14 ms·

E Foundation – deGoogled unGoogled smartphone OS and online services

320 points by lelf 6y ago

francis-io 6y ago
How can this be "de-googled" but I can also use "all my favourite apps"? I'd love to step away from Google, but I have some requirements on apps from the play store for work (slack, okta) and personal communication (whatsapp).
- CaptainBern 6y ago
  WhatsApp actually provides an APK download on their website[0]. I'm not entirely sure whether they keep it as up-to-date as the version on the play store though. [0]: https://www.whatsapp.com/android/ https://www.whatsapp.com/android/
- javierseballos 6y ago
  You would be so disapointed with this OS ... Look for others :)
- kevinfanch 6y ago
  /e/ provides its own Apps store, which have many apps including ones from F-Droid, but if you like you can also install something like Aurora and install any app. Not 100% work with MicroG but it is still great for privacy.
ForHackernews 6y ago
I've been using /e/ as my primary smartphone for a couple months now. It's certainly usable: The experience is more pleasant and integrated than stock LineageOS + MicroG, but there's still quite a few rough edges. I hope they can make a go of it, but I think it'll take adoption by a deep-pocketed sponsor (Samsung? Huawei? The German government?) before it would be polished enough to be a real contender for non-technical users. But I do think the idea of an Android fork that maintains some compatibility with existing apps is more likely to find success than something like Sailfish OS, that's entirely distinct.
- artvark11 6y ago
  How well does it work with Waze? That is the only app keeping me on stock Android.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    I haven't tried Waze. The (nonfree) mapping app it ships with works pretty well, as does Maps.me (frontend to OSM data).
    - artvark11 6y ago
      I like Waze because it tells you where speed cameras and cops are. I've used osm+ and maps.me before. They are decent but google maps and Waze have much better routing and directions.
  - javierseballos 6y ago
    well it doesn't work, like half of the apps on this OS :)
- aspyct 6y ago
  Care to elaborate on the "rough edges"? Is it a reliable day to day phone?
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    It's mostly a reliable day to day phone. Rough edges I've seen: - Occasional "X app stopped unexpectedly" messages. - Font sizing is really weird on the built-in email app (a K9 Mail reskin) - System webview sometimes (maybe once a week?) starts rendering blank white pages until I reboot the phone.
    - severine 6y ago
      FWIW, I have experienced all those things with different Android versions, and mainline K9.
gostsamo 6y ago
I new about the project, but I haven't found anything about the accessibility there. Does anyone has any info?
doublerabbit 6y ago
Had me until it mentioned "the cloud" Does it force you to have data on the cloud? Or can you get by without using the cloud? Simply put: I don't want anyone having my data anywhere apart from me and my device.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  I've been using it for a few weeks: It doesn't force you to put anything on the cloud. If you choose to create an /e/ account, it makes it easy to sync/backup to their cloud services, but it's completely optional. Unlike Google or Apple, you're not required to create a cloud account just to use your own device.
  - rsync 6y ago
    Can you easily drop to a command line and just rsync your data to a remote host ? ... asking for a friend ...
- swiley 6y ago
  Most people wouldn't think a smartphone OS was complete without an online component. If you truly don't want that postmarketOS and a number of Linux distros work on some older phones and the pinephone now.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    Reality: "Most people" can not even parse your assertion, much less take a position on it.
    - swiley 6y ago
      You can dump a device running GNU/Linux in front of them and when push notifications don't work the way they expect they'll tell you "it's broken."
    - jmnicolas 6y ago
      To be fair, my 72 yo dad that never used a computer in his life nor possessed any smartphone, has a basic understanding of what is the cloud. People are not dumb because they're not specialized in the same field as us.
thinkloop 6y ago
