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Comment by danvittegleo | Hacker News Reader

If you are looking to maintain a secure device similar to stock Android without google services, a Pixel phone with verified boot using your own signing keys, latest AOSP, and up to date drivers/firmware is a far better option. I've been working on a project that automates the entire process in AWS and it supports all Pixel phones now: https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack.

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Frankly all I need my phone for these days is running Firefox.

Locked down computing via proprietary apps is getting less and less appealing by the day.

I think the Firefox OS and phone was just a little too early. We're approaching the point where the web experience of an application is superior to almost every mobile app. There are exceptions, of course, but I foolishly bought an Amazon tablet recently because my brain doesn't work right when it sees a bargain, but the lack of apps isn't such a terrible thing.

I eventually did put the Play store on it so I could get a few must have apps, but, Reddit is better on the web (though it is an absolute pain in the ass about it with constant overlays trying to get you to use the app). Wunderlist is fine, gmail is fine, Twitter is ok, etc. The big win, however, is that I trust Firefox/Mozilla not to sell me out (I have mostly forgiven the Pocket thing), unlike just about anybody else. That has some value...also, all of my accounts and stuff is synced via Firefox, where with apps I have to login on every new device...some apps demand a fresh login every time, like my bank app, so Firefox is a better experience there.

This. I recently got a new Android phone, and decided to go Google-less with microG and LineageOS. Since I had to install everything from scratch anyway, I only installed apps as I needed them, and I've found that I have not reinstalled a large portion of the apps on my old phone—Amazon, Yelp, YouTube, etc all work perfectly fine in the browser, and I now have the added advantage that uBlock in Firefox blocks all of the trackers that are impossible to avoid in native apps. Hell, many of these "native" apps are just the web versions wrapped in a web view, so there is absolutely no discernible difference in functionality or UX between the two.

Ads are impossible to avoid when you have no control over your device. A rooted Android phone can easily block native ads.

I don't know what device you are running but the reddit and twitter websites seem to be built to be absolutely horrible to use. Both get stuck on long loading screens and have constant popups getting in my way.

Try using i.reddit instead of www.reddit not sure how long it will stay up though. When they take those down, I'll leave Reddit (if their main site is still so shit on mobile).

Not sure how long it will last but I still default to https://old.reddit.com/.compact

No pictures and video previews, but I actually like it that way.

There's even a Firefox addon to automatically switch to old.reddit when following links.

Use the ublock origin extension to remove the parts of Reddit that are annoying.

Use the picker to select the problem overlays and create a rule and they will be gone. You have to do this a few times since some seem to be page sensitive.

Even if you insist on having closed-source apps from the Play Store on your device you don't need to install the actual Play Store or any of its dependencies. Use either Yalp [1] (or its derivative Aurora [2] for those who want a more polished interface) and you can install free Play Store apps without ever needing to sign in to Google.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor...

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.dragons.aurora/

Banking apps may be more convenient than their web counterparts, because they eliminate the need for a token device for small payments or checking the balance. Depends on the bank, of course.

Holy freaking paranoid waste of lifespan, i have to admit i thought, partly because i'm 51 now and while I dig what you wrote, I think priorities shift as the rear view mirror shows more. Cool project, though.

Ha, you definitely have some years on me, but I can appreciate that perspective :)

Thanks for the pointer! How slick would it be if someone extended this project to distribute verifiable binaries which then underwent a final, local keysigning step.

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