How did he manage installing applications such as banking apps from the place store?
Unless you’re going to be sideloading the app how do you know that you’re getting official banking app and not just downloading some file online.
E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
61–70 of 137 posts
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it depends where your priorities lie, but this effort seems _more_ sustainable to me because it can run most proprietary android apps, and everything on F-Droid right out of the box. PureOS has to try and reimplement an entire mobile app ecosystem just to get to parity with existing competitors.
PureOS is trying to use desktop apps instead and fit them to the phone screen ("convergence"). I think it is a viable strategy.
The thing is, there aren't any desktop apps—much less Linux desktop apps—for the types of things I need to do on my phone. On an Android phone, I can buy train tickets (NJTransit), deposit checks (Chase), and have telemedecine appointments with my doctor (MyChart).
I don't know if all of these would work in e.foundation, but presumably at least some would run.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to elaborate on the "rough edges"? Is it a reliable day to day phone?
It's mostly a reliable day to day phone. Rough edges I've seen: - Occasional "X app stopped unexpectedly" messages. - Font sizing is really weird on the built-in email app (a K9 Mail reskin) - System webview sometimes (maybe once a week?) starts rendering blank white pages until I reboot the phone.
FWIW, I have experienced all those things with different Android versions, and mainline K9.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#64I'm using e.foundation for a while now on my Moto G3 (osprey) and it's working ok despite a few camera/gallery crashes here and there. The only thing I'm not really fond of, is that the apps come from an opaque source ( https://info.cleanapk.org/ ). I also found no information on how those apps are signed, and how this is checked. Upon asking them, someone pointed me to a git commit where an outdated public key of F-…
Yeah, that's the thing that would worry me the most: it's nice and all that I can use many regular Android apps, but how do I know that that's safe? In practice, I'd probably still restrict myself to F-Droid, like I do today - the only app I'd like to use in addition is our Corona warn app.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
PureOS is trying to use desktop apps instead and fit them to the phone screen ("convergence"). I think it is a viable strategy.
The thing is, there aren't any desktop apps—much less Linux desktop apps—for the types of things I need to do on my phone. On an Android phone, I can buy train tickets (NJTransit), deposit checks (Chase), and have telemedecine appointments with my doctor (MyChart). I don't know if all of these would work in e.foundation, but presumably at least some would run.
This may indeed be a problem. Perhaps one can use webapps for some of those use cases.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the graveyard of Android privacy forks is that big? All I can think of is CopperheadOS which died because it was company-backed. You could argue CyanogenMod died, though really it's still well alive in LineageOS. (and CyanogenMod wasn't really privacy-focused) I have a very high respect for all the work that's been done on the various GNU/Linux mobile distributions, but it's still so far away from Andro…
The e.foundation sponsors MicroG, so it is not entirely true that they don't give back.
Ah I didn't know that thanks. That's still pretty little though, but I guess that's a gesture in the right direction.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, there aren't any desktop apps—much less Linux desktop apps—for the types of things I need to do on my phone. On an Android phone, I can buy train tickets (NJTransit), deposit checks (Chase), and have telemedecine appointments with my doctor (MyChart). I don't know if all of these would work in e.foundation, but presumably at least some would run.
This may indeed be a problem. Perhaps one can use webapps for some of those use cases.
Unfortunately, I chose all of those examples explicitly because they can't be done on the web—they can't be done on a desktop device at all! :(
The telemedecine app is a big one I think about. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had a modern iOS or Android device when the pandemic hit in March, and my doctor appointments suddenly moved to this remote system.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#68I've been using /e/ as my primary smartphone for a couple months now. It's certainly usable: The experience is more pleasant and integrated than stock LineageOS + MicroG, but there's still quite a few rough edges. I hope they can make a go of it, but I think it'll take adoption by a deep-pocketed sponsor (Samsung? Huawei? The German government?) before it would be polished enough to be a real contender for non-techni…
How well does it work with Waze? That is the only app keeping me on stock Android.
well it doesn't work, like half of the apps on this OS :)
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been using it for I think over a year now as my only phone, on a Samsung Galaxy S9+. It's honestly not much different from Android (although a little out of date), and the only real issue I have is that installing software is a little inconvenient. (The built in app store doesn't work reliably.)
I assume in-app purchases are also a no go, right?
Right. It's fine for me since I use free software as much as possible anyway. The only applications I've sideloaded are WeChat, Teams, Discord, Target, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all of which work fine.
Edit: and Google Maps. The built-in mapping software doesn't have good enough traffic estimation.
Re: E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services
#70/e/ is mud among the LineageOS community (which is upstream of it), due to several reasons. Sadly I can't find the relevant /r/lineageOS posts . Here's some reading that covers the basic points though: https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191224031946/https://ewwlo.xyz...
I kinda agree with the sentiment in the articles from an AOSP/lineage/cyanogen perspective.
They should definitely embrace the Telegram FOSS fork [1] and OSMAnd~ [2] (which is a superb offline navigation tool btw) and remove all Apps that require the Android 10 firebase hockey-based notifications. [5] and [6]
A lot of apps use this for convenience and because it was _required_ since AOSP 10 but there are ways to work around that requirement with a high priority notification.
I would additionally recommend to use AppWarden [3] and Blokada [4], because both are amazing additions for an Android device.
Firefox for Android, though, is still a nightmare with all the telemetry. The old TOR Browser 9.5 series is based on old Firefox pre-quantum, 10 is based on Firefox post-quantum.
The issue with current Firefox and TOR Browser is that Mozilla decided to include the Adjust-, Firebase- and LeanPlum-SDK which introduce now more user tracking than ever before. You'll even sometimes see different A/B UIs based on your browsing behavior (not kidding) and geolocation, and of course this happens more often with Orbot being used as a Proxy.
(You can verify this via AppWarden if you don't trust me)
[1] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS
[2] https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd
[3] https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/
[4] https://github.com/blokadaorg
[5] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas...
[6] https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/ba...