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De-Googling my phone

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Re: De-Googling my phone

#181

Post by Yetanfou »

psergeant wrote: post #34
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple iPhone: mostly works as long as you agree with the Apple way of doing things. No alternative web browser for you, no expandable memory, no 3.5mm jack if you want a recent device, no full control over your device. Very limited choice of hardware from a single supplier. Expensive hardware, this mostly related to the issue of there only being a single supplier. Hardware also with well-documented problems which tend not to be solved [1].

You need to trust Apple. What makes you think you can trust them? Remember that Google started life with 'do no evil' as their motto, people tended to trust them as well. Lately, not so much anymore.

If you don't feel these issues are valid or think they don't matter Apple can be an option but it does not make sense to portray them as the solution which 'just works'.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

Re: De-Googling my phone

#182

Post by zoom6628 »

lopmotr wrote: post #24
zoom6628 wrote: post #19

For who ever is interested.... I live in China and have lived in a "google free" microcosm for some time forced on me by the government. Generally do not miss anything at all - at least I dont miss anything i dont know about. FTR i dont game or media watch on my phone. For me a phone is a mobile device for getting things done when im not at my desk. I use a Blackberry DTEK60. The apps I use: APKpure for getting apps…

That's much easier in China because all the important local apps are obviously available without the Play store. Like banking, ridesharing, payment, etc. App publishers in the rest of the world always depend on Play store and it's a real pain for people with Chinese phones who're travelling/moving.

Good points. In China one needs only alipay & wechat and basically everything you need in life is covered....and I mean everything!

Previously i used the xiaomi store for apps on local phones, and phones bought elsewhere and it worked a charm - looks first on its own store and then has option to search elsewhere for the apk. Worked faultlessly for me until i decided to switch to APKpure because the signing in F-Droid and its occasional blocking became a pain for me.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#183

Post by Boulth »

didsomeonesay wrote: post #73
evjim wrote: post #57

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.

This appears to be still an open issue. https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/2060

I just tested it. It saves a draft each time I switch the screen but when I press Send only one email is delivered (the last one, as expected).

Re: De-Googling my phone

#184

Post by kqr »

alexozer wrote: post #7

Nice, I've also thought about moving all my notes and todo stuff to Org Mode. I did figure out a way to sync org mode files between laptop and phone with low latency (unlike with Syncthing) running Unison inside Arch Linux inside Termux, using git to automatically merge conflicts. It's a little crazy, but seems to work? Maybe will do a write-up at some point.

Syncthing has recently gotten inotify support for lower latencies. These days I barely even notice any latency, actually. (Where previously it would depend on your scan interval, default 60 s.)

Re: De-Googling my phone

#185

Post by Lurkars »

letsgetphysITal wrote: post #87
Lurkars wrote: post #54

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 opini…

How do you find it when communicating with people who don't share your ethos, say those heavily invested in Whatsapp, or another platform to which there is no F/OSS compatible client.

The topic was more on google free, than FOSS. To go fully FOSS, you have to walk some extra miles and just don't use these services. I don't, so in the case of WhatsApp, you're lucky because they offer official apk (https://www.whatsapp.com/android/) and have an autoupdate function. As mentioned, the backup service has do be done manually. As I said before, for other proprietary Apps, you can use p.a. Yalp store, which downloads apks directly from play store. There are of course some Apps, that fully depends on play services, which I cannot use. MicroG is no real alternative, because it still communicates with Google service AFAIK.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#187

Post by dleslie »

letsgetphysITal wrote: post #87
Lurkars wrote: post #54

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 opini…

How do you find it when communicating with people who don't share your ethos, say those heavily invested in Whatsapp, or another platform to which there is no F/OSS compatible client.

I use SMS and email; I've never had a whatsapp account and stopped using gchat and messenger when they broke with jabber.

People who provide meaningful value are worth a little extra effort.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#188

Post by fghtr »

kqr wrote: post #53
cyphar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Take a look at https://neo900.org

Re: De-Googling my phone

#189

Post by boneitis »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #127

Been thinking of getting the Essential Phone as my next phone as opposed to the Pixel 2 but not sure if I want to root and install Lineage, which begs two questions: how secure is Lineage does it maintain close ties to Android or does it drift a little? and... Are there LineageOS phones out there yet?

Isn't one of the main purposes of the LineageOS project to preserve as close-to-stock of an experience as possible?

Personally in terms of security, I would worry more about the Essential-specific builds, not general LineageOS releases. For example, a quick search shows LOS having the KRACK vulnerability seemingly patched the same month after public disclosure.

As for my distinction between Essential builds vs. general LOS builds, bear in mind LOS has not reached Official status for the Essential phone and is very unlikely to within the foreseeable future, primarily due to the difficulty in decoupling Google services from the OS. BUT! If the Essential LineageOS Discord channel is any indication, maintenance and updates are super active. And, the (volunteer-run) support is VERY helpful. Keep in mind, they are supporting LineageOS on Essential, not necessarily cases of rooted devices.

Furthermore, rooting isn't a 1-click process at this time, either. You'll have to bust out the computer terminal, run some adb/fastboot commands, and do a couple additional things that get your hands dirty.

If you use T-Mobile and have the money for a Pixel 2, I would just go with that. Essential has widely varied reception for T-Mobile users. Mine for example simply doesn't work much of the time that it says I have full signal, and it flat out drops incoming calls and text messages with absolutely no indication whatsoever that anybody even tried to contact me.

I kind of regret my choice in phone to replace my aging, problematic N5.

Pretty healthy pool of LineageOS phones "out there." https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Re: De-Googling my phone

#190

Post by antb123 »

I've been doing this for 3-4 years. Most of the apps are what he recommends

A couple of other recommendations:

Try using amazon app store as they have some commercial apps and don't use google

KeepPassDroid - and use syncthing to sync Skype (on amazon)

The two that I have problems with are uber which use to allow you to use their web interface and google maps replacement. I ended up with a burner phone after a while...

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