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Does anyone have a good grasp of the differences between GOS and /e/OS? I'm buying a Fairphone soon and was wondering what both are like

SockThief 8mo ago
Consider this (by Graphene OS): https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... /e/OS community talking about it: https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-about-e-os/72203 https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-abo... And then maybe this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm Hope that helps.
- realusername 8mo ago
  I like GrapheneOS but they fail to understand in this post that the #1 security concern an android user face is the lack of privacy. Sure they have hardened everything but realistically, that's not the main threat for your average user. Their top contribution to android is the sandboxed Google Play, by far.
  - gf000 8mo ago
    privacy != security. And sandboxed Google Play services serve both goals -- it runs the service as a regular android service, not an exceptional one that has a bunch of extra permissions. So you can allow/restrict it as you seem fit, while not "getting behind" on features/apps that mandate it.
    - realusername 8mo ago
      I disagree, privacy is an essential part of security, if there's no privacy, then there's no security. That's also why I don't keep anything important on my phone as I don't trust what's going on there despite having all the secure features that you would want.
      - scheeseman486 8mo ago
        Other way around, actually. It's possible to make concessions to privacy, like providing crash reports, or running applications in sandboxes which limits what they can harvest, while keeping the platform secure. Any privacy you have on a system is reliant on no one tampering with that system and on software behaving itself. Without security, you can't trust the system to implement any privacy.
        realusername 8mo ago
        I also disagree with that, I trust my Linux distribution to behave well much more than I trust any Android platform and it doesn't even have much app sandboxing at all. You can't fix a lack of trust like you have in Android with technical solutions. The flaw in Android is fundamentally a social problem.
        scheeseman486 8mo ago
        That reads more as sports team flag wavey thoughts and feelings trust than anything actually backed by objective data.
        realusername 8mo ago
        That's the difference between trusted computing (Linux distribution) and untrusted computing (Android). If you want something backed by objective data, my phone has an advertising ID built in the OS and my laptop doesn't. My phone had 100s of privacy scandals and my laptop doesn't have one. I do applaud GrapheneOS don't get me wrong but I have a feeling that they are fighting a losing battle.
        Aachen 8mo ago
        What advertising ID is built into the OS?
        8mo ago
    - strcat 8mo ago
      GrapheneOS provides major privacy enhancements including Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle, per-connection Wi-Fi privacy via per-connection DHCP state + MAC randomization and far more. It's a privacy project and privacy depends on security so it heavily focuses on protecting against exploitation of privacy and security vulnerabilities too. Privacy and security are not separate things from each other but rather closely tied together and our work is on both for the sake of improving privacy. Our only reason to work on security features is protecting privacy.
      - gf000 8mo ago
        I won't argue with you on the project-related part of it, you obviously know best there :) Thank you for all the work! But how would you "rate" for example desktop "GNU/Linux" with this in mind? Quite clearly privacy is important here and none of the major components leak/store unnecessary personal data. But the security story is quite sad, everything runs as the same user so a random `npm install` can just do whatever it wants with my browser caches, ssh keys, etc. I would say that GNU/Linux is privacy-friendly, but has terrible security. Would you not agree here? How does this fit with the "privacy and security are not separate things" part? Genuinely curious about your opinion here, not arguing for the sake of it, they are just not as closely connected in my mind. For example Google has a good track record of having safe practices regarding data storage -- but privacy is not their strong suit/hard to define what it means for a company to begin with.
        strcat 8mo ago
        > Quite clearly privacy is important It's seriously lacking. There's little work on it. Applications are largely fully trusted with lack of a modern permission model. > none of the major components leak/store unnecessary personal data Many components have privacy issues and have privacy invasive services. > I would say that GNU/Linux is privacy-friendly, but has terrible security. Disagree with an OS which has poor privacy protections against applications and services along with overall lack of systemic work on privacy being privacy friendly. Android Open Source Project without our privacy improvements is more privacy friendly than desktop Linux. There's not much privacy when nearly everything has access to everything and developers do all kinds of things which are bad for privacy. They may not be trying to gather user data but that doesn't mean the services quietly used by many applications are privacy friendly.
  - palata 8mo ago
    I think it's more of a marketing claim from less secure systems that "privacy is not security, and GrapheneOS focuses on security while we focus on privacy". GrapheneOS does care about both, quite obviously. And GrapheneOS tends to say that if your security is bad, then it is affecting your privacy too. Whereas others say "sure, we break the Android security model by unlocking the bootloader and signing our system with the Google test keys, but your apps will contact Google through microG instead of the Play Services, so it's more private". Which is worth what it is worth...
    - ForHackernews 8mo ago
      This is only my opinion, but GrapheneOS's approach to privacy seems obtuse to me. They will claim that an unlocked bootloader is a risk, but then turn around and recommend you install proprietary apps GApps in their sandbox. The sandbox doesn't matter if all the private data is in the same sandbox! Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/
      - gf000 8mo ago
        They recommend you install google play services if you need it. Privacy is in no small part a user-decision - no matter how secure your device is if you just scroll Facebook all day.
      - palata 8mo ago
