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

divestos.org

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

#131

Post by wetpaws »

wildzzz wrote: post #91
kkielhofner wrote: post #57

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 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.

I got Samsung M51 blacklisted by AT&T earlier this year (with perfectly functional 4G support that stil works fine on TMobile)

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

#132

Post by thrtythreeforty »

j-james wrote: post #31
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #24

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/

Unfortunately they don't support near the number of devices that GrapheneOS supports. I'm using a Pixel 3a.

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

#133

Post by palata »

CameronNemo wrote: post #95
palata wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's based in the Netherlands. Not sure how difficult it is for Fairphone to work in the US, my understanding is that the US carriers are trickier than others.

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

#134

Post by palata »

ramesh31 wrote: post #49
palata wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier for Apple to do because they make both the hardware and the OS. Say you are Sony and make an Android phone. You take some version of Android and port it to your hardware (with patches for your hardware e.g. in Linux, etc). Your Android system is now effectively a fork. Now say you want to get updates from upstream regularly. Every time, you may have conflicts with your patches, and you have to fix them. T…

I’m not sure this holds up, though. I could install Ubuntu latest on any random laptop from 2005 right now with zero issues. What exactly makes mobile special?

My guess would be that the OEMs don't mainline their patches. At least from what I understood looking at PostmarketOS, they spend a lot of energy mainlining those devices they support.

I guess it's different for laptops, somehow.

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

#135

Post by palata »

_rdvw wrote: post #56
palata wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it appears to me that there is quite some drama between GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, and apparently the author of GrapheneOS already had some drama with their previous employer. So overall it did not help me trusting both of those projects. With /e/OS I haven't seen such a thing, it just feels like a nice community.

There is no drama, only misinformation.

Well, that is not enough to convince me. Regarding GrapheneOS, I have read extremely aggressive posts from the author against their previous company. I thought that maybe it was a toxic company, and the GrapheneOS was right (why not?).

Then I've seen exchanges between the GrapheneOS author and some Calyx people on some GitHub issue, and they were borderline insulting each other. At this point is difficult for me to believe that somehow the GrapheneOS author is always the victim. And if that's the case, then that's bad for the CalyxOS community anyway.

Maybe that's misinformation, and they all love each other. Maybe not. How could I tell? What I see is that I would not want to be part of such discussions.

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

#136

Post by palata »

_rdvw wrote: post #55
palata wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have been using /e/OS for 1.5 years on my Fairphone 3+, I love it! Not sure what you mean about their ecosystem, I personally don't have an eCloud account. They have a NextCloud integration that I don't use but could work with your self-hosted instance. So yeah, no lock-in as far as I can tell.

Please see my list of issues with /e/OS: https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt

Nice to have a list, though many points there are debatable.

It's always a question of threat model. The /e/OS experience is perfect for me, and I am convinced it is much more likely to reach my friends than e.g. GrapheneOS, which is much more into security (at the cost of UX).

In the end it's good to have the alternative, and to realise that they target different profiles.

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

#137

Post by karteum »

my123 wrote: post #125
karteum wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 5 years of updates is still a short time. We only have one planet... > The biggest issue for long term cell phone support is, even if we get an OS…

Qualcomm Android phones use UEFI since the Snapdragon 835. With an Android bootloader UEFI app on top to mimic what Android wants on top...

I doubt my Oneplus 5T has UEFI (and I can see for sure that LineageOS still releases device-specific firmwares rather than generic ones...)

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

#138

Post by my123 »

karteum wrote: post #137
my123 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualcomm Android phones use UEFI since the Snapdragon 835. With an Android bootloader UEFI app on top to mimic what Android wants on top...

I doubt my Oneplus 5T has UEFI (and I can see for sure that LineageOS still releases device-specific firmwares rather than generic ones...)

Oh it does. (running the ABL application)

UEFI alone isn’t exactly useful when you need per device kernels (and associated modules). It’s just one slice of the problem.

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

#140

Post by IshKebab »

_rdvw wrote: post #111
IshKebab wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but you didn't say you were the project author anywhere so how would they have known that?

Isn't that implied? This is a "Show HN" post.

There are dozens of people commenting here and HN doesn't highlight the author of the post like Reddit does (it would be nice if it did).
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