Why isn't there as much diversity in the mobile OS world as there is in the desktop OS?

Question

linux

Why is the choice limited to purely android, apple, windows. Why are projects similar to openmoko not developed (dead too)? Why is ubuntu touch, I'm not afraid of this word, so miserable? Although Canonical is not a small office, and how long has it been sawing it and all to no avail? Everything in the end is limited to AOSP + your view of what it should be.
The reasons are interesting. Why is there still no *nix-like, NetBSD (whose motto is "run everywhere") and other things?
Iron heterogeneity in a mobile environment? Or what?

Answer 1

Exhaustive answer:
https://cascardo.eti.br/blog/GNU_on_Smartphones_pa...

Answer 2

A mobile axis without a community is worth nothing. No one will use an operating system if no one writes software for it, and getting someone to write software for a new platform is not easy.

Answer 3

Because the user does not need the OS. He needs software - a browser, messenger, Word, Excel.
And this software is written for popular, already promoted systems.
It is unlikely that you are ready to spend millions of funds and thousands of man-hours to write excel for some RT11SJ thread (yes, there is such an OS)

Answer 4

On the desktop, in essence, the choice is limited to one of the Linux distributions, Windows and Macos. Debian, Centos and, for example, Arch cannot be called different axes. Yes, there is a choice from a bunch of options with their own advantages and disadvantages, but they are all essentially distributions of the same system. Free BSD on the desktop is rare. All sorts of exotics like React OS and Kolibri - well, there are exotics on phones like the same Ubuntu Touch.
Well, it is difficult to attribute many radically different systems to advantages. From the point of view of software development, this is an extra hemorrhoids with support for all possible operating systems. So having three platforms to choose from isn't too bad.

Answer 5

Who said no?
For example, VinHP was launched on Nokia. But no one wanted to use it.
So the question to users is why don't they run openBSD on their mobile phones?

Answer 6

You might think there is a wide variety on the desktop. Windows and Linux - that's all the diversity. I do not take Yabble, because Yabble is a closed hardware and software configuration, which, unlike the first two, tends to close even more. Pure UNIX on the desktop is the wildest exotic, which brings its users a constant hit, but they don’t migrate from them - for many reasons - due to habit, laziness, unwillingness to learn another axis, out of a feeling of being “elite” ... I, I must to say, I was one of them for a long time :) 1997 - 2013, FreeBSD desktop, KDE.
Writing an axis from scratch is not an easy task. And most importantly - why? Just like that - well, a couple of the same enthusiasts will launch it. So there are plenty of Linux distributions - go to distrowatch and count how many there are. Users do not care what axis. They need services. No software - no community. There is no community - the axis is dying. Read at your leisure the history of OS/2...

Answer 7

https://medium.com/english/%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B...