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CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

calyxos.org

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Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#361

Post by silasdavis »

kelnos wrote: post #124
_abox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calyx has more focus on functionality and privacy rather than security. On Graphene, security is always priority #1. For example: Calyx provides MicroG. This means you can talk to Google Play services, though in a better, more privacy-conscious way. MicroG is an open implentation of Google Play Services. However, MicroG requires signature spoofing: You need to install a fake Google certificate so that it can trick of…

This is the trade off that I hate having to make, and I'm glad to see something like Calyx here. I want a phone that respects my privacy and is secure, but I also want to use apps like Google Photos (my favorite app that I use more than anything, aside from Firefox), Lyft, Netflix, Slack, banking apps, airline apps, and, critically, Google Pay. I get that using many of those apps might increase my exposure to trackin…

I feel similarly. However I could probably drop Netflix, Slack (at a push), Google pay (painful) if I could find a replacement for Google photos, it's been too valuable in recording my life memories. The Apple CSAM story gave me a kick to think I don't want to be sending photos in the plain to Google either.

Alternatives seem to be Owncloud and Nextcloud, which have hosted options. I don't really want to self host but nice to have the option. Does anyone have experience with their android apps for photo storage as compared to Google photos? In particular autobackup and image scaling/compression would be nice.

I use ProtonMail and have started fiddling with their new calendar offering, I was half hoping they might have some encrypted storage service in the offing...

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#362

Post by tedk-42 »

danvittegleo wrote: post #356
hayd wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any of the build cached?

In order to limit costs, everything is pulled from source on each build and there is nothing cached. This strategy takes advantage of the fact that AWS doesn't charge for ingress traffic and unfortunately puts additional load on Google's servers. I've attempted a few different strategies on caching AOSP and Chromium source trees, but since you have to incur the storage costs on an ongoing basis, it's just not very ec…

You could certainly do it. No point having multiple EBS volumes lying around - just create a snapshot of the volume with the git checkout / build cache after each new build is done.

When you want to build again, create the instance and then recreate the EBS volume from the snapshot and attach it to the new instance. Pull the latest set of changes from the git repo and build with the old cache!

Obviously there are cache purging considerations (e.g. starting from scratch once per week/month) you could optimise as well.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#363

Post by danvittegleo »

tedk-42 wrote: post #362
danvittegleo wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to limit costs, everything is pulled from source on each build and there is nothing cached. This strategy takes advantage of the fact that AWS doesn't charge for ingress traffic and unfortunately puts additional load on Google's servers. I've attempted a few different strategies on caching AOSP and Chromium source trees, but since you have to incur the storage costs on an ongoing basis, it's just not very ec…

You could certainly do it. No point having multiple EBS volumes lying around - just create a snapshot of the volume with the git checkout / build cache after each new build is done. When you want to build again, create the instance and then recreate the EBS volume from the snapshot and attach it to the new instance. Pull the latest set of changes from the git repo and build with the old cache! Obviously there are cac…

I investigated EBS snapshot as an option, but there were two problems. 1) cost as i mentioned initially - for just AOSP source tree alone you are looking at > 250GB and at a cost of $0.05 per GB you are already at > $10/month and 2) EBS snapshots lazy load from S3 which gives TERRIBLE performance which means you end up with far far slower builds. AWS released a feature "EBS Fast Snapshot Restore" to workaround this issue, but it's extremely expensive.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#364

Post by correcthorse123 »

foresto wrote: post #359
busymom0 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How expensive is it to build android in the cloud? And how are the build times? Is it possible to do it on a local Mac mini instead or will that take too long to build?

From memory, I think LineageOS 17 took roughly 8-12 hours for an initial build and 3.5 hours for subsequent (ccache) builds on an Intel i5-3570K and spinning hard drive. That's not including the initial git clone. The idea might seem daunting, but assuming midrange hardware and a decent net connection, it's very much doable in under a day without resorting to cloud services.

How would it scale with the number of cores? 3950x should make relatively short work of it, or wouldn't it?

