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Leaving Apple and Google: more devices now supported
- kop316 8y agoTo help everyone else out, here is the comprehensive list: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/wiki/en/wikis/devices-list https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/wiki/en/wikis/devices-list
- nwellnhof 8y agoIf they really support Android 8 (Oreo) on the Nexus 5 (Hammerhead), I might give it a try. LineageOS doesn't support this combination yet, at least not officially.
- mtarnovan 8y ago"The /e/ ROM is forked from LineageOS 14.1" I guess that would be Android 7.1.2 then. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS#Version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS#Version_history
- nwellnhof 8y agoAfter more investigation: e-0.1 is forked from LOS 14.1 (based on Android 7), e-0.2 from LOS 15.1 (Android 8). The Nexus 5 downloads have an e-0.1 filename, so no Oreo. The website seems to imply that all 49 supported devices can run Oreo which is misleading.
- indidea 8y agoNow there is a release forked from LOS 15, that supports new devices.
- haolez 8y agoWhy use slashes in the name? Why not just E Foundation or something similar?
- Jorge1o1 8y agoI agree, it makes me think of 4chan. Not the best brand association.
- solarkraft 8y agoSame here. Additionally it's pretty dumb to use special characters in an actual name, especially one that short. Search for "/e/" on Google and you should get results for everything about the letter e. What does it even mean?
- thinkingemote 8y ago> search for "/e/" on Google > Leaving apple and Google.. Maybe they want to leave Google entirely. Maybe they are walking their walk and not just talking about it.
- throwawaylolx 8y agoIt's applicable for any search engine...
- ArunRaja 8y agoThis makes their discovery difficult.
- userbinator 8y agoOf course, it could be a subtle reference to 4chan's /e/ board (NSFW), which is certainly best visited in private.
- timbit42 8y agoWhy not something easy to find with a search engine?
- gcb0 8y agoDo they really support those devices? or do you still have to install binary blobs (pried from Google/OEM images) for the kernel and/or drivers to have even basic things like touchscreen, radio, etc working?
- kop316 8y agoIf it is a fork of LineageOS, I would think it needs the binary blobs you mentioned in order to work.
- kop316 8y agoSo reading through it, my understanding of what is going on is that they use MicroG + LineageOS and provide their own email/app store/other services. I tried to go through to figure out what exactly they did to degoogle /e/ further than that, but I couldn't find the documentation to show me. If the folks from /e/ are here, is there some sort of documentation of how you degoogled it past LineageOS + MicroG? I would be interested, as I use AOSP without Play Services nor MicroG, and I would be interested in seeing what /e/ gets me that my current set up does not.
- ForHackernews 8y agoI think your understanding is correct, but what /e/ is trying to provide is a more consistent, unified experience. Lacking Google services, you're sort of on your own trying to get what many people consider "basic" smartphone features: email, maps, cloud backups, etc. I don't know if they'll succeed, but I fully endorse the idea of some umbrella project trying to put together a pleasantly integrated smartphone experience that doesn't rely on the tech giants. Maybe /e/ will become the Gnome project of smartphones.
- kop316 8y agoSo then that brings a different set of questions. Like how are those things backed up? Is it client side encryption (I.e. they cannot access the data)? Can I point those services to a self hosted solution? If they had the ability to make a self hosted back end for online services back ups, I would actually be extremely interested.
- ForHackernews 8y agoI think the project is in pretty early days. You could get involved and help build (or at least request) the features you'd like to see.
- timbit42 8y agoIt has NextCloud support built in and I think they offer a NextCloud account to users (fee?) but hopefully a person could self host.
- spuz 8y agoHow is the /e/ Foundation and the /e/ OS different from Mozilla and the Firefox phone?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoAndroid compatibility and it runs on phones that people actually have.
- mjhagen 8y agoAnd it's (so far) not discontinued.
