Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LineageOS Android Distribution

lineageos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 104 posts

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#61

Post by cartoonworld »

lucideer wrote: post #9
wongarsu wrote: post #3

LineageOS is great, my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own. You basically have to get phones according to their popularity in a certain subgroup: for example currently one HTC model and two LG models are supported, but close to everything from OnePlus. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…

While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.

>In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.

I agree with this wholly. Devices like iphones or the samsung devices are riddled with user-hostile features like KNOX, locked bootloaders, pre-installed payment gardens and proprietary blobs all over along with carrier locked, contractually defined handset ownership agreements.

The state of open smartphones is rather nacient, checking the wikipedia list page[0] there hasn't been a real handset launched in numbers for 3 years. I would describe the availability of these devices at best as Very Poor.

That said, HTC is much better for open firmwares than the big ones like apple or samsung. You can just ask and they will return the bootloader key. Try that with Samsung, they are horrible. Samsung is a very integrated vendor, and it can be quite challenging to develop for these very closed platforms, the software sometimes takes ages.

Case in point the Galaxy s6. The verizon locked phones still have no public bootloader unlock tooling afiak. Quite a hassle.

Currently the only Openish devices you might be able to get soonish are ( In the order of my own arbitrary bias )

- PinePhone (Pre-Production Developer Kits Shipped) [1]

- Librem 5 (Production Batches Shipping) [2]

- Necunos NC 1 (Released, Unavailable?) [3]

Unless I've left any out.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_pho...

1 - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

2 - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

3 - https://necunos.com/

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#62

Post by thaumasiotes »

lucideer wrote: post #27
_0ffh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices I've been using HTC devices for ages, and so far every one of them was dead-simple to unlock: Just go to the HTC developer page and enter your phone ID, get unlock code and enter on phone, done! Naturally HTC will from there on out decline responsibility for bricked phones, but which company doesn't?

If you're talking about simply unlocking the bootloader, that's as simple on most phones. I'm more referring to the general barriers put up to doing anything with your phone, either before unlocking (the OS itself is restrictively HTC-oriented) or after unlocking (S-ON, etc.) > Naturally HTC will from there on out decline responsibility for bricked phones, but which company doesn't? The fact that this is an accepted…

> The fact that this is an accepted norm is another part of the problem. Why "naturally"? Some manufacturers (like Google, Fairphone, Motorola on a limited number of phones) don't void the warranty, but even if none did: why do you think this "naturally" an acceptable thing other than it being the norm?

Because I want to be allowed to install software that will damage the phone. Holding the phone manufacturer responsible for code I wrote is not in fact a natural thing to do.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#63

Post by sozy777 »

xrisk wrote: post #35
datalist wrote: post #31

I have used CyanogenMod, and later LineageOS, for quite some time and was pretty pleased with it. The problem is it seems to be past its prime. It dropped support for mainstream phones more and more and is currenly limited to either very old handsets or rather exotic manufacturers. The most recent Samsung S series they support is from 2014, almost six years ago. CM and LOS were also popular on the Nexus 4 and 5, thes…

I think that's just because stock ROMS have become good enough that we don't need custom ROMS; except for purposes like de-Googling your phone or removing stuff installed by your OEM.

I'm using because I don't want to give location permission to apps. At least not my real location. I want to have the ability to spoof any detail of my phone.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#64

Post by bdcravens »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #60
unicornporn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support and I have also very good experiences of GrapheneOS (former CopperheadOS). I buy them when the next model (or the model after that) is out for a fraction of the price. Couldn't care less about getting the la…

> This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support Huh? The most recent Google phone with LineageOS support is the Pixel. The first one, from 2013.

Point taken, but the original Pixel was launched in 2016, not 2013.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#65

Post by zirror »

datalist wrote: post #31

I have used CyanogenMod, and later LineageOS, for quite some time and was pretty pleased with it. The problem is it seems to be past its prime. It dropped support for mainstream phones more and more and is currenly limited to either very old handsets or rather exotic manufacturers. The most recent Samsung S series they support is from 2014, almost six years ago. CM and LOS were also popular on the Nexus 4 and 5, thes…

> The most recent Samsung S series they support is from 2014, almost six years ago.

