We gotta rush the EU to pass legislation to prevent monopolies like this.
Yes, everyone cares enough, they will definitely change that.
As far as I know, people are too stupid to even understand what sideloading is (it is about that, right? Edit: yes.)
E/Os all the way. Fuck Google
How’s the security/privacy? I don’t expect it to be as good as Graphene, but I’m not interested in buying a Google phone.
Is it good enough that I won’t have to worry about it? Any uses I should avoid on e/os?
Just make sure you can relock the bootloader after you install the e/os ROM or anyone with a USB cable can do as they please with your phones OS. AFAIK that feature is limited to pixel phones and some fair phones, so your options are a bit slim.
I recently switched from Apple to a De-Googled Fairphone 6 (Murena e/OS), because I do not fully understand Graphine OS and I thought the Fairphone would be the easiest way to detach myself from Apple and Google.
tbh the only thing that keeps people from jumping to a full deGoogle phone or an open source Linux phone is app. More specifically, IM and chat apps.
Social media and all those entertainment like Youtube, we can access via a good web browser. But those IM apps? Very hard because you can try to use an alternative, but people around you dont.
I currently run GraphineOS. I will probably buy one more refurb phone that can run it until Android is dead. Then I am switching to a dumb phone for calls and SMS, and a mobile hotspot connected to a pocket sized cyberdeck. I can still run the apps I want and no longer need Android. With a 3d printer, 25 years of being an electrical and software engineer I can easily make a device that does what I actually want.
Is this practical for the average person? Of course not. But this whole problem is something the average person can fix. STOP BUYING SHIT FROM COMPANIES WHO SCREW YOU!!! Use your power as a consumer and stop giving them money. Make them feel the pain of doing anti-consumer actions. None of this stuff is a requirement for life. If they see a hit in sales, if everyone who makes apps pulls them from the app store, they will change. But it requires everyone to act, and we damn well know most of yall will do nothing but complain.
This problem is a foot gun where we are all buying the gun, loading it, handing it to someone while sticking our foot out and we want to blame them for the bloody hole. Stop it!
Does this effect patched apps? Like YouTube Revanced
This was just inevitable for Google. Google is no longer an open source company. Hasn’t been for maybe a decade or more. They abused the good spirit of open source for their corporate benefit and are ending that relationship on their terms. Get used to it Android users.
Anyone got any ideas on how to force another OS onto my phone? I’m fed up with it.
The best general resource for instructions on how to unlock your phone’s bootloader and flash alternate AOSP ROM’s or non-Android OS’s is https://xdaforums.com/
Please note that not all carriers and oem’s allow you to unlock the bootloader though, so choose your device carefully for this.
You will also most likely need a PC (desktop or laptop) with adb & fastboot on it. These are apps used in the terminal, but you only need to copy and paste a few commands into them to use it.
If you have a Google Pixel then best option is Graphene - https://grapheneos.org/
For other devices you can use a “degoogled” Android ROM and get apps from the open source F-Droid app store - https://f-droid.org/
Some choices for this are:
Lineage - https://lineageos.org/
crDroid - https://crdroid.net/
/e/os - https://e.foundation/e-os/
Iode - https://iode.tech/iodeos/
OR use a a true alternative mobile OS. Options for this are:
Ubuntu Touch - https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
Sailfish OS - https://sailfishos.org/
Mobian - https://mobian-project.org/
Postmarket OS - https://postmarketos.org/
Plasma Mobile - https://plasma-mobile.org/
Droidian - https://droidian.org/
You can also purchase devices with alternative OS’s already preinstalled from:
Volla - https://volla.online/en/devices/
Jolla - https://jolla.com/
Fairphone - https://fairphone.com/
Murena - https://murena.com/
Furilabs - https://furilabs.com/
Brax - https://www.braxtech.net/
In order to load a custom OS you first must be able to unlock the bootloader ofthe device. The list of OEMs allowing that is sadly getting smaller and smaller and vendors are becoming actively hostile towards custom firmware development.
see: https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame
Keep in mind, that Brax uses misleading YouTube videos and their devices are as secure as my 2017 Redmi with LineageOS and a non-relockable bootloader (which I use with caution).
