Ugh, I don't know. From a practical standpoint, I can see why basing on Android makes sense. But I really wish we can "somehow" extend an existing Linux distribution (or an Android kernel, even) with a user space reworked to function well on small screens. Maybe that's a pipe dream.
What I'd really, really prefer is to be able to program the device with the same ease as developing a local Linux application. If I need a UI, I'd rather that be a web front end, and not something that needs GBs and GBs of special IDEs and other bloatware. That way, we don't need specialised "apps" for each and every thing: any service that already has website, should work as it is. Just point a browser at it.
And how do I tweak an "app's" UI if I must, rather than beholden to it? That's right: web extensions.
OpenMoko had that more than a decade ago, there were a multitude of distros. I ran Debian with X11 and Enlightenment on it at one point. QtMoko was probably the best one for the Freerunner hardware though, much more suited to the small touchscreen.
Purism did a lot of work to build Phosh, based on Gnome, with GTK apps that had fluid layout. on a phone-size screen, the UI was suited for touch; but connect it to a screen and everything seamlessly switches to a standard Gnome UI.
i would rather see this get mainlined into Gnome, and for it to be common-practice to design desktop apps with a fluid layout that can adapt to phone screens.
I'm rooting for the web because it's all plain text technologies. And UIs live high up in the stack that one benefits from quick feedback, and also isn't forced to use a low-level language to develop them. But I suppose there can be language bindings from Python etc.
What I'd really, really prefer is to be able to program the device with the same ease as developing a local Linux application. If I need a UI, I'd rather that be a web front end, and not something that needs GBs and GBs of special IDEs and other bloatware. That way, we don't need specialised "apps" for each and every thing: any service that already has website, should work as it is. Just point a browser at it.
And how do I tweak an "app's" UI if I must, rather than beholden to it? That's right: web extensions.