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.
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.
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.
So reading through it, my understanding of what is going on is that they use MicroG + LineageOS and provide their own email/app store/other services. I tried to go through to figure out what exactly they did to degoogle /e/ further than that, but I couldn't find the documentation to show me.
If the folks from /e/ are here, is there some sort of documentation of how you degoogled it past LineageOS + MicroG? I would be interested, as I use AOSP without Play Services nor MicroG, and I would be interested in seeing what /e/ gets me that my current set up does not.
I agree that the web site leaves lots for the imagination. For instance, I can't see how 1) this is supposed to be all that different from a typical, yet cleaned up, Android instance, and 2) what does this have to do with Apple devices? Are they going to have a port to iPhones? Or are they just trying to make us think they're going to be an option for people who don't trust Apple?
As it is, Android is already too much of a mess for me to trust. I wouldn't ssh from an Android to an important server, just as I wouldn't from a Windows machine. Too many moving parts into which I have little or no vantage.
I think your understanding is correct, but what /e/ is trying to provide is a more consistent, unified experience. Lacking Google services, you're sort of on your own trying to get what many people consider "basic" smartphone features: email, maps, cloud backups, etc.
I don't know if they'll succeed, but I fully endorse the idea of some umbrella project trying to put together a pleasantly integrated smartphone experience that doesn't rely on the tech giants.
Maybe /e/ will become the Gnome project of smartphones.
Can somebody clarify specifically what risks the microg signature spoofing patch might entail in real world use? I know its conceptually bad, but its a bit abstract in terms of my actual phone
My question whenever one of these de-googled google projects comes up is how do they keep up with the security patches released in stock? This is an especially big problem with all the "de-googled" chromium forks, that remove autocomplete from the address bar at the expense of running 3 versions behind stable. The only fork i've seen so far that even came close to keeping up with the average android install was Copperhead OS, and they seem fairly proud of that - it's right at the top of their features overview [1].
Seeing no mention of how up-to-date this OS is is worrying - I have a hard time seeing it as an improvement to reduce the number of calls to google services, while running an OS that's missing the last couple months of security updates.
I am confused. Everything I read on the website is very vague.
What exactly is their issue with Apple? Apple is already privacy focused. I can imagine what it could be (mistrust of closed source, big corporations) but they never say so. What exactly are they building? Are they just a distro or are they building their own software?
EDIT: All the replies focus on Apple. But my point is not that Apple is privacy-friendly. When I say Apple is privacy-focused, I just mean Apple claims they focus on privacy. They can disagree, but should provide some arguments.
Why does everyone keep repeating this idea that Apple is the privacy company? They are just less bad than Google, but that isn't saying much. It's a marketing point for apple, but they still collect hoards of data and work directly with governments and agencies.
From e Foundation website:
"our mobile phones, even when using no Google service, connect to Google Servers tens of times per hour (91 times per hour for an Android mobile with a total amount of 11,6MB of data sent on a single day, and 51 times per hour for an iphone, corresponding to 5,7MB of data sent to Google servers)."
With a reference to:
https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
This is why I always wanted the boot to gecko (B2G), also called firefox os, to succeed. It was different and also open source. The concept was also good. But too bad they only released on very low cost, low feature phone like Spice. It was a shit phone with good os.
I don’t know about e foundation, but what I came to know from their mobile phone os page is that they are providing a os with data privacy as main feature. Why cannot they reuse firefox os?
because firefoxOS is no longer under development. /e/ probably doesn't want to take over development of the whole operating system.
also, there is no easy way to collect all FOSS apps available for firefoxOS, because firefox didn't track that information. that is, if the market is even still running.
the goal of /e/ was to start with a fully functional system, and remove the bad bits one by one. lineageOS and f-droid make that easy.
developing firefoxOS would be more like starting empty, and having to develop or port any apps needed to make it good.
Gael Duval is the founder of Mandrake which is the predecessor of Mandriva. Mandrake was a user-friendly, newbie-friendly, RPM-compatible Linux distribution which was cheaper than RedHat Linux back in the days.
