**Wanted to update this post with a website I found that has info about this topic for regular people, in case anybody finds this later. ** Privacy Focused OS For Everyone It has info about the different os options as well as apps for phones using regular android.

Pretend I am five and please be nice.

Say I want to free my phone and tablet from samsung/google/skynet but I neeeeeed to be able to use my printer and external cd drives and their silly proprietary apps, as well as flash drives, cds, and normal apps without alternatives like bandcamp and libby and and all that. I also need to be able to use government websites and use my wifi and pay bills and just generally do everything that I do now on samsung’s/motorola’s software.

(Most of these things were issues for me when I tried to use linux years ago which is why I’m listing them. I do not possess the technical ability to solve these problems on my own when they come up. I also do not possess any other devices to use if my main ones can’t do these things anymore.)

Is this realistic in 2024 for Graphene or any other free open source os? And if it is, how do I install it safely and properly?

Are there any known issues with it like slowness or not being able to use the camera, etc? Most of the places with information about this stuff are not written in a langauge I speak.

Edit: does anyone want to work on creating or collecting some simplified tutorials with me? I’m thinking of installing one of these on my phone and it it goes well I will probably write the details down. It might be good to have a place for other people who have done so, or want to, to do the same for their respective devices.

  • Snot FlickermanEnglish
    7•4 months ago

    First off? Do you have a current Pixel phone?

    Because GrapheneOS is only available for Pixels, and current ones at that. I’m still on a Pixel 4a, and GrapheneOS considers my phone end-of-life and support for it will eventually stop. So unless you just got a brand new Pixel… kind of a waste.

    Secondly, since you’re less tech savvy, you’ll probably want to use the official installation via WebUSB but as a point of warning, Firefox purposefully chooses not to use WebUSB or WebSerial because of security risks.

    Google built WebUSB and WebSerial because Chromebooks are a useless fucking joke of a computer without them, since it doesn’t have a real OS, and just a glorified web browser. This is fuckstupid, pathetic, and absolutely a security risk.

    That being said, the WebUSB install is definitely going to be the “easier” path for you, but you’ll be forced to use Chrome to do it.

    Are there any known issues with it like slowness or not being able to use the camera, etc?

    No idea, I always went LineageOS because it supports more devices, has better support for Google services, and isn’t quite as obsessive about privacy. Unlike GrapheneOS, updates for devices will come as long as maintainers are able to make new versions of Android run on older hardware. With LineageOS, I’m looking at likely years of security updates for my Pixel 4a.

    • @algorithmae
      6•4 months ago

      …and GrapheneOS considers my phone end-of-life and support for it will eventually stop. So unless you just got a brand new Pixel… kind of a waste.

      Hard disagree. Just because it stops receiving updates doesn’t suddenly make it useless