Graphene does only work on the pixel devices. What makes it special is that you can lock the bootloader again after installing it, which with things like lineage, you cannot do. I have never used /e/OS but i use lineage as my daily and it can be installed on FP
Honestly trusting the bootloader feels very risky
GrapheneOS uses pixels because not even Google employees can break into it.
Yes. Insider Attack Resistance is pretty awesome.
Ok what is your alternative? Android Verified Boot with a secure hardware keystore like the Google Titan M2 is basically the best thing you can get.
Strong encryption with a password you know only. The password should have a high enthropy
This is unrelated. You want to familiarize yourself with the concept of OS integrity and how it is different from data encryption. You can have a passphrase that encrypts your data alongside having access to these hardware features.
It has very minimal code and its implemented in a robust manner. Unlike UEFI and the desktop implementation of secure boot, it does work well and it has not yet been exploited on pixels. Its way better to have any kind of OS integrity check than none.
What makes it special is that you can lock the bootloader again after installing it
I'm not sure why this is considered special. You can also re-lock the bootloader with CalyxOS, iodéOS and DivestOS. This is a Pixel thing, not a GrapheneOS thing.
It's also possible to relock the bootloader on a handful of Motorola and fairphones, at least as part of the Calyx install procedure
Personally, and thanks to some comparison charts, Graphene is the best, followed by DivestOS for most devices. Others are weaker, and Calyx is not useful as we have stronger Graphene.
I found the following website to be a definitive source for comparisons of all sorts, including this one:
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Too bad it's hosted on Microsoft's GitHub. Wish open source proponents would stick to open source solutions
Yes, GrapheneOS only works on Pixel devices, because the project has some pretty extensive hardware security requirements: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
The Fairphone is a highly insecure device, which comes nowhere close to the (hardware) security of a Pixel. On top of that, the Fairphone company doesn't even know how to maintain their own Fairphone OS. The verified boot implementation is fundamentally broken and very misleading, since it's signed with the publicly available (!!!) AOSP test private keys. This is such a blatant disregard of security practices, that should have made it impossible to certify their devices. It's not a surprise either that Fairphone regularly misses important Android security patches, or delivers them months later. That's also why GrapheneOS will never support devices like the Fairphone. There are more issues with Fairphone's misleading update policy that I haven't covered in detail.
I highly recommend against purchasing such insecure, and poorly maintained hardware. DivestOS is the best option for "damage control", if you already own a Fairphone. Its developer actually cares about users and their security, and the OS is properly signed.
I've never heard of Fairphone and have only barely heard of DivestOS.
Depending on your linux knowledge, you may want to use real linux (postmarketOS). But beware, the amount of things that require closed source OSs like android or ios isnt 0. banking apps for example arent accepting of non proprietary phones yet. I dont know about emulation though.
Not true. I'm a Tangerine customer and have no issues at all with their app on Graphene.
That is one usecase. I‘d be a little more thoughtful about my first sentence if I were you.
That one use case literally invalidates the claim that banking apps don't work. Your banking app might not work, but mine does.
Thats not how logic works my friend. If 99 people cant get it to work and you do, that makes the claim not invalid but either you lie or you have an „unusual“ setup. The claim still holds true in most cases.
Instead of waltzing over someone like this, you could try and show interest in their usecase and how to troubleshoot the underlying problem. That would be making the world a better place.
I'm not here to troubleshoot this issue. I don't have the technical skill or understanding of this platform to do so.
I'm sure I'm not the only one with a working banking app. We don't all use mainstream banks, right? There are options and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Thanks for insinuating I'm a liar though. That's nice.
I'm on a Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS and a working banking app with no special fuckery because I genuinely don't know enough about android to deviate from what's offered in the stock Graphene experience other than using the FUTO keyboard and customizing basic settings just like everyone else.
Well, thanks for the info. I never said you were a liar. I said thats an option.
The point I took issue with is the way you approached this. I dont mind being corrected. I mind it being done like this as if I were somehow saying stupid things which 20 yrs of IT work clearly speak against.
So maybe we just forget this issue and agree that you have a working setup which I find very positive.
Have a good one.
I daily drove a Oneplus 6 with PostmarketOS for a few months. While it was very cool and gave me a bunch of freedom compared to android, I missed things like always having proper mobile UIs and a working camera. It is my understanding that the fairphone 4 is in a similar state of support, if a bit worse. Can recommend it though if you like using linux and don't need banking or a camera from your phone.
Thanks for chiming in. I agree that pmos is not a perfect drop in alternative for android yet. but for me it is 1. not necessary to have a perfect copy and 2. not a permanent situation since pmos is picking up steam, same as the rest of linux. So I believe cameras will become usable at some point and banking apps will probably also come around at some point. The more people use it, the faster imo.
Every few months or so there is news of what hurdle has been overcome getting the camera on the oneplus 6 to work. So you might be right there.
Thats my impression as well. Lets hope mobile linux goes nuts.
What about de-googled android? Is that private/secure?
No given the recent Cellebrite leak. You're only secure if you use Pixel 6 and after, stock or GOS.
Of course that mostly only apply if you put government into your threat model.
