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

divestos.org

91–100 of 147 posts

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

#91

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 phon…

I’m really confused by this - my iPhone 6 from 2014 has 4G LTE (and still gets security updates). What were you buying in 2018 that was 3G!?

There were some burner flip phones that didn't have 4G up until around 2015, LG making a few of them. This guy was buying used pieces of crap and complaining how they weren't going to support a waste of spectrum.

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

#92

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 phon…

I’m really confused by this - my iPhone 6 from 2014 has 4G LTE (and still gets security updates). What were you buying in 2018 that was 3G!?

There were a number of cheap Android devices that had LTE, but never had VoLTE enabled. Instead of allowing them to work as data only devices, most carriers just blacklisted them from their networks.

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

#93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the 1400s my arse. It's just an annoying trend among woke evangelists, and makes the english language uglier while conveying less information about the subject in question.

There is quite literally nothing "woke" about using "they" to refer to someone in a gender neutral way. That term is really overused nowadays. Either way, I suppose "he/she" could be used instead if that really is an issue?

It would at least specify that you are talking about one single person, and not more than one, so it is ALWAYS better to use he/she.

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

#94

I went to the site and failed to understand what’s different from other Android distros to make the general claim of “support for EOL Android devices”. Isn’t it the same as LineageOS or whatever other distros you can find for each device at XDA? I thought I was going to find a site that found a way of running newer Android over the old one to not have to worry about drivers and such, but I found yet another distro wi…

This is a massive difference from any other project like this with wide device support, assuming it works correctly:

> Bootloader relocking is restored and has been tested working on 23 devices and is available for 26 more. Verified boot is also restored on 36 of those devices and is enforcing once locked.

Edit: looks like almost all the devices with relocking support are Google / OnePlus / Fairphone, so it might not add anything in this regard to GrapheneOS. No workaround for the signing key issue, I guess.

They also seem to be doing some security hardening and blob removal, although I'm not sure how that would affect driver / device support.

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

#95
post #51

I am frustratingly blind to today's alternate OSes. Where does a lay-consumers even start? Do I buy a used, but well supported (by alt OSes) phone? Which one would that be? Do I attempt to use my existing phone?

For a while, I was trying on old phones. I had LineageOS on my Samsung Galaxy S2, and it had a lot of problems (camera did not work, it would sometimes get hot and reboot, etc). Not the best experience but it was fun to try when my S2 got old. Recently I feel like alt OSes have become really mature. I have been using a de-Googled /e/OS on a Fairphone 3+ for 1.5 years and I don't have anything to complain about the sy…

Fairphone only sells phones, and replacement parts, to European customers, right? or is it closer to everyone but US?

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

#96

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 phon…

Must be a US problem. Where I'm from we still have 2G and no plans to turn it off, but we also don't have any plans to introduce 5G it seems (though tbh 5G isn't much of an improvement over 4G for most people's use cases).

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

#97
post #45

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 phon…

This, exactly. I have two ancient Nokia N900s that came out in 2009, runs a Debian variant natively and there's the Maemo Leste project that brings mainline Linux to the device (amazing!). However, is already useless as a phone in the USA. I also hear rumors European carriers will shutter their 3G networks soon; which is a shame. The hardware, while old and slow due to memory constraints, still works . I guess I shou…

These days you can make a huge damning report of how eco-unfriendly they are for doing this. However we have been sucked into

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

#98
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really confused by this - my iPhone 6 from 2014 has 4G LTE (and still gets security updates). What were you buying in 2018 that was 3G!?

There were a number of cheap Android devices that had LTE, but never had VoLTE enabled. Instead of allowing them to work as data only devices, most carriers just blacklisted them from their networks.

Yup, got burned by this. I had a POCO X3 (4G LTE but no VoLTE) which I'd still be using today had AT&T not labeled it as a 3G phone. Even just attempting to use it with my SIM card now automatically deactivates my plan.

Now they have a phone whitelist restricted to (mostly) mainstream brands...

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

#99

The tool https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/cve_checker is fascinating; I've usually seen people attempting to bring needed drivers to a mainline kernel, but backporting security fixes to a vendor kernel does seem like a plausible way to get a lot of the benefit with less work.

Indeed. The data they maintain used by that is fascinating as well: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Divested-Mobile/Kernel_Pat...

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

#100

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 phon…

Not sure if smartphones will last 10 years. I have 2 early Google phones die on me with strange boot loops (different series), my trusted hardware guy says the flash died. They are just not made for 10 years usage.

Your laptop may be good, but it will probably only support some ancient insecure slow WiFi profiles.

Distributions start to drop old hardware. And there are always new CPU and other chip security bugs discovered, how do you get fixes for that into your system?

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