Consider the incentives. Google: track every detail of your life and use it to serve up ads that support their bottom line. Implements changes that serve themselves at your expense. F-Droid et al: build cool open-source software cause they like cool open-source software. Implements changes because they make the software better.
Missing option: Apple iPhone. Just works, aggressive security team.
Cons: You end up in Apple's high walled closed source garden. And have to deal with whatever they remove from the next iteration of the device based on their whims and fancies. And the exorbitant price tag.
Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? yes, its a devils-advocate position. You might (for instance) have high trust because you know them from hacker traeff you've been on, f2f. I can't have this a-priori knowledge. From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. Of course for the primary goal of "distrust g…
> Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? One gains knowledge , not trust, from studying governance and audit structures. > From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. In what concrete way(s)?
Do they do the same kind(s) of scans the google store does on apps? Sure, reproducible builds, but reproducible with holes isn't an upside.
How does a bad app get removed? Who decides? When?
Something I haven't yet understood -- why hasn't a ~Debian of Android-compatible phones emerged? Are we lacking a UI? Kernel? Apps? Interest? Interface with existing closed-source apps? Is stock Android too good?
Purism is planning on fixing that[1]. The funny thing is that we've actually reverted backwards, you could install a Debian-based distro on the Nokia N900 -- not really possible on newer phones (though you do have stuff like Ubuntu Phone). [1]: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
I miss my N900 so much and for so many reasons. Unfortunately all of mine had abysmal build quality and fell apart after a few months. A friend of mine kept repairing his for many years -- maybe he still uses it.
But a huge part of why I liked the N900 was the physical keyboard. What is the puri.sm stance on that?
I run a similiar setup for almost 1,5 years. LineageOS 14.1 with f-droid "store"; syncing contacts and calendar with davdroid over nextcloud; also switched search to duckduckgo (on desktop, too) and I really don't miss anything. Another advantage of missing Google play services on my now 5 year old phone is, that the power last two times longer than before. A google service free phone is absolutely usable in my opinion and I can recommend this to anyone who does not want to share all its data with google.
Some word to the play store problem: I've heard of so much malware and fake apps there, that I don't think the trust is less for an open source community. To install any proprietary apps, I can recommend yalp store, which uses the play store.
It's interesting to see how much apps depend on google services and the only trusted source is the google play store, which requires a google account (which I don't have). At this time any request on providing google free apps are ignored or denied with google play being the only trustable source for android. I don't think that this is true, at least not for people with some technical background.
iOS Firefox is a reskinned WebKit, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
Ah, got it, that's unfortunate. I remember some time ago, Mozilla said that they wouldn't put a browser on iOS unless it could use Gecko. When I saw the app I assumed that the restrictions had changed.
This is exactly what we mean when we say closed garden and extortion. If firefox wants to exist on the platform, they have to play by apple rules. Apple are just fine without firefox so they don't care.
I have been running non-stock ROMs for a while now (specifically AOSP Extended, on my Samsung S7 Edge) and ny main issues have been related to reliability/stability, primarily in what I assume is the device drivers' area. Camera freezes phone or gives shitty pictures, microphone not working, etc, etc. This is nearly enough to cause me to go back to stock.
However, I do see the number of ROMs built for my phone has increased a lot, so maybe I should try something else?
I used k9mail for awhile until I realized it had sent every temporary draft of an email as I revised something and changed between apps. Was super embarrassing. Hard to trust it now even though the ui seemed great.
I used k9mail for awhile until I realized it had sent every temporary draft of an email as I revised something and changed between apps. Was super embarrassing. Hard to trust it now even though the ui seemed great.
That's horrifying. I imagine the moment you found out a cold wave went down your spine.
Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? yes, its a devils-advocate position. You might (for instance) have high trust because you know them from hacker traeff you've been on, f2f. I can't have this a-priori knowledge. From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. Of course for the primary goal of "distrust g…
Something I haven't yet understood -- why hasn't a ~Debian of Android-compatible phones emerged? Are we lacking a UI? Kernel? Apps? Interest? Interface with existing closed-source apps? Is stock Android too good?
Canonical made some attempts at a mobile Ubuntu (which is a Debian derivative) but they have a short-sighted vision and in general they have a history of failed attempts at similar projects, like Netbook Remix.
Consider the incentives. Google: track every detail of your life and use it to serve up ads that support their bottom line. Implements changes that serve themselves at your expense. F-Droid et al: build cool open-source software cause they like cool open-source software. Implements changes because they make the software better.
Missing option: Apple iPhone. Just works, aggressive security team.