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CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

calyxos.org

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Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#411

Post by emptysongglass »

strcat wrote: post #317
_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…

> Yeah GrapheneOS is security over privacy No, GrapheneOS is heavily focused on both privacy and security. See https://grapheneos.org/features for a list of the enhancements compared to the latest Android Open Source Project. GrapheneOS offers substantial privacy advantages over CalyxOS. It has a bunch of nice privacy improvements, carefully designed to work against real adversaries. Bypasses of privacy features are…

Can you please stop attacking another Android distro under the umbrella of a project (the Calyx Institute) that has done a lot of good for others? It makes you look like an a**hole.

There's plenty of room in this space for multiple visions of what a more-secure, more-private Android OS looks like. There's gradations of privacy and security and some users might prefer your gradient, whereas others might prefer CalyxOS'.

You might try getting your act together and reach across the aisle so the world can benefit rather than this frankly stupid and childish infighting.

And to pre-empt your honestly terrible, "but they started it", I don't see anyone from Calyx giving the mouth you're giving them, repeatedly, in this thread about their product. So please just stop.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#412

Post by atatatat »

sleavey wrote: post #373
rashil2000 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use LineageOS+microG and practically all apps not made by Google (WhatsApp, Spotify, PayTM) work as they should. Even for some Google apps, there are good alternatives like YouTube Vanced etc.

Good to know, thanks! I plan to reinstall LineageOS since I stupidly relocked my bootloader last time and can't upgrade without wiping the phone. I'll try out microG this time!

> relocked my bootloader last time and can't upgrade without wiping the phone

That doesn't sound right.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#413

Post by naasking »

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/

> YouTube can be replaced by NewPipe

I'm using SmartTubeNext. It's great. Haven't tried NewPipe, anyone have a comparison?

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#414

Post by tentacleuno »

strcat wrote: post #395
commoner wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I really appreciate your work on GrapheneOS (and I will be checking out the sandboxed Google Play Services feature), I don't think it's very good form to heavily promote your OS in a discussion about a different OS, especially in such an adversarial way. There's room in the FOSS space for both GrapheneOS and CalyxOS.

Please look at the comments being replied to from that user in this thread. They're spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS in order to promote CalyxOS. This isn't something isolated but rather than community is highly hostile towards our project and has been heavily involved in harassment of our developers, raids on our community and coordinated spreading of misinformation. Every time GrapheneOS or CalyxOS is ment…

> has been heavily involved in harassment of our developers, raids on our community and coordinated spreading of misinformation

I'd be interested to see how you draw this conclusion. I have been in the CalyxOS rooms for quite a long time and have never seen anything of the sort. In fact, when GrapheneOS is mentioned, users are told to change the topic.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#415

Post by atatatat »

josh_today wrote: post #207
joecool1029 wrote: post #205

> microG replaces some functions of Google Play Services while maintaining much more anonymity and privacy. I've said it before and saying it again on here for those that don't know: microG breaks the security model on android and adds in package signature spoofing. It's the only way to add a fake Google Play Services without needing to pull Google blobs. This is why projects like LineageOS are against using this met…

Funny that you’re using “tin foil hat crew” the day after Apple announced snooping on everyone’s pictures

Especially since tinfoil would be like an antenna.

Everyone knows that.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#416

Post by luca020400 »

summm wrote: post #397
luca020400 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cater the normal user. And what the hell? Root with verified boot? That's like having the most secure castle while leaving the door open for anyone, you can't have both worlds. Note: our root implementation was apparently affected by some vulnerabilities ( never disclosed to us ), meaning I tried to lower the attack surface to minimum, but not knowing I did anything helpful we just couldn't leave it there.

Root doesn't mean you give root permissions to any dumb app. I implied proper permission management and authorization, of course. Then it's just like a secure castle where the user can go into all of the rooms, to some with a special key. You don't have to go into those rooms, but you have the option to at any time. And, depending on the implementation, you may change the special room, but if you return after the nex…

If you're rooted your security is way lower. Simple as that. Rooting can be used against you, it can lead to exploitation, and likely has been.

Note: you can have secure boot without root and using your own Android build, such as CalyxOS. Not rooting doesn't imply using the stock firmware, never has been.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#417

Post by atatatat »

emptysongglass wrote: post #411
strcat wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah GrapheneOS is security over privacy No, GrapheneOS is heavily focused on both privacy and security. See https://grapheneos.org/features for a list of the enhancements compared to the latest Android Open Source Project. GrapheneOS offers substantial privacy advantages over CalyxOS. It has a bunch of nice privacy improvements, carefully designed to work against real adversaries. Bypasses of privacy features are…

Can you please stop attacking another Android distro under the umbrella of a project (the Calyx Institute) that has done a lot of good for others? It makes you look like an a**hole. There's plenty of room in this space for multiple visions of what a more-secure, more-private Android OS looks like. There's gradations of privacy and security and some users might prefer your gradient, whereas others might prefer CalyxOS…

Your comment leaves out the danger of advertising security and privacy when you cripple those things.

All open source projects should be able to take GP's criticism, dev of "competitor" or otherwise — specifically because they're not products — they're public projects.

Both projects should absolutely be encouraged — and steered, if a user knows a better way.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#418

Post by codetrotter »

danvittegleo wrote: post #363
tedk-42 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Are you doing partial clone?

https://source.android.com/setup/build/downloading

Although, an answer at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33053615/how-to-download... from October 2020 says that even a partial clone is still 73 GB in size!? That’s insane! How the heck come it’s so big?

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#419

Post by atatatat »

strcat wrote: post #391
kelnos wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, this is actually amazing. I'm really impressed with the work the GrapheneOS folks are doing. Ah, damn, it looks like they've dropped support for the Pixel 2. I have a Pixel 4 as my daily driver, but I'd prefer to try it first on a phone I don't use all the time. Ah well. Perhaps the 4 will still be supported whenever I get my next phone :) Some non-Twitter prose about the Play Services support (though it does…

You can still download the Pixel 2 images via getting the version from https://releases.grapheneos.org/walleye-testing if you really want to use it. There may be a final extended support release, but it's very insecure at this point and we won't be making those extended support releases for much longer.

At some point, the new hardware has been changed for good reason — exploits have been discovered!

Upgrading to a new-to-you few-hundred dollars Pixel every 2-4 few years isn't anywhere close to the expense of a new $600-$900 phone every 1-3yrs, the way people used to (and the way iPhone users still seem to).

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#420

Post by newsch »

commoner wrote: post #308
flir wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vance gives you an audio-only option, which is nice.

NewPipe also has an audio-only option. Unlike YouTube Vanced (a mod of the original YouTube app), NewPipe is open source and supports video downloading. I think the main advantages of Vanced over NewPipe are the SponsorBlock integration and the ability to log in to a Google account (if that's what you're looking for).

I've been very happy with this fork of newpipe that has sponsorblock built-in (it's been kept up to date with upstream so far): https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

It started with this rejected PR: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205

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