My complaint is not that the "appliance" solutions exist for those that want them. But that there is next to no room in the market now for options that are not those "appliance" solutions for those that do want them but also want to take part in the modern tech world with things like NFC payments without having to trick the services with Magisk modules.

The world of mobile phones is a real world example of what we avoided on the PC back in the day when the IBM BIOS got reverse engineered, allowing for someone to put out an IBM compatible PC without having to pay the tithe to big blue first. Not that IBM didn't do their level best to put those efforts in the ground with their lawyers and the courts as soon as they found out about it. Thankfully the legal system of the time didn't allow that to happen.

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of "cool toys" and "security" virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

Phones, TV set top boxes, smart TVs, IoT gear. They are all a cesspit of locked down propitiatory and gate kept gardens where nothing happens without the gardens keeper getting a cut and having final say over everything.

This sort of control and gatekeeping from the likes of Google, Apple, and Qualcomm was not something that was hard to see coming a mile away, yet we all collectively let it happen anyway.

But in order to create a solution that will be mainstream enough to make in-roads into the hold Big Tech has on the market

Firstly, I doubt their users asked them to be "mainstream", only their want for a piece of the app store profit pie is asking for that.

Secondly, if the only way to make in-roads on big techs hold on the market is to become just like them, then maybe they should be trying to find a better way.

F-droid is not going to beat the Play store at its own game. And it shows how naive the maintainers of F-droid are if they really believe that.

I've been using KISS launcher off and on since Branch bought Nova. Not nearly as flexible when it comes to customization. But if you just want a simple launcher that supports stuff like custom icon packs it is a good one.

Eh, no matter the phone I have had or the version of Android it has, it has more or less looked the same for years since I just install Nova and import the backup. Same thing for my lock screen. I will probably continue to use it the same way I have for years no matter what it technically supports.

I moved to esim for everything since my carrier (US Mobile) supports it and has a nice utility built into their mobile app to allow you to move your number to a new esim anytime you want to switch phones.

I worked somewhere like that back in the 2008-2010 time frame. Thankfully, there was a extension, I believe the name was "IETab", that would spawn a new tab in Trident (IE's browser engine). So you could set certain sites to launch in one of those tabs and everything else would use standard Firefox. None of the people I supported were any the wiser. They just thought everything worked in Firefox.

Granted it was only that seamless because Windows already had that rendering engine built in. There are some extensions that do something similar with Chrome, but because of more modern security standards and whatnot you have to install extension helper applications which is gross.

This kind of shit is why Googles (and anyone else that tries it as well) ever increasing push to put a layer of ads into anything is so off putting to me. Sure ads are annoying, but they are also probably second only to social engineering as the method for someones device and accounts getting compromised.

I personally will not go back to the days where just the act of visiting a website and clicking on nothing has a good chance of loading some Javascript and infecting my browser or whole device with the drive by malware of the day because the shit heads that run the site are to lazy to vet what they are letting their site call out too and the third party ad networks are to lazy to vet what sorts of things they are allowing their ad networks to serve.

Gotta get that post nut clarity to make sure it is you and not the horny feelings leading you to making that decision.

I dream of working somewhere where this kind of effort is appreciated enough to motivate me to put in the effort of actually doing it.

This combination of arrogance and complacency sort of thinking is how it does happen on Linux one day.