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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

> What I'd like is an exit route for my hardware aka LineageOS. But of course the core of Android is Google Play Services, not the OS so that's a painful situation if you want to retain some apps when you switch over.

I'm not following; it's easy to install Google Play Services on lineage

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It is but I don't want them and half the crap doesn't work without them. I use MSFT apps and OrganicMaps and that's about it.

MicroG is an option, it's an open source implementation of a good portion of play services, though not everything "just works". But for the bare minimum like functional push notifications, location services, etc it's not half bad. There exists a fork[1] of lineage with MicroG installed from the get-go, otherwise installing it can be a little painful.

[1] - https://lineage.microg.org/

It's still a separate issue though; you can use Google Play Services on an old version of stock Android, an old major version of Lineage, or on a new version of Lineage, or you can decide to run an old major version of Lineage or a new version of Lineage without it. All of these except the first should fix the "vendor removing features from Android" problem.

Half, really? I don't run them and haven't had issues with apps not working in recent memory, though I try to stick to F-Droid stuff almost entirely. A lot of the time you can use your mobile browser instead of some company's app.

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