Why do we have to give access to our entire hard-drive to share one file once? How is it legal for someone else to give away your phone number, your addresses for the last 30 years, your email addresses, and the rest of your personal contact information, along with all the contact information of everyone else they ever met to any app they like? Why can apps run your mic and camera 24 hours a day in the background because you wanted to record a gif once? Why should an app be able to read every sms for all eternity because they wanted to verify your phone number once? Ungoogling is a fine step but the whole thing needs to be rebuilt: - Sharing Contacts: Should be illegal and removed as an option. Apps shouldn't be able to trick/coerce/incentivise people to harvest and sell other people's private information. When people give out their phone numbers and addresses they do it with some expectation of care, not with the intention of having it immedietly uploaded to Flappy Bird. The most that should be allowed is perhaps some sort of hash of contacts to be able to bootstrap some friend graph, but that's it. - Sharing Files: There should be a single general default "file manager" app that acts as the intermediary between your files, and other apps, giving them only the files they need for the specific task at hand. Permission for the filemanagers themselves can be given with multiple ALL CAPS permission warnings not to do it. - Camera/Mic/Location: Trusted intermediate app should capture and provide the data needed for the task at hand. At the absolute minimum, permissions should default to only recording while the app is open (like android location now). Persistent background recording should only be allowed after multiple ALL CAPS stern warnings and suggestion to reject unless absolutely necessary. - SMS/etc: Have intermediate trusted apps select and share the specific messages you need to share for the task at hand. In short, data access should be handled by few, trusted, vetted, intermediary apps, with heavily gated permissions for those apps themsevles; and sharing other people's private contact information should be illegal.
- contingencies 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625015
  - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    > android.permission.DVB_DEVICE DVB as in the Digital Video Broadcasting standard? I'm surprised Android has a specific permission for this.
izacus 6y ago
One of the things that feels a bit problematic here - the webpage is avoiding mention of the fact that this is still Android. In essence, this is still Google's OS and the team has decided to start a fight against Google by taking their opensource and perpetually fight against the main developer by removing their proprietary component. I don't think this is a fight that's sustainable - a giant graveyard of Android privacy forks shows that. In the end, the major contributor to this OS is and will remain Google. In that respect, Purism's PureOS seems like a more sustainable effort.
- GTP 6y ago
  What about LineageOS + MicroG? It seems sustainable to me
  - izacus 6y ago
    LineageOS has sadly been falling behind on device support these days, not sure what's going on there. :/
    - nobodywasishere 6y ago
      What do you mean? LineageOS currently supports 164 devices, and LineageOS 17.1 was released a few months ago with 75%[0] of devices moved over to it currently. LineageOS 18.0 is in the works as well [1]. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1bx6RvTCEGn5zA06lW_uZGZ_dq6qQyCZC_NifmyeC1lM/htmlview# https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1bx6RvTCEGn5zA06l... [1] https://redd.it/jueya4 https://redd.it/jueya4
  - joecool1029 6y ago
    LineageOS does not support MicroG officially, you will not receive support from them so I don't know what your benchmark for sustainability is. The officially stated reason (I'm paraphrasing) was because it allows for fudging the signatures of apps and services on the OS, and this breaks the security model.
    - 6y ago
vinay427 6y ago
I looked at /e/ extensively before buying a new phone and ultimately settled on GrapheneOS. I'd much prefer the de-Googling to be combined with a focus on security, where Google has admittedly done some important work for Android. I'm sure it's not quite as functional as /e/ given the lack of integrated Google services and other bits and pieces, but a surprising number of apps work perfectly without these things and I rarely miss them. I would also recommend Shelter for a work profile for non-open source apps, which one can install on one of the Play Store clones such as Aurora.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  https://calyxos.org/ https://calyxos.org/ is another promising Android fork similar in ideals to https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/
  - ThenAsNow 6y ago
    Thanks for posting this. I spent some time looking at how "de-Googled" GrapheneOS is. If you define "de-Googled" as meaning the phone makes no connections to Google servers that you do not explicitly acknowledge/permit, then GrapheneOS is still far from "de-Googled". Just to give one example, SUPL. There are also plenty of unGoogled-Chromium patches GrapheneOS doesn't apply. I'm not saying GrapheneOS isn't way better than the Android that ships on phones, but it's misleading to pretend they care about de-Googling as a first tier priority. GrapheneOS does do some privacy oriented work, but it's far more focused on hardening. I look forward to examining /e/ and CalyxOS since their focus is more heavily on privacy. For my use cases, I'm less worried about hardening than privacy. Also, it's a lot of work to keep Android both up-to-date and de-Googled. I started patching GrapheneOS and realized I did not have the bandwidth to maintain the patchset. And still had no good answer for SUPL. Hopefully CalyxOS and /e/ have maintainers with the bandwidth.
