[jqpabc123]

You should check out /e/OS. It's Lineage with microg by default and with all the Google contacts stripped out of the source. Been running it myself for a few years and installing it for friends and family --- without a single Google app.

[opan]

You can also run LineageOS with no gapps or microg just fine. F-Droid has an amazing selection of apps.

[jqpabc123]

Yes, you can do that --- but it won't fully eliminate the privacy issues. Contact with Google servers is hard coded into the Android source in various places. /e/OS strips this out and replaces it.

Also, most people won't forgo a lot of convenience apps/features that depend on Google services. MicroG allows most of these apps to still work without privacy invasion.

[solarkraft]

I use /e/. It's a pretty good experience, a bit above LineageOS for microG.

The major downsides are a bit of a weird launcher, camera app (OpenCamera ... but worse?) and them occasionally pushing their weird services (some account and the absolutely terrible search engine). Those are all easily fixed, though. What stays is a pretty solid version of Android with almost everything working (the best experience I've had with microG), which is a pretty big achievement without Google Services (... and with Android).

You may want to install additional location (NLP) providers, my experience with the pre-installed ones was not very good. I also have occasional issues related to the camera (probably specific to my device).

A fun side-fact is that they use Bromite (great version of Chrome) as the default browser without crediting the author, just calling it "Browser". As a techie I don't like this obfuscation, but for non-techies it must be great.

[timschumi]

> A fun side-fact is that they use Bromite (great version of Chrome) as the default browser without crediting the author, just calling it "Browser". As a techie I don't like this obfuscation, but for non-techies it must be great.

They seem to have that issue with a lot of things.

At one point they were stripping existing copyrights out of the apps that were taken from other projects.

Changing the display name of an app definitely is one of the more innocent things to do, and most developers likely wouldn't even object. As an example, LineageOS uses Etar as the calendar app (with their permission of course), which is named "Calendar" in the app drawer.

[jqpabc123]

The major downsides are a bit of a weird launcher...

i use Discreet Launcher. It's kind of an acquired taste --- very Zen like, simple and functional. Now that I'm hooked, I won't use anything else