Are you saying you can build a modern desktop without any binary blobs? Full control of all firmware (including the CPU microcode and things like Intel ME)? What about WiFi cards? I'd say that hasn't been true for at least 20 years.
> Are you saying you can build a modern desktop without any binary blobs? Full control of all firmware (including the CPU microcode and things like Intel ME)? What about WiFi cards? I'd say that hasn't been true for at least 20 years.
Not exactly.
What I mean is the average x64 Intel/AMD device is relatively much more "controllable" than an equivalent smartphone, assuming decent BIOS/UEFI options are provided. If I want to customize the looks with rainmeter, or even system-level tweaks (eg mactype), it's relatively trivial on desktop OSes (possibly excluding recent locked-down MacOs versions). I can even jump between Windows and Linux and Hackintosh/MacOs and BSD as I have a "pretty decent" level of control.
A rooted android phone is also quite decent, however issues start creeping in the further you stray from what your manufacturer provided. It starts of with things like Widevine/DRM not playing nice (unless you have a Titan M chip or something similar), and the further you go (stock rom -> custom rom with gapps/microG -> deGoogled rom), the more painful it becomes to even use ""basics" like whatsapp.
I guess all this is a very roundabout way of saying that desktop OS is a first class citizen (mostly), while mobile OSes (which are necessary for booking an Uber/paying at the checkout POS/navigating with Google Maps with turn-by-turn nav) do not have other freedoms. And while the hardware absolutely exists for an arm board to do it all with the right daughterboards, doing mobile stuff on a desktop is impossible, and doing desktop stuff on mobile is limiting thanks to software.
