I am a long term GrapheneOS user and would like to talk about it. r/privacy on the redditland blocks custom OS discussions which I think is very bad for user privacy, and I hope this post will be useful to anyone who are in the hunt for better privacy.
Nowadays smartphones are a much bigger threats to our privacy and Desktop systems, and unfortunately manufacturers has designed them to be locked down devices with no user freedom. You can’t just “install Linux” on most smartphones and it is horrible. And most preloaded systems spy on us like crazy. That was why I specifically bought a pixel and loaded GOS onto it.
According to https://grapheneos.org/features , they start from base AOSP’s latest version, imptoves upon it’s security and significantly hardens it. There’s hardened_malloc to.prevent against exploitation, disabling lots of debugging features, disabling USB-c data, hardening the Linux kernel and system apps etc. They even block accessing the hardware identifiers of the phone so that apps cannot detect whqt phone you’re using. That means with Tor and zero permissions given, apps are anonymous.
Compatibility with apps are best in Custom ROMs but there are still that can’t work, especially if they enforce device integrity. Very few apps usually enforce that tho. Also their community isn’t the friendliest but you can get help. Just don’t try and engage too much or have too many debates.
Anyone else here use GrapheneOS, or any other privacy ROMs? What is your experience? Do you disagree on any point? Let’s have a discussion!
By default there is nothing, it’s a blank slate. It’s up to you to decide what apps to use.
Agreed. The Google implementations are there for folks who absolutely cannot go without certain apps only available from the Play Store. Upon installation, all that’s there is the OS with the necessary apps (camera, phone, browser, etc) with the security on these individual apps additionally patched.
With the sandboxing of Google Play and Services AND the option to further house these apps from the Play Store in a separate profile, you have a perfectly working device that the individual user can customise to their needs.
Its a great project and a real asset to the FOSS, privacy and security community against big tech/govt surveillance.
The phone is only as good as how you choose to set it up and use it.
Screenshot for you. Google is explicitly linked to for easy setup. F-Droid is not. “There is nothing” is simply disingenuous.
It’s not installed.
But it is Google Play-centric. There is an option to install Google Play. There is not an option to install other app stores like F-Droid, unlike some of the other AOSP clones.
Thanks for the downvote! Really helps lemmy become a more welcoming place when we are just having a civil discussion.
Having google play, and the auora store in the GOS apps system does reduce friction to install them vs f-droid, agreed, but it is a blank slate and its totally up to you.
Which I think is good. Make it easy for people wanting to test FOSS to do so.
Anyone who knows what they are doing will figure out how to install F-droid soon enough.
I find it hard to critisize it for something that makes it so much easier to start with for anyone.