    - jmnicolas 6y ago
      You don't have to use Vanadium on GrapheneOS, I use Bromite (mostly for the ad blocking) and there's also an ungoogled chromium available in FDroid.
closeneough 6y ago
I'm using e.foundation for a while now on my Moto G3 (osprey) and it's working ok despite a few camera/gallery crashes here and there. The only thing I'm not really fond of, is that the apps come from an opaque source (https://info.cleanapk.org/ https://info.cleanapk.org/). I also found no information on how those apps are signed, and how this is checked. Upon asking them, someone pointed me to a git commit where an outdated public key of F-Droid was used.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  Yeah, that's the thing that would worry me the most: it's nice and all that I can use many regular Android apps, but how do I know that that's safe? In practice, I'd probably still restrict myself to F-Droid, like I do today - the only app I'd like to use in addition is our Corona warn app.
  - m3adow 6y ago
    If you're from Germany, that may work soon. The Corona Warn App may appear on F-Droid soon.
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      Yeah I'm following that, but I'm from the Netherlands. I do hope that once the German app works, the Dutch one will follow - the issue tracker of the Dutch app has an issue, which links to the German one.
cute_boi 6y ago
full support.
1MachineElf 6y ago
Sounds really nice to me. I recently bought another LG V20 and had a small adventure installing LineageOS to it. The phone reboots randomly at times, which is unfortunate, but I haven't explored the possibility there's a fix for it out there somewhere.
- javierseballos 6y ago
  If smthg doesn't work on LineageOS, then it certainly will NOT work on /e/ haha
BiosIT 6y ago
There were several privacy problems with this ROM, not sure if they corrected it. https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-first-look/ https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-first-look/
- Forbo 6y ago
  I vouched for your comment, since the linked article does bring up some good concerns and I see nothing wrong with your comment. The only one I dug into further was the connectivity check, which appears to have been resolved. I can't speak to any of the other issues that are raised in that article.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  Thanks, interesting article. Note that at the bottom of the article, they link to a second review they did months later: https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-final-look/ https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-final-look/
Qwertious 6y ago
/e/ is mud among the LineageOS community (which is upstream of it), due to several reasons. Sadly I can't find the relevant /r/lineageOS posts . Here's some reading that covers the basic points though: https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191224031946/https://ewwlo.xyz/evil.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191224031946/https://ewwlo.xyz...
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  I kinda agree with the sentiment in the articles from an AOSP/lineage/cyanogen perspective. They should definitely embrace the Telegram FOSS fork [1] and OSMAnd~ [2] (which is a superb offline navigation tool btw) and remove all Apps that require the Android 10 firebase hockey-based notifications. [5] and [6] A lot of apps use this for convenience and because it was _required_ since AOSP 10 but there are ways to work around that requirement with a high priority notification. I would additionally recommend to use AppWarden [3] and Blokada [4], because both are amazing additions for an Android device. Firefox for Android, though, is still a nightmare with all the telemetry. The old TOR Browser 9.5 series is based on old Firefox pre-quantum, 10 is based on Firefox post-quantum. The issue with current Firefox and TOR Browser is that Mozilla decided to include the Adjust-, Firebase- and LeanPlum-SDK which introduce now more user tracking than ever before. You'll even sometimes see different A/B UIs based on your browsing behavior (not kidding) and geolocation, and of course this happens more often with Orbot being used as a Proxy. (You can verify this via AppWarden if you don't trust me) [1] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS [2] https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd [3] https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/ https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/ [4] https://github.com/blokadaorg https://github.com/blokadaorg [5] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/master/Notifications.md https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas... [6] https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/background-starts https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/ba...
  - dessant 6y ago
    Those SDKs have indeed no place in Tor Browser, though at least they appear to be disabled. Have you witnessed Tor Browser sending telemetry data to these services on Android? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/fenix/-/issues/40077 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/fenix/-/issue...
