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Show HN: DivestOS – Long-term support for end-of-life Android devices

334 points by _rdvw 4y ago

craftkiller 4y ago
Does this support GrapheneOS's Google Services Framework compatibility layer? And why not fork GrapheneOS instead of Lineage?
- FireInsight 4y ago
  The main dev has expressed that they don't intend to add any google play services compatibility, and probably forking Lineage because GrapheneOS is already pretty good but works just on pixels, as opposed to Lineage which works on maany many phone models.
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    DivestOS has been a fork of LineageOS since before it was LineageOS: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=history https://divestos.org/index.php?page=history The precursor to GrapheneOS also used to have a non-foss license for a period of time.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  Is GrapheneOS' PlayServices sandbox open source?
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    All of their work is open source, usually Apache-2.0 or MIT but some GPL-2.0 too. There is an older condensed list of changes here: https://gist.github.com/thestinger/ee536cbd1ca674b94dde05831192c348 https://gist.github.com/thestinger/ee536cbd1ca674b94dde05831... Newer changes are in the updated repos.
- thrtythreeforty 4y ago
  Are there any other projects that are using Graphene's Play Services? My ideal OS is basically Lineage with those patches applied.
  - j-james 4y ago
    Yes, ProtonAOSP: https://protonaosp.org/ https://protonaosp.org/
    - _rdvw 4y ago
      Was sadly discontinued it seems: https://github.com/ProtonAOSP https://github.com/ProtonAOSP
    - thrtythreeforty 4y ago
      Unfortunately they don't support near the number of devices that GrapheneOS supports. I'm using a Pixel 3a.
iamgopal 4y ago
What are the alternatives / competitors to this ?
- _rdvw 4y ago
  For new/supported devices I strongly recommend GrapheneOS. The other projects who support some of these older devices have numerous issues as noted here: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#osSecurity https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#osSecurity Edit: also of note: DivestOS currently provides monthly updates spanning seven versions of Android, I don't know of any other project doing that specifically.
  - h4waii 4y ago
    To note, the monthly security updates DivestOS provides don't (can't?) include baseband and such "firmware" updates for legacy OEM-unsupported versions of Android. Don't get me wrong, it's terrific that security patches are backported to such ancient versions of Android by those working on DivestOS and it's a great option for devices that aren't supported by GrapheneOS, LineageOS, et al.
    - _rdvw 4y ago
      Firmware is included for 45 devices, but no one but the vendor/manufacturer can actually provide security updates for them, so they are largely just the last release. https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/firmware-empty/-/blob/master/STATUS https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/firmware-empty/-/blob/mas... This is indeed an issue and is documented on multiple places of the website. Patching everything else is the best harm-reduction for this.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    A significant difficulty for GrapheneOS is that it has fairly limited device support: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices Now if you're buying a device planning to run it, that's fine, but it really does limit its usefulness.
  - 4y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
The tool https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/cve_checker https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/cve_checker is fascinating; I've usually seen people attempting to bring needed drivers to a mainline kernel, but backporting security fixes to a vendor kernel does seem like a plausible way to get a lot of the benefit with less work.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  It isn't perfect, but I am quite happy with how effective it has been considering how simple it really is.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Indeed. The data they maintain used by that is fascinating as well: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Divested-Mobile/Kernel_Patches/master/Kernel_CVE_Patch_List.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Divested-Mobile/Kernel_Pat...
squarefoot 4y ago
Any chances to see something similar to install Linux images (native, no chroots) to old Android tablets over the original OS? Some hardware wouldn't be supported, but I wouldn't mind not having for example video acceleration, audio and/or modem, if I could use an old tablet as a IoT screen or to show graphs from sensor data, etc. Having a full OS, hence the ability to use multiple programming languages, libraries, etc would change everything.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Sounds like you want https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/ or https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/ ?