Also: mobile linux doesn’t even offer the security of Secure boot on laptops (maybe Purism does, as they have a good track record on their laptops).
Please don’t be an idiot, use GrapheneOS as it is the only security focused mobile OS.
“Don’t be an idiot” - yet the big idiocy I see over & over on the Fediverse are Graphene evangelists that want to knee jerk condemn the multitudes of other mobile libre projects that are doing some good things, with its supposed (and disputable) “perfect”.
Graphene is indeed the current best solution towards security hardening for mobile devices, and I would certainly recommend it as first choice especially for anyone working in truly sensitive areas (e.g. journalism, political activism, closed source design, utility maintenance, etc.), or for whom anyone for which security is their primary concern.
However - at this point Graphene is 100% dependent on Google for continuance - both to a large extent the coding of its AOSP base, for the timely security updates Graphene prides itself on, AND in ALL of the hardware it currently supports. As such, given Google’s direction, with the next gen Pixel phones likely not to be easily unlockable, and with security updates possibly only provided in a timely way to an insiders list of oem’s, until Graphene issues their own devices, or expands beyond only Pixel support, it faces a potential expiry date (similar to what has happened for CalyxOS).
Meanwhile there are TONS of use cases of people with devices from all kinds of oem’s, that simply want an experience on these that offers better privacy and more digital sovereignty relative to what Google & Apple offer. As such one can achieve a close to an ad free & data mining free, with much less overall tracking, experience on all of the solutions I listed. And many of these solutions, unlike Graphene, do not depend on Google for their software & hardware. Do some of these solutions have flaws in their security & privacy? Absolutely. For which the thing they need is folks to join in to help fix these flaws. And I’ve been happy to see increased momentum across lots of these projects to do exactly that recently.
I haven’t looked into it much yet but grapheneOS has apparently come a far way and has an easy installer nowadays.
Only reason I’ve paused is I have to use a private 2fa authenticator for work and not sure if it’d work on the OS, but it looks like they’ve gotten most major bank apps work on it so that’s one less obstacle
which 2fa do you use for work? microsoft? authy?
Authy doesnt work so I am transferring all to Keepass Not sure about microsoft though
Its their own proprietary one, not sure what runs underneath it.
Its their own proprietary one, not sure what runs underneath it
Its their own proprietary one, not sure what runs underneath it
Unfortunately they don’t support any devices besides Google’s Pixel: https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support
Supporting at least major Samsung models would help adoption.
Unfortunately Samsung is making it more difficult to impossible to unlock the bootloaders of their recent devices, but you can reflash some of their older models at least to ROM’s like crDroid - https://crdroid.net/
Buying Samsung is never the solution to anything. Plus, Motorola will have some cutting edge devices supported by GOS in about a year or so.
Or so…
GrapheneOS puts 0 compromises on user-security in addition to privacy. They don’t really have anything to gain by supporting less secure hardware to drive adoption.
Motorola seems to be cashing in on providing the alternative, though, which is a win for everyone
Had not idea, that really sucks. Guess im in the same boat with samsung…
It’s not an easy install if it literally can’t be fucking installed on most devices.
You just won the most moronic phrase of the week. That’s like saying there’s no point to sd cards because there are devices that don’t have a way ro use them.
If you were already talking about limited storage on devices that typically can’t use SD cards, then yes, you’re a fucking idiot if you say “Just use an SD card to increase your storage! It’s EASY!” Which is what you’re doing when people are talking about Android issues and you say the same fucking thing about GrapheneOS.
TL;DR: There’s a moron here, but it isn’t me.
Had no idea, no reason to get hostile about it.
Sorry, I’ve had a lot of assholes telling people to use GrapheneOS like it’s super easy for most people to just go out and get a specific phone that is relatively low in market share (making them harder to find second hand too) like it’s as easy as running to the store for a loaf of bread and they get super aggressive when called out on it and it has, in turn, been pissing me off.