lobster45 6y ago
How did he manage installing applications such as banking apps from the place store? Unless you’re going to be sideloading the app how do you know that you’re getting official banking app and not just downloading some file online.
nobody666 6y ago
Duval will cash in on this using every trick and loophole he can. The "3rd party" app store is shady as h/e/ll, and they know no limits to deceit. If you trust th/e/m, you probably trust Wikipedia too, which is just one place they tried and failed to take advantage by breaking rules and using sock puppets. If you don't have a 'droid device supported by GrapheneOS or CalyxOS, have a look at DivestOS for something more original, and privacy and security focused, without cloud "services."
cordite 6y ago
I got the Silent Circle Blackphone [1] (or silent phone) back in 2016. My experience was terrible battery life, slow to update operating system, overall lack of attention. E Foundation strikes me as quite similar, I have high hopes for privacy in the mobile space but unless someone really can fund that indefinitely, I don't see updates going out for a $600 smart phone (499 euros) for the lifetime a phone should have. [1]: https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/silent-phone/ https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/silent-p...
- Fnoord 6y ago
  /e/ don't have their own device. You can for example buy a Fairphone 3 with Android and get /e/ on it, or buy a Fairphone 3 via /e/ with /e/ on it. The battery life of Fairphone 3 is good with Android, and good with /e/.
IceWreck 6y ago
Doesn't /e/ just take Lineage OS, install microg on top of it add their crappy launcher, and then take $$$ as donations. If anyone deserves donations its Lineage or MicroG. Donate upstream instead of this.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  They do fund the MicroG developer: https://web.archive.org/web/20200817144004/https://e.foundation/e-foundation-announces-official-support-of-microg-development/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200817144004/https://e.foundat... See also https://community.e.foundation/t/microg-what-you-need-to-know-a-conversation-with-its-developer-marvin-wissfeld/22700 https://community.e.foundation/t/microg-what-you-need-to-kno... I think part of their approach is also to sell refurbished phones (or, in partnership with Fairphone, new ones) with /e/ preinstalled, lowering the barrier to entry. There might be more, but I'm not too familiar with them.
  - javierseballos 6y ago
    marketing BS, they don't
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      What reason do you have for thinking they don't?
sam537 6y ago
E Foundation reminds me of E(vil) Corp.
jvanderbot 6y ago
What's to prevent me from buying this phone for its modularity and repairability, and installing lineageOS for their (presumably better) software support?
SubzeroCarnage 6y ago
Last I checked /e/ sells devices with unlocked bootloaders, known vendor security flaws, and known vulnerable kernels. They also include a number of proprietary apps. And at one point were sending off your exact location for weather lookup over HTTP to a proprietary service. Extremely immoral.
dllthomas 6y ago
To be clear, no relation to the E language?
kevinfanch 6y ago
I am using /e/ for quite some time now, and I'm really happy. Both articles seem like intentionally done by someone trying to scare people away from trying privacy-friendly and easy to use OS. About https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html: - Most users would prefer Magic Earth even though being not open sourced, because AndOSM sucks, and Magic Earth is much close to Google Maps quality. - No one is forced to create an /e/ account, but if you decide to create one it is much less likely your data to be used, because /e/ doesn't sell ads like Google. - Lineage OS has no privacy enhancing features, while /e/ removed all calls to Google servers. This improves privacy a lot! About second article which is not even published anymore. - Since when collecting money by crowdfunding makes a company bad? - It is a lie that /e/ doesn't do anything new. Check here: https://doc.e.foundation/faq#is-e-lineageos--microg https://doc.e.foundation/faq#is-e-lineageos--microg - the ROM still falls back to google’s DNS : This have been fixed many months ago. - th/e/y don’t accept negative feedback : I have been in /e/ chat and there is so much negative feedback there and no one gets kicked out, I wonder what he did to get kicked out. Seriously, this all looks like someone who doesn't like privacy trying to scare people away. Admit it no one is going to use a hard to install or hard to use OS. /e/ is the best option if you want your grandmother to have some privacy while still being able to use android apps.
pcdoodle 6y ago
/e/ was doomed from the beginning. I can't google it, ebay it, etc.
LarissaH1 6y ago
Interesting project but I think others do it better. More contributes is great for the long run though.

