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The /e/ Google-free, pro-privacy Android clone is now available
- nxrabl 7y ago“Google-free” in that the name is impossible to google? /s I had not heard of Qwant before this. How does it compare to other privacy-focused search engines e.g. Duck Duck Go?
- tsukurimashou 7y agoLast time I read about it it wasn't very promising. If I remember correctly their code is proprietary and last time I checked it was just aggregating results from other search engines.
- big_chungus 7y agoWhen I use DDG, I get results nearly as good as Google. I tried qwant; nowhere near as good. It is used mostly by those who resent the dominance and techical superiority of American tech companies, because it is based in france.
- mapniels 7y ago> It is used mostly by those who resent the dominance and techical superiority of American tech companies, because it is based in france. Or maybe because they are subject, as an European company, to GDPR?
- monocasa 7y agoIsn't Google subject to GDPR despite being based in the US practically? And isn't Google technically a EU company since they use the double irish with a dutch sandwich tax scheme?
- big_chungus 7y agoThe gdpr applies to Google's operations in europe.
- csagan5 7y agoTo be honest, '/e/' is also not that easy to search for.
- krlx 7y agoFor search queries in French, DDG is a total no go for me while Qwant has decent results. But then, anything technical or in English I find myself automatically adding the &g suffix to search on Google. They were based on Bing, but it changed years ago now and have their own crawlers.
- stereolambda 7y agoOne thing that I like about DuckDuckGo is that you can browse results with arrow keys and enter. No simple way to load the next page, sadly. If you have it set as the search engine in Firefox, you can get mouseless search with ctrl+t and f6 if needed. This is not to say that Qwant is horrible because of not having this (I just ran a couple of test queries and the results seem decent), just it would be nice if different "indie" search engines allowed navigation with keyboard.
- RMPR 7y ago> you can get mouseless search with ctrl+t and f6 You can get "very mouseless" with vim vixen add-on
- perlwle 7y agoI use it in China whenever my VPN is down. It's not blocked, yet. On an unrelated note, hackernews has been blocked for at least a month or two. Probably due to lots of HK protest submissions in recent months.
- derision 7y agoThe name of the operating system is actually "/e/"??? That's terrible..
- tsukurimashou 7y agoI have to agree, the first thing that pop in my head is the /e/ board from 4chan which is for ecchi
- SnarkAsh 7y ago/e/: the Pedophile Phone
- rsynnott 7y agoI’m reluctant to google; what’s that mean?
- krapp 7y agohentai - pornographic manga and anime. "ecchi" is Japanese for the English letter "H", standing for "hentai", which means perverted or strange.
- Smithalicious 7y agoSpecifically /e/ is the board for softcore images of that nature, while /h/ (hentai) is for hardcore images (and /d/ is, well...)
- westmeal 7y ago... Females with large phalluses.
- Angostura 7y agoIs it pronounced slashy-slash?
- juped 7y ago
- zosterops 7y agoI don't really see the benefit in this. You can install LineageOS without gapps and MicroG already distributes a fork of LineageOS that includes MicroG. If you want full control of your device you will likely be better off going with something like Librem 5 from Purism.
- sp332 7y agoWhy is MicroG's fork better than this one? Edit: getting downvoted so for clarity this is the part of your comment I'm referring to: MicroG already distributes a fork of LineageOS that includes MicroG
- zamadatix 7y agoMicroG isn't a fork for starters.
- deno 7y agoThey have LineageOS builds with MicroG integrated that are technically a fork, mostly because they add permission API to spoof Google apps, that got rejected upstream. Also they ship with two location backends (Mozilla and Nominatim), though disabled by default, and FDroid comes preinstalled as a system app. https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/
- sp332 7y agoI didn't say MicroG was a fork.
- deno 7y ago/e/ is LineageOS + MicroG already. Seems like a LineageOS downstream distro with bunch of defaults and some Cloud stuff (can be self-hosted) and an Appstore other than FDroid. Oh and they’ll sell you preflashed phones. So basically AOSP for less technical people interested in privacy. Seems harmless so far.
- _bxg1 7y ago
- lrvick 7y agoIf you want google-free android with some privacy defaults you can build/sign yourself with a simple make command, see: https://github.com/hashbang/os https://github.com/hashbang/os
- chopin 7y agoNice, but works only on Pixel phones.
- csagan5 7y agoBromite author here (https://www.bromite.org https://www.bromite.org ); I was contacted some time ago about the possibility to maintain a modified version of Bromite with a customised /e/ home page and list of search engines. Nothing particularly murky there, but after some Q/A I did not want to proceed with this type of cross-branding because fundamentally I do not want Bromite to be using or be affiliated with any cloud service and I concluded that /e/ invites users to swap Google for /e/ as a cloud services provider. Now to the reason why I am commenting here: there is no GPL violation for the patches used in their /e/ browser but I find it a bit disappointing that nowhere it is mentioned that the browser is a complete Bromite build, minus the logo and renamed to '/e/ Browser'. Most users are assuming that it is a Chromium fork developed by /e/ and will never reach the Bromite open source project, which is basically the way the project is kept alive.
