@Emphrath so the dependency on Android is something we cannot change if we want to have devices out there that work.
As you might know, so far no hardware vendor came up with any device that is on par with an Android-Hardware device regarding power consumption, robustness/stability of the drivers and in the same way performance for nice UX and effects (something you need for consumers at a certain point).
Librem5 is not finished with their power management issues and a lot of doubt if they ever will be - In fact sending the CPUs to stop in 90% of the time of operation creates huge problems when events occur. Thats nothing that will be easy achieved.
Pinephone we dont know yet, but could have similar issues. So, as it seems we do not have any alternative hardware at end, do you suggest to have no hardware at all is better than to have one that is backed by low-level Android?
As for the 2nd part, being read-only in the root file system has 2 main reasons, which were reiterated in the forum, in the supergroup so many times already:
UT doe not use apt-based upgrading since it should be superstable so that the delivered binaries will 100% fit together - you dont want to install one package with apt that in the next moment crashes your display manager and you cannot use your phone anymore. Its not a PC! You cannot just switch to text mode, connect a wired keyboard and fix it yourself. Mobile devices have a much higher level of demand for resilience than your desktop PC. Also, image-based upgraded can use deltas to help downloading only whats changed in an efficient way - No need to run apt and compare all the lists of stuff.
Security: Unlike a normal Linux distro a mobile OS invites a lot of 3rd party apps to the system. In fact its the whole point of it: Your Debian and Ubuntu deliver 90% of what you need from their repos, but in UT its maybe 10%. So with so many 3rd party code enabled you definitely do not want to have a writable root partition and also the Android container is protected that way.
People please stop thinking that UT is "Ubuntu on a phone", its not and it also makes no sense to demand it. If this would be so desireable, Canonical would have done it, and not scratch their head to implement this much different logic.
