Oh oh, I know the answer to this one! No.
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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What a stupid headline. Negative clickbait (it makes me want to click elsewhere).
There's an axiom that every single news headline on the internet that ends in a question to the reader can be accurately answered with "no".
Betteridge's law
No.
No
That's just linux with extra steps
You misspelled "enshittification".
Can't call yourself a desktop when you can't even install a .apk without google's permission
With the way things are going on the mobile Android side and hope Google get fucked.
I dunno why everyone is so skeptical.
If it does Android apps, it's got everything 'normal' users could want. It's got a massively anticompetitive megacorp behind it. It's 'lean' and runs on cheap computers and is compatible with work stuff. And it doesn't bork itself with spam like Windows does.
...How could it not catch on?
99% of the population doesn't actively seek out modularity of privacy, many don't really know concepts like filesystems, URLs or desktops anyway. They get what's cheapest in Best Buy, and that's about to be Android laptops, if Google desires that.
The ONE GUY in this thread who gets it. Consumers want to go online. They want to browse the web. Watch youtube. Go to facebook. Check their G-Mail.
Thats about it.
Everyone else in this thread is like responding from the perspective of "Will Android as a desktop OS work FOR YOU?"
And that's not what's being asked here. What's being asked is if this would work for the masses.
In the 1940s, Japan underestimated the USA. They sent spies to look at Pearl Harbor months before the attack. They reported home with real accurate information. Their mistake was NOT intel gathering. They had the right correct information.
The mistake was thinking that USA used their navy vessles in the same way Japan did. Japan ran small efficient crews. Fast, efficient, stealthy. But small.
So when Japan got their intel on how the USA was operating they estimated the number of navy forces based on real data, but estimated the number of human forces based on their own policy. They miscalculated how many navymen were in service by 800%.
So they made the same mistake people in this thread are doing. Assuming others would apply the same line of thinking and way of doing something that they would.
When in reality, there are 8 billion different individual people on this planet right now. And with that comes 8 billion different ways to think.
Most people won't pass over an Android OS just because the file structure or privacy settings aren't to YOUR liking.
They already tried it with Chromebooks.
I hope not!
No.
Might as well just run Linux at that point and if you want android apps, waydroid. The value prop of Chromebooks was supposed to be that you can just factory reset it at any point and log back in
No but I could see SteamOS taking this crown in the long run
Yeah if there will be a new OS pushing into the market, it will be SteamOS.
Our long nightmare of commodity hardware and open ecosystems is finally coming to an end!
Please Lord, no 🙂↔️🙏
No. Next question.
lol no.
Google is developing a Linux runtime for Android, Valve are making an ARM version of Steam, so it could be usable but I don't think it'll light the world on fire.
After seeing how Chromebooks were, which were treated as just Android-like OSes in laptop shelling. Absolutely not.
Chromebooks were/are the most efficient user to ewaste pipeline ever created. So many Chromebooks just got dumped after a couple years of use.
They had it right for a while when you could install Linux on them, but Google decided we couldn't have nice things and ruined that.
Sure would be nice to play Android games on my desktop without using those dodgy-as-fuck emulators
No it's not largely because of Google mocking around with it.
Just install Linux stop trying to make Android desktop a thing. It's not going to be a thing and no one really wants it to be a thing anyway. Move on.
But Google can't control Linux. They can control Android. That's the only reason they're pushing it.
It's great for appliance type things, for example turning an all in one in to a security camera interface. There's zero chance it's going to be anything but a VM on my desktop.
It already is but not in a traditional way as desktops are basically dieing off for most non power users.