        Feels like you don't know what "the sandbox" is. It's not "their" sandbox, it's from AOSP. When you run an app on Android, it runs in a sandbox. Meaning that your social media app cannot access the files of your banking app by default. They are "sandboxed". On a normal Android, the Play Services are installed as a system app. It is privileged app that has "system" access. A system app is not sandboxed. GrapheneOS allows you to install the Play Services and the Play Store as "sandboxed" apps in that they run unprivileged, just like WhatsApp or TikTok or your banking app. So running the proprietary Google apps in the sandbox is obviously more private than running them as system apps, wouldn't you say?
        8mo ago
  - strcat 8mo ago
    GrapheneOS is primarily privacy project. It keeps up with important Android updates with major privacy enhancements and very important privacy patches. It builds crucial privacy protections such as Storage Scopes, Contact Scopes, Sensors toggle and much more into the OS. Privacy depends on security so security protections and security patches are part of providing strong privacy too. It's a misconception that GrapheneOS is focused on security over privacy. It heavily works on privacy features and the work on security features is entirely to protect privacy. There's widespread use of commercial exploit tools and GrapheneOS is proven to provide far better real world protection against those. Most alternate operating systems reduce privacy from AOSP and massively reduce security while GrapheneOS is preserving the baseline and heavily improving both side by side. GrapheneOS is also very focused on usability and app compatibility, making sure to preserve those with the major privacy and security enhancements.
    - realusername 8mo ago
      The #1 security problem your average Android user face isn't an attack by some Israeli firm but data leaks by advertisers and unless I missed something (it's possible), GrapheneOS does not have an equivalent of ublock origin built into the OS which I'd consider step 1 of fighting the problem. The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android. I feel like you can't really fix android anyways, the design is just broken and if you care about security / privacy, you should just use everything in a browser or a Linux distribution. Sure the work GrapheneOS does is valuable but it's like removing water from a lake with a bucket. I feel like shielding the mess that Android is into something like an improved Waydroid with a mindset of "yeah let's keep it there and the sane stack for the rest" sounds a better approach to me.
      - ysnp 8mo ago
        >GrapheneOS does not have an equivalent of ublock origin built into the OS which I'd consider step 1 of fighting the problem. Content filtering is built into the browser. GrapheneOS have always maintained that you cannot prevent an app from exfiltrating data, especially if it has internet access. Enumerating badness is an unsustainable approach they don't want to encourage. Instead they attack the heart of the issue with Storage Scopes/Contact Scopes/Network Permission/Sensors Permission etc. They allow aps to think they have full access when they do not, so you can control exactly what data they get in the first place. Maybe all of the other AOSP projects could contribute App Communication Scopes/Enhanced Clipboard Privacy and other things because this approach makes a lot of sense to me. Like preventing an illness instead of wasting energy treating symptoms. >The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android. Something similar was addressed some years ago as a feature request for GrapheneOS https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284 https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284. To summarise there was no way to do this without an unacceptable security cost to the OS, but this is sort of doable if you run your own userdebug build which you have the power to do.
  - MaroonBear 8mo ago
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deleted 8mo ago
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lawn 8mo ago
Read this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm In short, GrapheneOS is vastly superior.
- Aachen 8mo ago
  Read the rest of the thread here. The blanket statement is a bit short-sighted (some people might even say 'vastly')
onli 8mo ago
GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure, having additional hardening. See https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm - keep in mind that it is not an independent comparison, the Graphene guys directly feed what this table is supposed to say in the issue tracker, https://github.com/eylenburg/eylenburg.github.io/issues/ https://github.com/eylenburg/eylenburg.github.io/issues/. But it gives a good representation of the state of the ROMs according to Graphene. In regular use, main difference will be that /e/OS comes with access to the alternative cloud service that project provides. It uses the default FOSS solution microG for google api compatibility, unlike GrapheneOS with their sandbox approach. /e/OS sets on AppLounge to install and upgrade both play store or F-Droid apps. Graphene has a small curated app repo instead. I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project. /e/OS is also not my favorite since it feels like it is developing slowly, having had issues with outdated software versions - though it does work well in practice. Have a look at iode for an alternative.
- gf000 8mo ago
  > GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure That's not just a claim, this is an objective fact. GrapheneOS has a excellent track record when it comes to security, they have made several patches that got upstreamed to Android, etc.
- palata 8mo ago
  > I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project Fair enough, you choose what you trust. But personally, I have never seen a technical claim from GrapheneOS that was wrong or misleading. But I have seen many claims from /e/OS that were technically wrong or misleading. So I trust GrapheneOS more. Then there is the drama, and all sides annoy me when they behave like this. But I have seen drama coming from all sides.
  - onli 8mo ago
    I have never seen drama from /e/ or any other project GrapheneOS attacks, like Calyx. Please link me to it - I asked this several times, people never can follow up. So far?
noirscape 8mo ago
