TL;DR
- Efforts like Graphene OS face increasing pressure from apps that refuse to run on non-standard Android.
- The custom ROM project characterizes Google’s approach to device attestation as incomplete and flawed.
- Graphene OS is prepared to take legal action if Google won’t let it pass Play Integrity checks.
Hell yes.
It’s fucking open source, this is no different from games with intrusive anti-cheat refusing to run on Linux, except in this case it’s not even a different OS.
It’s monopolistic and anti-user.
Ironically, if Graphene would succeed, it would lead to a system that’s every bit as locked down as a manufacturer’s Android. GrapheneOS would also not allow you to have root etc.
IMO Graphene wants a place at the big player table. They’re not in it for user freedoms.
A manufacturer’s Android can have special privileges for their own apps, and almost will certainly have special privileges for Google’s apps.
Graphene by default wouldn’t give special privileges to any app, so that’s at least a plus.
It’s true that it would be locked down, but you at least have a couple more controls over how locked down compared to a manufacturer’s OS.
yeah. like my manufacturers’ 3-year-old, full-o-spyware ROM is more secure than latest clean installed lineage.
they just want control, not security. and with banking apps becoming a necessity, i’m starting to be forced to return to stock.
graphene sandboxes Google services so they don’t run as root on your device. I haven’t encountered an app I can’t get running on graphene yet and having Google play installed as non root is a far sight better than stock.
my biggest problem with lineage was compatibility with banking apps so I reluctantly switched but graphene is a solid choice in operating system for privacy and security.
Myself, I use my bank’s web portal via my mobile browser. Not as instant as an app, but it gets the job done.
What gets me is the “this phone cant be trusted” message on boot. Implying OEM roms are trustworthy, but nothing i choose or create could possibly be.
I wish you could slap a custom rom on whatever phone you want and it Just Works™ like you can slap linux on any PC, but instead we get apps that potentially don’t work, locked bootloaders, push notifications tied to Google Play Services, and whatever else. You can put Lineage on the EU version of my phone but not the US version because fuck you. I hate how corpo centric phones have become. Like Google shouldn’t be allowed to hijack my entire screen for an ad or an app update. The entire modern definition of “sideloading” is BS, apps have access by default to things that they really don’t need, and why do I need to use ADB to purge your pre-installed bloatware ffs
Not cool.
I really hope the GrapheneOS team succeed. Custom ROMs are reason I’m really into tech today. Coding, FOSS, Linux, etc. all that came from rooting my dad’s HTC phone back in the day. Google shouldn’t cannibalize its children.
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.
The PC was stolen fire from the gods. aRM snapdragon X will take back our fire, turn PC into smartphone on the desktop.
Heracles could shoot the eagle and break the chains, but then Prometheus might inform Zeus of the path to Troy. Titanomachy is one way of exchanging fire, but I’m human and content to hand it back and forth between each other. The pain of letting go is nuclear enough after Gaia and Uranus’s Family Vacation tore valleys through the mountains.
the only reason I’ve wanted to be rooted in recent years is when I didn’t have hotspot on my plan and the most complete way around that was with root.
I think I would like a degoogled Lineage/Graphene OS though
Wtf, plans locking down device features. That’s mindblowing.
Why is stuff like that included not included in every plan by default? As a European, I can’t even imagine paying extra for that. If I want to hotspot my data, my operator can kiss my ass and simply allow it, I’m paying for the data anyway.
In less free countries the provider also provides the handset and locks it all down.
for this case it was a plan that’s pretty discounted and also unlimited without hard throttle. they don’t want people using it on computers or game consoles probably
As Kevnyon@lemmy.world said: @NetworkOperator: Kiss my ass. I pay your for service. You wanna restrict me, I switch my damn plan. If I use it on my phone streaming 4K stuff from my home server or watch 1GB of data over hot spot on my phone is not their business.
I love running a custom ROM, but I’m concerned RCS is going to become a deal break for me :(
I love that text messaging will finally not be complete shit between iOS and Android, but RCS is such a shitty locked down protocol.
but I’m concerned RCS is going to become a deal break for me
For what it’s worth, I have RCS working with GrapheneOS. I don’t think I did anything special, but it did take awhile. I did see stuff on their forum about others having a bigger issue with it, though.
And of course, I prefer Signal, where possible.
Interesting. Do you have Google services installed? I use MicroG, which afaik has no RCS support.
Do you have Google services installed? I use MicroG…
Yes, I have Google Plays Services, Google Services Framework, and the Google Play Store installed, which are all sandboxed. MicroG isn’t supported by GrapheneOS.
Even without the custom ROMs, the whole Android ecosystem is a colossal fucking mess.
I’ve got old apps that won’t work any more. It’s not even compatible with itself.
People give Windows a load of shit, and deservedly so for some of it, but it’s a million times more usable than Android when you want shit to “just work”.