320 points by lelf 6y ago

How can this be "de-googled" but I can also use "all my favourite apps"? I'd love to step away from Google, but I have some requirements on apps from the play store for work (slack, okta) and personal communication (whatsapp).

CaptainBern 6y ago
WhatsApp actually provides an APK download on their website[0]. I'm not entirely sure whether they keep it as up-to-date as the version on the play store though. [0]: https://www.whatsapp.com/android/ https://www.whatsapp.com/android/
javierseballos 6y ago
You would be so disapointed with this OS ... Look for others :)
kevinfanch 6y ago
/e/ provides its own Apps store, which have many apps including ones from F-Droid, but if you like you can also install something like Aurora and install any app. Not 100% work with MicroG but it is still great for privacy.

ForHackernews 6y ago

I've been using /e/ as my primary smartphone for a couple months now. It's certainly usable: The experience is more pleasant and integrated than stock LineageOS + MicroG, but there's still quite a few rough edges. I hope they can make a go of it, but I think it'll take adoption by a deep-pocketed sponsor (Samsung? Huawei? The German government?) before it would be polished enough to be a real contender for non-technical users. But I do think the idea of an Android fork that maintains some compatibility with existing apps is more likely to find success than something like Sailfish OS, that's entirely distinct.

artvark11 6y ago
How well does it work with Waze? That is the only app keeping me on stock Android.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  I haven't tried Waze. The (nonfree) mapping app it ships with works pretty well, as does Maps.me (frontend to OSM data).
  - artvark11 6y ago
    I like Waze because it tells you where speed cameras and cops are. I've used osm+ and maps.me before. They are decent but google maps and Waze have much better routing and directions.
- javierseballos 6y ago
  well it doesn't work, like half of the apps on this OS :)
aspyct 6y ago
Care to elaborate on the "rough edges"? Is it a reliable day to day phone?
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  It's mostly a reliable day to day phone. Rough edges I've seen: - Occasional "X app stopped unexpectedly" messages. - Font sizing is really weird on the built-in email app (a K9 Mail reskin) - System webview sometimes (maybe once a week?) starts rendering blank white pages until I reboot the phone.
  - severine 6y ago
    FWIW, I have experienced all those things with different Android versions, and mainline K9.

gostsamo 6y ago

I new about the project, but I haven't found anything about the accessibility there. Does anyone has any info?

doublerabbit 6y ago

Had me until it mentioned "the cloud" Does it force you to have data on the cloud? Or can you get by without using the cloud? Simply put: I don't want anyone having my data anywhere apart from me and my device.

ForHackernews 6y ago
I've been using it for a few weeks: It doesn't force you to put anything on the cloud. If you choose to create an /e/ account, it makes it easy to sync/backup to their cloud services, but it's completely optional. Unlike Google or Apple, you're not required to create a cloud account just to use your own device.
- rsync 6y ago
  Can you easily drop to a command line and just rsync your data to a remote host ? ... asking for a friend ...
swiley 6y ago
Most people wouldn't think a smartphone OS was complete without an online component. If you truly don't want that postmarketOS and a number of Linux distros work on some older phones and the pinephone now.
- eternalban 6y ago
  Reality: "Most people" can not even parse your assertion, much less take a position on it.
  - swiley 6y ago
    You can dump a device running GNU/Linux in front of them and when push notifications don't work the way they expect they'll tell you "it's broken."
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    To be fair, my 72 yo dad that never used a computer in his life nor possessed any smartphone, has a basic understanding of what is the cloud. People are not dumb because they're not specialized in the same field as us.

