Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can use whatsapp without gapps
But backup, at least in the past, did require gapps
microg is an implementation of most relevant playstore APIs
De-Googling my phone
151–160 of 192 posts
Re: De-Googling my phone
#152Your 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?
We're working on it with postmarketOS [0].
A lot of the issue is that most devices have poor, if any, mainline kernel support. That means you have to rely on the downstream vendor kernel, which is almost always hopelessly out of date. (For instance, the downstream kernel for my OnePlus One is at 3.4 from 2012.)
Besides just being out of date, the vendor kernels require binary drivers and Android-specific services to use a lot of peripherals. For instance, the graphics driver Freedreno is compatible with my OnePlus One's GPU. However, Freedreno isn't compatible with the version of KGSL that the downstream kernel supports. That meant that my only options, if I wanted hardware-accelerated graphics, were to use Halium or mainline my device.
That's not even getting into bringing up WiFi, LTE, and actual phone capabilities, which are still a ways out as far as open source software is concerned.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#153I am adopting a different approach. It seems likely that I may not be able to de-BigBrother myself without tremendous efforts. There are all kinds of devils out there, why not at least sell the soul only to a single devil? So I am going all Google. Nothing else. I exclusively use all their products (even Google+). I don't have FB, Twitter etc. Google is the devil I have sold my soul to.
So sad it has come to this.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The real problem is that you can't get a phone [1] which can run upstream kernel. So while there's postmarketOS and Replicant (both trying to port regular Linux (for lack of a better word[2]) to phones), very few phones work properly (and most are fairly old and not sold anymore, IIRC Replicant's newest phone they support is the European S3 - guess how old that thing is). So now, for each device, you have to port des…
postmarketOS tries to bring a desktop-style, Alpine-based Linux distro to mobile devices. It has some level of support for relatively recent (~2015) devices, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Replicant is working on creating a fully free software distribution of Android, rather than trying to provide a desktop-style Linux.
Porting programs isn't generally a huge deal. Most devices on postmarketOS currently use the old downstream kernel, and most things run fine on it.
The main problem is that a lot of peripherals require closed source drivers and firmware. For instance, very few devices have support for hardware-accelerated graphics or wireless connectivity, both of which are necessary on a mobile device.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#155[[
Re: De-Googling my phone
#156I 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.
A massive killer for me was sending mail under one username but indicating others in body and headers.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#157The Deutsche Bahn navigator mentioned in the article runs fine without Google Play Services. The only thing missing is the map view. And you can use yalp to install and update it.
Just use https://github.com/grote/Transportr/blob/master/README.md (in F-Droid). It supports many transports worldwide.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#158Maybe I can help, I have written this in google context, but it is general privacy enabled configuration. This is what I am using: https://lineage.microg.org/ (get rid of google play (and save 1/3 of battery)) apps have a dependancies to google framework and just not having it breaks lots of stuff (this is google true vendor lock-in). Microg is opensource reimplementation of it, but it needs patches into android to f…
Xposed shouldn't be used carelessly, see e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1y4u1p/can_xposed_...
Re: De-Googling my phone
#159Your 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…
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.
>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.
I think you're missing the part where a user benefits from their services.
I mean, it's not as if users get nothing out of this arrangement. The vast majority of users feel they're getting a good deal. Just because you don't think it's a good deal for you, don't impose it on others.
Re: De-Googling my phone
#160Your 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…
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.
I understand you're frustrated, but there are a lot of us at Google who are also just trying to build cool open-source software, and in cases such as mine, building it so that others can use it to build even better things with less work. =(