I have Sailfish OS, just got the new Jolla Phone and I am quite happy with it. Surprisingly daily driveable for my requirements. My phone isn't a tiny laptop. Mic, IEM and camera work without issues. So does 4G VoLTE.
I know, its controversial for having some closed source UI parts (that are the reason why it doesn't feel like a tiny laptop) but the Linux/GNU underneath is open source. To those who are not requiring 100% FOSS purity it is an interesting choice.
There are those of us who are using Firefox on the desktop. No Google Play anywhere in sight.
And on the phone I am one of the odd ones using the Gecko engine based native Sailfish OS browser.
That is where you are going wrong. US cities were not transformed overnight to car oriented places either. That took decades. Maybe where the error arises is from the idea that only transit needs transit oriented places to work well, but cars do need car oriented places to support a car only design as well. Yes, cars can drive on all sorts of roads but that is true for one car, if you put everyone into a car in a transit oriented city, the whole traffic is going to collapse, commute takes forever ...
Transition to transit oriented places can work, but you need long term dedication and political support. The Netherlands demonstrate that quite well. In the 1970s they were on their way to become transformed into a US style car hell hole, even had US city planners to make it a reality. The first oil crises and rising popular opposition against it, saved them.
You don't transform an entire car oriented city into a transit oriented overnight. It is more like a crystallization process. A transit oriented city condensates along axis. This is happening in some places already today. One example is the Washington DC metro area. But of course, due to lack of political support if not open ideological opposition, it happens even much slower than it has to.
"The braking distance and inability to turn is why greater physical barriers are required to separate rail."
That's nonsense. HSR does not require any extraordinary barriers. Nothing more than you commonly find at modern highways in Europe.
Your "inability to operate off track" argument still doesn't make any sense. I think you fundamentally do not understand how rail works. They don't need to be able to operate on roads and for pure transportation purposes, they can be moved across any freight rail track of the same gauge. The US is full of those and even where there is no network at all, units can be transported also by ship and even via road if need be. If there are reasons why a HSR can't be operated, well, it doesn't operate. Easy as that. Same as if an airport is blocked due to bad weather. My experience with HSR is that it operates much more reliable than aviation.
Houston lilght rail sucks because it is an inferior system in a city completely designed for the car, with a barebone light rail tapered on at the side. Singapore is a hot city too, yet it has a well working rail system. And much of China is also hot and humid with great working rail systems, HSR as well. I know there are a lot of excuses that the US can't have any of that because it is so big, so hot, so cold and what not. Those are excuses with countless real world examples proving that they are.
I find it rather bewildering how people don't seem to think that airports can't work because of the lack of transit, but with HSR stations it is absolutely impossible to have them working without. Yes, local transit is highly beneficial for both, but it is not a requirement for either to work.
Outside of town is high speed rail also less of a headache to build. Sure, you need more tunnels and bridges but for example the LGVs in France have surprisingly high gradients, so they can follow the landscape better than many people believe.
I am not saying that HSR is easy to build I am merely saying that they are not such an existential challenge as US Americans make it out to be. Even developing countries manage to build them, highly developed ones manage it and everyone in between. The problem in the US is not that that the technology is so challenging. The problem is legislation that is extremely hostile towards such projects, creating overhead costs that are multiple times the entire project costs in other high cost countries. The problem is a lack of political will and the problem is especially ideology, the idea that rail infrastructure has to be profitable to be justifiable (road infrastructure interestingly is not having that requirement more often than not).
PS: "extreme breaking distance" and "inability to turn independently or operate off track" are not an issue at all, why would they be?
Highways are not nearly as easy to construct as you make them out to be. Especially in metropolitan areas their (not so much) smaller possible radius is counteracted by much larger area requirements, gigantic interchange areas required, pollution and noise that is destroying land values in a wide corridor ... Also regarding pedestruan crossings, highways are no better than rail. They are actualy worse as crossings have to be much longer.
What you consider showstoppers for rail are consequences of countless recent highway projects, that were miraculously not impossible to construct.
It is BS that real estate can be routinely sacrificed for highway widening and even brand new highways but not for modern rail infrastructure.
The easiest way to know that those accusations are not true, is that the case would not have been persued by the justice dep, if the SPLC really wanted to fraudulently use donations for supporting Nazis.
That is part of the reason I guess, but large long car infrastructure projects are still much more likely to happen even if they take longer than that.
You get what you build. The US still builds basically only road infrastructure and as long as that doesn't change, the US will remain underdeveloped in the personal mobility department. The country could do something about anytime but it doesn't. Sure, it takes decades until a change in direction really starts to change the country and how it works but that wasn't different when the country was bulldozed for cars either.
That's a lame excuse. There are universities right next to heavy rail, with super sensitive equipment. It is all a question of shielding and vibration management. And when it comes ro vibrations, I have never heard of a highway project getting cancelled because of sensitive hospital or research eqipment, have you?
It is bad enough if anti-trust actions get moving against a functional monopoly in the EU. Really bad for business ... of the monopolist.
I have Sailfish OS, just got the new Jolla Phone and I am quite happy with it. Surprisingly daily driveable for my requirements. My phone isn't a tiny laptop. Mic, IEM and camera work without issues. So does 4G VoLTE.
I know, its controversial for having some closed source UI parts (that are the reason why it doesn't feel like a tiny laptop) but the Linux/GNU underneath is open source. To those who are not requiring 100% FOSS purity it is an interesting choice.
Safari? Yes, it is most definitely a major browser, if anything Firefox isn't one. So if we don't count Firefox, then it would be only two indeed.