- O_H_E 8y agoThis is my first time to not find a Wikipedia entry for a topic. The only mention that I found was in the founder's wiki[0] page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABl_Duval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABl_Duval Edit: Well I think I might create one when I have some free time. As it look like a nice project
- Fnoord 8y agoGael Duval is the founder of Mandrake which is the predecessor of Mandriva. Mandrake was a user-friendly, newbie-friendly, RPM-compatible Linux distribution which was cheaper than RedHat Linux back in the days.
- surgeisworking 8y agoA flipped and mirrored iteration of google's G as their logo doesn't really help to serve the cause.
- GuB-42 8y agoI think that's the point. They want to offer the same things as Google (search engine, apps, ...) but in a way that respects privacy. So a logo with the same shape as the Google logo but with a different orientation makes a lot of sense.
- markstos 8y agoHaving your logo be not-Google doesn't clarify what you are, just want you aren't. What you would you expect out of the not-Nike brand? As Google evolves and changes, the meaning of not-Google branding becomes ambiguous. Does it mean the not-Google-from-2015 or the not-Google-from-2020? The definition of the "same things as Google" is involving constantly.
- Apocryphon 8y agoInterestingly enough, New Balance positioned itself to be the anti-Nike, touting its shoes as U.S.-made and not benefiting from exploited foreign labor. I read somewhere that the way their N logo is put on their shoes is meant to echo the Nike swoosh. And people have criticized that branding as insufficient, as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/new-balance-needs-to-redesign-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-balance-needs-to-redesig...
- Nux 8y agoInteresting, Gael Duval of Mandrake Linux fame I assume.
- em-bee 8y agoyes, the very same
- ma2rten 8y agoI am confused. Everything I read on the website is very vague. What exactly is their issue with Apple? Apple is already privacy focused. I can imagine what it could be (mistrust of closed source, big corporations) but they never say so. What exactly are they building? Are they just a distro or are they building their own software? EDIT: All the replies focus on Apple. But my point is not that Apple is privacy-friendly. When I say Apple is privacy-focused, I just mean Apple claims they focus on privacy. They can disagree, but should provide some arguments.
- colordrops 8y agoWhy does everyone keep repeating this idea that Apple is the privacy company? They are just less bad than Google, but that isn't saying much. It's a marketing point for apple, but they still collect hoards of data and work directly with governments and agencies.
- blueboo 8y agoThe downgrade in security isn't worth it. Too little, too late folks
- giornogiovanna 8y agoIt's obviously not a finished product yet. Let them try things out! It doesn't seem to be much more than Lineage yet, but this could go some interesting places.
- kcirtap-hs 8y agoIt comes with online services, not sure any other alternative OS does that.
- rkagerer 8y agoWill it support anything that runs LineageOS? I was going to buy a Xiaomi Pocophone F1, wondering if this is worth trying out.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zandorg 8y agoI just want to buy a phone with this on. Is this possible? I don't want the hassle of finding a phone on Ebay and installing some bundle of software. I just want to plug and play.
- netdeamon 8y agoThis is why I always wanted the boot to gecko (B2G), also called firefox os, to succeed. It was different and also open source. The concept was also good. But too bad they only released on very low cost, low feature phone like Spice. It was a shit phone with good os. I don’t know about e foundation, but what I came to know from their mobile phone os page is that they are providing a os with data privacy as main feature. Why cannot they reuse firefox os?
- em-bee 8y agobecause firefoxOS is no longer under development. /e/ probably doesn't want to take over development of the whole operating system. also, there is no easy way to collect all FOSS apps available for firefoxOS, because firefox didn't track that information. that is, if the market is even still running. the goal of /e/ was to start with a fully functional system, and remove the bad bits one by one. lineageOS and f-droid make that easy. developing firefoxOS would be more like starting empty, and having to develop or port any apps needed to make it good.
- ChrisSD 8y agoSuccessors to Firefox OS, like B2G and KaiOS are still being developed. The app situation is more of a problem. Web apps are a partial, if imperfect, answer to that.
- em-bee 8y agooh, i am very happy to hear about that. i'll have to check that out.