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    I'm aware of PostmarketOS, but unfortunately not many tablets are supported; I'm not interested in phones also due to their too small screen.
    - palata 4y ago
      They have a nice community, you could try to add support for your tablet!
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/ might be of interest to you.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  Checkout the postmarketOS project, they do exactly that!
- pabs3 4y ago
  Some articles about that are on the Debian mobile wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile Using a chroot will always be the easiest way to do this though. https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid
JohnKuzyarko 4y ago
I have an old OnePlus and it's managed to last like 7 years. Sadly every other developer has abandoned it. Hope this project can bring it back from the dead!
- wazoox 4y ago
  My 2013 OnePlus One still works perfectly fine (with an out-of-date LineageOS). Battery still lasts 2 full days easily.
kernal 4y ago
Unless these devices have the ability to update their binary OEM blobs then these cannot be considered secure. This is why alternative OSs like GrapheneOS end their support when the Google Pixel is EOL. If you want long term support buy an iPhone or an Android phone that guarantees at least 5 years of security updates.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  This is clearly documented see (and also the section above it): https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#secure https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#secure
  - summm 4y ago
    That makes it even worse. They apparently do not even try to make it secure and willingly exclude some patches. Reminds me of "security by management risk acceptance"
    - _rdvw 4y ago
      They? This is my project, it is just me. There is not a single other project that achieves the scope of what DivestOS does for old devices.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So now the answer to security is to trust one lone developer? This is more of a statement to the shit show of modern Android. A company worth $1T+ can’t be bothered to figure out how to support devices more than a couple of years and it’s left up to a random developer.
      - wizzwizz4 4y ago
        > They? This is my project, it is just me. "They" has been an acceptable default third-person singular pronoun since at least the 1400s. If there's something you'd prefer, it might be wise to list it on one of your user profile pages.
ramesh31 4y ago
Still running the latest iOS on my 6 year old first-gen SE. Why can't Android do the same?
- palata 4y ago
  It's easier for Apple to do because they make both the hardware and the OS. Say you are Sony and make an Android phone. You take some version of Android and port it to your hardware (with patches for your hardware e.g. in Linux, etc). Your Android system is now effectively a fork. Now say you want to get updates from upstream regularly. Every time, you may have conflicts with your patches, and you have to fix them. That's costly, so why would you do that for old phones people already paid years ago? Long story short, I believe it's easier for Apple to not break compatibility with old iPhones than for an Android OEM to stay up-to-date with upstream.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    I’m not sure this holds up, though. I could install Ubuntu latest on any random laptop from 2005 right now with zero issues. What exactly makes mobile special?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      PCs nearly-universally use standardized interfaces, phones go hard on cost cutting and everyone ships their own badly-done drivers that are never upstreamed running on custom hardware that wouldn't run a "standard" image if you had one. Or more succinctly, because phones won the race to the bottom.
    - asddubs 4y ago
      the drivers generally do not get upstreamed by the vendors
    - palata 4y ago
      My guess would be that the OEMs don't mainline their patches. At least from what I understood looking at PostmarketOS, they spend a lot of energy mainlining those devices they support. I guess it's different for laptops, somehow.
mofosyne 4y ago
Could there be a chance for splitting android into two half? One for per device low level initialization and one for a shared image for all android devices? So the idea is you be able to easily upgrade or even multiboot different android or linux images if you wish, without having to recompile for every device.
- ccouzens 4y ago
  Sounds like project treble. I don't know how much of a success it has been, and I don't think it has been used to multiboot a phone or to boot a more standard Linux. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Yeah, this is exactly what GSIs are meant to do - see https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/ https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/ for a nice wiki talking about taking advantage of that. I thought mobian was distributing a GSI to do non-Android on the Android base, but I can't seem to find it if they do that. Also, bear in mind that this almost intentionally doesn't solve some support problems - any bugs/vulnerabilities in the base layer won't get fixed by GSIs (which is why DivestOS says it explicitly doesn't ship a GSI).