I think my phone is not just about apps, but also services, tightly integrated with those apps, like chrome's browser history, password manager, Google docs synchronisation etc.
Perhaps the only reason why I cannot shift to other apps is due to the serious is the lack of cohesion across all platforms. Google has It's paws on every device, every platform. Which is a huge selling point.
Half my work is handled by this single Google account. I haven't seen any product lineup that lets me have this kind of one-ness across my devices.
This is what they're trying to achieve: phones are heavily tied to services, so if you want people to break free from Google, Apple, MS, you need strong alternatives. The /e/ Foundation is working on services that will go with their fork of Android. You'll also have the option to self-host those services if you prefer.
This will not be easy to achieve, but I believe it's a great idea.
Interesting, I don't want my phone to be attached to any other aspect of my life. I want it to be a communications device and that's about it. Maps and navigation are the one other thing that I think is really useful.
I don't want my phone to be able to touch my bank account, my email (other than a phone-specific email account) or any personal or work-related files.
Yes, that's just it. It's gradually becoming a smart assistant, and that requires cohesion of data and services that Google provides now. I fully subscribe to that vision, and I want to able to participate in it, I just don't want Google, or Apple, or anyone else to control it, and of course it requires a secure foundation. I think there is going to be a new category way of thinking about this soon, for some people at least.
I degoogled my phone by installing LingageOS and by not installing any Google app (no play services etc). Everything is great, except one major annoyance: I do not receive any notifications of chat apps, because I am not connected to GCM /Firebase. Does /e/ somehow fix this, e.g. by providing their own cloud messaging services?
/e/ is right now just a fork of LineageOS 14.1 with a bunch of degooglization and microG. microG isn't currently compatible with the latest version of GCM/Firebase. WhatsApp, for example, works around that but that might not be what you want; it is quite the battery drain that way. Although such push messages are as well (like IMAP IDLE is). Depending on your phone, you got LineageOS 15.1 already. Though you might not find the differences between 15 and 14 major. Though the news here seems to be that there's a new version of /e/ based on LineageOS 15.x
The only app that works well for me is Conversations (XMPP client). It's also quite battery efficient. You have to convince people to use XMPP though, that's the hard part.
For all apps that requires Firebase/GCM, the only solution is MicroG, but then you have some data going to google. It doesn't require a google account and, depending on how the app is made, it shouldn't contain personal data, but it's still data going to google...
Every passing year makes me yearn more for the missed possibilities of the Firefox OS for the phone. It was visionary of Mozilla folks to anticipate the need for it — I wonder whether the project might have been mismanaged due to unrealistic expectations (expecting too much too soon).
It is going to be a difficult task. Developers won't bother to write or update their apps for a niche OS. But if it at least can run apps from F-droid (and has root access) then it is good enough for me. And if there were a replacement for apps depending on Google Services then it would be perfect.
> office: a set of online office applications (including word processor, spreadsheet and presentation) that you can use for collaborative work also.
Is it really necessary? It might work for a tablet but for example I cannot type anything on small on-screen keyboard. And I don't understand why do that if you have a laptop with a normal keyboard. So I think a document viewer would be more than enough.
I just want to buy a phone with this on. Is this possible? I don't want the hassle of finding a phone on Ebay and installing some bundle of software. I just want to plug and play.
[+] [-] dang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kcirtap-hs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danvittegleo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josteink|7 years ago|reply
Locked down computing via proprietary apps is getting less and less appealing by the day.
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkagerer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kop316|7 years ago|reply
If the folks from /e/ are here, is there some sort of documentation of how you degoogled it past LineageOS + MicroG? I would be interested, as I use AOSP without Play Services nor MicroG, and I would be interested in seeing what /e/ gets me that my current set up does not.