GOS creates a complete bunker of a phone that can provide defense against pretty much all but the most dedicated state level actors. If you're worried that someone would steal your phone specifically to target you, Graphene will protect against that. Securitywise it's hard to argue against them, although GOS tends to sacrifice usability in favor of security, which leads to odd decisions. Their device depreciation timeline is also pretty aggressive and really just matches that of the Pixel. (You're also buying the Google phone... to not want Google in your life; this bizarre paradox will always be strange). It's not exactly a recommendation for long-term support. Worth noting however is that usage of GOS is also seen as a signal in and of itself for the authorities that you may have something unsavory to hide, so using it stands out in that regard; some law enforcement officers (I think it was in Spain?) have said that the OS is popular with organized crime. GOS obviously denies the connection and they're probably honest in that the OS isn't deliberately designed for criminals, but it's worth noting at the very least. (Basically GOS is the paradox where someone trying their hardest to be anonymous ends up standing out way too much from the crowd and drawing attention to themselves.) /e/OS (and similar "non-LineageOS" ROMs really) instead focus more on de-Googling. They're still generally security focused, but the priority is less "someone's after you" and more "corporate surveillance is kinda scary innit". The aim is less to avoid someone actively trying to drain your phone of data and more to prevent your phone from passively sending everything it can possibly find to the Big G's ad machine (as well as whatever other trackers get snuck into apps.) Because of this, they usually have better depreciation timelines and support a lot more devices compared to GOS who only support the Pixel line (which is an increasingly awful set of phones truth be told); their scope is much smaller. Finally, it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS. It's extremely maximalist, tends to get very upset at other projects whenever they get attention (see sibling reply to this, where they pretty much melted down because an outlet dared to recommend a Fair phone+/e/OS) and the projects official channels have generally encouraged this sort of behavior. It doesn't really damage the software itself, but it's worth considering.
- palata 8mo ago
  I have been a user of /e/OS for 5 years, and also of GOS and would like to share my opinion on this: > it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS What I have seen (and I am not involved in any of those projects) is that GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security. Not that they couldn't improve their communication style, but usually when they call out technical limitations of other projects (e.g. /e/OS), they are right. And I mean the technical arguments. Then I have seen a bunch of drama, but to be fair I have seen those other communities show toxic behaviour towards GOS just as much as the opposite. It feels like it is GOS vs "the others", because the others don't criticise each other, and GOS bluntly criticises when they see claims they find are wrong (I have seen claims by /e/OS going from misleading to downright wrong). On my particular phone, after 5 years with /e/OS, the Fairphone updates were outdated by 4 years. In terms of security I would have been better with the Stock Android. It depends on the phone of course, because /e/OS tends to claim that they support everything and they just can't. Even on a phone that /e/OS supports well, GrapheneOS is superior, period. But I agree, I could do without all the drama. I guess my point is that it goes both ways.
palata 8mo ago
I have been using /e/OS for 5 years, and also GOS. My take is: - If your phone is supported by GOS, you should go for GOS. - If your phone is not supported by GOS, you should look carefully and compare between /e/OS and Stock Android. I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates. In other words, Stock Android coming from Fairphone was more secure than /e/OS on that Fairphone. In my experience, /e/OS has a tendency to claim that they support everything, but they just can't, there is too much. And then they complain when GrapheneOS criticises the fact that some /e/OS users believe their phone is well supported but actually isn't. And GrapheneOS is not wrong: I realised I was in that case after 4 years with /e/OS.
- gnufx 8mo ago
  > I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates Mine is running /e/ and reporting Android 13, which appears to be the last one Fairphone support. /e/ said it was too difficult to support 14 with the kernel involved. It's had continual security updates apart from the Android version. Edit: Murena make it clear which phones are officially supported and which have "community" support.
  - palata 8mo ago
    > Mine is running /e/ and reporting Android 13, which appears to be the last one Fairphone support. This is not the manufacturer updates. I was talking about the manufacturer updates. I just checked and someone complained a few months ago and they updated them. Before that, they had not been updated in years on /e/OS, but they were up-to-date on Stock Android. > Edit: Murena make it clear which phones are officially supported and which have "community" support. I bought a phone to Murena, advertised by Murena, through Murena. It really felt like it would be officially supported, otherwise they should have made it clear that they advertise and sell something that they won't support, wouldn't you say? My feeling is that they just stopped supporting it after a while. Also I would assume that "supported" means that it receives both the LineageOS updates and the manufacturer updates. Apparently they have a different definition of "supported" (which is fine, maybe it's just "we will continue sending you our own updates"). It's just that in my book, if I get more security updates with the Stock Android than with /e/OS, then Stock Android is more secure.
ForHackernews 8mo ago
The main difference is that GrapheneOS prioritizes security hardening first and foremost (above usability or compatibility). /e/OS focuses on privacy (i.e. reducing data leakage to adtech) and usability over security. To put it concretely, GrapheneOS recommends running all the proprietary Google apps in a locked "sandbox" so they can't read data on the phone outside the sandbox -- but obviously Google still gets to see everything you do in their apps. /e/OS tries to provide [largely but not entirely FLOSS] alternatives (e.g. their own Maps app, their own email, their own calendar) that make your phone usable out of the box without Google software.
- gf000 8mo ago
  > but obviously Google still gets to see everything you do in their apps Well, the actually scary part of google services is that they have this quasi-elevated access in your phone where it can do a lot of stuff ordinary android services just can't do. E.g. google maps' location sharing works this way (but don't quote me on that). GrapheneOS managed to "put it back into the bottle", and it runs as a regular android service anyone could write, with the same rules applying. So you have much more control on what you allow it, and this will also limit what data apps relying on google services can leak about you.
- jeffbee 8mo ago
