6 ms·

Instead of an alternative OS, we need a company that will make good hardware (comparable to Samsung) and not lock down their android system and provide open sou

Instead of an alternative OS, we need a company that will make good hardware (comparable to Samsung) and not lock down their android system and provide open source drivers. That will satisfy most tinkerers, since they can modify anything they want and even load their own images since the drivers are open source. Android as an OS is good enough. Just that every single manufacturer has opted to lock it down.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
What about Lineage and rooting your phone? https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  1. Installing Lineage degrades many hardware features. For example, the camera will never be as good as it is on the official OS. This is what I meant by "open source drivers". Currently all of this stuff is binary blobs, which aren't even available freely. So it is impossible for Lineage to fully utilize the hardware. 2. Rooting presents another extremely stupid problem. Apps like Netflix and snapchat and many payments/banking apps will refuse to work. I cannot find a way to explain this except dev incompetency and/or hostility towards users. 3. On Samsung phones there is a Knox bit, which gets tripped as soon as you flash any image. On many models, people haven't been able to figure out how to reset it. This means that once you flash Lineage on your phone, you permanently lose features, even if you go back to the official OS! This is what prevents me from flashing my phone, since I really don't wanna lose Samsung pay and Secure folder etc.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > Apps like Netflix and snapchat and many payments/banking apps will refuse to work. I cannot find a way to explain this except dev incompetency and/or hostility towards users. - Netflix: "we see you have root, we can no longer trust our DRM on your phone". - Snapchat: a service whose core principle was always, "you can send your nude photos to each other, the photos are ephemeral, and they won't be able to save them without you knowing". Rooting your phone breaks that last guarantee. - Payment/banking: CYA. You have root, some evil "hacker" might "hack" your phone and steal your money, and we don't want to get sued for that. It's very much user hostility, created by a conflict of interest between the company making the product, and the users of that product.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - fisian 9y ago
      And why do these then work on desktop computer without checks like: Do you have the latest (windows) update installed? Do you have an Antivirus installed, which we approve of? etc. (I'm not referring to Snapchat but the banking things here) It seems to me that they never cared when on desktops and suddenly on mobiles there are all these problems.
      - progval 9y ago
        Because the banking application would stop working for most users.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        On the desktop so far they haven't had a way to ensure that, beyond Apple and Microsoft sandboxing attempts, while on mobile the sandbox mechanisms are guaranteed unless one has an unofficial OS.
      - Vendan 9y ago
        They can't really check most of that stuff on desktop, as they are restricted to run inside the browser. That said, I'm sure some tried with ActiveX crap and such.
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        Because if your banking website is designed properly it won't rely on the client to ensure security.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  Another problem with Lineage OS is that the firmware and kernel drivers on your phone cannot be updated once the OEM ends support. Here'a a page that lists all of the CVE's that are not patched on Lineage OS builds by device: https://cve.lineageos.org/devices https://cve.lineageos.org/devices
Vinnl 9y ago
You definitely also have to care about reducing the use of conflict minerals and your environmental impact, but if you do, the Fairphone [0] provides most of that as an added bonus. [0] https://www.fairphone.com https://www.fairphone.com
JepZ 9y ago
Completely agree. Recently I have been in contact with the topic of eMMC deaths [1] in Samsung S3 phones and I have to say I am very pissed of by the arrogance of large corporations like Samsung (I have no evidence, but I am confident that Samsung is not the only player doing shit out there): They sell you a device with a firmware which will probably kill your memory chip within weeks. To fix it, they patch their firmware to let the memory chip freeze as soon as the firmware would kill it. So instead of the firmware killing the integrity of the memory, they risk the integrity of the filesystem and let the user experience freezes and reboots for the rest of the phones life (until the filesystem can't recover). To sum it up: - they sell you a fast breaking device - they patch it to make the phones deaths less likely, but without fixing the real issue and that all within software. Sounds to me as if someone wants to make sure the market will not be saturated. I am no lawyer but to me this sounds illegal, but as it is kinda hard to find out that shit (the S3 was over 5 years old when the linked talk was given), it is very unlikely anybody will engage in a lawsuit. Currently, I am under the impression that the only solution to that kind of a problem would be, to force all manufacturers to open source all their software which is required to use their devices (firmware, drivers, etc. license doesn't even matter). It would be one hell of a change for device manufacturers, but as we can see, otherwise we have no idea what kind of hidden 'features' the devices we buy (our devices?) have. [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8784-emmc_hacking_or_how_i_fixed_long-dead_galaxy_s3_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8784-emmc_hacking_or_how_i_fixed...
- profalseidol 9y ago
  Even better, free software instead of open source.
fghtr 9y ago
There is a couple of attempts: https://neo900.org/ https://neo900.org/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
- andrewclunn 9y ago
  The Librem 5 is desktop linux, just with mobile accessible UI. This is the future. THere's no need for a "mobile only" linux.