I’ve got old apps that won’t work any more.
That’s true for every operating system. Old apps aren’t updated to use new system APIs and such and they eventually stop working.
On desktops we can use virtual environments, translation layers, plenty of solutions to make old programs and games work on a modern OS. Phones are somehow incapable of this.
I hope some OEM (especially those opposed to google) picks up and develops mainline linux like Pine Phone. There are already several mobile UXs and distros with prebuilt images available as well, and it has been shown multiple times that Android apps can run fairly easily on linux. It would be a big risk, but I think it’d at least find a market success like the Steam Deck.
Android in its current state is the same as Chromebooks. A glorified walled garden of google’s crappy choices & DRM which just so happens to run on the Linux kernel because it’s free. People downvote me for this, but I maintain that even Dalvik and the android runtime itself is an inefficient relic of 10+ years ago when mobile devices had at most 2gb of ram and a tiny low power ARM processor.
It runs like complete crap sometimes on modern devices despite huge advancements in the underlying tech. It feels like a knockoff JVM which is already a known memory hog.
On top of that, it sticks with single kernel releases with proprietary OEM binaries so you have devices out here running on kernels as old as 3.x because no custom ROM will be able to recompile the device modules for a newer kernel.
It is almost hilarious to me that Moonshell, a multimedia homebrew software for the Nintendo DS (4mb of RAM), has more complete features, file compatibility, and better UI design than at least 95% of the music apps on Google Play. And it was written by literally one guy. I was honestly surprised at just how many music players lacked functionality as basic as supporting m3u playlists.
I feel that the mobile world is ripe for disruption. There has not been excitement for new devices in a while from me and my friends who are all into tech. I remember 00s and early 10s where we used to discuss new devices all the time.
Most of us are STUCK with Apple and Google because they have both built walled gardens. It is not just the apps, it is also moving away from open standards, moving away from even files. e.g., 10 years ago mp4 files used to hold all the metadata related to a TV Show/Movie so if you put that into a device (iTunes for example) it’ll have all the metadata, now this info is in a separate database. SMS for all it’s flaws was open, now google wants us to believe RCS is also open (LOL).
This has led to a basic degradation in all the basics, echoing your example that it is impossible to find a decent music app.
Even apples own music has has ACTIVELY DEGRADED. Bottom bar of apple music app was “Albums”, “Songs”, “Artists”, and “Playlists” and YOU COULD CHANGE THE BOTTOM BAR. Now it is literally “Home” == Ads, “Browse” == Ads (pls buy apple music), “Search” == Ads. and LITERALLY only 1 page called “Library” where you can access your own purchased library. Same happened with apple books.
Android has seen similar shitty stuff, I remember being excited about actually FUN android games, tiny thief, vector, cut the rope, where is my water, etc. Now it is all ads, paywall nonsense.
Not to mention the Today page of the Playstore ACTUALLY USED TO BE USEFULL for highlighting some apps. And is not LITERALLY ONLY F***** ADS.
I feel/hope/pray that we have a SteveJobs 2007 type iPhone event around the corner, because everyone is ready for it.
There really is a dearth of choices. I’ve little love for Google’s version of android, mostly for privacy reasons.
If I could get a decent phone that ran at reasonable speed for a tolerable price, without the tracking, I’d be willing to give it a go - and endure more than a few pain points.
Getting an “a” series pixel for a few hundred and going grapheneOS seems like a good option, no?
I have tried it. Pixel 6a.
My banking app works. That’s good.
RCS messages don’t. Could live without that.
Merlin bird ID doesn’t. Pain point all right, but I’ll live.
My Galaxy Watch doesn’t. Probably not GrapheneOS’ fault, and I should buy a better watch, but that will only happen when this one dies.
Now I use a pixel 7a with stock ROM. Everything works, and if I get sick of it, I can get back to GrapheneOS and it’s quirks…
The only reason I stopped using grapheneOS was because Google contactless payment didn’t work.
Loved everything else about graphene thoI’ve never used contactless on my phone, I already had a contactless debit card. Why are you, and others, using their phones to pay?
I can create a virtual card before every trip, use it via my phone and then cancel it after the trip, never worrying if my card got skimmed anywhere for one.
For some fucking reason there is zero option for this type of secure virtual card in my country. And I hate it. A friend got skimmed for over $1200 a couple months ago.
Wow, I legit just ordered a used pixel yesterday to give graphene a try lol. Uncanny timing!
Anyhow, that’s great news! I can really see the EU sinking its teeth into this if nothing else.
I would totally buy a Pixel too but apparently most Pixels here are black market and the IMEIs are banned so I don’t wanna risk getting one that can’t connect to cell networks
Oof that’s scary. Good thing I have a decent enough return window to at least make sure stuff like that isn’t the case, at least.