  > security hardening first and foremost (above usability or compatibility). Right. Something that GrapheneOS boosters often fail to mention. It's not like those guys at Google are just idiots and don't know how to make a hardened allocator. Android uses a different hardened allocator that is much, much faster and uses less space. GrapheneOS is slower and uses more memory.
  - Aachen 8mo ago
    I assume this is all technically correct, but in practice I've not noticed any speed difference between stock Pixel and GrapheneOS. Maybe their Vanadium browser when tab switching, that feels slow, but I wasn't planning on being part of the Chromium monoculture anyway so this doesn't matter to me
strcat 8mo ago
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS. It preserves the standard privacy and security of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) along with keeping up with the updates. It builds major privacy and security improvements on top of that. /e/ is the direct opposite and reduces privacy and especially security compared to AOSP. /e/ doesn't keep up with updates, has huge delays for important privacy and security patches along with reducing privacy and especially security in many other ways. GrapheneOS is a much more widely used OS with much more testing and provides much broader app compatibility. Unlike /e/, GrapheneOS only connects to GrapheneOS services by default and provides a high level of control over it. /e/ still uses a bunch of Google services by default and gives extensive privilege access to Google apps/services. Our approach is that Google apps/services are an optional thing people can install which do not receive any special access and can't do more than other regular apps since they're installed as regular sandboxed apps on GrapheneOS via our Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. A common misconception is that people believe GrapheneOS is less usable than much less private and far less secure options but it's the other way around. GrapheneOS provides nearly perfect app compatibility when taking into account the per-app exploit protection compatibility toggle and sandboxed Google Play. Nearly the only apps not working on GrapheneOS are ones banning any alternate OS and a larger number of those work on GrapheneOS than elsewhere due to a subset specifically permitting GrapheneOS due to far higher rather than weaker security. Apps have legitimate reasons for being concerned about the poor security of many alternate operating systems but they're wrongly grouping it all together as if GrapheneOS. /e/ lags weeks, months and even years behind on providing updates for drivers, firmware, the Linux kernel and more. They miss a large portion of the monthly Android security bulletins which are a limited subset of the patches in the first place but then claim to provide the latest patch level despite many of the required patches being missing. /e/ has a supposedly private speech-to-text sends data to OpenAI and their own servers without obtaining explicit user consent to share sensitive data with a third party. https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509 https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using... They say the data is anonymized based on passing it through their own servers before OpenAI but OpenAI is receiving all of the user speech data under their usual terms of service enabling them to store and leverage it. Fairphone lags significantly behind on OS updates and patches with only a small subset of what should be provided being shipped. Their hardware omits important security protections required by GrapheneOS which it uses to protect users against widespread commercial exploit tools. Fairphone doesn't provide upstream Linux kernel updates in practice which is a massive omission for their updates. Fairphone 4 has an end-of-life 4.19 kernel branch and the Fairphone 5 despite not being very old already has an end-of-life 5.4 kernel branch. Neither was providing the LTS revisions prior to end-of-life so from their perspective nothing really changed but it means it's a huge task for an alternative OS to provide basic updates since they'd need to port everything to a newer kernel branch. /e/ does not provide similar privacy features to GrapheneOS such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle and much more. It focuses on bundling things which can be provided with apps such as RethinkDNS on GrapheneOS with a higher quality implementation. GrapheneOS delegates as much as it can to apps while focused on the core OS. If a feature can be done better with an open source app, we'd rather leave it up to that app and many provide privacy and security protections which apps cannot. For the most part, apps can't improve OS privacy and security. Enumerating badness via blocklists which cannot block anything that's dual purpose functionality is also a very weak approach to privacy which is increasingly less useful. The most privacy invasive behavior of apps is nearly all done through their own services which also provide their functionality. Among other things, /e/ uses this system for labeling app tracking and permissions which is incorrect and misleading as shown by this example: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.facebook.lite/latest/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.faceboo... Facebook clearly doesn't have no tracking but rather this system only detects a small number of specific third party libraries they've decided are trackers. Those choices are often very questionable such as portraying even opt-in crash reporting as tracking because it used a third party library on their list. Meanwhile, Facebook's lite app supposedly has no trackers. The permissions list is thoroughly inaccurate and not how Android permissions work. The core permissions are opt-in with apps having to request them so listing those as if they're granted on install and mandatory due to being possible to grant is incorrect. Most of the rest have special access toggles which are opt-in for the sensitive ones or other toggles such as the battery optimization mode where Restricted stops apps starting themselves and delays those things until it's run by another app or the user. Privacy requires providing privacy patches and strong privacy protections. It also depends on security which means providing security patches and strong security protections. GrapheneOS is heavily focused on all of that rather than simply treating not having bundled Google apps and services as meaning a private OS. There are also worse things for privacy than Google apps and services. /e/ sending speech data to OpenAI vs. Apple doing the processing locally as we've it implemented for GrapheneOS is a good example. Google at least has partial local speech-to-text support and a better privacy policy than OpenAI for the cloud portion. Avoiding Google apps/services is not the same thing as providing strong privacy.