May i know why you do not like the pixel phones?
They are expensive and I don't want to give money to Google
CalyxOS is another one. Some consider fairphone problematic
Can you explain that? Why is Fairphone problematic?
Well, whether anything is problematic or not is highly subjective.
Do you consider no headphone jack to be problematic? Or that some think it was done intentionally to push their wireless headphones?
What about the use of slave labor? After realizing it was impossible to get away from that, they tweaked their slogan from a fair phone to a "fairer" phone.
How about the high price and little demand?
See what I mean? One person's problem is not everyone's.
What does any of this have to do with Fairphone? You can apply every single one of these criticisms to the rest of the industry and it would be way more relevant than it is with Fairphone.
It seems some people will not accept paying more for an ethically superior product unless it is literally perfect in every single ethical aspect. If it's not perfect, then this company that is vastly superior to all its competitors when it comes to ethics is somehow the villain. This is braindead logic.
I think the point is, why avoid buying a more mainstream phone like a pixel if even fairphone can't avoid slave labour? The two big reasons why people go for fairphones is ethicality of the manufacturing process (labour and environmental impact) and modularity/fixability. If their labour is unethical then that means they lose one of their most important appeals. The horrific treatment of miners in the global south is easily one of if not the most significant issue with modern phone manufacture.
That's not a point. This is not a case of all or nothing. You seem to have been raised with some kind of Disney fantasy land ideals about good and bad but the reality is that nothing is perfect including ethical consumerism. We simply look for the better or best alternative and that is currently Fairphone. That's an objective fact.
Where did I say it was all or nothing. I don't think you're reading anything me or the other person is saying
why avoid buying a more mainstream phone like a pixel if even fairphone can't avoid slave labour?
You acknowledged yourself that Fairphone is also environmentally superior to its competitors, such as Google, yet apparently this doesn't matter to you when it comes time to purchase. Your logic seems to assume that because Fairphone is not perfect, it is therefore no better ethically than a company like Google. That is an all or nothing mentality.
I didn't say it didn't matter.
Other phones have advantages over Fairphone. Nobody buys a Fairphone because they think it has the most cutting-edge features. They buy it because they believe it's more ethical. So any way in which Fairphone fails to be significantly more ethical than mainstream phones, is a reason to go for mainstream phones instead, as Fairphone loses its main advantage.
You acknowledged yourself that Fairphone is also environmentally superior to its competitors, such as Google
I didn't say this. I said that believing Fairphone is more environmentally friendly is a reason why people go for Fairphone. For the record I do believe its emissions are lower but I don't believe it to be environmentally friendly because I don't think there's any eco-friendly way to make modern smartphones, but that's besides the point, I never commented either way on what I think of Fairphone's environmental policies, only its labour policies.
The two big reasons why people go for fairphones is ethicality of the manufacturing process (labour and environmental impact) and modularity/fixability.
Only one of these is undermined by your supposed slave labour argument (you're yet to share any evidence that suggests Fairphone is worse than its competitors in this regard). Discounting the other reasons you listed because of this is an all or nothing mentality.
any way in which Fairphone fails to be significantly more ethical than mainstream phones, is a reason to go for mainstream phones instead, as Fairphone loses its main advantage.
You haven't proven or argued this, though. You've only argued that Fairphone uses "slave labour" (again, no comparison here with competitors). That doesn't mean that Fairphone loses ALL its ethical advantages.
I never said Fairphone was more unethical than its competitors, only that it claims to be more ethical and its main marketability is on the basis of this claim. If you didn't care about ethics in phone production, would you still buy a Fairphone over any other phone? I don't think so. Aside from their claims about ethics, the only thing that sets them apart is the modularity, which I do think is a positive and possibly that's enough for some people, but I'm personally more concerned about the ethics of phones. If Fairphone is not substantially more ethical than its competitors then a lot of their customers would buy other phones, because other phones may have features that Fairphones don't have.
And for the record I don't think any ethical phone exists nor do I think it's possible to ethically make a modern smartphone. There's no ethical way to mine cobalt, and if you dispute that I challenge you to go work in a cobalt mine. Phone production is evidentially terrible for the environment and many of the natural resources required to make phones cannot be extracted without incredibly unpleasant and frequently deadly labour, which nobody would voluntarily do. I think it's good enough that Fairphone is supposedly making an effort to mitigate this, and if you need a smartphone I don't think there's anything wrong with buying a Fairphone. But I think it's quite obvious that the reasons to buy one are undermined significantly if Fairphone is engaging in much of the worst of industry standards.
It seems like an incredibly disingenuous representation of criticism of a tech company to say that it's "all or nothing" to be swayed away from a company that specifically markets itself as an ethical alternative (which Google, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, etc do not market themselves as) when they could be getting something they may consider to be a better product from another company with similar working conditions etc.
I use MicroG LineageOS which is in my opinion comparable with graphene os and is supported by a lot more devices.
Graphene and Lineage are the most uncomparable custom roms. Have and look at security and privacy and the type of Google Play handling.
See https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm to geht a first idea
MicroG version of lineage. Graphene is obviously way supperior.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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