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GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

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

#51

Post by acomjean »

masklinn wrote: post #32
SubiculumCode wrote: post #11

Why was it that in the early PC days, IBM was unable to keep a lid on 'IBM compatible', allowing for the PC interoperability explosion, yet today, almost every phone has closed drivers, closed and locked bootloaders, and almost complete corporate control over our devices? Why are there not yet a plethora of phones on the market that allow anyone to install their OS of choice?

> Why was it that in the early PC days, IBM was unable to keep a lid on 'IBM compatible', allowing for the PC interoperability explosion IBM didn't think to lock it down, the BIOS was the main blocker and was relatively quickly reverse-engineered (properly, not by copying over the BIOS source IBM had included in the reference manual). They tried to fix some with the MCA bus of the PS/2 but that flopped. > almost ever…

IBM was in a hurry.

From triumph of the nerds part 2 ( worth a watch.. they also explain how IBM ended up getting and operating system from Microsoft)

https://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html

https://youtu.be/_cMtZFwqPHc

“In business, as in comedy, timing is everything, and time looked like it might be running out for an IBM PC. I'm visiting an IBMer who took up the challenge. In August 1979, as IBM's top management met to discuss their PC crisis, Bill Lowe ran a small lab in Boca Raton Florida.

Bill Lowe:

Hello Bob nice to see you. BOB: Nice to see you again. I tried to match the IBM dress code how did I do? BILL: That's terrific, that's terrific.

He knew the company was in a quandary. Wait another year and the PC industry would be too big even for IBM to take on. Chairman Frank Carey turned to the department heads and said HELP!!!

Bill Lowe Head, IBM IBM PC Development Team 1980:

He kind of said well, what should we do, and I said well, we think we know what we would like to do if we were going to proceed with our own product and he said no, he said at IBM it would take four years and three hundred people to do anything, I mean it's just a fact of life. And I said no sir, we can provide with product in a year. And he abruptly ended the meeting, he said you're on Lowe, come back in two weeks and tell me what you need.

An IBM product in a year! Ridiculous! Down in the basement Bill still has the plan. To save time, instead of building a computer from scratch, they would buy components off the shelf and assemble them -- what in IBM speak was called 'open architecture.' IBM never did this. Two weeks later Bill proposed his heresy to the Chairman.

Bill Lowe:

And frankly this is it. The key decisions were to go with an open architecture, non IBM technology, non IBM software, non IBM sales and non IBM service. And we probably spent a full half of the presentation carrying the corporate management committee into this concept. Because this was a new concept for IBM at that point. BOB: Was it a hard sell? BILL: Mr. Carey bought it. And as result of him buying it, we got through it.

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

#52

Post by vbezhenar »

fmajid wrote: post #25
the_biot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comparison shows "Deblobbed? Yes" for GrapheneOS. That implies they've replaced (most of) the blobs for wifi, bluetooth, 5g chips etc. Is that actually true? It's such a big deal, and I see little to no work being done on this front. Anyone have any idea what GrapheneOS actually deblobbed?

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).

Do you claim that there's a place where I can find datasheets for peripheral devices for Google Pixel? Like GPU, etc.

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

#53

Post by Klonoar »

jMyles wrote: post #14

Obviously this situation can't go on. If neither of the two major players can make an open, secure, _simple_, easy-to-understand, bloat-free OS, then we somehow need another player. Presently (and I confess, my bias to seek non-state solutions may show here), it seems that a non-trivial part of the duopoly stems from regulatory capture insofar as the duopoly isn't merely software, but extends all the way to TSMC and…

One comment mentioned Jolla. Another currently available option is [FuriLabs](http://furilabs.com). It runs atop Hallium/etc but you are effectively still able to daily drive a mobile Linux shell and contribute to the ecosystem if you want to see it grow.

Now with that said: so much work has gone in to Android (and by extension, Graphene) to improve on power usage/security/etc that I'm not sure I'd bother to actually run a mobile Linux device. The juice just doesn't feel worth the squeeze.

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

#54

Post by AnthonyMouse »

shagie wrote: post #24
SubiculumCode wrote: post #11

Why was it that in the early PC days, IBM was unable to keep a lid on 'IBM compatible', allowing for the PC interoperability explosion, yet today, almost every phone has closed drivers, closed and locked bootloaders, and almost complete corporate control over our devices? Why are there not yet a plethora of phones on the market that allow anyone to install their OS of choice?

