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CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

calyxos.org

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Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#91

Post by cdesai »

grey_earthling wrote: post #16

From https://calyxos.org/about/ : > In social science, agency is defined as: the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. > built-in integration for Signal and WhatsApp calls Signal and WhatsApp are both fully centralised, tied to a single organisation each — they are antithetical to agency. Why not use open protocols like DeltaChat, Matrix or XMPP instead? > built-in free “Vir…

The VPN is one of the Digital Services we offer, completely free.

https://calyxinstitute.org/projects/digital-services/vpn

We also include RiseupVPN, and Orbot (which is Tor as a VPN)

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#92

Post by cdesai »

steelbrain wrote: post #40
spinax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trusted by whom? Calyx VPN uses the same tech stack as Riseup VPN, which are branded versions of the Bitmask client - CalyxOS is a part of the Calyx Institute family. You can instead use the Bitmask client from the F-Droid repo and choose to connect to either service with the same app (rather than using branded apps for each service).

Curious, does anyone know what's their business model to monetizing the "free" VPN service? How do they make their money back or is it a donation kind of thing?

It is all based on donations, see https://calyxinstitute.org/projects/digital-services/vpn

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#93

Post by Koshkin »

_abox wrote: post #76
atatatat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The reputation of Nick Calyx (worth a look his Wikipedia page), or GrapheneOS team, etc, is so much easier lost than that of, say, Google's Android team.....or iOS security team. Having said that: Calyx shouldn't be considered much more secure than Android Open Source Project (AOSP). That's where GrapheneOS shines. Calyx should, however, be considered more private than AOSP, less dodgy & exploitable than Sa…

Yeah GrapheneOS is security over privacy, Calyx is privacy over security (and has a bit more mainstream appeal with MicroG, supporting push messaging and location services etc). GrapheneOS has also pioneered a lot of security measures, a lot of which have been added to Android proper (if you see their feature log, a lot of it says "removed because it was introduced in Android"). I wonder if that wouldn't have been th…

Don't privacy and security go hand in hand?

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#95

Post by ezconnect »

fitblipper wrote: post #28

The thing which always makes me hesitant about these projects is that they don't receive frequent security audits and not having an expensive brand behind them makes them more at risk to being willing to trash their name at the cost of my privacy and security. I consider these to be a fairly critical part of any project which claims superior privacy and security. I think about it this way: Should I trust A. The compa…

This is definitely better than google spyware as a phone. No built in exploit.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#96

Post by cdesai »

dstryr wrote: post #75
godelski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are always able to add playstore in. But of course this comes with some cost to privacy. There's also other app stores like f-Droid. Usually these are populated with the same apps but often there are ones you are going to have a harder time getting. Does anyone know if there's a way to do a sandboxed playstore? Like you can use it to download the apps and update (assuming this won't be automatic) but that it is c…

- Install Shelter from F-Droid - Install the Aurora store apk inside of Shelter - Open Aurora store in Shelter's work profile and use like a normal play store and all apps installed within Aurora remain sandboxed

There is also a built-in Work Profile feature now, under Settings -> System -> Multiple Users.

It basically does the same thing under the hood.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#97

Post by fragileone »

cdesai wrote: post #88

Lead Developer here, AMA?

1) What would you say are your unique differences from LineageOS and GrapheneOS?

2) What big goals/projects are planned for the future?

3) Where do you see Android as a platform in 5 or 10 years? Any predictions or notable obstacles?

4) What do you think of mobile Linux distributions?

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#98

Post by somenewaccount1 »

F-Droid is for distributing viruses. There may be legit apps on there, but there are also tons of virus's and not enough app oversite to be safe. It's doesn't seem like much of a threat because the userbase is so small that not a lot of hackers target it. Once it has 5% of pop though, it would be a meaninful target - particularly since these are rooted phones.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#100

Post by cdesai »

Ninjinka wrote: post #37

Only available on Pixel phones and a single Xiaomi phone.

We do want to support more devices, however not all of them meet our requirements https://calyxos.org/about/faq/device-support/#requirements-f...

We're trying to find devices which do, and if not see if the requirements can be relaxed.

The most important part that's missing from many phones is being able to relock the bootloader with a custom OS installed.

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