- hayksaakian 7y agoUpdate: Fixed -- Note -- HN included the ) and ; in your link, so clicking it doesn't work properly. I appreciate your cause and it'd help if it was easier to check it out
- csagan5 7y agoThanks, fixed that by adding a space.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoI use your browser as my daily driver and I just want to say thank you for your hard work.
- csagan5 7y agoYou're welcome :)
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoIs there anything I could do to help support bromite as a project?
- andred14 7y agowhat's wrong with cyanogen mod?
- andred14 7y agowhat's wrong with cyanogenmod?
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoFor one thing, it hasn't been called "Cyanogenmod" for about three years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS
- anoncake 7y agoTo rephrase the question for pedants: What's wrong with LineageOS née Cyanogenmod?
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoI'd like to know what their support model is. Will phones pre-loaded with /e/ continue to receive security/version updates? Since this is a fork of LineageOS, I'm guessing they don't get automatic updates from upstream.
- supercarson 7y agoFinally!! Ditch google to dirt.. and go with alternatives! Google is evil and privacy abuser!
- HocusLocus 7y agoJust what we need, a new system with the name of /e/ which will make information and discussion of it unsearchable on the web. WTF. I thought only Google did that, name things and projects for common dictionary words. You'd expect a search company to know better.
- mkeedlinger 7y agoSeeing a lot of critical comments here. I get it, this isn't perfect, but let's not forget that this is part of a growing movement towards something better. That is to be commended. Don't let perfect be an enemy of good.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoI applaud the effort but I'm buying a Librem because I can google Librem.
- tyingq 7y agoNot intuitive, but: https://www.google.com/search?q='/e/' https://www.google.com/search?q='/e/'
- Smithalicious 7y ago>1 (foot / e) / foot = 0.367879441 Thanks Google, that's exactly what I was looking for.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Smithalicious 7y agoMe and my friends had a good laugh over this. You'd think that at the very least someone, at some point would've recognized "/e/" as following the grammar of 4chan board names, right? People are still at least vaguely aware of /b/ (and nowadays, /pol/), right...? EDIT: Maybe they just googled it and assumed the name was free after finding nothing....
- tylerl 7y agoI see no reason reason to expect that this will fail to capture enough market share to justify maintaining it, and then stop providing updates, leaving its users with an insecure and unmaintained fork that offers no compelling benefit over it's better-maintained alternatives. None at all.
- zwaps 7y agoThe advantage here is that they sell phones. It is very difficult to install Lineage OS, as it is completely unclear which phone one should buy to install it. There isn't a single viable answer online for the question: "Which phone should I buy for Lineage OS". I am dead serious! The support is up to individuals able to produce ROMs, so for example a Galaxy A5 is supported, while A6 and A7 used to be, but are no longer (!) supported. So if you bought an A7 for Lineage OS, you are out of luck now. Of course it is also difficult to install Lineage OS itself. For most of us, it is probably at least possible. But there is no chance rest of the 95% of the world will ever do this. Indeed, I would also feel at least anxious to attempt it (alas, for my current phone no Lineage OS is available). So this is great. You can buy a Samsung phone and get it preinstalled with a good distro. I am not aware this is possible otherwise, let alone for less than 300 euro. Everyone who doesn't understand why this is better than "just install Lineage OS with microG" has some serious disconnect going on. I am fairly incompetent with computers, but I don't think I could fork my own Lineage OS for my phone of choice. Therefore, having something preinstalled and actually supported is a serious selling point for me! Edit: Additionally, they will offer a service for you to send in your phone to flash it. I really like this!
- 0-_-0 7y ago> There isn't a single viable answer online for the question: "Which phone should I buy for Lineage OS". I am dead serious! Check out https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
- zwaps 7y agoYeah but that site had mentioned phones officially supported, and then no longer. It doesn't answer the question which of these phones is a viable one to get now to have Lineage support. Clearly, its not better to get a newer one, it is best to get the one with most support. Which one that is, I do not know.
- oh_boy 7y agoI used the following site lately to choose a phone. I found it much easier to understand than the device list of LineageOS. https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ Still, individual research still required e.g. to find out that the fancy 48 MP camera mode is not supported in LineageOS.
- linusnext 7y agoI've been using this for over a year on multiple phones. The amount of negative feedback here based on zero experience reads like corporate fud.
- mindslight 7y agoWARNING: If you buy one of the S7/S9 preloaded models, the camera quality is likely to be quite poor, especially under low light. This is the state of affairs under microG (/lineage), as Samsung ROMs use a proprietary camera library that doesn't carry over. Source: My main phone is an herolte (S7), as the Exynos variants are one of the few phones with separate baseband and application processors. This should be prominently mentioned on the product page, as it's just going to cause disappointment, regret, and ultimately backlash. Really they should choose an additional model with good camera support to refurbish, and offer the choice as an explicit tradeoff (better quality photos vs better baseband security). (And if I am completely wrong here because they've somehow fixed or sidestepped this, please correct me. It just doesn't seem likely)