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Comment by krn | Hacker News Reader

The real Android without Google is CopperheadOS[1], which is also ahead of Google in terms of security (not behind, like LineageOS).

[1] https://copperhead.co/

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How is Copperheads supports for not using or fully replacing Google Play Services? Microg has built Lineage images so those are fairly accessible. Any word on Copperhead doing anything like that?

This is CopperheadOS lead developer's take on microG:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/77i687/microg...

NB: LineageOS has similar sentiments and did not accept patches to enable microG.

Thus microG maintains its own fork of LineageOS; the microG team would need to fork Copperhead.

Unfortunatly, copperhead only supports a tiny number of devices: Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P (+hikey as preview)

And for the Pixel models it also costs $500 per device unless you want to run your own build server.

Do they not provide fastboot images for the Pixel devices? I know I could just flash those images on a Nexus 5X.

For Pixels they only provide images to paying customers. They were mad about people resellling flashed devices because it violated their noncommercial license and even disabled the update servers for Nexus devices entirely for a while.

Why is Lineage behind?

When a security patch for Android becomes available, it takes a lot of time until it gets ported to the LineageOS build targeting your device. If it ever happens at all.

Also it's worth remembering that LineageOS can't patch the driver blobs (which are a source of a large number of security issues). As a result, if you don't run it on a maintained platform (e.g. Google Pixel phones), you're still behind in security.

For Fairphone 2 you can manually update that quite easily.

For my device, I've found the lineageOS version to be better patched (and quicker) than the official releases.

You have to be on nightlies for this though.

LOS is a community effort. No regular company. No VC money. All volunteer.

It's not like regular companies distributing Android are known for delivering security patches in a timely manner...

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