this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Privacy
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Things are fine for now, but long term Google will force out FOSS third parties. Linux phones get better every day, though. I imagine Linux will be relatively ready for primetime by the time Graphene can no longer continue.
famous call to inaction that brought us to the shitty situation we face today
What specific action would have precluded Google from no longer open sourcing Android drivers for the reference device and locking down their app situation in response to the anti-trust ruling? Please enlighten me.
right now? nothing because they already have a practigal monopoly... due, in great part, by the "it's not so bad" crowd who continue to tolerate shitty corpo behaviour until "oh shit, it'really bad now"
How would a more panicked attitude remove Google's ownership from the OS they own? I am confused.
it's not panicked, it's just a rejection of monopolistic practices... but you illustrate my point fantasticly by equating consumer rejection to panick... can't escape consumerism, eh?
Uh... okay 👍
I have seen no examples of a Linux os that is even close to being usable for daily smartphone needs and progress is laughable in most cases. What are you seeing that makes you think it's an option for anyone but the most stubborn of users?
sorry to say, but this is 100% true. i've tried postmarketos, manjaro and ubuntu touch – light years behind android and ios.
I'm not saying it is currently ready, I've never used a Linux phone. I'm just saying it will probably be fine in a decade or whenever Google manages to choke out Graphene and such on the Android side.
GrapheneOS still intends to support all the supported devices until EOL. The sideloading change doesn’t affect them. It won’t apply to GrapheneOS. It only applies to certified OSes and GrapheneOS is not certified because it doesn’t license Google Mobile Services. As per the rip out of the device trees for Pixels, that just makes Pixels like other phones. GrapheneOS has been able to expand it’s automation to build that device support themselves. For new devices, making the support will take longer than it did in the past though, but they will still support those Pixels, as long as they meet the hardware requirements and still allow third-party OS support with all security features intact. Besides that GrapheneOS is actively talking with a major Android OEM right now in order to help them reach the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. They are very optimistic about that.
Android is Linux of course since the Android kernel is a Linux kernel. I’m aware you are probablly referring to using traditional Linux OSes that are typically used on desktops on mobile phones. That would, however, be a significant regression for security. Android and iOS are both modern mobile OSes with an in-depth security model which includes a mandatory app sandbox with a sane permission model. This is not present on traditional desktop OSes. This is not meant to diss on those OSes, they are just children of their time, they were created much earlier, security practices have evolved. I can see why it would be a fun experience though to tinker with, it would just not be a secure experience and it’s unlikely to get there because the improvements in traditional Linux distros go much slower than they go on Android and Android is already massively ahead.