It was a skin, now its a completely different OS. The initial version, HarmonyOS, was based on Android/Linux, the new HarmonyOS Next, is a proprietary version (or successor) of HarmonyOS based on an open source project/OS, OpenHarmony. It uses a new microkernel instead of the linux kernel.

OpenHarmony is essentially an open source base for making an operating system on top. Its not like the Linux kernel, in the sense that its not just a kernel (in fact you can use the linux kernel with it), but rather a bunch of components people can build upon. And since it uses a permissive license, you can build a proprietary OS on top of it (like the HarmonyOS Next).

Huawei actually launched OpenHarmony many years back but it was not ready for phone usage yet. It was only with the launch of the 5th version that Huawei was confident enough in it to start using it on their own phones.

rpm-ostree is intended to be the last resort because layering causes issues with updates and other things

thanks for the comprehensive answer!

But what about the other features?

(tbf looking at the github I don’t see anything special but I have been seeing people using it swear by it so Im wondering what Im missing)

yep 😄 just edited it

AMD and Intel both have very good linux support. On that note there shouldn’t be much of a difference.

In fact, AMD GPU drivers are quite a bit ahead of Intel on Linux. And the AMD laptop has a significantly more powerful iGPU plus it has DDR5 ram. So it should give you noticeably better performance.

More problematic could be the wifi chip, fingerprint reader and maybe the camera.

Wifi nowadays works well on Linux so I don’t think that should be much of a problem. Intel Wifi usually has better support though.

Cameras also mostly work though the IR sensor might not work.

Fingerprint support on linux is 50/50 (from linux-hardware, it seems fingerprint on similar models is not working unfortunately). If you know the exact fingerprint reader model on the laptop you can check if it has linux support.

Thinkpads usually have good support on Linux overall so I won’t be too worried with either option. I couldn’t find the exact models on linux-hardware.org, however I did find similar models:

All AMD models by this name (E14 Gen 6)

All Intel models by this name (E14 Gen 5)

21M3002TGE

21JK0009SP

Intel pretty mutch only thinks about Winows

Where did you get that from? Intel officially supports their drivers on linux and has many engineers working on support for their products in the kernel and mesa.

Let Linus see through the Rust inclusion in Linux. I dont think it will go well without him. He is well respected in the Linux community so people are more willing to compromise with him.

It has been in the works for a long time (since 2022): https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/19059

You can disable apps using adb.

I personally use AppManager (FOSS). In the settings, change the working mode to Wireless ADB. The app should give you the instructions but you can also ask here. Then from the app list you should be able to disable any app you want. The app even tells you which apps are bloatware.

But if you want, you can use adb on Linux too. Download adb and then from terminal run the commands as explained here: https://www.xda-developers.com/disable-system-app-bloatware-android/

Yes, but maybe debian enables it by default? You can check by running cat /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/enabled

If the result is 0x0007, it means MGLRU is fully enabled.

Its about Malibal, an infamous linux/windows hardware company. The person in the video is a KDE dev (Niccolo).

If you prefer peertube: https://tube.kockatoo.org/videos/watch/fcd71cf8-37be-41ad-ab66-bb7efaf44350

Distros ship with icons and themes system wide because apps running as root only load icons/themes that are installed system wide (you can check this by running an app as sudo).

Woah that MR actually got merged damn. Couldn’t believe it when I saw this, I thought the title was a clickbait or something until I checked and it was for real.

You are just being silly, there is no way its going to “seriously damage the entire Linux project”. There is nothing too technical about the whole R4L drama (esp. the recent one), its mostly political opposition to Rust from some C folks. We have seen this before in Linux (Wayland/X11, systemd/sysv, etc.).