fjsolwmv 9y ago

What about Lineage and rooting your phone? https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

dingo_bat 9y ago
1. Installing Lineage degrades many hardware features. For example, the camera will never be as good as it is on the official OS. This is what I meant by "open source drivers". Currently all of this stuff is binary blobs, which aren't even available freely. So it is impossible for Lineage to fully utilize the hardware. 2. Rooting presents another extremely stupid problem. Apps like Netflix and snapchat and many payments/banking apps will refuse to work. I cannot find a way to explain this except dev incompetency and/or hostility towards users. 3. On Samsung phones there is a Knox bit, which gets tripped as soon as you flash any image. On many models, people haven't been able to figure out how to reset it. This means that once you flash Lineage on your phone, you permanently lose features, even if you go back to the official OS! This is what prevents me from flashing my phone, since I really don't wanna lose Samsung pay and Secure folder etc.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Apps like Netflix and snapchat and many payments/banking apps will refuse to work. I cannot find a way to explain this except dev incompetency and/or hostility towards users. - Netflix: "we see you have root, we can no longer trust our DRM on your phone". - Snapchat: a service whose core principle was always, "you can send your nude photos to each other, the photos are ephemeral, and they won't be able to save them without you knowing". Rooting your phone breaks that last guarantee. - Payment/banking: CYA. You have root, some evil "hacker" might "hack" your phone and steal your money, and we don't want to get sued for that. It's very much user hostility, created by a conflict of interest between the company making the product, and the users of that product.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - fisian 9y ago
    And why do these then work on desktop computer without checks like: Do you have the latest (windows) update installed? Do you have an Antivirus installed, which we approve of? etc. (I'm not referring to Snapchat but the banking things here) It seems to me that they never cared when on desktops and suddenly on mobiles there are all these problems.
    - progval 9y ago
      Because the banking application would stop working for most users.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      On the desktop so far they haven't had a way to ensure that, beyond Apple and Microsoft sandboxing attempts, while on mobile the sandbox mechanisms are guaranteed unless one has an unofficial OS.
    - Vendan 9y ago
      They can't really check most of that stuff on desktop, as they are restricted to run inside the browser. That said, I'm sure some tried with ActiveX crap and such.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Because if your banking website is designed properly it won't rely on the client to ensure security.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bitmapbrother 9y ago
Another problem with Lineage OS is that the firmware and kernel drivers on your phone cannot be updated once the OEM ends support. Here'a a page that lists all of the CVE's that are not patched on Lineage OS builds by device: https://cve.lineageos.org/devices https://cve.lineageos.org/devices

Vinnl 9y ago

You definitely also have to care about reducing the use of conflict minerals and your environmental impact, but if you do, the Fairphone [0] provides most of that as an added bonus. [0] https://www.fairphone.com https://www.fairphone.com

JepZ 9y ago

Completely agree. Recently I have been in contact with the topic of eMMC deaths [1] in Samsung S3 phones and I have to say I am very pissed of by the arrogance of large corporations like Samsung (I have no evidence, but I am confident that Samsung is not the only player doing shit out there): They sell you a device with a firmware which will probably kill your memory chip within weeks. To fix it, they patch their firmware to let the memory chip freeze as soon as the firmware would kill it. So instead of the firmware killing the integrity of the memory, they risk the integrity of the filesystem and let the user experience freezes and reboots for the rest of the phones life (until the filesystem can't recover). To sum it up: - they sell you a fast breaking device - they patch it to make the phones deaths less likely, but without fixing the real issue and that all within software. Sounds to me as if someone wants to make sure the market will not be saturated. I am no lawyer but to me this sounds illegal, but as it is kinda hard to find out that shit (the S3 was over 5 years old when the linked talk was given), it is very unlikely anybody will engage in a lawsuit. Currently, I am under the impression that the only solution to that kind of a problem would be, to force all manufacturers to open source all their software which is required to use their devices (firmware, drivers, etc. license doesn't even matter). It would be one hell of a change for device manufacturers, but as we can see, otherwise we have no idea what kind of hidden 'features' the devices we buy (our devices?) have. [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8784-emmc_hacking_or_how_i_fixed_long-dead_galaxy_s3_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8784-emmc_hacking_or_how_i_fixed...

profalseidol 9y ago
Even better, free software instead of open source.

fghtr 9y ago

There is a couple of attempts: https://neo900.org/ https://neo900.org/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

andrewclunn 9y ago
The Librem 5 is desktop linux, just with mobile accessible UI. This is the future. THere's no need for a "mobile only" linux.