- jrochkind1 8y agoThere's a KaiOS flip phone being sold in the US. As Alcatel Go/Alcatel Quickflip. It's really really bad. I have one. Like, the basic experience is just bad. Even for a flip phone. There is also no supported way to install apps or anything, even though KaiOS theoretically supports this. I had intended to see if I could find a back channel way to even write my own apps and install them, but the basic experience is so bad I lost interest.
- devxpy 8y agoI think my phone is not just about apps, but also services, tightly integrated with those apps, like chrome's browser history, password manager, Google docs synchronisation etc. Perhaps the only reason why I cannot shift to other apps is due to the serious is the lack of cohesion across all platforms. Google has It's paws on every device, every platform. Which is a huge selling point. Half my work is handled by this single Google account. I haven't seen any product lineup that lets me have this kind of one-ness across my devices.
- ams6110 8y agoInteresting, I don't want my phone to be attached to any other aspect of my life. I want it to be a communications device and that's about it. Maps and navigation are the one other thing that I think is really useful. I don't want my phone to be able to touch my bank account, my email (other than a phone-specific email account) or any personal or work-related files.
- devxpy 8y agoThis comment makes me wonder... What if you can spin up a personal server, and have it connect seamlessly to apps across all devices? I understand your concern on having 3rd parties touching your personal information, so what if the lineage OS, firefox OS or any other set of "libre" apps, also brought with them libre, self-hosted services?
- davidy123 8y agoYes, that's just it. It's gradually becoming a smart assistant, and that requires cohesion of data and services that Google provides now. I fully subscribe to that vision, and I want to able to participate in it, I just don't want Google, or Apple, or anyone else to control it, and of course it requires a secure foundation. I think there is going to be a new category way of thinking about this soon, for some people at least.
- remir 8y agoThis is what they're trying to achieve: phones are heavily tied to services, so if you want people to break free from Google, Apple, MS, you need strong alternatives. The /e/ Foundation is working on services that will go with their fork of Android. You'll also have the option to self-host those services if you prefer. This will not be easy to achieve, but I believe it's a great idea.
- ssivark 8y agoEvery passing year makes me yearn more for the missed possibilities of the Firefox OS for the phone. It was visionary of Mozilla folks to anticipate the need for it — I wonder whether the project might have been mismanaged due to unrealistic expectations (expecting too much too soon).
- djsumdog 8y agoIt was just difficult to get a FirefoxOS device back then. I had a friend pick one up for free at a trade show at a conference. I personally want to try going down the KDE Plasma route myself. Device support is still problematic though.
- hawski 8y agoWhen I was thinking about buying my first smartphone I wanted a Firefox OS device. However devices were underpowered and the OS was too young and heavy on resources. So I bought the original Moto G. But still if there would be a Moto G of Firefox OS it probably would all end-up the same. But maybe it could at least retain a niche. My Moto G with current Lineage OS is better than when it was still getting updates, but sadly I broke SIM holder. Maybe I will try to fix it someday with someone's help. Now I use Nexus 5X and as it will soon receive its last update I'm thinking about alternatives. LineageOS is an obvious choice, maybe with MicroG. But I also am thinking a bit about Plasma Mobile as it is a supported device. If it will not bootloop maybe I will be able to try it. But I put my hopes in PostmarketOS and when there will be a single device with enough hardware support (I can close an eye on Bluetooth, NFC, accelerometer and gyro) I will buy two such devices even and maybe especially used.
- hasahmed 8y agoAny hope on the iPhone front?
- O_H_E 8y agoProbably not. I don't think booting another OS on an iPhone is doable.
- ndnxhs 8y agoI seem to remember old demos of booting android on old iphones but I doubt it will ever be practical and probably next to impossible these days. Would likely be easier to design and produce a whole new phone than crack the multiple layers of DRM on iphones
- donarb 8y agoHow long before they get sued for their stylized 'e' which is a ripoff of Google's logo? Essentially it's an upside down 'G'.