[+] [-] johnklos|7 years ago|reply
As it is, Android is already too much of a mess for me to trust. I wouldn't ssh from an Android to an important server, just as I wouldn't from a Windows machine. Too many moving parts into which I have little or no vantage.
[+] [-] indidea|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|7 years ago|reply
I don't know if they'll succeed, but I fully endorse the idea of some umbrella project trying to put together a pleasantly integrated smartphone experience that doesn't rely on the tech giants.
Maybe /e/ will become the Gnome project of smartphones.
[+] [-] jammygit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Operyl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|7 years ago|reply
Seeing no mention of how up-to-date this OS is is worrying - I have a hard time seeing it as an improvement to reduce the number of calls to google services, while running an OS that's missing the last couple months of security updates.
[1] https://copperhead.co/android/
[+] [-] ma2rten|7 years ago|reply
What exactly is their issue with Apple? Apple is already privacy focused. I can imagine what it could be (mistrust of closed source, big corporations) but they never say so. What exactly are they building? Are they just a distro or are they building their own software?
EDIT: All the replies focus on Apple. But my point is not that Apple is privacy-friendly. When I say Apple is privacy-focused, I just mean Apple claims they focus on privacy. They can disagree, but should provide some arguments.
[+] [-] colordrops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indidea|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|7 years ago|reply
Says you (and say them).
>I can imagine what it could be (mistrust of closed source, big corporations) but they never say so.
Yes, that's exactly it. With proprietary software I have no idea what my device is doing. Maybe they're spying on me! Maybe they aren't! Who knows!
The reasoning behind the people that say "Apple respects privacy" is always "because they say so".
[+] [-] ForHackernews|7 years ago|reply
As technologists, I think we should stand against the notion that personal privacy is a luxury feature for those wealthy enough to afford it.
[+] [-] kop316|7 years ago|reply
https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/wiki/en/wikis/devices-list
[+] [-] haolez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jorge1o1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timbit42|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netdeamon|7 years ago|reply
I don’t know about e foundation, but what I came to know from their mobile phone os page is that they are providing a os with data privacy as main feature. Why cannot they reuse firefox os?
[+] [-] em-bee|7 years ago|reply
also, there is no easy way to collect all FOSS apps available for firefoxOS, because firefox didn't track that information. that is, if the market is even still running.
the goal of /e/ was to start with a fully functional system, and remove the bad bits one by one. lineageOS and f-droid make that easy.
developing firefoxOS would be more like starting empty, and having to develop or port any apps needed to make it good.
[+] [-] O_H_E|7 years ago|reply
The only mention that I found was in the founder's wiki[0] page.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABl_Duval
Edit: Well I think I might create one when I have some free time. As it look like a nice project
[+] [-] Fnoord|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devxpy|7 years ago|reply
Perhaps the only reason why I cannot shift to other apps is due to the serious is the lack of cohesion across all platforms. Google has It's paws on every device, every platform. Which is a huge selling point.
Half my work is handled by this single Google account. I haven't seen any product lineup that lets me have this kind of one-ness across my devices.
[+] [-] remir|7 years ago|reply
This will not be easy to achieve, but I believe it's a great idea.
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
I don't want my phone to be able to touch my bank account, my email (other than a phone-specific email account) or any personal or work-related files.
[+] [-] davidy123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surgeisworking|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuB-42|7 years ago|reply
So a logo with the same shape as the Google logo but with a different orientation makes a lot of sense.
[+] [-] Nux|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] em-bee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tinkr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fnoord|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boudin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naveens|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssivark|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djsumdog|7 years ago|reply
I personally want to try going down the KDE Plasma route myself. Device support is still problematic though.
[+] [-] codedokode|7 years ago|reply
> office: a set of online office applications (including word processor, spreadsheet and presentation) that you can use for collaborative work also.
Is it really necessary? It might work for a tablet but for example I cannot type anything on small on-screen keyboard. And I don't understand why do that if you have a laptop with a normal keyboard. So I think a document viewer would be more than enough.
[+] [-] zandorg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkagerer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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