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CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

calyxos.org

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Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#151

Post by ineedasername »

_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…

Remember the time when you could sudo on macOS with a blank password :)

Apple paid out a lot of free sandwiches on that one [0] Internationalization on that command was a mess though. Defaults were based on OS settings and the flags to override were based on a combination of country & postal code rather than the localized name of the ingredient.

So, if I didn't want the default of an American cheese sandwich on white bread with mayo, I had to research each bread, meats, and cheese lineage to get, for example, provolone using the switches -c IT -r 26100. It got worse if you wanted multiple cheese types.

In the end I just aliased a bunch of options. My favorite was meatloaf w/ swiss cheese... I have no idea where Apple sources their meatloaf for the US region, but I haven't had anything like it since. The cafeteria staff at Apple HQ have stopped taking my calls.

[0] https://xkcd.com/149/

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#152

Post by brundolf »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #145
brundolf wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can other Android flavours like GrapheneOS or LineageOS do this? There's a separate question you're missing: what your Google Services situation is Distros like Lineage come without Google Services; if you want them, you install them yourself "gapps" is the official one. It's straight Google everything. Lineage OS + gapps will give you a very clean and nice Android experience if you don't care about Google collecti…

X >will give you a very clean and nice Android experience if you don't care about Google collecting your data. I must be confused here, but isn't the whole point of installing any OS besides Android on an Android device preventing google from collecting your data? Why else would anyone deal with a non-standard OS?

The above are all distros of Android

The other reasons to use a non-stock version of Android are:

- Much longer updates lifetime than you get from the OEM

- Removal of OEM bloat

- Addition of features that are actually good

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#153

Post by peakaboo »

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…

That attitude will lead to you being a slave for Apple or Microsoft or Google for your entire life. They won't change their ways. You won't have privacy there.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#155

Post by LukeShu »

cdesai wrote: post #139
LukeShu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those are the phones that are supported in the upstream Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which these OSes are typically based on. Other phones, even ones that to a great job of publishing their sources (like Sony's), have their support living outside of AOSP. And older phones get dropped from AOSP, the original Pixel was dropped in Android 11. So, by only targeting the devices that AOSP supports these OSes…

The other aspect to this is that you can install a custom OS on the Pixels and still re-locked the bootloader, which means you get Verified Boot and all the security guarantees that brings. https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot

You actually couldn't do that with the original Pixel (which until recently, Android 11, these custom derivatives tended to support). You'd get a warning screen every boot about how the OS has been modified.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#156

Post by cdesai »

LukeShu wrote: post #155
cdesai wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other aspect to this is that you can install a custom OS on the Pixels and still re-locked the bootloader, which means you get Verified Boot and all the security guarantees that brings. https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot

You actually couldn't do that with the original Pixel (which until recently, Android 11, these custom derivatives tended to support). You'd get a warning screen every boot about how the OS has been modified.

You definitely could, we used to support it in a previous iteration.

This was also possible on the Nexus devices, although the oldest I've tried it is the Nexus 6P.

It just worked slightly differently on those, nowadays you enroll the public key by flashing it to the device, on those (Pixel 1, Nexus) you used to have the public key embedded in the kernel.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#158

Post by _1 »

vbsteven wrote: post #140
_1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * I need the Fitbit app to work so my watch can show push notifications from my personal apps It's going to hard to degoogle your phone and stay attached to your Fitbit.

Is there a specific reason for this? Does the Fitbit app rely on Play Services? I don’t care too much for on wrist calls or anything like that. I just want to use the Fitbit app to sync stats and mostly display notifications from WhatsApp and my personal apps.

I don't know how the app works under the hood, but Google owns Fitbit

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#159

Post by valiant-comma »

Koshkin wrote: post #93
_abox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Another way of looking at it:

Privacy is what about you're trying to protect, security is about how you are protecting it.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#160

Post by luca020400 »

cdesai wrote: post #154
luca020400 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Director/Head Developer @ LinaegeOs here. Hi, sharing codebase when? :P

We're already sharing developers, even one of the directors :P Only question is: who forks what.

Guess I'll play a bit more on CalyxOS then. Feel free to hire me I guess.

We are the base of course.

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