this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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Privacy
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if you have a pixel theres absolutely no reason why you shouldnt use it.
if you dont i dont think its worth to buy one just for graphene
Plenty reasons to not use it on a pixel...I had horrible compatibility with all sorts of banking apps, government 2FA and traffic warning systems, to the point where they just couldn't work at all. Their sandboxed play services breaks a shitload of day to day convenience and even necessities to increase privacy.
this is a problem with all ROMs, actually.
banking apps especially do everything in their power to block every phone that isn't stock.
There a lot of ethical reasons to not use it. Also the community tends to be a bit toxic.
Name only one reason that is relevant from a technical standpoint.
I said ethical not technical. Anyway from a technical perspective Graphene os is only supported on a handful of devices so it is off the table for many people.
By this logic rpiOS sucks because its only supported on Raspberry PIs. Only Pixel hardware meets the security requirements of Graphene.
Raspberry Pis suck in general as they lack open firmware. You are stuck with the Raspberry Pi kernel and all of its blobs. "Security requirements" is something Microsoft says about Windows 11. If you are concerned about security your best bet is stock software as it is maintained by Google.
Again, you demonstrate that you don't have the sufficient knowledge. There is no commerical device with open-source firmware. "Security Requirements" are not some kind of marketing bullshit as you seem to think. Graphene's can be found here: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
I doubt you understand what any of them mean, since you seemingly think Windows 11 requirements are just random things that are just there to hurt you.
You thinking that Stock Google devices are more secure than GOS simply shows that you fundamentally lack the understanding of how things work. They are built on the same core but Graphene has massively reduced attack surface and fewer ways to exploit remotely. And then we didn't even talk about the hardened kernel and such.
I wouldn't try to discredit projects I don't know anything about if I were you.
https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers (2021)
https://pine64.org/documentation/ROCK64/
Pine64 boards rarely need proprietary software and they don't need it to boot like the raspberry pi does. However, that is a discussion for another time.
You are also illustrating my point. The Graphene community has a my way or the highway mentality. As it turns out stock will often be more secure as it will have the latest security updates and will have less people handing it in general so less risk of supply chain attack from a bad actor in the community. However, this is a non issue. I find a lot of the so called security holes to be fairly mild as they require very specific targeting to exploit.
In general, the people around Graphene os and Divest OS are very toxic. In the F-droid board meeting the issue was brought up that the is censorship is promotion happing for Divest OS. People who criticized Divest OS were getting banned. The person who brought this complaint has a page where they go over there beliefs and bring forward evidence. I think they are a bit harsh but they do have a point.
http://opinionplatform.org/
What are the ethical reasons to not use it?
None. This person doesn't know what they are talking about and they try to discredit the project based on their personal views and demonize the dev team.
Could you elaborate on the ethical part, please?
Most likely talking about how the lead developer had a mental health crisis and lost his marbles. From what I've heard, he has stepped off to take care of that and the project is still going great.
They encourage proprietary software and locked down systems. For instance, they use Google play services instead of microG and they promote the play store. I personally think that F-droid apps are much better from both an software freedom perspective and a privacy perspective. I'm not against people installing proprietary apps as I realize sometimes that is unavoidable but they could at least encourage the use of Foss. Graphene could simply have both F-droid and Aurora store by default and on setup explain the difference. They could even allow the install of Play services instead. However, they don't even really try. They focus on security which at the end of the day is subjective.