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GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

grapheneos.social

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Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#271

Post by fmajid »

joecool1029 wrote: post #76
fmajid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can because they essentially support Google chipsets, which are not blobby like MediaTek or Qualcomm because Google for all its faults is still relatively open (except their recent change in release schedules is why the Pixel 10 series still only has experimental GrapheneOS support).

Here’s an example of the radio firmware and vendor blobs required for a pixel 9 pro XL build: https://github.com/TheMuppets/proprietary_vendor_google_komo... Nobody, including Graphene, is getting away with building their own modem firmware. The reduced blobs are on userspace and some HAL components.

Yes, even Apple with its practically infinite resources took 14 years from when it acquired Infineon's mobile chipset unit to launching its C1 modem. So much of the telcos' allegedly open protocols are actually implementation-dependent that it takes a lot of testing on actual mobile networks to validate interop.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#272

Post by fsflover »

immibis wrote: post #264
fsflover wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not as simple as you're saying. Making a new phone not relying on proprietary drivers tied to Android is impossible without a huge effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656355

Obviously you'd only choose hardware that works the way you want it to.

Hardware relying on free drivers is almost non-existent in the mobile world. There is nothing to choose from, obviously.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#273

Post by fsflover »

gf000 wrote: post #260
kahnclusions wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux doesn’t really rely on Linus for coding anymore…

It does on Intel, AMD and a bunch of other huge corps though

Which is not the same as one single, hostile corp.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#274

Post by palata »

berdario wrote: post #213
palata wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, they're not going to restart a whole product category just for grapheneos. I don't think that there is any need to restart a new category. Just make your new phones good enough for GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS has close to half a million users, I think it's worth doing some adjustments.

> I don't think that there is any need to restart a new category. Just make your new phones... For HTC, yes... But neither LG nor Blackberry are still making phones

Oh, I get it now!

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#275

Post by palata »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #189
palata wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the big manufacturers would want to depend on a proprietary Google OS. Samsung does make a lot of changes to the OS, for instance.

> Not sure if the big manufacturers would want to depend on a proprietary Google OS. They already do; Google's flavour of Android adds plenty of proprietary components on top of AOSP.

They depend on the Play Service and Play Store, that's for sure. But I'm pretty sure they know it's a risk already.

Don't get me wrong: they are locked-in, that's a fact. And to be fair they benefit from all the work of Google on the OS. But that's not a reason to desire to go further and lose even more control.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#277

Post by palata »

Telaneo wrote: post #216
berdario wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt even someone as big as Samsung will be willing or able to develop their own alternative OS Huawei pulled it out with HarmonyOS (I don't know how good/bad is it, and if it'll have staying power, but other companies are putting in the effort) PS: btw, Samsung already had its own, non-Android OS with Bada (of course, developing a new OS is only the first step, getting it to be successful wouldn't be easy)

Huawei has a whole-ass Chinese government behind it with quite a lot of incentives to move away from Google. Samsung does not. Heck, China's making its own GPUs and x86 CPUs. They're not great, but when the incentives over there are that strong, the market forces are clearly in a whole different universe compared to the rest of the world. Bada lasted, what, 3 years? So it did better than Firefox OS (unless you want t…

> Huawei has a whole-ass Chinese government behind it

I don't like how Chinese companies systematically get reduced to "it's because the government can help them". The US TooBigTech get a ton of help from the US government, starting with political pressures when other countries want to regulate them.

Huawei have really good technology and very competent engineers. It's not the Chinese government that does the engineering.

DJI is years ahead of everybody else technologically, and that's again not the Chinese government doing the engineering. Let's stop believing that the US are superior in every single way and that someone else doing better means that they must be cheating.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#278

Post by palata »

udev4096 wrote: post #236
palata wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you run WhatsApp or Signal without a smartphone? Pretty hard. If your answer is "don't use them", then you're not living in a country where the vast majority of communications are done on WhatsApp or Signal, good for you I guess.

Signal can be used without a phone using signal-cli. You can sign up with it and either attach your account to signal-desktop or keep using signal-cli

"You don't need a smartphone, you can just carry a laptop with you" :-)

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#279

Post by fsflover »

zdc1 wrote: post #90
immibis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any one of us here could learn the skills to design a smartphone. It won't necessarily be good, but I remember that years ago, someone made one with a touchscreen hat and GSM hat atop a Raspberry Pi, rubber-banded to a power bank. I'm sure any one of us HN users could do this. And it worked. Quality only goes up from there. The problem is it won't run any apps, so you'll need to carry this open-source secure phone in…

Or use everything via the web browser; but yes, I think apps are the main reason we can't just have a generic Linux phone OS on an open hardware platform

We have generic Linux phone OSes: Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS and more. They can even work as daily drivers on some phones.

Re: GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

#280

Post by pona-a »

treyd wrote: post #180
flomo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody gave you the actual answer. IBM was under an antitrust decree and had to openly license their technology for a nominal fee. (Supposedly about $5/PC.) So yes, they were in a hurry and used generic parts, but they still had tons of patents on it. When they got out from under this, they came up with Microchannel.

This and also cryptography technology was not nearly as sophisticated and easily accessible as it is today, and where it existed it was pretty slow on the hardware of the time.

How much of it is cryptography? The only notable cryptographic locks are just the TPM-backed Widevine and the infamous Play Integrity, both rarely required due to how many older devices that would lock out.

There's no crypto, as far as I know, in all the binary blobs in the kernel, yet we still can't re-implement enough of them to even have a true Linux phone without reusing the manufacturer's kernel.

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