thinkloop 6y ago

Why do we have to give access to our entire hard-drive to share one file once? How is it legal for someone else to give away your phone number, your addresses for the last 30 years, your email addresses, and the rest of your personal contact information, along with all the contact information of everyone else they ever met to any app they like? Why can apps run your mic and camera 24 hours a day in the background because you wanted to record a gif once? Why should an app be able to read every sms for all eternity because they wanted to verify your phone number once? Ungoogling is a fine step but the whole thing needs to be rebuilt: - Sharing Contacts: Should be illegal and removed as an option. Apps shouldn't be able to trick/coerce/incentivise people to harvest and sell other people's private information. When people give out their phone numbers and addresses they do it with some expectation of care, not with the intention of having it immedietly uploaded to Flappy Bird. The most that should be allowed is perhaps some sort of hash of contacts to be able to bootstrap some friend graph, but that's it. - Sharing Files: There should be a single general default "file manager" app that acts as the intermediary between your files, and other apps, giving them only the files they need for the specific task at hand. Permission for the filemanagers themselves can be given with multiple ALL CAPS permission warnings not to do it. - Camera/Mic/Location: Trusted intermediate app should capture and provide the data needed for the task at hand. At the absolute minimum, permissions should default to only recording while the app is open (like android location now). Persistent background recording should only be allowed after multiple ALL CAPS stern warnings and suggestion to reject unless absolutely necessary. - SMS/etc: Have intermediate trusted apps select and share the specific messages you need to share for the task at hand. In short, data access should be handled by few, trusted, vetted, intermediary apps, with heavily gated permissions for those apps themsevles; and sharing other people's private contact information should be illegal.

contingencies 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625015
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  > android.permission.DVB_DEVICE DVB as in the Digital Video Broadcasting standard? I'm surprised Android has a specific permission for this.

izacus 6y ago

One of the things that feels a bit problematic here - the webpage is avoiding mention of the fact that this is still Android. In essence, this is still Google's OS and the team has decided to start a fight against Google by taking their opensource and perpetually fight against the main developer by removing their proprietary component. I don't think this is a fight that's sustainable - a giant graveyard of Android privacy forks shows that. In the end, the major contributor to this OS is and will remain Google. In that respect, Purism's PureOS seems like a more sustainable effort.

GTP 6y ago
What about LineageOS + MicroG? It seems sustainable to me
- izacus 6y ago
  LineageOS has sadly been falling behind on device support these days, not sure what's going on there. :/
  - nobodywasishere 6y ago
    What do you mean? LineageOS currently supports 164 devices, and LineageOS 17.1 was released a few months ago with 75%[0] of devices moved over to it currently. LineageOS 18.0 is in the works as well [1]. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1bx6RvTCEGn5zA06lW_uZGZ_dq6qQyCZC_NifmyeC1lM/htmlview# https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1bx6RvTCEGn5zA06l... [1] https://redd.it/jueya4 https://redd.it/jueya4
- joecool1029 6y ago
  LineageOS does not support MicroG officially, you will not receive support from them so I don't know what your benchmark for sustainability is. The officially stated reason (I'm paraphrasing) was because it allows for fudging the signatures of apps and services on the OS, and this breaks the security model.
  - 6y ago

vinay427 6y ago

I looked at /e/ extensively before buying a new phone and ultimately settled on GrapheneOS. I'd much prefer the de-Googling to be combined with a focus on security, where Google has admittedly done some important work for Android. I'm sure it's not quite as functional as /e/ given the lack of integrated Google services and other bits and pieces, but a surprising number of apps work perfectly without these things and I rarely miss them. I would also recommend Shelter for a work profile for non-open source apps, which one can install on one of the Play Store clones such as Aurora.

ignoramous 6y ago
https://calyxos.org/ https://calyxos.org/ is another promising Android fork similar in ideals to https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/
- ThenAsNow 6y ago
  Thanks for posting this. I spent some time looking at how "de-Googled" GrapheneOS is. If you define "de-Googled" as meaning the phone makes no connections to Google servers that you do not explicitly acknowledge/permit, then GrapheneOS is still far from "de-Googled". Just to give one example, SUPL. There are also plenty of unGoogled-Chromium patches GrapheneOS doesn't apply. I'm not saying GrapheneOS isn't way better than the Android that ships on phones, but it's misleading to pretend they care about de-Googling as a first tier priority. GrapheneOS does do some privacy oriented work, but it's far more focused on hardening. I look forward to examining /e/ and CalyxOS since their focus is more heavily on privacy. For my use cases, I'm less worried about hardening than privacy. Also, it's a lot of work to keep Android both up-to-date and de-Googled. I started patching GrapheneOS and realized I did not have the bandwidth to maintain the patchset. And still had no good answer for SUPL. Hopefully CalyxOS and /e/ have maintainers with the bandwidth.
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    You don't have to use Vanadium on GrapheneOS, I use Bromite (mostly for the ad blocking) and there's also an ungoogled chromium available in FDroid.