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      Droidian is the GSI-based project from the Mobian folks. Note that GSI's are not totally unified; they'll still vary by CPU architecture, starting Android version shipped with the device, weird features like "A" or "A+B" boot, etc.
strenholme 4y ago
The problem with long term support for my Android phones has actually not been the fact that Android devices have incredibly short security update windows. That issue has been somewhat mitigated with the newer Google Pixel phones which have five years of security updates. The biggest issue for long term cell phone support is, even if we get an OS with a 10-year security update timeline like Rocky Linux, will the phone itself be able to make calls on whatever cellular networks exist 10 years from now? I have a number of 3G phones I bought as recently as 2018 which became paperweights in 2021 when all of the cellular telcos in the United States stopped supporting 3G, forcing me to update to a 5G phone. Is 5G going to still work in 10 years? Or are the telcos going to continue to convert perfectly good phones in to landfill? As someone who has a 15-year-old laptop which is still a perfectly good Linux server (its screen went out two years ago, but it was a perfectly good desktop computer until then), it’s annoying seeing phones I bought less than six years ago be useless on today’s cellular networks.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  The ability to place calls is the absolute last feature I want from my phone. I'll even call it a misfeature. An os that will let an old device live on as a wifi only device is sorely needed.
  - jkepler 4y ago
    Lineage OS can often do WiFi only on old Androids. But unless I'm mistaken, if a device only has 3G, and you want to travel with it away from WiFi, you can't even get 3G data on the device, as they shut off the 3G networks in the USA. Best you're gonna find in some rural areas may be 2G or 2.5G.
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      That's fine. I still have my main modern device with my sim card and 5g and I can tether the old device to it for the kids to use in the back seat.
    - noduerme 4y ago
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
I am frustratingly blind to today's alternate OSes. Where does a lay-consumers even start? Do I buy a used, but well supported (by alt OSes) phone? Which one would that be? Do I attempt to use my existing phone?
- palata 4y ago
  For a while, I was trying on old phones. I had LineageOS on my Samsung Galaxy S2, and it had a lot of problems (camera did not work, it would sometimes get hot and reboot, etc). Not the best experience but it was fun to try when my S2 got old. Recently I feel like alt OSes have become really mature. I have been using a de-Googled /e/OS on a Fairphone 3+ for 1.5 years and I don't have anything to complain about the system. Even the store now works very well. So I'd say, for your next phone, choose something that is well supported by those alternative OSes (typically Fairphone is), so that you can try, and fallback to stock Android if that's not working for you.
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    Fairphone only sells phones, and replacement parts, to European customers, right? or is it closer to everyone but US?
    - palata 4y ago
      It's based in the Netherlands. Not sure how difficult it is for Fairphone to work in the US, my understanding is that the US carriers are trickier than others.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  This writeup has a lot of good starting points: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/ https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/
wpwpwpw 4y ago
There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe there would be a lot less work to upgrade no new generations of the same chipset? Aaand would it be less secure?
- biorach 4y ago
  mX macs are the future - you are guaranteed that there will be future generations of laptops sold in the millions(?) using at least some of this hardware. So the huge amount of work is probably going to be worth it. Legacy phone hardware... harder to justify.
  - wpwpwpw 4y ago
    I understand that, however I'm still not very convinced (obviously not saying it's not a huge amount of work) for the reasons in my other reply in this thread. Thanks for your answer and sorry for my ignorance!
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  No chances, because there's just too much hardware to support. The only real chance is to get behind brands like Faiphone.