You know, maybe I was lucky or hit some weird Window, but they used to have S7 Lineage OS on there and I still run it on mine.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#66

Post by Fnoord »

cartoonworld wrote: post #61
lucideer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.

>In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones. I agree with this wholly. Devices like iphones or the samsung devices are riddled with user-hostile features like KNOX, locked bootloaders, pre-installed payment gardens and proprietary blobs all over along with carrier locked, contractually defined handset ownership agreements. The state of open smartphones is rather nacient,…

Great list. There's also the option of going for a SailfishOS smartphone because you won't have to abide to FAANG tracking.

Fairphone 3 doesn't quite fit the bill, but I'd still mention it in lists like these as it is possible to unlock bootloader, the phone is modular so can be repaired, and the Fairphone 2 ran a myriad of OSes (#3 just got released, give it some time).

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#67

Post by scns »

jumbopapa wrote: post #52
wazoox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very easy; the default is to have zero google proprietary stuff. In fact, you have to jump through some hoops to get Google play store, Maps etc installed, and it's getting harder and harder as Google locks its services down. Simply set up your default search engine to DDG or whatever you want and your LineageOS phone will send exactly nil to Google.

My understanding is that completely de-googling the phone is somewhat hard because of Google Play Services being a prerequisite for many services. I understand that you can get by without it, but many people find that somewhat of a burden.

WhatsApp works, but you have to check from time to time since Google made Playservices mandatory for push messages. Signal and Telegram don't.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#68

Post by gsaga »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #60
unicornporn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support and I have also very good experiences of GrapheneOS (former CopperheadOS). I buy them when the next model (or the model after that) is out for a fraction of the price. Couldn't care less about getting the la…

> This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support Huh? The most recent Google phone with LineageOS support is the Pixel. The first one, from 2013.

Pixel 1 came out in 2015, right?

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#69

Post by thaumasiotes »

gsaga wrote: post #68
thaumasiotes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the reason that I've only bought Google's handsets. Easy to unlock and always excellent ROM support. Flawless LineageOS support Huh? The most recent Google phone with LineageOS support is the Pixel. The first one, from 2013.

Pixel 1 came out in 2015, right?

2016. I mistakenly checked the wikipedia page for "Google Pixel", not the page for "Pixel (smartphone)".

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#70

Post by correct_horse »

xwvvvvwx wrote: post #46

iPhone user here. Increasingly curious about Android. If I installed LineageOS on a pixel3a, how much information would be going to google by default? How easy is it to avoid google altogether?

If you want to have a working phone, you need google apps (Google Maps, Google Play Services (used for many apps' notifications, location, analytics, etc.), Google Play Store, YouTube app). The Open Gapps project packages these nicely for use with LineageOS, but installation is janky (download a .zip file, install it using TWRP). note: despite being called "open", Open Gapps are proprietary, but packaged using open source software. Using LineageOS in this way is the sane/easy default that most LineageOS users probably choose. Using this method, you must sign in to google play services to install or update apps through the play store. Google play services includes a google analytics api, a a device registration program that generates an advertising id (so does iOS), Google also collects location data associating Wi-Fi hotspot with GPS coordinates (so does iOS). I'm not sure of the full extent of what info google collects, but it is probably substantial, and most probably happens through google play services. You could dodge this tracking by not logging in to Google Play Services and using a play store replacement like Aurora Store or Yalp (play backwards).

Another option is to use microG, a derivative of LineageOS that re implements parts of google play services with open source and throws out the rest. YMMV, but I have used it and my phone worked, excepting some apps' notifications because they use google cloud messaging. I never signed in anywhere with a google account, but I did have google maps installed (I haven't found a good replacement on Android). Google probably got rather little info from me, but they did get my location sometimes.

Post reply on HN