closeneough 6y ago

I'm using e.foundation for a while now on my Moto G3 (osprey) and it's working ok despite a few camera/gallery crashes here and there. The only thing I'm not really fond of, is that the apps come from an opaque source (https://info.cleanapk.org/ https://info.cleanapk.org/). I also found no information on how those apps are signed, and how this is checked. Upon asking them, someone pointed me to a git commit where an outdated public key of F-Droid was used.

Vinnl 6y ago
Yeah, that's the thing that would worry me the most: it's nice and all that I can use many regular Android apps, but how do I know that that's safe? In practice, I'd probably still restrict myself to F-Droid, like I do today - the only app I'd like to use in addition is our Corona warn app.
- m3adow 6y ago
  If you're from Germany, that may work soon. The Corona Warn App may appear on F-Droid soon.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Yeah I'm following that, but I'm from the Netherlands. I do hope that once the German app works, the Dutch one will follow - the issue tracker of the Dutch app has an issue, which links to the German one.

cute_boi 6y ago

full support.

1MachineElf 6y ago

Sounds really nice to me. I recently bought another LG V20 and had a small adventure installing LineageOS to it. The phone reboots randomly at times, which is unfortunate, but I haven't explored the possibility there's a fix for it out there somewhere.

javierseballos 6y ago
If smthg doesn't work on LineageOS, then it certainly will NOT work on /e/ haha

BiosIT 6y ago

There were several privacy problems with this ROM, not sure if they corrected it. https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-first-look/ https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-first-look/

Forbo 6y ago
I vouched for your comment, since the linked article does bring up some good concerns and I see nothing wrong with your comment. The only one I dug into further was the connectivity check, which appears to have been resolved. I can't speak to any of the other issues that are raised in that article.
Vinnl 6y ago
Thanks, interesting article. Note that at the bottom of the article, they link to a second review they did months later: https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-final-look/ https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-final-look/

Qwertious 6y ago

/e/ is mud among the LineageOS community (which is upstream of it), due to several reasons. Sadly I can't find the relevant /r/lineageOS posts . Here's some reading that covers the basic points though: https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191224031946/https://ewwlo.xyz/evil.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191224031946/https://ewwlo.xyz...

cookiengineer 6y ago
I kinda agree with the sentiment in the articles from an AOSP/lineage/cyanogen perspective. They should definitely embrace the Telegram FOSS fork [1] and OSMAnd~ [2] (which is a superb offline navigation tool btw) and remove all Apps that require the Android 10 firebase hockey-based notifications. [5] and [6] A lot of apps use this for convenience and because it was _required_ since AOSP 10 but there are ways to work around that requirement with a high priority notification. I would additionally recommend to use AppWarden [3] and Blokada [4], because both are amazing additions for an Android device. Firefox for Android, though, is still a nightmare with all the telemetry. The old TOR Browser 9.5 series is based on old Firefox pre-quantum, 10 is based on Firefox post-quantum. The issue with current Firefox and TOR Browser is that Mozilla decided to include the Adjust-, Firebase- and LeanPlum-SDK which introduce now more user tracking than ever before. You'll even sometimes see different A/B UIs based on your browsing behavior (not kidding) and geolocation, and of course this happens more often with Orbot being used as a Proxy. (You can verify this via AppWarden if you don't trust me) [1] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS [2] https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd [3] https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/ https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/ [4] https://github.com/blokadaorg https://github.com/blokadaorg [5] https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/master/Notifications.md https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas... [6] https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/background-starts https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/ba...
- dessant 6y ago
  Those SDKs have indeed no place in Tor Browser, though at least they appear to be disabled. Have you witnessed Tor Browser sending telemetry data to these services on Android? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/fenix/-/issues/40077 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/fenix/-/issue...

lobster45 6y ago

How did he manage installing applications such as banking apps from the place store? Unless you’re going to be sideloading the app how do you know that you’re getting official banking app and not just downloading some file online.