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#365

Post by ekianjo »

NullPrefix wrote: post #276
yusi-san wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try lineage with MicroG[0][1], it replaces Google services. If you want stores there is the F-Droid store for FOSS app or Aurora Store if you want casual apps. YouTube can be replaced by NewPipe and these days I'm trying Organic Maps (a layer for OSM with nav and offline maps) to replace Google Maps. [0] : https://microg.org/ [1] : https://lineage.microg.org/

Youtube app can be replaced with Firefox

Newpipe is a better option.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#366

Post by danvittegleo »

correcthorse123 wrote: post #364
foresto wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From memory, I think LineageOS 17 took roughly 8-12 hours for an initial build and 3.5 hours for subsequent (ccache) builds on an Intel i5-3570K and spinning hard drive. That's not including the initial git clone. The idea might seem daunting, but assuming midrange hardware and a decent net connection, it's very much doable in under a day without resorting to cloud services.

How would it scale with the number of cores? 3950x should make relatively short work of it, or wouldn't it?

It scales amazingly well with the number of cores you throw at it. Definitely the 3950x would work great.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#367

Post by [deleted] »

busymom0 wrote: post #349
danvittegleo wrote: post #347

CalyxOS is an awesome project. I have worked with the lead developer a bit over the past few years and it's been such a pleasure. We share some bits of code between our projects here: https://github.com/AOSPAlliance . If anyone is interested in building their own custom android OS in the cloud (AWS) with same ability to lock your bootloader like CalyxOS, you can checkout my project I've been maintaining for a few yea…

How expensive is it to build android in the cloud? And how are the build times? Is it possible to do it on a local Mac mini instead or will that take too long to build?

[deleted]

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#368

Post by sleavey »

andrepd wrote: post #280
new_stranger wrote: post #198

I purchased a Pixel phone to test this stuff on. I installed LineageOS and found I couldn't run some google apps. I reinstalled LineageOS with https://opengapps.org added during the install and made the mistake of transferring from my old phone which brought all the google services and everything back to the phone (mostly). I then installed CalyxOS - much easier install process than lineage. Really liked the defaults…

Did you try microg? It's dead simple to install (they publish builds of lineage+microg for any device which has an official lineage build), works out of the box, and I haven't had any compatibility issues. > I reinstalled LineageOS with https://opengapps.org added during the install and made the mistake of transferring from my old phone which brought all the google services and everything back to the phone (mostly).…

I think they meant that when they ran Google's automatic import tool it reinstalled all the forcefully installed Google apps from the old phone. The difference with lineageos though is that you can uninstall them afterwards.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#369

Post by sleavey »

yusi-san wrote: post #211
new_stranger wrote: post #198

I purchased a Pixel phone to test this stuff on. I installed LineageOS and found I couldn't run some google apps. I reinstalled LineageOS with https://opengapps.org added during the install and made the mistake of transferring from my old phone which brought all the google services and everything back to the phone (mostly). I then installed CalyxOS - much easier install process than lineage. Really liked the defaults…

You can try lineage with MicroG[0][1], it replaces Google services. If you want stores there is the F-Droid store for FOSS app or Aurora Store if you want casual apps. YouTube can be replaced by NewPipe and these days I'm trying Organic Maps (a layer for OSM with nav and offline maps) to replace Google Maps. [0] : https://microg.org/ [1] : https://lineage.microg.org/

Does WhatsApp still work? I care about privacy and degoogling but I'm not yet quite ready to abandon my social network over it. Currently I use lineageos with the micro Google apps bundle which provides the real Play Store services and WhatsApp still works. I'd be happy to use the replacement if that was still the case.

EDIT: for clarity, by "micro Google apps bundle" I mean the opengapps [1] micro variant.

[1] https://opengapps.org/

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#370

Post by toastal »

Something like this seems a lot easier to set up than the hoops I ran through to get my Xaiomi Redmi K20 Pro running Havoc OS + microG. I wish it were more straightforward to get more device compatibility for builds. With GNU/Linux I pick my CPU architecture and I'm good to go. With a project like this, I, given my Android proficiency, should wait who knows how long to get a compatible build. But why a separate build for every device?
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