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    Fairphone 3 and 4 have broken bootloaders that trust test-keys for Android Verified Boot: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-roms-for-fairphone-3-4/83448/11 https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro... And they have similar limitations to what I do here with regards to firmware support, as they offer longer support than Qualcomm actually does for these chips used. The only devices with proper aftermarket OS support and five years of updates are the Google Pixel 6 and 7 series.
commoner 4y ago
DivestOS also develops a collection of useful FOSS apps that can be installed on any Android device. These apps are available on F-Droid. Highlights include: - Mull (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix), a privacy-focused fork of Firefox similar to LibreWolf - Hypatia (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/hypatia https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/hypatia), a malware scanner that uses ClamAV signatures - MotionLock (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/motionlock https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/motionlock), automatically locks device when it is face down or has not been moved
zeagle 4y ago
Is there any similar project for the galaxy s9/s10 north american versions with locked bootloaders? It's infuriating Samsung gets away with this.
throw_m239339 4y ago
I want to try this on a very old device BUT is there a way to flash the current image to restore it later if DivestOS installation did not succeed? Or is there a list of supported devices for DivestOS already? the 2 devices are an old Alcatel and some random OEM Android (LOGICOM).
- _rdvw 4y ago
  The downloads page has the list of supported devices, but neither of those two you mention are supported. For a copy of the stock OS you can usually find it on the vendors website.
culopatin 4y ago
I went to the site and failed to understand what’s different from other Android distros to make the general claim of “support for EOL Android devices”. Isn’t it the same as LineageOS or whatever other distros you can find for each device at XDA? I thought I was going to find a site that found a way of running newer Android over the old one to not have to worry about drivers and such, but I found yet another distro with support for SOME devices. I also thought I’d find support for an oldish Kindle HD8 I’ve been wanting to repurpose. This is not to say that it might be great and all, I just felt a bit mislead by the title and I would like to find out if I’m just not seeing something.
- bscphil 4y ago
  This is a massive difference from any other project like this with wide device support, assuming it works correctly: > Bootloader relocking is restored and has been tested working on 23 devices and is available for 26 more. Verified boot is also restored on 36 of those devices and is enforcing once locked. Edit: looks like almost all the devices with relocking support are Google / OnePlus / Fairphone, so it might not add anything in this regard to GrapheneOS. No workaround for the signing key issue, I guess. They also seem to be doing some security hardening and blob removal, although I'm not sure how that would affect driver / device support.
- reyqn 4y ago
  Yeah I was checking what support they advertised for my old nexus 5 and the recently retired oneplus X of my girlfriend. The nexus 5 is on 9.0, mostly working, the oneplus X isn't supported at all. That's not long-term support.
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    hammerhead died on 15.1 because no one could get Bluetooth to reliably work on later versions. The support is in the form of all the added security features, the (system) updates, and kernel patches like this: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/blob/master/Scripts/LineageOS-15.1/CVE_Patchers/android_kernel_lge_hammerhead.sh https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/blob/mas...
snvzz 4y ago
"the best os" / divestOS. The name sure is pretentious.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  DivestOS is not the best OS, for modern devices I recommend GrapheneOS.
  - bogle 4y ago
    Only if you have a Google Pixel for GrapheneOS. That's a really small subset of "modern devices".
    - snvzz 4y ago
      And only if you don't care about SafetyNet. The situation has got so bad that regulators should probably get involved. Important software people depend on such as banking or electronic payment apps can't be used with relatively safe and maintained operating systems, forcing the use of unmaintained, insecure stock system just to get SafetyNet these apps wrongly require.
regular 4y ago
regular 4y ago
seu 4y ago
Looks like it only supports a few devices (Google Pixel, some OnePlus and Samsung). As long as these OSs don't support a majority of the devices out there, they will not really be an "alternative" to Android.
nix23 4y ago
Oh yes my lovely Nexus 5 is supported THANK you very much!!!! Already updated...thanks again.
DarthNebo 4y ago
Wish there was ROM for HID webcam behaviour or as RTSP camera with reliable battery charge cycle management due to being plugged in
t0bia_s 4y ago
I wish there would be support for Samsung devices (S10 and newer).

