- SailfishOS: still linux based and seems fairly community inclusive, but the UI part of the stack is closed source. Is the only one officially allowed to run android apps, via emulation. Has existed for a very long time, it's lightweight and I think the most stable/bug-free in this list.

- Ubuntu Touch: fully open source and community driven, it uses snap packages for security, you might be able to run android apps. Last time I run it also seemed fairly stable/bug-free.

- PureOS: fully open source and privacy focused. I think it's the only one that, released with the Librem 5, can avoid using proprietary blobs for interfacing with the hardware. Seems less stable than SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch. You would need to buy a fairly expensive-but-old phone(librem 5) to run it.

- PostmarketOS: fully open source, focused on being lightweight and revive old phones, has a huge amount of phones it has been tested on, is based on Alpine.

- Mobian: mobile version of Debian, it's fairly new on this list.

There are many more linux mobile OSes, but as far as I know these are the main ones. There might also be some inaccuracies on this post, I tested some of these a long time ago, and I never actually run the last 2.

Someone needs to create a Linux based mobile OS foundation - Google's domination is contrary to many large companies interests, and if Meta and many other such companies were approached, they may well donate large sums of money in their own strategic interests.

With such an article, many (including perhaps google) get the ammo to disregard what fdroid says, by branding them as childish/not to be taken seriously. for eg: no reputable news org is going to post this.

PS: https://keepandroidopen.org/ is better done.

Could one stop this by disabling OS updates?

Google is Trojans all the way down. What is the true intent of almost every Google product? Data harvesting.

Every single product is spyware of some kind. They've even managed trojanize TVs by subsidising manufactuers to ship their spyware.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)

Android making another step in this direction is bad. But, let's not kid ourselves: we are neck deep in this cyberpunk serfdom, and have been for decades. If we were to get this Android win, it would be only a small win. I'm saying this not to be defeatist, but to remind us of the bigger fight.

How does this feudal goliath meet its end? When is enough enough?

But then, Librem 5 Phone was just failed few years ago, telling the story that people who care about their rights are still sensitive to how much they would pay (which is a form of rights too).

Also but, there is the thing, making a phone is not easy. If you reach deep enough, you'll eventually reach the layer where you realize how solid the monopolization has become. The global telecom standards if you read them is in the hands of few companies, Boardcom, Motorola, Huawei, Nokia and such. They'll control whether or not your phone can access the network. Then there's telecom companies who runs the network, and they might have to approve your device/modem as well since they got their channel allocation from the government.

It's not easy, and it's not just the software problem.

Oh and yes, we also have the software problem. Linux, if you want to go that route, cannot be used as a mobile OS, as least not for the public, because the average people don't know how to properly secure their system, and Linux is not a restrictive-by-default system. It will be a malware nightmare if you ship Linux on a phone as is.

The best hope for now I think is for geek vendors to make more mobile/4/5G enabled Fairphone or uConsole-like product to the enthusiast market, and then you can load whatever OS on it as you want.

I do not need Google Play (a collection of spyware, covertly collecting Wifi points and cell towers location in my country and sending them abroad), I do not need bank apps (I have a laptop for that) so I guess I will be fine. Obviously there will be no developer verification on my device as well, and I mostly use apps from F-Droid anyway.

Good thing about F-Droid is that they build apps themselves and you can always get the sources - unlike Google Play and Apple Store that provide no sources and unlike PyPi/NPM which allows sources to not match the binary distribution.

Does this somehow also apply to developers in China? Are Chinese OSs (Vivo/Honor/Oppo/etc.) entirely forked off of Google's Android?

Is the solution to just a Chinese phone without the Play Store?

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935853 (2 months ago, 889 comments)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139765 (4 months ago, 378 comments)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778274 (3 months ago, 68 comments)

I really need to take the time and go with Graphene OS in this device. My bank N26 kind of still allows it, but they made it harder and harder to use with certain custom checks. Looks like in the future I need a separate banking phone and my daily driver.

The device works right now how I want it. I don't want anything to change.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067119

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555244

On my android phone:

My own launcher

My own keyboard

My own sync tool for local net

My own net tools to WoL some devices on my lan.

My own tool to control 3 proxmox servers

My own tool that parses groceries slips

My own tool that keep tracks of my vehicles events/lifecycle/purchases etc.