SockThief 8mo ago

Consider this (by Graphene OS): https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... /e/OS community talking about it: https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-about-e-os/72203 https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-abo... And then maybe this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm Hope that helps.

realusername 8mo ago
I like GrapheneOS but they fail to understand in this post that the #1 security concern an android user face is the lack of privacy. Sure they have hardened everything but realistically, that's not the main threat for your average user. Their top contribution to android is the sandboxed Google Play, by far.
- gf000 8mo ago
  privacy != security. And sandboxed Google Play services serve both goals -- it runs the service as a regular android service, not an exceptional one that has a bunch of extra permissions. So you can allow/restrict it as you seem fit, while not "getting behind" on features/apps that mandate it.
  - realusername 8mo ago
    I disagree, privacy is an essential part of security, if there's no privacy, then there's no security. That's also why I don't keep anything important on my phone as I don't trust what's going on there despite having all the secure features that you would want.
    - scheeseman486 8mo ago
      Other way around, actually. It's possible to make concessions to privacy, like providing crash reports, or running applications in sandboxes which limits what they can harvest, while keeping the platform secure. Any privacy you have on a system is reliant on no one tampering with that system and on software behaving itself. Without security, you can't trust the system to implement any privacy.
      - realusername 8mo ago
        I also disagree with that, I trust my Linux distribution to behave well much more than I trust any Android platform and it doesn't even have much app sandboxing at all. You can't fix a lack of trust like you have in Android with technical solutions. The flaw in Android is fundamentally a social problem.
        scheeseman486 8mo ago
        That reads more as sports team flag wavey thoughts and feelings trust than anything actually backed by objective data.
        realusername 8mo ago
        That's the difference between trusted computing (Linux distribution) and untrusted computing (Android). If you want something backed by objective data, my phone has an advertising ID built in the OS and my laptop doesn't. My phone had 100s of privacy scandals and my laptop doesn't have one. I do applaud GrapheneOS don't get me wrong but I have a feeling that they are fighting a losing battle.
        Aachen 8mo ago
        What advertising ID is built into the OS?
        8mo ago
  - strcat 8mo ago
    GrapheneOS provides major privacy enhancements including Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle, per-connection Wi-Fi privacy via per-connection DHCP state + MAC randomization and far more. It's a privacy project and privacy depends on security so it heavily focuses on protecting against exploitation of privacy and security vulnerabilities too. Privacy and security are not separate things from each other but rather closely tied together and our work is on both for the sake of improving privacy. Our only reason to work on security features is protecting privacy.
    - gf000 8mo ago
      I won't argue with you on the project-related part of it, you obviously know best there :) Thank you for all the work! But how would you "rate" for example desktop "GNU/Linux" with this in mind? Quite clearly privacy is important here and none of the major components leak/store unnecessary personal data. But the security story is quite sad, everything runs as the same user so a random `npm install` can just do whatever it wants with my browser caches, ssh keys, etc. I would say that GNU/Linux is privacy-friendly, but has terrible security. Would you not agree here? How does this fit with the "privacy and security are not separate things" part? Genuinely curious about your opinion here, not arguing for the sake of it, they are just not as closely connected in my mind. For example Google has a good track record of having safe practices regarding data storage -- but privacy is not their strong suit/hard to define what it means for a company to begin with.
      - strcat 8mo ago
        > Quite clearly privacy is important It's seriously lacking. There's little work on it. Applications are largely fully trusted with lack of a modern permission model. > none of the major components leak/store unnecessary personal data Many components have privacy issues and have privacy invasive services. > I would say that GNU/Linux is privacy-friendly, but has terrible security. Disagree with an OS which has poor privacy protections against applications and services along with overall lack of systemic work on privacy being privacy friendly. Android Open Source Project without our privacy improvements is more privacy friendly than desktop Linux. There's not much privacy when nearly everything has access to everything and developers do all kinds of things which are bad for privacy. They may not be trying to gather user data but that doesn't mean the services quietly used by many applications are privacy friendly.
- palata 8mo ago
  I think it's more of a marketing claim from less secure systems that "privacy is not security, and GrapheneOS focuses on security while we focus on privacy". GrapheneOS does care about both, quite obviously. And GrapheneOS tends to say that if your security is bad, then it is affecting your privacy too. Whereas others say "sure, we break the Android security model by unlocking the bootloader and signing our system with the Google test keys, but your apps will contact Google through microG instead of the Play Services, so it's more private". Which is worth what it is worth...
  - ForHackernews 8mo ago
    This is only my opinion, but GrapheneOS's approach to privacy seems obtuse to me. They will claim that an unlocked bootloader is a risk, but then turn around and recommend you install proprietary apps GApps in their sandbox. The sandbox doesn't matter if all the private data is in the same sandbox! Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/
    - gf000 8mo ago
      They recommend you install google play services if you need it. Privacy is in no small part a user-decision - no matter how secure your device is if you just scroll Facebook all day.
    - palata 8mo ago
      Feels like you don't know what "the sandbox" is. It's not "their" sandbox, it's from AOSP. When you run an app on Android, it runs in a sandbox. Meaning that your social media app cannot access the files of your banking app by default. They are "sandboxed". On a normal Android, the Play Services are installed as a system app. It is privileged app that has "system" access. A system app is not sandboxed. GrapheneOS allows you to install the Play Services and the Play Store as "sandboxed" apps in that they run unprivileged, just like WhatsApp or TikTok or your banking app. So running the proprietary Google apps in the sandbox is obviously more private than running them as system apps, wouldn't you say?
      - 8mo ago
- strcat 8mo ago
  GrapheneOS is primarily privacy project. It keeps up with important Android updates with major privacy enhancements and very important privacy patches. It builds crucial privacy protections such as Storage Scopes, Contact Scopes, Sensors toggle and much more into the OS. Privacy depends on security so security protections and security patches are part of providing strong privacy too. It's a misconception that GrapheneOS is focused on security over privacy. It heavily works on privacy features and the work on security features is entirely to protect privacy. There's widespread use of commercial exploit tools and GrapheneOS is proven to provide far better real world protection against those. Most alternate operating systems reduce privacy from AOSP and massively reduce security while GrapheneOS is preserving the baseline and heavily improving both side by side. GrapheneOS is also very focused on usability and app compatibility, making sure to preserve those with the major privacy and security enhancements.
  - realusername 8mo ago
    The #1 security problem your average Android user face isn't an attack by some Israeli firm but data leaks by advertisers and unless I missed something (it's possible), GrapheneOS does not have an equivalent of ublock origin built into the OS which I'd consider step 1 of fighting the problem. The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android. I feel like you can't really fix android anyways, the design is just broken and if you care about security / privacy, you should just use everything in a browser or a Linux distribution. Sure the work GrapheneOS does is valuable but it's like removing water from a lake with a bucket. I feel like shielding the mess that Android is into something like an improved Waydroid with a mindset of "yeah let's keep it there and the sane stack for the rest" sounds a better approach to me.
    - ysnp 8mo ago
      >GrapheneOS does not have an equivalent of ublock origin built into the OS which I'd consider step 1 of fighting the problem. Content filtering is built into the browser. GrapheneOS have always maintained that you cannot prevent an app from exfiltrating data, especially if it has internet access. Enumerating badness is an unsustainable approach they don't want to encourage. Instead they attack the heart of the issue with Storage Scopes/Contact Scopes/Network Permission/Sensors Permission etc. They allow aps to think they have full access when they do not, so you can control exactly what data they get in the first place. Maybe all of the other AOSP projects could contribute App Communication Scopes/Enhanced Clipboard Privacy and other things because this approach makes a lot of sense to me. Like preventing an illness instead of wasting energy treating symptoms. >The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android. Something similar was addressed some years ago as a feature request for GrapheneOS https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284 https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284. To summarise there was no way to do this without an unacceptable security cost to the OS, but this is sort of doable if you run your own userdebug build which you have the power to do.
- MaroonBear 8mo ago
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deleted 8mo ago

