Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by charcircuit 153 days ago
Because it was a kickstarter that was run like a scam, was years late to deliver the first device, the hardware was already not good at the start due picking an automotive SOC, the form factor was bulky, and the software was really buggy.

GrapheneOS is a much more practical open source OS to use Linux on a phone.
2 comments
zozbot234 153 days ago
GrapheneOS is not solving the actual interesting problem (running on an entirely mainline kernel, just like on x86). It's effectively a hardened variety of LineageOS/AOSP, hence entirely reliant on device-specific downstream kernels/BSPs that will never see a feature update.

BTW, hardware support on postmarketOS "community" class devices has seen some nice improvements as of late. Once these improvements meaningfully stabilize (avoiding the risk of regression/breakage; there's been some of that even in the recent testing for the 2025-12 stable release) it's quite possible that some "community" devices might finally reach "main" class, marking them as OK for daily-driver use. Something to watch for as we approach 2026-06.

link
charcircuit 152 days ago
>GrapheneOS is not solving the actual interesting problem

Consumers don't care how interesting the developer's problems are. They want their own problems to be solved and GrapheneOS does a better job of that.

>running on an entirely mainline kernel

Google already did that work years ago. Android will work on a mainline kernel. Just like with x86 the mainline kernel needs to support the hardware e you want to use though.

link
fsflover 152 days ago
> and GrapheneOS does a better job of that

While Google is allowing that.

> Just like with x86 the mainline kernel needs to support the hardware e you want to use though

Librem 5 runs on all free drivers. This is why it will never be tied to an old kernel. This doesn't work with GrapheneOS.

link
charcircuit 151 days ago
>While Google is allowing that.

And while Linus allows Linux to be open source. A benefit of open source is that you can fork it if upstream decides to stop development or go closed source.

>This doesn't work with GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS can use free drivers too. It literally is using Linux.

link
fsflover 151 days ago
> And while Linus allows Linux to be open source.

Linus can't close the kernel. He would need to ask all contributors for a signed agreement for that. This is the benefit of GPL.

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177148

> GrapheneOS can use free drivers too. It literally is using Linux.

Except there is no device with free drivers that it supports. They just refuse to support Librem or Pinephone without a good reason. (I strongly disagree with their "security" arguments.)

> A benefit of open source is that you can fork it if upstream decides to stop development or go closed source

Android is already semi-closed (see this submission). Are GrapheneOS developers forking it? (No)

link
charcircuit 151 days ago
>Linus can't close the kernel.

That's not how it works. GPL only prevents old versions from becoming closed source. If Linus added code to the kernel which required a $100k license to redistribute then people could no longer freely distribute the code of the kernel. People could not freely distribute compile kernels because they would need that license. GPL doesn't magically make all licensing issues go away. He could also make a required kernel module that was not GPL licensed that Linux could require to operate.

>Except there is no device with free drivers that it supports.

Having a working system providing competitive value to others is much more important.

>They just refuse to support Librem or Pinephone without a good reason.

The good reason is that those devices can't provide industry standard security.

link
fsflover 153 days ago
I don't care about the problems they had many years ago. Sent from my daily driver Librem 5.
link