If they break my launcher/keyboard and my ability to use my phone in my customized way, they will NEVER see me as a client again. None of these apps are in the Play Store, they are signed with my own signing keys, which have never been uploaded to google, in fact, no google account is linked to these apps. These apps are also privacy-oriented (even the keyboard, I ship a 1mb dictionary with and it learns my own words, never transmits anything).

I will not give google my ID , neither Persona or anyone else. I'm very happy to go back to using bank card + chip + pin than use google wallet. Trust me I will walk away. I already move 4 family members off of Windows in the last 2 years, I will get them off google too.

Now that they reached penetration they do the switch - under the guise of security.

Just let me do with my hardware what I want to do it. Let it be my responsibility to install whatever I want (and stop calling it "side-loading", as if I am doing something shady from the "side").

We need to resist this! Alas, from the broader response it seems that most people just do not care.

If Google is looking at a world where all of their competitors are using first-party-controlled signing, it makes sense for them to wonder "why not us". And if they get sued for this, that would set the precedent for all of their competitors too.

At that point the playing field would be level and platforms would be properly open.

24 hour waiting time? Big outcry.. Anticompetitive permission system where apps can do not that much more than websites? Nah, it's fine..

Unless you unlocked the bootloader, you were NEVER able to install apps you want, as Google had the final say what those apps could do (the anticompetitive permission system where user is the third class citizen, vendors are second-class citizen and there's only one first class citizen - Google). We need to fight for the right to unlock the bootloader and then not be restricted by the actual malware that is Play Integrity.

Are governments going to institute more lockdowns? Is this some topdown control thing?

I will root this POS android phone I have and forego any Google Play services and just use it as web browser and a phone. Fuck these guys!

But even ignoring this - it is not for Alphabet/Google to decide whether, and how, I want protections. I want to be able to pick a sequence of bytes and install that as an application on my phone, without Alphabet having any say in whether that happens or not, and in fact without them knowing about it. It's my phone, not theirs, and the software should help me do what I need/want, not help them provide me their often-questionable services.

> That is because it is Google themselves who is propagating ADV. And once activated, this malevolent process has exactly one goal: to block you from running software by developers who haven’t been approved centrally by Google.

The rest of the article is a claim that Google's new terms of service amount to "malware is any software we [Google] don't like."

It seems like Google is aiming for its own walled garden.

Is that right? Is that the future of Android as well?

If this is disseminated through Play Protect, does disabling Play Protect prevent triggering this?

Again, there is a tradeoff between protecting consumers and protecting vendors. If you protect the privacy of vendors, you do so at the expense of increasing risk to the consumers.

I don't want to be polarizing, but narcissistic is the best word to describe the position of this article. I'm assuming that when they are consumers, they would find it reasonable that their vendors provide due diligence and be held to higher standards. When they go to the pharmacy, and they buy aspirins, would they choose a tablet of aspirins from a pharmacy that doesn't ask where the aspirins came from or who the distributor or producer is? If such privacy of the producer were respected then the market would open up to actors that provide low quality, counterfeit, or malicious product.

You can't have it both ways. If you are a vendor, you are no longer an anonymous consumer. Installing a VPN, paying with cryptocurrency, using firefox and duckduckgo to avoid tracking, that's not on the table for you once you decide to be on the other side of the production market.

If you want to make software and distribute it anonymously, go ahead and submit it to one of the many malware riddled distributors that don't do any due diligence like npm, github, AUR, why must you insist on being let in a club that doesn't want you? Is it perhaps because the reputation of such club is higher because it doesn't have malware because it performs such due diligence?

At least if you are going to complain about this, do it with standard language don't co-opt cybersecurity terms, adding noise to whoever cares about actual security. If this is really a problem you wouldn't need to exaggerate or plain lie about it.

And you’ll never reach a human to sort it out.

I personally have seen every single older relative and non-tech friend, end up installing bloateare, spyware, and malware inadvertently - because they have no idea how anything in the tech domain works. And given the widespread popularity of Android (globally 70% vs iOS at 30% market share) and even moreso in lower income demographics, it also leads to rampant piracy of obviously non-essential apps like games and streaming (eg Spotify). In fact, even here on HN, almost everyone who has given their parents an iPhone has extolled the virtues of a secured AppStore/device and the peace of mind it brings.

While there may someday be a way to support both the average user and the HN power user, we are not there yet. It’s hard for me to outright reject Google/Android attempts to secure people’s devices.

Classic slippery slope fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

History shows that when a "slope" appears... regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the thing.

In almost every case, the feared "bottom" of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.