| I've been using LineageOS since the good ol' CyanogenMod days and I am very grateful for how much work the developers put into it day in and day out. Thanks to them, I managed to get rid of Google Apps in my day-to-day life almost[0] entirely and drastically improve privacy for me: Instead of Google Play Services I use MicroG[1] and instead of Play Store, I use Aurora Store[2] and F-Droid. For syncing files there is Syncthing[3] and for backups there is Seedvault[4]. To isolate apps I don't trust I use NetGuard[8] and Shelter[9] and practically no internet-facing app has access to my internal "SD card" on which my photos and documents reside. As a bonus, getting rid of GApps and using LineageOS has increased my phones' battery life and their overall lifetime tremendously. (I've only owned three smartphones in my entire life, the original T-Mobile G1, the HTC One M8 and the BQ Aquaris Pro.) I couldn't be happier. That being said, I've closely been following GrapheneOS[5] because I find its additional security guarantees very attractive. In fact, just a few hours ago my new Pixel 5 arrived and I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Though I already know I will miss MicroG… Maybe I'll end up building my own custom Android ROM, using Hashbang or RattlesnakeOS[6, 7]? Overall, I don't really understand people who criticize Android for not being open while loudly claiming a "pure" Linux phone would be so much better. (There was yet another discussion here on HN just a few days ago.) Yes, Android is a not your typical open-source project and clearly in the hands of Google. Yes, most phone and chip manufacturers still haven't open-sourced their hardware binary blobs. We definitely have to fight these fights. But with a Linux phone I'd probably be struggling with window-manager-related bugs in the worst possible moments (say, an emergency call) and risk all my data getting stolen whenever I install a new app. As much as I like Linux – I dabbled with it the first time almost two decades ago and have been using it as a daily driver for more than a decade – but its stability and security guarantees are orders of magnitude worse than Android's. I secretly hope that Fuchsia will find its way to the desktop at some point and be able to replace my Linux system. [0]: I still use Google Maps every now and then [1]: https://microg.org . See https://lineage.microg.org/ for LineageOS images that come with MicroG pre-installed. [2]: https://auroraoss.com/ [3]: https://syncthing.net [4]: https://github.com/seedvault-app/seedvault [5]: http://grapheneos.org/ [6]: https://github.com/hashbang/aosp-build [7]: https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack/ [8]: https://netguard.me/ [9]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/ |
I appreciate the 'apps as containers' by default. But it sometimes makes using my phone unbearable. E.g. why can't I see my own apps' settings or data (in /data/data) without rooting my phone? Or why is my only default backup option is a blackbox backup in google drive? (yes there is seedvault in Lineage, but this already restricts you to certain phones). Why can't I use symlinks (or at least bind mounts) so I can syncthing a single directory instead of a bunch of scattered dirs like Camera/DCIM; Downloads; Pictures; Android/data/app.name/, etc?
That said I agree that Linux on desktop could use better and friendlier app containers as well. But I feel like the security/malleability balance is much better on Linux, at least for a technical user.