334 points by _rdvw 4y ago

Does this support GrapheneOS's Google Services Framework compatibility layer? And why not fork GrapheneOS instead of Lineage?

FireInsight 4y ago
The main dev has expressed that they don't intend to add any google play services compatibility, and probably forking Lineage because GrapheneOS is already pretty good but works just on pixels, as opposed to Lineage which works on maany many phone models.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  DivestOS has been a fork of LineageOS since before it was LineageOS: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=history https://divestos.org/index.php?page=history The precursor to GrapheneOS also used to have a non-foss license for a period of time.
ignoramous 4y ago
Is GrapheneOS' PlayServices sandbox open source?
- _rdvw 4y ago
  All of their work is open source, usually Apache-2.0 or MIT but some GPL-2.0 too. There is an older condensed list of changes here: https://gist.github.com/thestinger/ee536cbd1ca674b94dde05831192c348 https://gist.github.com/thestinger/ee536cbd1ca674b94dde05831... Newer changes are in the updated repos.
thrtythreeforty 4y ago
Are there any other projects that are using Graphene's Play Services? My ideal OS is basically Lineage with those patches applied.
- j-james 4y ago
  Yes, ProtonAOSP: https://protonaosp.org/ https://protonaosp.org/
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    Was sadly discontinued it seems: https://github.com/ProtonAOSP https://github.com/ProtonAOSP
  - thrtythreeforty 4y ago
    Unfortunately they don't support near the number of devices that GrapheneOS supports. I'm using a Pixel 3a.

iamgopal 4y ago

What are the alternatives / competitors to this ?

_rdvw 4y ago
For new/supported devices I strongly recommend GrapheneOS. The other projects who support some of these older devices have numerous issues as noted here: https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#osSecurity https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#osSecurity Edit: also of note: DivestOS currently provides monthly updates spanning seven versions of Android, I don't know of any other project doing that specifically.
- h4waii 4y ago
  To note, the monthly security updates DivestOS provides don't (can't?) include baseband and such "firmware" updates for legacy OEM-unsupported versions of Android. Don't get me wrong, it's terrific that security patches are backported to such ancient versions of Android by those working on DivestOS and it's a great option for devices that aren't supported by GrapheneOS, LineageOS, et al.
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    Firmware is included for 45 devices, but no one but the vendor/manufacturer can actually provide security updates for them, so they are largely just the last release. https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/firmware-empty/-/blob/master/STATUS https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/firmware-empty/-/blob/mas... This is indeed an issue and is documented on multiple places of the website. Patching everything else is the best harm-reduction for this.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  A significant difficulty for GrapheneOS is that it has fairly limited device support: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices Now if you're buying a device planning to run it, that's fine, but it really does limit its usefulness.
- 4y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

The tool https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/cve_checker https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/cve_checker is fascinating; I've usually seen people attempting to bring needed drivers to a mainline kernel, but backporting security fixes to a vendor kernel does seem like a plausible way to get a lot of the benefit with less work.

_rdvw 4y ago
It isn't perfect, but I am quite happy with how effective it has been considering how simple it really is.
fulafel 4y ago
Indeed. The data they maintain used by that is fascinating as well: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Divested-Mobile/Kernel_Patches/master/Kernel_CVE_Patch_List.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Divested-Mobile/Kernel_Pat...

squarefoot 4y ago

Any chances to see something similar to install Linux images (native, no chroots) to old Android tablets over the original OS? Some hardware wouldn't be supported, but I wouldn't mind not having for example video acceleration, audio and/or modem, if I could use an old tablet as a IoT screen or to show graphs from sensor data, etc. Having a full OS, hence the ability to use multiple programming languages, libraries, etc would change everything.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Sounds like you want https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/ or https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/ ?
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I'm aware of PostmarketOS, but unfortunately not many tablets are supported; I'm not interested in phones also due to their too small screen.
  - palata 4y ago
    They have a nice community, you could try to add support for your tablet!
WaxProlix 4y ago
https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/ might be of interest to you.
_rdvw 4y ago
Checkout the postmarketOS project, they do exactly that!
pabs3 4y ago
Some articles about that are on the Debian mobile wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile Using a chroot will always be the easiest way to do this though. https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid

JohnKuzyarko 4y ago

I have an old OnePlus and it's managed to last like 7 years. Sadly every other developer has abandoned it. Hope this project can bring it back from the dead!

wazoox 4y ago
My 2013 OnePlus One still works perfectly fine (with an out-of-date LineageOS). Battery still lasts 2 full days easily.

kernal 4y ago

Unless these devices have the ability to update their binary OEM blobs then these cannot be considered secure. This is why alternative OSs like GrapheneOS end their support when the Google Pixel is EOL. If you want long term support buy an iPhone or an Android phone that guarantees at least 5 years of security updates.

_rdvw 4y ago
This is clearly documented see (and also the section above it): https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#secure https://divestos.org/index.php?page=patch_levels#secure
- summm 4y ago
  That makes it even worse. They apparently do not even try to make it secure and willingly exclude some patches. Reminds me of "security by management risk acceptance"
  - _rdvw 4y ago
    They? This is my project, it is just me. There is not a single other project that achieves the scope of what DivestOS does for old devices.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So now the answer to security is to trust one lone developer? This is more of a statement to the shit show of modern Android. A company worth $1T+ can’t be bothered to figure out how to support devices more than a couple of years and it’s left up to a random developer.
    - wizzwizz4 4y ago
      > They? This is my project, it is just me. "They" has been an acceptable default third-person singular pronoun since at least the 1400s. If there's something you'd prefer, it might be wise to list it on one of your user profile pages.

ramesh31 4y ago

Still running the latest iOS on my 6 year old first-gen SE. Why can't Android do the same?

palata 4y ago
It's easier for Apple to do because they make both the hardware and the OS. Say you are Sony and make an Android phone. You take some version of Android and port it to your hardware (with patches for your hardware e.g. in Linux, etc). Your Android system is now effectively a fork. Now say you want to get updates from upstream regularly. Every time, you may have conflicts with your patches, and you have to fix them. That's costly, so why would you do that for old phones people already paid years ago? Long story short, I believe it's easier for Apple to not break compatibility with old iPhones than for an Android OEM to stay up-to-date with upstream.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  I’m not sure this holds up, though. I could install Ubuntu latest on any random laptop from 2005 right now with zero issues. What exactly makes mobile special?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    PCs nearly-universally use standardized interfaces, phones go hard on cost cutting and everyone ships their own badly-done drivers that are never upstreamed running on custom hardware that wouldn't run a "standard" image if you had one. Or more succinctly, because phones won the race to the bottom.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    the drivers generally do not get upstreamed by the vendors
  - palata 4y ago
    My guess would be that the OEMs don't mainline their patches. At least from what I understood looking at PostmarketOS, they spend a lot of energy mainlining those devices they support. I guess it's different for laptops, somehow.

mofosyne 4y ago

Could there be a chance for splitting android into two half? One for per device low level initialization and one for a shared image for all android devices? So the idea is you be able to easily upgrade or even multiboot different android or linux images if you wish, without having to recompile for every device.

ccouzens 4y ago
Sounds like project treble. I don't know how much of a success it has been, and I don't think it has been used to multiboot a phone or to boot a more standard Linux. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Yeah, this is exactly what GSIs are meant to do - see https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/ https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/ for a nice wiki talking about taking advantage of that. I thought mobian was distributing a GSI to do non-Android on the Android base, but I can't seem to find it if they do that. Also, bear in mind that this almost intentionally doesn't solve some support problems - any bugs/vulnerabilities in the base layer won't get fixed by GSIs (which is why DivestOS says it explicitly doesn't ship a GSI).
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Droidian is the GSI-based project from the Mobian folks. Note that GSI's are not totally unified; they'll still vary by CPU architecture, starting Android version shipped with the device, weird features like "A" or "A+B" boot, etc.

