Android without the mothership
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Re: Android without the mothership
#2I have been running this setup (Cyanogenmod + f-droid, no google apps) for the past 9 months and have been quite happy. I use owncloud for keeping my calendar, contacts, and files sync'ed. K9mail + APG for (signed/encrypted) email. As the article notes OsmAnd is workable, but the what is available through f-droid is 2 versions behind (apparently with low chance of future updates due to difficulties building it).
Many apps are open source (e.g., github, wordpress, coinbase, 2FA apps compatible with many services) and so are available through f-droid. Others, like TextSecure are really easy to build from source and install.
I have occasionally downloaded apps through one of the APK downloader services mentioned in the article comments -- I've had mixed luck. Some work flawlessly, others don't work at all without the google apps.
It would be awesome to see Mozilla's location service [0] integrated into Cyanogen to replace the google location services (which are of course disabled if you don't install google apps).
Re: Android without the mothership
#3I am wondering how long it is before we see an effort to do to Google Play Services what Google did to Java - copy all the APIs and create an independent alternative that lets you build apps that use features from Play Services, without tying your app to Google. Ideally one can then choose what to do from just stubbing them out, filling them with 3rd party alternatives, or providing custom implementations. I would think a nice collaboration between Amazon, Microsoft, some Chinese players and maybe even Yahoo could do quite a nice job of this.
Re: Android without the mothership
#4It's getting harder and harder to not give up your privacy in order to use new technology. Android without all that Google goodness is a hard sell to an average customer today.
Re: Android without the mothership
#5I used to run without any google play services and running pure aosp.
I stopped because Android is just so much better with google and fuck it, who cares about me any ways. Not to mention compiling aosp is a pain.
Like seriously, no swyping in aosp keyboard? so i install google keyboard, then i might as well have everything. one piece of proprietary software from google, might as well go all the way.
Though i still get most of my apps from f-droid and will use an open source alternative if its as good or better. example: i prefer cyanogenmod gallery to google+ and vlc to google music, poweramp
Re: Android without the mothership
#6It seems notable that trying to run a modern computer without Google is about as quixotic as was trying to run a '90s-era computer without Microsoft.
Re: Android without the mothership
#7I used to run without any google play services and running pure aosp. I stopped because Android is just so much better with google and fuck it, who cares about me any ways. Not to mention compiling aosp is a pain. Like seriously, no swyping in aosp keyboard? so i install google keyboard, then i might as well have everything. one piece of proprietary software from google, might as well go all the way. Though i still g…
There are other (non-google) swipe keyboards.
Re: Android without the mothership
#8[deleted]
Re: Android without the mothership
#9It's a good article. Those who prefer to have their phones disconnected
from Google for whatever reason at least have some options to limit
exposure, but unfortunately, preventing the mobile web browser in the
phone from leaking information like location, history, and habits to
Google (and plenty of others) is going to be really tough.
Also, the article glossed over an important issue; the need to use closed-source proprietary binary blob drivers to make the hardware usable. With drivers running in kernel space, the potential damage of an intentionally or unintentionally bad driver is pretty much unlimited.
The most problematic drivers are usually the graphics drivers due to complexity and their impact on both system and battery performance. Since the companies making the graphics chips (well, they're often just graphics cores within the main processor IC rather than separate chips) like nVidia, Qualcomm, Arm Inc (mali), and Broadcom (to a lesser degree lately) refuse to release the documentation necessary for open source hackers to write drivers, tons of unnecessary effort is wasted in attempts to reverse engineer the binary blob drivers so open source drivers can be written.
There are quite a few efforts under way to produce open source drivers for various graphics "chips" on various types of ARM systems. Here are a few links I've collected:
http://bloggingthemonkey.blogspot.com/
https://github.com/grate-driver/grate/wiki
https://github.com/laanwj/etna_viv/wiki
http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320828
I haven't seen anyone succeed in making a fully open source blob-free phone yet, but people are working towards that goal.
Unfortunately, even if open source devs eventually solve all of the blob driver (and chip documentation!) problems, there will still be an unknown, untested, and unaudited chunk of code running on phones that cannot be legally altered; it's the baseband processor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor
Since the baseband processor controls the radio(s), it's actually against the law (FCC in the US) to modify the broadcast/receive power levels or frequencies. As such, each baseband processor has to be tested and certified by the FCC, and any change means it has to be tested and recertified again.
Re: Android without the mothership
#10I am wondering how long it is before we see an effort to do to Google Play Services what Google did to Java - copy all the APIs and create an independent alternative that lets you build apps that use features from Play Services, without tying your app to Google. Ideally one can then choose what to do from just stubbing them out, filling them with 3rd party alternatives, or providing custom implementations. I would th…
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