How does graphene compare to linage os?
GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
161–170 of 186 posts
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Pixel running stock AOSP with F-droid and Chromium is the bleeding edge of what's possible with open source. There's no better UI/UX in existence and the tragedy of it all is that outside of Android developers and software engineers most people never get to experience it at all. The reality is that Librem is unnecessary because we have F-droid. There's nothing wrong with F-droid and as time goes on more mainstream…
Too bad the Pixel doesn't have a headphone jack, otherwise I would have bought one. I've also heard it was pagued with hardware issues. Stuck on Nexus 5 + LineageOS for the time being. GrapheneOS is sadly only available on Pixel devices.
I am stuck on nexus 5 + lineage. Sadly lineage is stuck on version 14 because of some Bluetooth bug.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#163Librem seems to have the correct way forward, reject the big mess of Android and catch up to it with completely Open pieces. https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ They're making good progress and I can't wait to be able to update my handheld device with mainline pieces for as long as anyone who still uses one cares to update it. Currently my Samsung Android device is at Dec 2018 patchlevel and nothing I can do about it.
What's wrong with AOSP? It's fully open source, supported by a huge amount of phones and has a snappy UI.
The only other open source UI that has managed that so far is Sailfish OS.
Just dump all the proprietary Google add-ons and enjoy the F-Droid app store. You will have amazing battery life, less detractions, less ads and a lot more security and privacy.
I enjoyed this with CopperheadOS (the GrapheneOS predecessor) on a Nexus 5X until the project folded. Google stopped supporting the Nexus 5X with updates a few months later.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with completely Open pieces AOSP is completely open source. Hardware and firmware is a much different story, but that applies to the device you're promoting just as much... > They're making good progress and I can't wait to be able to update my handheld device with mainline pieces for as long as anyone who still uses one cares to update it. Currently my Samsung Android device is at Dec 2018 patchlevel and nothing I…
> AOSP is completely open source. This is only true in the most technical way possible. Yes, AOSP is open source -- but none of the standard applications on any stock version of Android use AOSP anymore. The calendar and other applications are all proprietary. The AOSP versions feel like they stopped being developed in 2010 -- which coincidentally is when Google started developing proprietary replacements. I use Line…
OK, so with AOSP we have a good base to build upon. Why NOT use AOSP to create new FLOSS standard applications? It's certainly less work than having to start from scratch. Besides, there are already some really good free open source Android apps in the F-Droid app store
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AOSP is completely open source. This is only true in the most technical way possible. Yes, AOSP is open source -- but none of the standard applications on any stock version of Android use AOSP anymore. The calendar and other applications are all proprietary. The AOSP versions feel like they stopped being developed in 2010 -- which coincidentally is when Google started developing proprietary replacements. I use Line…
OK, so with AOSP we have a good base to build upon. Why NOT use AOSP to create new FLOSS standard applications? It's certainly less work than having to start from scratch. Besides, there are already some really good free open source Android apps in the F-Droid app store
LineageOS already exists -- if you want an updated AOSP, use that. I'm not sure why folks seem to think that all free software phone projects must necessarily just reinvent the Android ROM.
Android itself has a wide variety of issues which might be solved (or at least solutions might explored) by creating projects that go outside of the mold of Android ROMs.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is security, and then there is freedom. You can have the most secure system in the world -- but if there are state sponsored, or company back back doors it means nothing. Okay, so you're saying: "If a backdoor is present than your security prioritization doesn't matter, the result is bad." I understand, but: 1. If there is a back door in open source code that goes unnoticed (and it certainly does) because of…
Why do you assume that OSS has more bugs than proprietary software? I would probably argue the opposite. With OSS you get more people working on a project that actually care. A proprietary business project prioritizes making money over actually creating a good product everyone loves. You're right that this is not a perfect solution. All software has bugs and all software may have malicious back doors. I just find it…
> Why do you assume that OSS has more bugs than proprietary software? I would probably argue the opposite
I don't. But nor do I assume it has less. My point, as restated elsewhere, is that from a user's point of view Openness of Source is more about protecting against negligence.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is security, and then there is freedom. You can have the most secure system in the world -- but if there are state sponsored, or company back back doors it means nothing. Okay, so you're saying: "If a backdoor is present than your security prioritization doesn't matter, the result is bad." I understand, but: 1. If there is a back door in open source code that goes unnoticed (and it certainly does) because of…
Bad software is bad whether it's open or not. But historically, closed software has more lock-in. If a particular open lib or component is bad, it can often be fixed by somebody who didn't create it. Or, for those who don't want to touch the scary hairball, it can often be replaced by a completely new hairball written from scratch by a completely different party. Even if there's nothing broken with the original, open…
It's good then that both options I discussed were open source.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#168Librem seems to have the correct way forward, reject the big mess of Android and catch up to it with completely Open pieces. https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ They're making good progress and I can't wait to be able to update my handheld device with mainline pieces for as long as anyone who still uses one cares to update it. Currently my Samsung Android device is at Dec 2018 patchlevel and nothing I can do about it.