strenholme 4y ago

The problem with long term support for my Android phones has actually not been the fact that Android devices have incredibly short security update windows. That issue has been somewhat mitigated with the newer Google Pixel phones which have five years of security updates. The biggest issue for long term cell phone support is, even if we get an OS with a 10-year security update timeline like Rocky Linux, will the phone itself be able to make calls on whatever cellular networks exist 10 years from now? I have a number of 3G phones I bought as recently as 2018 which became paperweights in 2021 when all of the cellular telcos in the United States stopped supporting 3G, forcing me to update to a 5G phone. Is 5G going to still work in 10 years? Or are the telcos going to continue to convert perfectly good phones in to landfill? As someone who has a 15-year-old laptop which is still a perfectly good Linux server (its screen went out two years ago, but it was a perfectly good desktop computer until then), it’s annoying seeing phones I bought less than six years ago be useless on today’s cellular networks.

Fatnino 4y ago
The ability to place calls is the absolute last feature I want from my phone. I'll even call it a misfeature. An os that will let an old device live on as a wifi only device is sorely needed.
- jkepler 4y ago
  Lineage OS can often do WiFi only on old Androids. But unless I'm mistaken, if a device only has 3G, and you want to travel with it away from WiFi, you can't even get 3G data on the device, as they shut off the 3G networks in the USA. Best you're gonna find in some rural areas may be 2G or 2.5G.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    That's fine. I still have my main modern device with my sim card and 5g and I can tether the old device to it for the kids to use in the back seat.
  - noduerme 4y ago

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

I am frustratingly blind to today's alternate OSes. Where does a lay-consumers even start? Do I buy a used, but well supported (by alt OSes) phone? Which one would that be? Do I attempt to use my existing phone?

palata 4y ago
For a while, I was trying on old phones. I had LineageOS on my Samsung Galaxy S2, and it had a lot of problems (camera did not work, it would sometimes get hot and reboot, etc). Not the best experience but it was fun to try when my S2 got old. Recently I feel like alt OSes have become really mature. I have been using a de-Googled /e/OS on a Fairphone 3+ for 1.5 years and I don't have anything to complain about the system. Even the store now works very well. So I'd say, for your next phone, choose something that is well supported by those alternative OSes (typically Fairphone is), so that you can try, and fallback to stock Android if that's not working for you.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Fairphone only sells phones, and replacement parts, to European customers, right? or is it closer to everyone but US?
  - palata 4y ago
    It's based in the Netherlands. Not sure how difficult it is for Fairphone to work in the US, my understanding is that the US carriers are trickier than others.
_rdvw 4y ago
This writeup has a lot of good starting points: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/ https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/

wpwpwpw 4y ago

There's this years long quest to keep old phones alive, which is amazing (i'm myself using lineageos). But what are the odds of doing the crazy stuff people at asahi are doing with mX macs? There are absolutely no drivers for that hardware, and they are building everything from the ground up. Of course it's a huge amount of work given the considerable amount of different chipsets, cameras... but am I dumb to believe there would be a lot less work to upgrade no new generations of the same chipset? Aaand would it be less secure?

biorach 4y ago
mX macs are the future - you are guaranteed that there will be future generations of laptops sold in the millions(?) using at least some of this hardware. So the huge amount of work is probably going to be worth it. Legacy phone hardware... harder to justify.
- wpwpwpw 4y ago
  I understand that, however I'm still not very convinced (obviously not saying it's not a huge amount of work) for the reasons in my other reply in this thread. Thanks for your answer and sorry for my ignorance!
spaniard89277 4y ago
No chances, because there's just too much hardware to support. The only real chance is to get behind brands like Faiphone.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  Fairphone 3 and 4 have broken bootloaders that trust test-keys for Android Verified Boot: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-roms-for-fairphone-3-4/83448/11 https://forum.fairphone.com/t/bootloader-avb-keys-used-in-ro... And they have similar limitations to what I do here with regards to firmware support, as they offer longer support than Qualcomm actually does for these chips used. The only devices with proper aftermarket OS support and five years of updates are the Google Pixel 6 and 7 series.