GrapheneOS is legitimately great IF you have a device that can run it, which most people don’t. A lot of it’s fans are raging assholes. Sorry for assuming you were one of them.
No worries, I had actually assumed that with all the people suggesting it it was a bit more ubiquitous, but apparently I was mistaken.
I have felt this way about my phone for a long time. This is probably good because it will probably create a viable alternative to the apple-android ecosystem. Maybe Graphene will support more phones and new privacy focused mobile-OS will pop up.
I got grapheneOS on my phone right now. Go fuck yourself, google.
I will also do my damn best to make sure my older Samsung S23 doesn’t fall into that version. I have uses for that phone.
Can you explain a bit more? I’ve had one laying around for 2 years and haven’t updated it.
Yea but you had to buy a google phone right or do they support more phones now
Sadly I had to. But Motorola did support… before I got a Samsung I had a grapheneOS compatible Motorola, but it broke down.
Motorola is starting to offer grapheneOS compatible phones or so they said, on the regular.
You are right to point out that this hardware dependency on Google is bad and obviously this wouldn’t work for everyone if everyone were to switch to GrapheneOS, but you can totally buy a used Pixel if you don’t want to give more money to Google.
We must all keep pushing people to go against this and to build up Linux mobile alternatives: PostmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch, JollaOS, and semi by extension, GrapheneOS
I can only afford one phone and it has to be a successful daily driver.
That’s going to be the story of 90% of everyone affected right now too.
Running something like lineageos, graphene or e/os all can easily serve as a daily driver.
The problem is that the most important apps for users aren’t on those platforms. Bank apps and identification apps. They need to make apps for those platforms first otherwise a switch makes no sense.
Also I have tried Ubuntu touch and it’s a nightmare and dysfunctional. e_OS however works great.
Exactly, consumer choice only works as a force in a functional market. Phone OSs are very much not a functional market. This requires regulators to wake up.
agree, see also official government apps, like medical apps, post office, public transport, etc. i live in europe and those are usually necessary.
People thinking this isn’t a monopoly enforcement action in disguise are the same people who think banning Huawei was justified.
Google’s one mistake was that they sold Motorolla to Lenovo, who ran it as low cost shovelware to make the mobile phone market in the US not look like a complete oligopoly. They kept their cost low by using complete stock Google ROMs while every other OEM exited the market.
Until recently when Lenovo properly built up their hardware lineup and started jumping ship to GrapheneOS the moment Google started clamping down.
That and thinking that they won’t be sued to oblivion for this. People are looking for ways to do lawsuits and this is a big one
Of course the US won’t do jack shit. Google always wins in reality even when they lose in US antitrust courts. But other countries can maybe win. Please do!
What happens to existing side loaded apps on my phone?
I believe nothing, Google still allows side loading via ADB and apparently sideloading is not exactly going anywhere, but when you want to install one, you have to wait 24 hours and reboot your phone, as I said though terminal bypasses these, it’s just security stuff all again, I guess Google isn’t very happy about society’s widespread misinformation that Android is less secure than iOS
I’ve found it impossible to run apps from APKpure. Google Play gets in the way, stops the app from startup because “it might be malicious” and does not give you the option to run it anyway. I have sideloaded apps and run into the same problem. I’d read you can disable Google Play Services to get around it, but the apps themselves require it. These are just Japanese escape games, nothing sketchy.
Connect to PC, install ADB Platform tools, open up your terminal, “adb install app.apk”
Maybe. That is unclear. If your app isn’t verified, Google may or may not do something to “warn” you.
And whatever they do now is only the first step. They will soon lock it all down, because monetizing it gets them rich.
We need go start talking about the year of the GNU/Linux phone
Or the year of free (as in freedom) pocket computers, since the global telephony system goes against the freedoms.
PostmarketOS isn’t GNU
Anyways it’d be interesting to see more niche OSes on phones (there’s a mobile port of Genode/Sculpt OS for example)