- tinkr 8y agoI degoogled my phone by installing LingageOS and by not installing any Google app (no play services etc). Everything is great, except one major annoyance: I do not receive any notifications of chat apps, because I am not connected to GCM /Firebase. Does /e/ somehow fix this, e.g. by providing their own cloud messaging services?
- Fnoord 8y ago/e/ is right now just a fork of LineageOS 14.1 with a bunch of degooglization and microG. microG isn't currently compatible with the latest version of GCM/Firebase. WhatsApp, for example, works around that but that might not be what you want; it is quite the battery drain that way. Although such push messages are as well (like IMAP IDLE is). Depending on your phone, you got LineageOS 15.1 already. Though you might not find the differences between 15 and 14 major. Though the news here seems to be that there's a new version of /e/ based on LineageOS 15.x
- Markoff 8y agoWhatsApp and signal both work fine without gapps, using them daily without any issues and any battery drain
- boudin 8y agoThe only app that works well for me is Conversations (XMPP client). It's also quite battery efficient. You have to convince people to use XMPP though, that's the hard part. For all apps that requires Firebase/GCM, the only solution is MicroG, but then you have some data going to google. It doesn't require a google account and, depending on how the app is made, it shouldn't contain personal data, but it's still data going to google...
- naveens 8y agoYou should try https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/
- Markoff 8y agoSignal and WhatsApp notifications work fine on my lineage phone without any gapps so you must have done something wrong
- kcirtap-hs 8y ago/e/ has a dedicated discussion and support forum at https://community.e.foundation https://community.e.foundation
- oneplane 8y agoWhat is the point of this project (and most other Android-ish projects) if you are still stuck with the same binary blobs, modem OS you can't see or change, ROM loaders in the SoC, persistent code running with higher privs than your kernel (which is often woefully outdated and full of holes). If you simply don't want your phone to talk to google, connect to a WiFi AP you control which also blocks all of Google's AS-numbers and thus the subnets they contain.
- Bud 8y agoOr you could, you know, get an iPhone. A product from a company that actually cares about user privacy and also has the resources to do something about it. Unlike this project.
- Fnoord 8y agoDo you maintain such a dynamic blocklist?
- oneplane 8y agoNo need, IANA does that for you, and via that, ARIN etc. I don't block Google like that myself, but some clients wanted such provisions (sometimes with exclusions which makes it somewhat pointless), just like some do for Facebook etc. If you have a network that is specialised enough, it becomes a lot easier to do this, you turn it into a whitelist instead of a blacklist.
- dleslie 8y agoI'm disappointed that this has nothing to do with Enlightenment. https://www.enlightenment.org/ https://www.enlightenment.org/
- afandian 8y agoIn case it's bugging anyone else: the logo is the reverse of the Ableton Live ligo.
- danvittegleo 8y agoIf you are looking to maintain a secure device similar to stock Android without google services, a Pixel phone with verified boot using your own signing keys, latest AOSP, and up to date drivers/firmware is a far better option. I've been working on a project that automates the entire process in AWS and it supports all Pixel phones now: https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack.
- josteink 8y agoFrankly all I need my phone for these days is running Firefox. Locked down computing via proprietary apps is getting less and less appealing by the day.
- SwellJoe 8y agoI think the Firefox OS and phone was just a little too early. We're approaching the point where the web experience of an application is superior to almost every mobile app. There are exceptions, of course, but I foolishly bought an Amazon tablet recently because my brain doesn't work right when it sees a bargain, but the lack of apps isn't such a terrible thing. I eventually did put the Play store on it so I could get a few must have apps, but, Reddit is better on the web (though it is an absolute pain in the ass about it with constant overlays trying to get you to use the app). Wunderlist is fine, gmail is fine, Twitter is ok, etc. The big win, however, is that I trust Firefox/Mozilla not to sell me out (I have mostly forgiven the Pocket thing), unlike just about anybody else. That has some value...also, all of my accounts and stuff is synced via Firefox, where with apps I have to login on every new device...some apps demand a fresh login every time, like my bank app, so Firefox is a better experience there.