nobody666 6y ago

Duval will cash in on this using every trick and loophole he can. The "3rd party" app store is shady as h/e/ll, and they know no limits to deceit. If you trust th/e/m, you probably trust Wikipedia too, which is just one place they tried and failed to take advantage by breaking rules and using sock puppets. If you don't have a 'droid device supported by GrapheneOS or CalyxOS, have a look at DivestOS for something more original, and privacy and security focused, without cloud "services."

cordite 6y ago

I got the Silent Circle Blackphone [1] (or silent phone) back in 2016. My experience was terrible battery life, slow to update operating system, overall lack of attention. E Foundation strikes me as quite similar, I have high hopes for privacy in the mobile space but unless someone really can fund that indefinitely, I don't see updates going out for a $600 smart phone (499 euros) for the lifetime a phone should have. [1]: https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/silent-phone/ https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/silent-p...

Fnoord 6y ago
/e/ don't have their own device. You can for example buy a Fairphone 3 with Android and get /e/ on it, or buy a Fairphone 3 via /e/ with /e/ on it. The battery life of Fairphone 3 is good with Android, and good with /e/.

IceWreck 6y ago

Doesn't /e/ just take Lineage OS, install microg on top of it add their crappy launcher, and then take $$$ as donations. If anyone deserves donations its Lineage or MicroG. Donate upstream instead of this.

Vinnl 6y ago
They do fund the MicroG developer: https://web.archive.org/web/20200817144004/https://e.foundation/e-foundation-announces-official-support-of-microg-development/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200817144004/https://e.foundat... See also https://community.e.foundation/t/microg-what-you-need-to-know-a-conversation-with-its-developer-marvin-wissfeld/22700 https://community.e.foundation/t/microg-what-you-need-to-kno... I think part of their approach is also to sell refurbished phones (or, in partnership with Fairphone, new ones) with /e/ preinstalled, lowering the barrier to entry. There might be more, but I'm not too familiar with them.
- javierseballos 6y ago
  marketing BS, they don't
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    What reason do you have for thinking they don't?

sam537 6y ago

E Foundation reminds me of E(vil) Corp.

jvanderbot 6y ago

What's to prevent me from buying this phone for its modularity and repairability, and installing lineageOS for their (presumably better) software support?

SubzeroCarnage 6y ago

Last I checked /e/ sells devices with unlocked bootloaders, known vendor security flaws, and known vulnerable kernels. They also include a number of proprietary apps. And at one point were sending off your exact location for weather lookup over HTTP to a proprietary service. Extremely immoral.

dllthomas 6y ago

To be clear, no relation to the E language?

kevinfanch 6y ago

I am using /e/ for quite some time now, and I'm really happy. Both articles seem like intentionally done by someone trying to scare people away from trying privacy-friendly and easy to use OS. About https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html https://intangiblesheep.neocities.org/rants/eelo.html: - Most users would prefer Magic Earth even though being not open sourced, because AndOSM sucks, and Magic Earth is much close to Google Maps quality. - No one is forced to create an /e/ account, but if you decide to create one it is much less likely your data to be used, because /e/ doesn't sell ads like Google. - Lineage OS has no privacy enhancing features, while /e/ removed all calls to Google servers. This improves privacy a lot! About second article which is not even published anymore. - Since when collecting money by crowdfunding makes a company bad? - It is a lie that /e/ doesn't do anything new. Check here: https://doc.e.foundation/faq#is-e-lineageos--microg https://doc.e.foundation/faq#is-e-lineageos--microg - the ROM still falls back to google’s DNS : This have been fixed many months ago. - th/e/y don’t accept negative feedback : I have been in /e/ chat and there is so much negative feedback there and no one gets kicked out, I wonder what he did to get kicked out. Seriously, this all looks like someone who doesn't like privacy trying to scare people away. Admit it no one is going to use a hard to install or hard to use OS. /e/ is the best option if you want your grandmother to have some privacy while still being able to use android apps.

pcdoodle 6y ago

/e/ was doomed from the beginning. I can't google it, ebay it, etc.

LarissaH1 6y ago

Interesting project but I think others do it better. More contributes is great for the long run though.