Librem 5 isn't going to be particularly security-focused: no attestation, no trusted boot, most userspace programs are written in memory unsafe languages like C, with no extra effort memory corruption mitigations. Also, Flatpak offers a permission system that's very limited compared to Android.
I imagine it would be possible to get Genode running on the Librem 5, which would be even more secure than Android. Only you'd be limited in what applications you can run.
Still, even on Linux, you can set up SELinux or Apparmor to harden your system as much as possible, run untrusted applications as a different user, compile your own hardened kernel, and so on. It's going to be a less secure system for casual users, but it'll allow power-users to more easily (you can do that on Android as well, but it's more difficult) secure their system as much as they want.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Librem 5 isn't going to be particularly security-focused: no attestation, no trusted boot, most userspace programs are written in memory unsafe languages like C, with no extra effort memory corruption mitigations. Also, Flatpak offers a permission system that's very limited compared to Android.
I imagine it would be possible to get Genode running on the Librem 5, which would be even more secure than Android. Only you'd be limited in what applications you can run. Still, even on Linux, you can set up SELinux or Apparmor to harden your system as much as possible, run untrusted applications as a different user, compile your own hardened kernel, and so on. It's going to be a less secure system for casual users,…
> It's going to be a less secure system for casual users, but it'll allow power-users to more easily (you can do that on Android as well, but it's more difficult) secure their system as much as they want.
No, it really won't. Doing substantial privacy and security hardening requires a years of work by a team focused on it and the OS needs to be developed with it in mind. Sure, you can enable SELinux elsewhere, but you won't have anything remotely comparable to the complete, full system SELinux policies developed as part of the Android Open Source Project and deeply integrated into it. You're talking about users doing all this from scratch somehow when there is hardly any interest in it for that ecosystem. There's barely any application sandbox or permission model to speak of and projects like Flatpak are not approaching it in a meaningful way that avoids trusting apps.
You're suggesting throwing out having an application security model and all this privacy / security work to reinvent it all from scratch for a new ecosystem without existing applications. It's hard to understand how that makes anything easier.
Having the well-defined base OS with verified boot and clear separation between the OS and applications which are sandboxed and offered capabilities via a permission model is crucial. It's not an advantage for security to completely do away with that. It's important to implement each feature / capability in a way that fits into the overall security model. Developers love taking shortcuts and doing this in a lazy / negligent way, and you can see exactly that with how people implement features via the shortest path of depending on app-accessible root instead of doing it properly, even when that's a niche thing.
Re: GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, chain-of-trust only has one trick... it can check that what you're about to run is unaltered from what was signed to some degree of probability. This is only one of many privacy and security regressions from moving to a far less secure software stack without anything close to the same level of hardening or work on privacy / security. > If that is the - shipped and validly signed - bugridden nightmare-fuel like…
> Android is Linux.... Kind of, Google can release Android running on top of any OS that implements the NDK stable APIs, plus their POSIX subset, and besides OEMs no one would notice the change. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis Other than that I fully agree with your statement regarding being a security weakness.
Yes, that's true. I mean the Android Open Source Project, rather than Android as an OS family. For Android as a platform defined by the Compatibility Definition Document / Compatibility Test Suite, it doesn't have a specific kernel, and Windows could have become certified as Android if they had actually gone ahead with pursuing that.