Seeing as GrapheneOS appear to be recommended on the newest Pixel models, I wonder if it shouldn't be too difficult to get Arch Linux running on them with the AUR plasma-mobile?
Run away from Graphene, it is suspicious at best scenario and dangerous at worst.
Just observe that the key factor is to be independent from Google and then the only recommended devices from their side are exactly google devices where nobody here can have an idea of what is modified inside them.
You'd be better off supporting other distributions like Calyx, which have no problems in supporting other devices like the fairphone and so on.
CalyxOS was not a hardened OS and is a much different space from GrapheneOS. It hasn't provided the 2025-06-05 or later Android security patches and updates for it have been discontinued. It's strange to recommend people use an insecure and non-private OS without updates.
I agree with the parent. GrapheneOS puts security above freedom, which is wrong. It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware, which is questionable in the long term. They refuse to support different hardware "for your security". Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security.
> It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware
These are the only reasonably secure mobile devices with proper alternate OS support. It's not GrapheneOS forcing people to use these devices if they want a device to run it but rather other OEMs not providing what is required. The hardware requirements are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. GrapheneOS has been working with a major Android OEM since June 2025 towards their future devices meeting these requirements and providing official GrapheneOS support.
> Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security.
These devices provide objectively far less privacy and security at a hardware, firmware and software level. Linux itself is not a long term approach to privacy and security due to being a massive monolithic kernel written in C with very poor security. A long term approach will involve moving over current software onto a reasonably secure base. Moving to a dramatically less private and secure desktop operating system stack would be a huge regression in both the short and long term. It's not advancing as quickly in those areas, would not the usability/functionality people expect and is definitely not the future of secure devices. Android's current incarnation based around the Linux kernel is not the future of secure devices either, but it's far more private and secure today with a clearer path to moving forward.
I have been using google phones since the nexus and have never given google any money or paid more than $300 far a device. I am essentially pirating billions of dollars of expert development from them and they get nothing in return. In a real way I am actively siphoning value from google making them lose money (they get none of my data, which is what they hoped to actieve by producing the hardware).
If you're talking about buying used Pixels, you are affecting the market effectively increasing the value of Google's phones, which in the end benefits Google.
I don't think I've ever read any solid refutation of the technical choices of the project, mostly just character attacks, the basis of which are dodgy at best. They're completely up-front about the limitations and catches of their choices, too.
Those links don't really help your case, to be frank. Nothing strcat says reads as incorrect or even particularly controversial, they have personal beef with CalyxOS but their criticisms of the choices of the project are largely on point. They're justifiably upset by the mental health accusations too, it's kind of a joke that one of those people in the thread tried to gaslight strcat about how these accusations are somehow not a recurring issue when I, as a third party observer, have seen it come up all the fucking time.
Meanwhile, you're imagining "attacks" on GNU/Linux phones, when most of what I read from them regarding those was sober and reasonable, if not particularly positive, but they're allowed to do that. Their priorities are clearly security and none of those phones really have any.
This is another project that knows what you need better than yourself. People are constantly asking them to add support to other hardware, but the answer is "it's insecure". This is completely wrong and forces everybody without a(n expensive!) Pixel to abandon reasonable security. Even Qubes OS allows installing itself on hardware without VT-d, with respective warnings, and plans to enable GPU acceleration in VMs on demand. Their priority clearly isn't to make as many people as possible more secure but to force Google on you.
Are you calling the above a "character attack"?
I would love to use GrapheneOS on my Librem 5 and Pinephone. No proprietary drivers are required. Yes, some security features are lacking. Yet it would be a win for everybody.
I didn't say anything about CalyxOS: I don't care about this.
CalyxOS was not a hardened OS and is a much different space from GrapheneOS. https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm provides a high quality comparison of the privacy and security between different alternate AOSP-based operating systems.
No, the "key factor" of GrapheneOS is to provide a secure OS on a secure hardware. If the "key factor" was to be independent from Google, they wouldn't support Google devices at all. But since the Pixel phones are the only ones with secure enough hardware, GrapheneOS supports them.
They even tell you in their usage guide that it's more secure to use Google's app store than e.g. F-Droid (which neglects several good security practices for an app store), and that it's not a good idea to blindly aim for "degoogling" at all costs.
I use a Pixel with GrapheneOS because it's really the least bad option available today. But it's not wrong to say that they strongly prioritize security over privacy or freedom/independence. That's a fair decision for them to make, but people should know what they're getting into.
> Pixel phones are the only ones with secure enough hardware
The biggest thing that excludes most phones from supporting GrapheneOS is the lack of unlockable bootloader. Pixel phones also allow the developers to target a large but homogeneous hardware base.
GrapheneOS doesn't support Pixels with locked bootloader. It's where the game stops for all locked phones, a common practice now. You can already see how this is the single biggest thing.
The second big thing is that the "non-exhaustive list of requirements" is basically "whatever new Pixels do". Your conclusion that Pixel phones are "the only ones with secure enough hardware" is overstretching what's happening here.
The developers took the Pixel as a template because it's a well selling line, with good security, and generally with unlocked bootloader, and modelled the requirements based on it. It's a reasonable approach to the development of a niche security oriented OS because: "In order to support a device, the appropriate resources also need to be available and dedicated towards it". It has the downside that it makes it sound like no other phone has comparable security features.
Are the fully supported Pixel 6/6a more secure than any other non-Pixel phone sold on the market today?