- RussianCow 8y agoThis. I recently got a new Android phone, and decided to go Google-less with microG and LineageOS. Since I had to install everything from scratch anyway, I only installed apps as I needed them, and I've found that I have not reinstalled a large portion of the apps on my old phone—Amazon, Yelp, YouTube, etc all work perfectly fine in the browser, and I now have the added advantage that uBlock in Firefox blocks all of the trackers that are impossible to avoid in native apps. Hell, many of these "native" apps are just the web versions wrapped in a web view, so there is absolutely no discernible difference in functionality or UX between the two.
- codedokode 8y agoIt is going to be a difficult task. Developers won't bother to write or update their apps for a niche OS. But if it at least can run apps from F-droid (and has root access) then it is good enough for me. And if there were a replacement for apps depending on Google Services then it would be perfect. > office: a set of online office applications (including word processor, spreadsheet and presentation) that you can use for collaborative work also. Is it really necessary? It might work for a tablet but for example I cannot type anything on small on-screen keyboard. And I don't understand why do that if you have a laptop with a normal keyboard. So I think a document viewer would be more than enough.
- dang 8y agoLarge previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972448
- kcirtap-hs 8y agoDedicated /e/ discussion forum at https://community.e.foundation https://community.e.foundation also.
- notatoad 8y agoMy question whenever one of these de-googled google projects comes up is how do they keep up with the security patches released in stock? This is an especially big problem with all the "de-googled" chromium forks, that remove autocomplete from the address bar at the expense of running 3 versions behind stable. The only fork i've seen so far that even came close to keeping up with the average android install was Copperhead OS, and they seem fairly proud of that - it's right at the top of their features overview [1]. Seeing no mention of how up-to-date this OS is is worrying - I have a hard time seeing it as an improvement to reduce the number of calls to google services, while running an OS that's missing the last couple months of security updates. [1] https://copperhead.co/android/ https://copperhead.co/android/
- amelius 8y agoNaming your product "/e/" is a good way to de-Google as it ensures your product will never be found in a Google search!
- pndy 8y agoDamn, I wish one of such project could do something about my Nokia Lumia 1320 but iirc locked bootloader of Windows Phone is the problem here
- Const-me 8y agoIt’s not that locked: https://www.windowslatest.com/2017/08/05/install-android-on-lumia/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2017/08/05/install-android-on-... The problem is device drivers: traditionally, Linux doesn’t have them.
- incompatible 8y agoWhat are the privacy and security considerations of running an open source operating system with Android 8 (Oreo)? I believe this (as Project Treble) would generally leave the lowest layer of the vendor-supplied Android still in place, potentially giving them some responsibility and control.
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- charliebrownau 8y agoGday Platforms that censor speech:- * Facebook * Twitter * Google * Youtube * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple + apple podcast * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure cloud servers (microsoft) * Mastercard * Godaddy (removed alex jones+gab) * MEDIUM (Banned GAB Oct-2018) * Shopify (Banned AJ + GAB Oct-2018) * Cloudflare * pusher.com * WIKI Platforms that DONT censor speech * Tutanota + Protonmail(email alt) * Minds +mewe (FB alt) * Gabai (Twitter alt) * Bitchute (Youtube alt) * Wire (skype alt) * Librepay (Donation alt) * Startengine (Kickstarter alt) * peertube (DIY self host youtube stream style server) Also look into:- * searX.me or Duckduckgo (search alt) * OpenStreetmap - instead of Google maps * imgtc or tineye - free image upload site * Linux - Win/MacOSX replacement * f-droid.org - Google Play Store ALT * Mumble - Discord ALT Regards Charliebrownau
- wnscooke 8y agoI’m surprised by the number of Chinese phones on the supported list. Does this mean a simple OS reinstall overwrites any backdoors these phones may have, which suggests any backdoor is software related? What about hardware? Dos the new OS inhibit hardware backdoor communications?
- timbit42 8y agoIn theory but are other things in the phone backdoored? What if the WiFi device is backdoored?