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lawn 8mo ago

Read this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm In short, GrapheneOS is vastly superior.

Aachen 8mo ago
Read the rest of the thread here. The blanket statement is a bit short-sighted (some people might even say 'vastly')

onli 8mo ago

GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure, having additional hardening. See https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm - keep in mind that it is not an independent comparison, the Graphene guys directly feed what this table is supposed to say in the issue tracker, https://github.com/eylenburg/eylenburg.github.io/issues/ https://github.com/eylenburg/eylenburg.github.io/issues/. But it gives a good representation of the state of the ROMs according to Graphene. In regular use, main difference will be that /e/OS comes with access to the alternative cloud service that project provides. It uses the default FOSS solution microG for google api compatibility, unlike GrapheneOS with their sandbox approach. /e/OS sets on AppLounge to install and upgrade both play store or F-Droid apps. Graphene has a small curated app repo instead. I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project. /e/OS is also not my favorite since it feels like it is developing slowly, having had issues with outdated software versions - though it does work well in practice. Have a look at iode for an alternative.

gf000 8mo ago
> GrapheneOS claims to be a lot more secure That's not just a claim, this is an objective fact. GrapheneOS has a excellent track record when it comes to security, they have made several patches that got upstreamed to Android, etc.
palata 8mo ago
> I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project Fair enough, you choose what you trust. But personally, I have never seen a technical claim from GrapheneOS that was wrong or misleading. But I have seen many claims from /e/OS that were technically wrong or misleading. So I trust GrapheneOS more. Then there is the drama, and all sides annoy me when they behave like this. But I have seen drama coming from all sides.
- onli 8mo ago
  I have never seen drama from /e/ or any other project GrapheneOS attacks, like Calyx. Please link me to it - I asked this several times, people never can follow up. So far?

