I have a FreeBSD VM on my iPhone but I'm not using it for any phone-related tasks.
You couldn't even if you wanted to, right? Doesn't apple have pretty crazy restrictions on VMs?
Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
141–150 of 237 posts
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
GrapheneOS only supports a few specific Google phones, so it's not an option for most cases
It still makes zero sense to take the XDG/dbus/whatever stack and make it run on a phone, suboptimally, when AOSP is right there and has already solved all the thousands of integration issues you'll run into --- plus, it's already free software. NIH is the only rationale for the "Linux" phone thing and it's why it will be forever fringe. People working on "Linux" phones as anything more than a diversion (why not play…
It makes sense because it gives you complete control over your device, to a level even AOSP can't touch.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#143Anyone tried Linux phones for daily use? Not those Android ones, but real Linux. Just wondering how it works in real life compared to Android/iOS?
Sailfish OS works fine. :)
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#144Because Android and iOS serve other masters. Its's not just that this is morally unsound, it's fucking infuriating. Imagine JD Rockefeller had arranged it so that your pen and paper constantly nagged you and tried to trick you into buying things. I'm calling it now, society is going to collapse and it's going to be because of software and hardware working together in tandem to make life miserable and expensive and on…
Fascism is our actual governance system - if you define it as 'government and corporations working together', as Mussolini did. It is just that we are mostly under the illusion that we live in a democracy.
It is long in the planning that software and hardware work together - look into technocracy. Smart anything = spy. Smart meters are tools to monitor resource usage. Smart phones are spying/reporting on you. Ai will guide you.
You will be irritated and fined to death if you do not conform with the plan.
Global warming, terrorists and child porn are the various justifications given to justify whatever-new-loss-of-privacy/resource extraction is required.
Even so, individuals will be fine. You don't have to willingly give up your heart and soul to join the borg. That extra yatch/holiday/holiday home will not appease your true self. How many times do you need to come back?
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#145But why, indeed. Years ago, I met someone (through another friend) who worked in CS, and was super into digital privacy. He was the first person I knew to run a Linux phone, for privacy reasons. He tried to pay for as much as possible by cash, and maintained his accounts manually on paper. The only way to contact him was by text message (intermittently, unreliably) or via a specific client using the Matrix protocol.…
As a layman in terms of security and operating systems, is this actually more secure or private than using iOS in lockdown mode and communicating via iMessage? Feels OTT for anything you might talk about in a personal relationship
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#146> Many will point out that a Linux phone is less secure than Android or iOS, but that highly depends on your personal threat model. Linux phones and their apps are all open-source and do not depend on ads or surveillance to sustain some nefarious business model, which means there is much privacy to be won. Meanwhile here I am on my Linux machine, constantly anxious that sooner or later one of my bazillion npm and pip…
- opensnitch
- flatpak
- docker/podman/vm, etc
- /etc/shadow has been around for decades.
- Boot/login with TPM / Yubikey etc around for a decade.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#147I run an older Android phone without a Google account. All apps are from F-Droid. Google services are all turned off. Mail is Thunderbird, browser is Fennec. Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
> Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
Totally, get a Pixel phone and put GrapheneOS on it. You get state of the art hardware and the latest Android hardened for privacy and with optional Google services. That is, you can install and remove them anytime like any other app.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#148I run an older Android phone without a Google account. All apps are from F-Droid. Google services are all turned off. Mail is Thunderbird, browser is Fennec. Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
> Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account? Totally, get a Pixel phone and put GrapheneOS on it. You get state of the art hardware and the latest Android hardened for privacy and with optional Google services. That is, you can install and remove them anytime like any other app.
Do you have to install a whole new distro? I just managed to get past the signup screen, then deleted the "first use" app and disabled Google's apps.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think it's not encrypted? https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Full_disk_encryption seems to indicate that support varies a bit by device but it's perfectly doable.
Note that the initramfs is stored without encryption or signing. So while your data won't be leaked when your phone gets stolen, it should be considered compromised if you get it back.
Sure, lack of secure boot is a tradeoff. Of course, by the same token you can just reflash the boot partition and fix that.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#150I run an older Android phone without a Google account. All apps are from F-Droid. Google services are all turned off. Mail is Thunderbird, browser is Fennec. Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
Recently picked up a Moto G Power 2024 as a cheap way to play around with Android. Never signed in with Google. Use Thunderbird / Firefox. Mixplorer for files. Most Google services & apps disabled. Use Obtanium as my main way to install apps, with a few from F-droid too. Have Aurora for anonymous Play if I need it but so far have just used it for Dropbox.
At the heart of this is Netguard. I'm using this firewall as a whitelist. Blocking network for everything except for the things I approve. So far, this seems to be working well.
It's been a great experience. Have ended up using this device more than my iPhone. Still has the stock ROM but, with the bad stuff disabled, it hasn't gotten in my way. This feels like it's truly my own device in a way that's rare these days. Main drawback is the lack of future updates.