A question as old as time, I know.
I’m getting away from Google and I’ve done the easy stuff: CoMaps, Proton mail (I know, not the best move), aveslibre, etc. I currently don’t have the time (or the knowledge base) to learn how to self host, but hopefully that will replace Drive and such in the future.
But I digress. I’m looking at a new OS for my phone. I’m currently in a contract with a phone that is incompatible with alternative OSs. Graphene needs a Pixel. Used, they’re $150-400. /e/OS will run on a Motorola or whatever and those are like $80.
There’s also the option of going full Fairphone with /e/os and I like that idea in the future.
The internet people tell me that Graphene is the best due to ease of installation, privacy, and security.
I don’t need a lot of security. I just want Google to stop suckling all that sweet, sweet data from my teat.
What are your thoughts?
/e/, lineage, Jolla/sailfish, they are all bad for security and really not that great for privacy. grapheneOS really is the best without question especially if you value the best security.
/e/ and lineage:
- https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114235397501611300
- https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2026368443071582346#m
Sailfish:
Why do you say not the best move for Proton?
Mostly it’s accusations of vibe coding a supposedly secure ecosystem. The Trump thing wasn’t great, but I think it was largely blown out of proportion.
At the time I was looking for a Google replacement, which Proton kind of is. It’s got mail, calendar, and a drive, all that stuff. Since then, I’ve learned or realized that I would prefer to be invested in individual services like mailbox.org, mullvad, keepass, etc. So that if one service fails, I can just divest myself from that individual service not an entire ecosystem.
I agree with the Trump thing kinda being blown out of proportion, but I haven’t heard about the vibe coding part? I know there was one point where they used ChatGPT for something and were called out for the irony of it, but I don’t think they are majorly vibe coded. Because everything is open source, and they routinely get audited, I trust them enough to use their products. I do agree however, that not having all your eggs in one basket is a better ideology from a security standpoint. From a convenience standpoint (and wife factor), I pay for everything Proton :P.
Graphene is the best by a long shot, security wise and degoogling wise. In fact, you can use GrapheneOS with absolutely zero Google services running on your phone. /e/OS uses MicroG which while better than your usual Android phone, still runs with privileged access to your device. This is in contrast to GrapheneOS’ optional sandboxed Google services implementation which gives Google the same privileges any other app on your phone would have.
Thank you for detailing in one paragraph what I was unable to understand after reading articles about it all last evening.
It is also largely questionable.
/e/OS has MicroG, and that runs as a system service. You can disable most of it, and if you’re not using any App that needs Google services, I doubt it really does much.
It is possible to use Graphene without using any Google at all. However… Doing so will break almost every app out there. Anything that needs push notifications, AndroidAuto, a thousands more things. So you end up using Graphene with Sandboxed Google services.
And we get into the debate. Is it better to take the official Google Play Services, which we all consider malicious, and run it in a sandbox, or take an open source private, and trusted implementation (MicroG) and run it as a system service?
It is at the very least largely debatable.
It is best to run GOS or Lineage OS completely Google-free.
LineageOS is not “Google-free”. The OS still connects to various Google services by default, even without Google Play Services installed.
https://lineageos.org/ https://www.kuketz-blog.de/lineageos-weder-sicher-noch-datenschutzfreundlich-custom-roms-teil4/
Obviously Graphene OS is the current gold standard for privacy, but you can run a Lineage OS device without Google Play Services, with only free/libre software installation sources, and without the telemetry for those users who can’t or won’t use current GOS. This is obviously a considerable improvement over a Chinese or other commercial manufacturer.
But, yes, if you can run GOS rather than LOS, you should.
This pretty much not adressing what I said at all. I use LineageOS myself and it’s miles better than the Stock Operating Systems of most if not all devices they support. But we shouldn’t mislead people, LineageOS is not fully “degoogled” and uses some Google services, even without the Google Play Services installed.
You’re engaging in a strawman. Privacy is not a boolean choice, there are degrees. Making a few connections to some Google servers is not the same as having stock Android.
I came to GrapheneOS for privacy and security, but stayed for the features.
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Per application network toggle: I found this incredibly useful in cases where the application is fully functional without internet, yet still asks for internet permission, and I do not want it to phone home (e.g. Google Photos). It is helpful for when you are using a VPN, and do not want the slot to be taken by an application like NetGuard. Although, I believe you can replicate this functionality with (Split Tunneling) + (Block connections without VPN).
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Storage Scopes: This is a another highly useful feature. Say you took a bunch of pictures on a trip, and want to show the pictures to a friend. Normally, you’d fear them snooping around pictures that you don’t want to show them. However, with GrapheneOS, you can just download a separate Gallery application, only expose the photos (or the photo directory) that you want to show via Storage Scopes, pin the application, and safely hand the phone over to them.
I found this feature very helpful when shortlisting ~10 photos from a gallery of 500 photos. I downloaded PhotoSwooper (which lets you keep/delete photos by swiping right/left) from F-Droid, exposed the 500 photos directory to it, and started swiping. I iterated this a couple of times, and got my perfect 10.
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Contact Scopes: This is for the cases when you don’t want to expose your contacts to the application for whatever reason (e.g. you don’t want them to graph your connections or you just want to protect the privacy of your friends). You can just selectively share contact(s) instead of handing your entire phonebook to the application.
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Sandboxed Google Play: Some applications require the extremely invasive Google Play Services (because it operates with elevated system-level privileges). However, with GrapheneOS, you can just install the sandboxed play services, which acts as a regular user level application. You can then revoke network access within Sandboxed Google Play Services, and use your play services dependant application as usual.
So, basically, if you can afford it, go for GrapheneOS. I wanted privacy and security; but now that I tried GrapheneOS’s features, a lot of these are now nonnegotiable to me.
On Graphene now, I dearly miss simple Lineage features I used 10 times a day: the network speed indicator and long press power button for flashlight. I just assumed GOS would have them.
I browsed the forums and they’re not interested in implementing it. One answer was “buy a flashlight”
Even after a few months I still feel like going back.
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