PS: Everything on an iPhone is forced to use webkit btw, so even Chrome is webkit on an iPhone. There are a lot of iOS users out there.
No, not really. Firefox and Gecko are crucial for Google to avoid being broken up by regulators. They have to keep Firefox alive for that reason.
Not entirely correct. When we look at engines there are Blink, gecko and webkit. Unless you also count Ladybird's engine I guess.
Yes Blink is a webkit fork but it has been separate for a good while.
Isn't it crazy that Safari and thereby also Chrome/Chromium are at the heart based on work by KDE for its Konqueror?
There are those of us who are using Firefox on the desktop. No Google Play anywhere in sight. And on the phone I am one of the odd ones using the Gecko engine based native Sailfish OS browser.
One of the areas where, interestingly enough, the supranational union called EU, is acting more unified and faster than the federal nation state USA.
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't uBlock the most capable adblock, with others coming close but not reaching it?
That is where you are going wrong. US cities were not transformed overnight to car oriented places either. That took decades. Maybe where the error arises is from the idea that only transit needs transit oriented places to work well, but cars do need car oriented places to support a car only design as well. Yes, cars can drive on all sorts of roads but that is true for one car, if you put everyone into a car in a transit oriented city, the whole traffic is going to collapse, commute takes forever ...
Transition to transit oriented places can work, but you need long term dedication and political support. The Netherlands demonstrate that quite well. In the 1970s they were on their way to become transformed into a US style car hell hole, even had US city planners to make it a reality. The first oil crises and rising popular opposition against it, saved them.
You don't transform an entire car oriented city into a transit oriented overnight. It is more like a crystallization process. A transit oriented city condensates along axis. This is happening in some places already today. One example is the Washington DC metro area. But of course, due to lack of political support if not open ideological opposition, it happens even much slower than it has to.
"The braking distance and inability to turn is why greater physical barriers are required to separate rail." That's nonsense. HSR does not require any extraordinary barriers. Nothing more than you commonly find at modern highways in Europe.
Your "inability to operate off track" argument still doesn't make any sense. I think you fundamentally do not understand how rail works. They don't need to be able to operate on roads and for pure transportation purposes, they can be moved across any freight rail track of the same gauge. The US is full of those and even where there is no network at all, units can be transported also by ship and even via road if need be. If there are reasons why a HSR can't be operated, well, it doesn't operate. Easy as that. Same as if an airport is blocked due to bad weather. My experience with HSR is that it operates much more reliable than aviation.
Houston lilght rail sucks because it is an inferior system in a city completely designed for the car, with a barebone light rail tapered on at the side. Singapore is a hot city too, yet it has a well working rail system. And much of China is also hot and humid with great working rail systems, HSR as well. I know there are a lot of excuses that the US can't have any of that because it is so big, so hot, so cold and what not. Those are excuses with countless real world examples proving that they are.
I find it rather bewildering how people don't seem to think that airports can't work because of the lack of transit, but with HSR stations it is absolutely impossible to have them working without. Yes, local transit is highly beneficial for both, but it is not a requirement for either to work.
Outside of town is high speed rail also less of a headache to build. Sure, you need more tunnels and bridges but for example the LGVs in France have surprisingly high gradients, so they can follow the landscape better than many people believe.
I am not saying that HSR is easy to build I am merely saying that they are not such an existential challenge as US Americans make it out to be. Even developing countries manage to build them, highly developed ones manage it and everyone in between. The problem in the US is not that that the technology is so challenging. The problem is legislation that is extremely hostile towards such projects, creating overhead costs that are multiple times the entire project costs in other high cost countries. The problem is a lack of political will and the problem is especially ideology, the idea that rail infrastructure has to be profitable to be justifiable (road infrastructure interestingly is not having that requirement more often than not).
PS: "extreme breaking distance" and "inability to turn independently or operate off track" are not an issue at all, why would they be?
Highways are not nearly as easy to construct as you make them out to be. Especially in metropolitan areas their (not so much) smaller possible radius is counteracted by much larger area requirements, gigantic interchange areas required, pollution and noise that is destroying land values in a wide corridor ... Also regarding pedestruan crossings, highways are no better than rail. They are actualy worse as crossings have to be much longer.
What you consider showstoppers for rail are consequences of countless recent highway projects, that were miraculously not impossible to construct.
It is BS that real estate can be routinely sacrificed for highway widening and even brand new highways but not for modern rail infrastructure.
The easiest way to know that those accusations are not true, is that the case would not have been persued by the justice dep, if the SPLC really wanted to fraudulently use donations for supporting Nazis.
No other country was blamed for it in the post above.
That is part of the reason I guess, but large long car infrastructure projects are still much more likely to happen even if they take longer than that.
You get what you build. The US still builds basically only road infrastructure and as long as that doesn't change, the US will remain underdeveloped in the personal mobility department. The country could do something about anytime but it doesn't. Sure, it takes decades until a change in direction really starts to change the country and how it works but that wasn't different when the country was bulldozed for cars either.
That's a lame excuse. There are universities right next to heavy rail, with super sensitive equipment. It is all a question of shielding and vibration management. And when it comes ro vibrations, I have never heard of a highway project getting cancelled because of sensitive hospital or research eqipment, have you?
There is a reason Trump is looking up to Putin.
Not only 0% alcohol, also 0% taste and 0% beer. There are great alcohol free beers out there btw. This ain't it.
Nor are most of the desktop Linux distros, compared to GrapheneOS, yet they are not downgraded for it.