341–350 of 467 posts
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Isn't there an emulator that can run Android apps inside any Linux distro?
No. There are a few that claim to, but none of them are actually any good. Waydroid, for instance, requires that your kernel is compiled in basically "Android mode" (e.g. binder enabled).
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> I think the easiest way to do that would be to run Android in a VM. The problem is the critical payment and government ID apps that will never run in an Android VM because they intentionally break without hardware attestation.
Isn't this spoofable with root access?
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> I stand corrected. Still, as you say, less point in it since it breaks their security model. It breaks the entire point of the security model on ALL android devices. It isnt recommended on any Android distribution. It doesnt matter if its LOS or GOS
Honestly don't care for the idea of a system secured from its owner. If I wanted to use iOS, I would.
It's not. It's making your data secure more secure from attackers.
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Honestly don't care for the idea of a system secured from its owner. If I wanted to use iOS, I would.
> Honestly don't care for the idea of a system secured from its owner It's not. It's making your data secure more secure from attackers.
Have you ever had to work on a locked-down machine at an office? I don't need Google or Graphene to play IT department for me.
... maybe, but it also drops support pretty fast, and not supported on most phones :-(
It supports devices just as long as the OEM does, which for modern Pixels is now 7 years, which is more than what Apple advertises for the iPhone. Considering people upgrade phones every 2 or 3 years, this is over double the amount of time of support than one would use the phone for. I disagree the support is for a short period of time.
Also, "people" who buy a Google-Pixel-level phone every two years are likely among the richer... let's say 10% of the world's population? Probably even less. The rest - don't do that.
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> Honestly don't care for the idea of a system secured from its owner It's not. It's making your data secure more secure from attackers.
Not having root prevents me from taking proper backups that include app data, it prevents me from using Aegis to import TOTP codes from Authy. I get that on some abstract level it is more "secure" from any malicious software that might find its way onto the device, but the practical upshot is largely obstructing the user from using the system. Have you ever had to work on a locked-down machine at an office? I don't n…
You can handle this better without root. GrapheneOS includes SeedVault per default for example.
> Have you ever had to work on a locked-down machine at an office?
Fortunately I'm the admin at work :)
> I don't need Google or Graphene to play IT department for me.
GrapheneOS is security+privacy first and "enabling root" compromises on this. Thats why its not recommended.
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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…
> Any one of us here could learn the skills to design a smartphone. Unless you're Fabrice Bellard who literally created a 4G softmodem - no. It takes a whole lot of people (or, again, one genius Fabrice Bellard clone) to design a smartphone. You'll need AT THE VERY LEAST: 1) a SoC that has reasonably open device drivers and specifications - without that, all attempts are moot 2) a hardware engineer to deal with the P…
... maybe, but it also drops support pretty fast, and not supported on most phones :-(
Pixel's design makes a good candidate for GrapheneOS or a secure OS in general. The baseband hardware is not integrated the same way like other phones are.
>A component being on a separate chip is orthogonal to whether it's isolated. In order to be isolated, the drivers need to treat it as untrusted. If it has DMA access, that needs to be contained via IOMMU and the driver needs to treat the shared memory as untrusted, as it would do with data received another way.
The problem with custom android ROM is that the kernel is built with proprietary drivers, and porting them to other custom android is really hard
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It supports devices just as long as the OEM does, which for modern Pixels is now 7 years, which is more than what Apple advertises for the iPhone. Considering people upgrade phones every 2 or 3 years, this is over double the amount of time of support than one would use the phone for. I disagree the support is for a short period of time.
An important motivation for a FOSS OS for phones is not having to buy a new phone just to have up-to-date software. Also, "people" who buy a Google-Pixel-level phone every two years are likely among the richer... let's say 10% of the world's population? Probably even less. The rest - don't do that.
A connected world full of devices with excessively vulnerable hardware & software is also something GrapheneOS are desperate to avoid.