The company making a device that is licensed by the FCC has to do everything that they can to mitigate the risk of an unlicensed broadcast on their devices. https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/rfdevice > INTENTIONAL RADIATORS (Part 15, Subparts C through F and H) > An intentional radiator (defined in Section 15.3 (o)) is a device that intentionally generates and emits radio frequency energy by radiation or induction that may…

I see people saying things like this all the time and then when I ask them for the specific text requiring them not to e.g. publish source code, nobody has been able to show me.

And a huge reason it seems like BS is this:

> PCs don't have that restriction.

There are obviously PCs with Wi-Fi and even cellular modems, so this can't be an excuse for a phone to not be at least as open as a PC.

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

#55

Post by fmajid »

vbezhenar wrote: post #52
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).

Do you claim that there's a place where I can find datasheets for peripheral devices for Google Pixel? Like GPU, etc.

No, but they used to publish the source code for the drivers as part of AOSP. Now they no longer publish the device trees. Check out GrapheneOS' other Mastodon posts for the gory details.

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

#56

Post by AnthonyMouse »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #41
cons0le wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting a lot of indirect responses. If you've ever tried to mod your android phone the answer is simple. Its google play services and hardware attestation for things like banking websites. Its really easy to make a custom rom but hard to do serious "real life" stuff; companies don't want to make it easy. To most regular users, if they cant download apps from the google play store, and they can't use venmo\cas…

Yeah but lots of phones you can't get ROMs for from a reputable source, and I sure as heck don't have the know how or time to build one, even if possible, which a lot of times is not due to locking down bootloaders, drivers, etc.

But that has the same cause.

When you buy a Windows PC, the first thing a lot of tech people will do is format it and put on a clean install of Windows without all of the OEM crapware, or in these days install Linux if grandma is just using email and Facebook anyway.

If you try to do that on your Android device, your bank app is broken, most importantly not because of anything the alternate OS is doing wrong, which causes the vast majority of people to not want to do it even if it means suffering the OEM crapware, with no way for the alternative OS to fix it. And that in turn allows the OEMs to get away with locked bootloaders etc., because then they're not losing sales to a competitor that lets you remove the crapware when nobody can do it either way.

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

#57

Post by tenthirtyam »

axelthegerman wrote: post #21
walterbell wrote: post #4

https://tbot.substack.com/p/grapheneos-new-oem-partnership > GrapheneOS has officially confirmed a major new hardware partnership—one that marks the end of its long-standing Pixel exclusivity. According to the team, work with a major Android OEM began in June and is now moving toward the development of a next-generation smartphone built to meet GrapheneOS’ strict privacy and security standards.

Oh that's one of the best news in the smartphone world in a long time. It's impossible to escape the Apple/Google duopoly but at least GrapheneOS makes the most out of Android regarding privacy. I still wish we could get some kind of low resource, stable and mature Android clone instead of Google needlessly increasing complexity but this will over time break app compatibility (Google will make sure of it) Edit: I do…

I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?

I'm imagining a future where you buy a smartphone and when you do the first configuration, it asks you which services provider you want to use. Google and Apple are probably at the top of the list, but at the bottom there is "custom..." where you can specify the IP or host.domain of your own self-hosted setup.

Then, when you download an app, the app informs the app provider of this configuration and so your notifications (messenger, social media, games, banking, whatever) get delivered to that services provider and your phone gets them from there accordingly.

Is there anything like that in the world today?

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

Klonoar wrote: post #49
Kuraj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might also be interested in Jolla Phone https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162368

If you're stateside and want a shipping Linux phone today, [FuriLabs]( http://furilabs.com ) is another option. Graphene is in a class of its own compared to both of these though and there's frankly no reason to bother unless you're trying to improve those ecosystems.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by immibis »

tenthirtyam wrote: post #57
axelthegerman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's one of the best news in the smartphone world in a long time. It's impossible to escape the Apple/Google duopoly but at least GrapheneOS makes the most out of Android regarding privacy. I still wish we could get some kind of low resource, stable and mature Android clone instead of Google needlessly increasing complexity but this will over time break app compatibility (Google will make sure of it) Edit: I do…

I'm not knowledgeable enough -- what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly? I'm imagining a future where you buy a smartphone and when you do the first configuration, it asks you which services provider you want to use. Google and Apple are probably at the top of the list, but at the bottom there is "custom..." where you can specify the IP or host.domain of your own self-hosted setup. Then, when you downlo…

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 addition to your normal phone.

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