Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

divestos.org

61–70 of 147 posts

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#61
post #52

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe…

mX macs are the future - you are guaranteed that there will be future generations of laptops sold in the millions(?) using at least some of this hardware. So the huge amount of work is probably going to be worth it.

Legacy phone hardware... harder to justify.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#62
post #52

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe…

No chances, because there's just too much hardware to support.

The only real chance is to get behind brands like Faiphone.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#63
post #52

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe…

No chances, because there's just too much hardware to support. The only real chance is to get behind brands like Faiphone.

Fairphone 3 and 4 have broken bootloaders that trust test-keys for Android Verified Boot: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro...

And they have similar limitations to what I do here with regards to firmware support, as they offer longer support than Qualcomm actually does for these chips used.

The only devices with proper aftermarket OS support and five years of updates are the Google Pixel 6 and 7 series.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#64
post #3
post #2

What are the alternatives / competitors to this ?

For new/supported devices I strongly recommend GrapheneOS. The other projects who support some of these older devices have numerous issues as noted here: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#osSecurity Edit: also of note: DivestOS currently provides monthly updates spanning seven versions of Android, I don't know of any other project doing that specifically.

There is also CalyxOS

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#66

I am frustratingly blind to today's alternate OSes. Where does a lay-consumers even start? Do I buy a used, but well supported (by alt OSes) phone? Which one would that be? Do I attempt to use my existing phone?

This writeup has a lot of good starting points: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#67
post #52

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe…

No chances, because there's just too much hardware to support. The only real chance is to get behind brands like Faiphone.

Sorry for my ignorance, but take, for example, Qualcomm chipsets, which are used in millions and millions of devices. There are 5 main series (2,4,6,7,8), a maximum of 9 generations for a total of 33 variations. I understand that 33 variations are a lot, but don't they share a lot of code? Apple Silicon has, at the moment, 5 variations in 2 generations (M1, M1Pro, M1Max, M1 Ultra and M2), and this number is going to grow quickly. Then we also have MESA drivers, which support, for example on NVIDIA, dozens of GPUs on a variety of architectures. I am getting this totally wrong? Is the effort that much greater than, for example, those projects? Is a Snapdragon 429 that much different from a 630, 665, a 750g or a 845? Apologies for so much text and thanks a lot for your answers!

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#68
post #61
post #52

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe…

mX macs are the future - you are guaranteed that there will be future generations of laptops sold in the millions(?) using at least some of this hardware. So the huge amount of work is probably going to be worth it. Legacy phone hardware... harder to justify.

I understand that, however I'm still not very convinced (obviously not saying it's not a huge amount of work) for the reasons in my other reply in this thread. Thanks for your answer and sorry for my ignorance!

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#69
post #65

Still running the latest iOS on my 6 year old first-gen SE. Why can't Android do the same?

I run latest Android version on my 6 years old Pixel 1. The only reason it isn't provided by Google is that Google doesn't want to.

Android 12 requires Linux 4.4 for proper networking and cgroup handling, which the Pixel 1 doesn't support. Skipping those requirements isn't a good idea.

p.s. status on this? thanks https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/issues/1...

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#70
post #29
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it even worse. They apparently do not even try to make it secure and willingly exclude some patches. Reminds me of "security by management risk acceptance"

They? This is my project, it is just me. There is not a single other project that achieves the scope of what DivestOS does for old devices.

So now the answer to security is to trust one lone developer?

This is more of a statement to the shit show of modern Android. A company worth $1T+ can’t be bothered to figure out how to support devices more than a couple of years and it’s left up to a random developer.

Post reply on HN