Hacker News Reader

Comment by riedel | Hacker News Reader

Don't you think it is kind of absurd that you have to buy a device from Google to degooglify it as CalyxOS does not support other devices. How difficult would it be to actually port it to a device already supported e.g. by lineage?

View on HN

The OS in this case has nothing to do with not being able to be ported to other phones. Google is one of the few who will pay extra to Qualcomm for the ability for users to flash their own signing keys. Lineage does not support one of the most important security feature of any modern smartphone, lockable bootloader and verified boot.

Lineage might be more privacy respecting than Googles Android, but far behind regarding security.

CalyxOS and GrapheneOS are the only real options (because they support relockable bootloaders) if you dont want to use Googles Android.

If you care about verified boot, you can let your phone boot in fastboot mode and issue a "fastboot boot" command from a trusted device. Combine that with plain FDE, and it's as secure as anything Qualcomm will support out of the box.

There's no point in using LineageOS after they dropped PrivacyGuard instead of expanding it. You start going down this road and suddenly you'll have a phone that doesn't pass SafetyNet anymore. You have to use 3rd-party applications and probably a ROM made by a random internet user not affiliated with LineageOS because they drop support for devices all the time. The phone manufacturers bribe ROM developers to do that or they just move on quickly.

MicroG is another really unstable experience. Google bought KaiOS and will buy the next KaiOS too. They moved and continue moving features to their proprietary castle. There's just no way you can win this fight against Google.

Long term the only solution is by some miracle a FOSS phone gets enough popularity for developers to want to make apps for it. I doubt it. My solution is unfortunately using two separates phones. Android and a FOSS one.

I had not noticed that Lineage dropped PrivacyGuard. Damn, there really is no choice these days.

Lineage is also so frigging annoying how they just drop old phones. They won't even provide the last good build or previous builds. Really bad thinking over there in general I guess.

They do provide source for all devices, which you can just compile yourself. PrivacyGuard was dropped in order to provide compatibility with a loosely-equivalent solution that's included in AOSP, hence in most custom ROMs. Unfortunately, this also means that the supported feature set has regressed, and getting back to parity will take some effort.

I don't think anyone is especially happy about the LineageOS shortcomings you point out, but that's why people are working on supporting the mainstream Linux stack on existing hardware.

The LineageOS folks have a very difficult job to do, they must keep up with developments in AOSP while supporting dozens of existing hardware models, each with its own "exciting" quirks. Is it really any wonder that some hardware gets dropped from official support? Usually that just means bugs have turned up which would make LineageOS not fully usable on the hardware, and they don't have the volunteer manpower to address them.

Complaining about SafetyNet and microG is even less understandable, as these will always amount to unsupported hacks and we don't really need them for a usable device. Just get your apps from F-Droid, and you won't have to care about either.

What’s your FOSS phone?

Privacy Guard) I was the one who purposely removed it. I spent days ( if not weeks ) trying to get it working properly ( read, it never worked properly and causes many issues we still have tickets for ) futhermore Google basically rewrote the full stack once again, while introducing the, now publicly available in 12, permission hub that somehow gave a better view of permissions and easy access to remove them. We know it removed some more granular ops, but it wasn't worth the effort.

SafetyNet) Nothing can legally pass it unless Google certifies it, we can't do much, only Google can enforce it to be used only for security related reasons

Bribing) I wish I got a single cent from any of the OEM I worked on, name it, Motorola, Asus, Huawei, OnePlus, Xiaomi. Not once they threatened us to stop working on their devices, and at the same time didn't help at all ( the only outsider is Asus that is willingly to help ) We simply can't continue supporting every device that enters the door, we don't have any real way to improve it, everyone is doing it voluntarily with no expectation, and so do we as project directors.

PS: I'm one of the directors.

>Privacy Guard) I was the one who purposely removed it.

I know that but it was the main selling point of the ROM for me. Also that I didn't even need a firewall because you could block network access.

>SafetyNet

I was commenting from the POV of a user who needs apps that demand SafetyNet access. You're right.

>Bribing

I was talking about ROM developers on e.g. XDA, not LineageOS the "company".

1) You can still block network via a native firewall ( it's in app settings ), currently the only issue is that network via VPN bypass the toggle.

3) Never heard of this happening, and I've heard a lot of stuff.

Thank you for your (sadly to often undeappreciated but still immensly useful to many people) work.

I disagree. LineageOS has a legitimate use case, being able to easily tinker with the device. It's certainly not as private or secure, and that doesn't make it a bad option depending on someone's use for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com