noirscape 8mo ago

GOS creates a complete bunker of a phone that can provide defense against pretty much all but the most dedicated state level actors. If you're worried that someone would steal your phone specifically to target you, Graphene will protect against that. Securitywise it's hard to argue against them, although GOS tends to sacrifice usability in favor of security, which leads to odd decisions. Their device depreciation timeline is also pretty aggressive and really just matches that of the Pixel. (You're also buying the Google phone... to not want Google in your life; this bizarre paradox will always be strange). It's not exactly a recommendation for long-term support. Worth noting however is that usage of GOS is also seen as a signal in and of itself for the authorities that you may have something unsavory to hide, so using it stands out in that regard; some law enforcement officers (I think it was in Spain?) have said that the OS is popular with organized crime. GOS obviously denies the connection and they're probably honest in that the OS isn't deliberately designed for criminals, but it's worth noting at the very least. (Basically GOS is the paradox where someone trying their hardest to be anonymous ends up standing out way too much from the crowd and drawing attention to themselves.) /e/OS (and similar "non-LineageOS" ROMs really) instead focus more on de-Googling. They're still generally security focused, but the priority is less "someone's after you" and more "corporate surveillance is kinda scary innit". The aim is less to avoid someone actively trying to drain your phone of data and more to prevent your phone from passively sending everything it can possibly find to the Big G's ad machine (as well as whatever other trackers get snuck into apps.) Because of this, they usually have better depreciation timelines and support a lot more devices compared to GOS who only support the Pixel line (which is an increasingly awful set of phones truth be told); their scope is much smaller. Finally, it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS. It's extremely maximalist, tends to get very upset at other projects whenever they get attention (see sibling reply to this, where they pretty much melted down because an outlet dared to recommend a Fair phone+/e/OS) and the projects official channels have generally encouraged this sort of behavior. It doesn't really damage the software itself, but it's worth considering.

palata 8mo ago
I have been a user of /e/OS for 5 years, and also of GOS and would like to share my opinion on this: > it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS What I have seen (and I am not involved in any of those projects) is that GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security. Not that they couldn't improve their communication style, but usually when they call out technical limitations of other projects (e.g. /e/OS), they are right. And I mean the technical arguments. Then I have seen a bunch of drama, but to be fair I have seen those other communities show toxic behaviour towards GOS just as much as the opposite. It feels like it is GOS vs "the others", because the others don't criticise each other, and GOS bluntly criticises when they see claims they find are wrong (I have seen claims by /e/OS going from misleading to downright wrong). On my particular phone, after 5 years with /e/OS, the Fairphone updates were outdated by 4 years. In terms of security I would have been better with the Stock Android. It depends on the phone of course, because /e/OS tends to claim that they support everything and they just can't. Even on a phone that /e/OS supports well, GrapheneOS is superior, period. But I agree, I could do without all the drama. I guess my point is that it goes both ways.

palata 8mo ago

I have been using /e/OS for 5 years, and also GOS. My take is: - If your phone is supported by GOS, you should go for GOS. - If your phone is not supported by GOS, you should look carefully and compare between /e/OS and Stock Android. I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates. In other words, Stock Android coming from Fairphone was more secure than /e/OS on that Fairphone. In my experience, /e/OS has a tendency to claim that they support everything, but they just can't, there is too much. And then they complain when GrapheneOS criticises the fact that some /e/OS users believe their phone is well supported but actually isn't. And GrapheneOS is not wrong: I realised I was in that case after 4 years with /e/OS.

gnufx 8mo ago
> I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates Mine is running /e/ and reporting Android 13, which appears to be the last one Fairphone support. /e/ said it was too difficult to support 14 with the kernel involved. It's had continual security updates apart from the Android version. Edit: Murena make it clear which phones are officially supported and which have "community" support.
- palata 8mo ago
  > Mine is running /e/ and reporting Android 13, which appears to be the last one Fairphone support. This is not the manufacturer updates. I was talking about the manufacturer updates. I just checked and someone complained a few months ago and they updated them. Before that, they had not been updated in years on /e/OS, but they were up-to-date on Stock Android. > Edit: Murena make it clear which phones are officially supported and which have "community" support. I bought a phone to Murena, advertised by Murena, through Murena. It really felt like it would be officially supported, otherwise they should have made it clear that they advertise and sell something that they won't support, wouldn't you say? My feeling is that they just stopped supporting it after a while. Also I would assume that "supported" means that it receives both the LineageOS updates and the manufacturer updates. Apparently they have a different definition of "supported" (which is fine, maybe it's just "we will continue sending you our own updates"). It's just that in my book, if I get more security updates with the Stock Android than with /e/OS, then Stock Android is more secure.

ForHackernews 8mo ago

The main difference is that GrapheneOS prioritizes security hardening first and foremost (above usability or compatibility). /e/OS focuses on privacy (i.e. reducing data leakage to adtech) and usability over security. To put it concretely, GrapheneOS recommends running all the proprietary Google apps in a locked "sandbox" so they can't read data on the phone outside the sandbox -- but obviously Google still gets to see everything you do in their apps. /e/OS tries to provide [largely but not entirely FLOSS] alternatives (e.g. their own Maps app, their own email, their own calendar) that make your phone usable out of the box without Google software.