commoner 4y ago

DivestOS also develops a collection of useful FOSS apps that can be installed on any Android device. These apps are available on F-Droid. Highlights include: - Mull (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix), a privacy-focused fork of Firefox similar to LibreWolf - Hypatia (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/hypatia https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/hypatia), a malware scanner that uses ClamAV signatures - MotionLock (https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/motionlock https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/motionlock), automatically locks device when it is face down or has not been moved

zeagle 4y ago

Is there any similar project for the galaxy s9/s10 north american versions with locked bootloaders? It's infuriating Samsung gets away with this.

throw_m239339 4y ago

I want to try this on a very old device BUT is there a way to flash the current image to restore it later if DivestOS installation did not succeed? Or is there a list of supported devices for DivestOS already? the 2 devices are an old Alcatel and some random OEM Android (LOGICOM).

_rdvw 4y ago
The downloads page has the list of supported devices, but neither of those two you mention are supported. For a copy of the stock OS you can usually find it on the vendors website.

culopatin 4y ago

I went to the site and failed to understand what’s different from other Android distros to make the general claim of “support for EOL Android devices”. Isn’t it the same as LineageOS or whatever other distros you can find for each device at XDA? I thought I was going to find a site that found a way of running newer Android over the old one to not have to worry about drivers and such, but I found yet another distro with support for SOME devices. I also thought I’d find support for an oldish Kindle HD8 I’ve been wanting to repurpose. This is not to say that it might be great and all, I just felt a bit mislead by the title and I would like to find out if I’m just not seeing something.

bscphil 4y ago
This is a massive difference from any other project like this with wide device support, assuming it works correctly: > Bootloader relocking is restored and has been tested working on 23 devices and is available for 26 more. Verified boot is also restored on 36 of those devices and is enforcing once locked. Edit: looks like almost all the devices with relocking support are Google / OnePlus / Fairphone, so it might not add anything in this regard to GrapheneOS. No workaround for the signing key issue, I guess. They also seem to be doing some security hardening and blob removal, although I'm not sure how that would affect driver / device support.
reyqn 4y ago
Yeah I was checking what support they advertised for my old nexus 5 and the recently retired oneplus X of my girlfriend. The nexus 5 is on 9.0, mostly working, the oneplus X isn't supported at all. That's not long-term support.
- _rdvw 4y ago
  hammerhead died on 15.1 because no one could get Bluetooth to reliably work on later versions. The support is in the form of all the added security features, the (system) updates, and kernel patches like this: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/blob/master/Scripts/LineageOS-15.1/CVE_Patchers/android_kernel_lge_hammerhead.sh https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/blob/mas...

snvzz 4y ago

"the best os" / divestOS. The name sure is pretentious.

_rdvw 4y ago
DivestOS is not the best OS, for modern devices I recommend GrapheneOS.
- bogle 4y ago
  Only if you have a Google Pixel for GrapheneOS. That's a really small subset of "modern devices".
  - snvzz 4y ago
    And only if you don't care about SafetyNet. The situation has got so bad that regulators should probably get involved. Important software people depend on such as banking or electronic payment apps can't be used with relatively safe and maintained operating systems, forcing the use of unmaintained, insecure stock system just to get SafetyNet these apps wrongly require.

regular 4y ago

seu 4y ago

Looks like it only supports a few devices (Google Pixel, some OnePlus and Samsung). As long as these OSs don't support a majority of the devices out there, they will not really be an "alternative" to Android.

nix23 4y ago

Oh yes my lovely Nexus 5 is supported THANK you very much!!!! Already updated...thanks again.

DarthNebo 4y ago

Wish there was ROM for HID webcam behaviour or as RTSP camera with reliable battery charge cycle management due to being plugged in

t0bia_s 4y ago

I wish there would be support for Samsung devices (S10 and newer).