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Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

divestos.org

31–40 of 147 posts

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#31

Does this support GrapheneOS's Google Services Framework compatibility layer? And why not fork GrapheneOS instead of Lineage?

Are there any other projects that are using Graphene's Play Services? My ideal OS is basically Lineage with those patches applied.

Yes, ProtonAOSP: https://protonaosp.org/

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#32
post #22

Unless these devices have the ability to update their binary OEM blobs then these cannot be considered secure. This is why alternative OSs like GrapheneOS end their support when the Google Pixel is EOL. If you want long term support buy an iPhone or an Android phone that guarantees at least 5 years of security updates.

Security isn't everything. Sometimes just having a working device you can use to access information takes priority. Not everyone can buy a device.

Exactly! If security is your highest priority, buy a new Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it.

But if you have an EOL device, DivestOS seems to be an amazing alternative to just staying on the stock firmware that is not going to get any updates at all.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#33
Could there be a chance for splitting android into two half? One for per device low level initialization and one for a shared image for all android devices?

So the idea is you be able to easily upgrade or even multiboot different android or linux images if you wish, without having to recompile for every device.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#34

Any chances to see something similar to install Linux images (native, no chroots) to old Android tablets over the original OS? Some hardware wouldn't be supported, but I wouldn't mind not having for example video acceleration, audio and/or modem, if I could use an old tablet as a IoT screen or to show graphs from sensor data, etc. Having a full OS, hence the ability to use multiple programming languages, libraries, e…

Sounds like you want https://postmarketos.org/ or https://mobian-project.org/ ?

I'm aware of PostmarketOS, but unfortunately not many tablets are supported; I'm not interested in phones also due to their too small screen.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any other projects that are using Graphene's Play Services? My ideal OS is basically Lineage with those patches applied.

Yes, ProtonAOSP: https://protonaosp.org/

Was sadly discontinued it seems: https://github.com/ProtonAOSP

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#36

Could there be a chance for splitting android into two half? One for per device low level initialization and one for a shared image for all android devices? So the idea is you be able to easily upgrade or even multiboot different android or linux images if you wish, without having to recompile for every device.

Sounds like project treble.

I don't know how much of a success it has been, and I don't think it has been used to multiboot a phone or to boot a more standard Linux.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#37
The problem with long term support for my Android phones has actually not been the fact that Android devices have incredibly short security update windows. That issue has been somewhat mitigated with the newer Google Pixel phones which have five years of security updates.

The biggest issue for long term cell phone support is, even if we get an OS with a 10-year security update timeline like Rocky Linux, will the phone itself be able to make calls on whatever cellular networks exist 10 years from now? I have a number of 3G phones I bought as recently as 2018 which became paperweights in 2021 when all of the cellular telcos in the United States stopped supporting 3G, forcing me to update to a 5G phone. Is 5G going to still work in 10 years? Or are the telcos going to continue to convert perfectly good phones in to landfill?

As someone who has a 15-year-old laptop which is still a perfectly good Linux server (its screen went out two years ago, but it was a perfectly good desktop computer until then), it’s annoying seeing phones I bought less than six years ago be useless on today’s cellular networks.

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you want https://postmarketos.org/ or https://mobian-project.org/ ?

I'm aware of PostmarketOS, but unfortunately not many tablets are supported; I'm not interested in phones also due to their too small screen.

They have a nice community, you could try to add support for your tablet!

Re: Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

#40
post #22

Unless these devices have the ability to update their binary OEM blobs then these cannot be considered secure. This is why alternative OSs like GrapheneOS end their support when the Google Pixel is EOL. If you want long term support buy an iPhone or an Android phone that guarantees at least 5 years of security updates.

Don't forget that even supported phones can have unpatchable hardware bugs.

For example checkm8 back in 2019.

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