gf000 8mo ago
> but obviously Google still gets to see everything you do in their apps Well, the actually scary part of google services is that they have this quasi-elevated access in your phone where it can do a lot of stuff ordinary android services just can't do. E.g. google maps' location sharing works this way (but don't quote me on that). GrapheneOS managed to "put it back into the bottle", and it runs as a regular android service anyone could write, with the same rules applying. So you have much more control on what you allow it, and this will also limit what data apps relying on google services can leak about you.
jeffbee 8mo ago
> security hardening first and foremost (above usability or compatibility). Right. Something that GrapheneOS boosters often fail to mention. It's not like those guys at Google are just idiots and don't know how to make a hardened allocator. Android uses a different hardened allocator that is much, much faster and uses less space. GrapheneOS is slower and uses more memory.
- Aachen 8mo ago
  I assume this is all technically correct, but in practice I've not noticed any speed difference between stock Pixel and GrapheneOS. Maybe their Vanadium browser when tab switching, that feels slow, but I wasn't planning on being part of the Chromium monoculture anyway so this doesn't matter to me

strcat 8mo ago

GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS. It preserves the standard privacy and security of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) along with keeping up with the updates. It builds major privacy and security improvements on top of that. /e/ is the direct opposite and reduces privacy and especially security compared to AOSP. /e/ doesn't keep up with updates, has huge delays for important privacy and security patches along with reducing privacy and especially security in many other ways. GrapheneOS is a much more widely used OS with much more testing and provides much broader app compatibility. Unlike /e/, GrapheneOS only connects to GrapheneOS services by default and provides a high level of control over it. /e/ still uses a bunch of Google services by default and gives extensive privilege access to Google apps/services. Our approach is that Google apps/services are an optional thing people can install which do not receive any special access and can't do more than other regular apps since they're installed as regular sandboxed apps on GrapheneOS via our Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. A common misconception is that people believe GrapheneOS is less usable than much less private and far less secure options but it's the other way around. GrapheneOS provides nearly perfect app compatibility when taking into account the per-app exploit protection compatibility toggle and sandboxed Google Play. Nearly the only apps not working on GrapheneOS are ones banning any alternate OS and a larger number of those work on GrapheneOS than elsewhere due to a subset specifically permitting GrapheneOS due to far higher rather than weaker security. Apps have legitimate reasons for being concerned about the poor security of many alternate operating systems but they're wrongly grouping it all together as if GrapheneOS. /e/ lags weeks, months and even years behind on providing updates for drivers, firmware, the Linux kernel and more. They miss a large portion of the monthly Android security bulletins which are a limited subset of the patches in the first place but then claim to provide the latest patch level despite many of the required patches being missing. /e/ has a supposedly private speech-to-text sends data to OpenAI and their own servers without obtaining explicit user consent to share sensitive data with a third party. https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509 https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using... They say the data is anonymized based on passing it through their own servers before OpenAI but OpenAI is receiving all of the user speech data under their usual terms of service enabling them to store and leverage it. Fairphone lags significantly behind on OS updates and patches with only a small subset of what should be provided being shipped. Their hardware omits important security protections required by GrapheneOS which it uses to protect users against widespread commercial exploit tools. Fairphone doesn't provide upstream Linux kernel updates in practice which is a massive omission for their updates. Fairphone 4 has an end-of-life 4.19 kernel branch and the Fairphone 5 despite not being very old already has an end-of-life 5.4 kernel branch. Neither was providing the LTS revisions prior to end-of-life so from their perspective nothing really changed but it means it's a huge task for an alternative OS to provide basic updates since they'd need to port everything to a newer kernel branch. /e/ does not provide similar privacy features to GrapheneOS such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle and much more. It focuses on bundling things which can be provided with apps such as RethinkDNS on GrapheneOS with a higher quality implementation. GrapheneOS delegates as much as it can to apps while focused on the core OS. If a feature can be done better with an open source app, we'd rather leave it up to that app and many provide privacy and security protections which apps cannot. For the most part, apps can't improve OS privacy and security. Enumerating badness via blocklists which cannot block anything that's dual purpose functionality is also a very weak approach to privacy which is increasingly less useful. The most privacy invasive behavior of apps is nearly all done through their own services which also provide their functionality. Among other things, /e/ uses this system for labeling app tracking and permissions which is incorrect and misleading as shown by this example: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.facebook.lite/latest/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.faceboo... Facebook clearly doesn't have no tracking but rather this system only detects a small number of specific third party libraries they've decided are trackers. Those choices are often very questionable such as portraying even opt-in crash reporting as tracking because it used a third party library on their list. Meanwhile, Facebook's lite app supposedly has no trackers. The permissions list is thoroughly inaccurate and not how Android permissions work. The core permissions are opt-in with apps having to request them so listing those as if they're granted on install and mandatory due to being possible to grant is incorrect. Most of the rest have special access toggles which are opt-in for the sensitive ones or other toggles such as the battery optimization mode where Restricted stops apps starting themselves and delays those things until it's run by another app or the user. Privacy requires providing privacy patches and strong privacy protections. It also depends on security which means providing security patches and strong security protections. GrapheneOS is heavily focused on all of that rather than simply treating not having bundled Google apps and services as meaning a private OS. There are also worse things for privacy than Google apps and services. /e/ sending speech data to OpenAI vs. Apple doing the processing locally as we've it implemented for GrapheneOS is a good example. Google at least has partial local speech-to-text support and a better privacy policy than OpenAI for the cloud portion. Avoiding Google apps/services is not the same thing as providing strong privacy.