> GrapheneOS has officially confirmed a major new hardware partnership—one that marks the end of its long-standing Pixel exclusivity. According to the team, work with a major Android OEM began in June and is now moving toward the development of a next-generation smartphone built to meet GrapheneOS’ strict privacy and security standards.
LineageOS has a place for those who care less about security and more about features, "freedom", compatibility, community etc...
I was a LOS user and maintained my own forks for devices, but switching to GrapheneOS was a good decision and I don't really miss anything.
GrapheneOS wants to make a FOSS Android with the security model that makes it hard for any bad party to break into the phone.
LineageOS wants to make a FOSS Android that respects user's privacy first and foremost - it implements security as best as it can but the level of security protections differs on different supported devices.
Good news is that if you have a boot passphrase, it's security is somewhat close to GrapheneOS - differing in that third parties with local access to the device can still brute-force their access whereas with GrapheneOS they can't - unless they have access to hardware level attacks.
For a list of security features see here [0].
There are technical reasons, but as ever the real underlying causes are incentives. Companies realized that the OS is a profit center, something they can use to influence user behavior to their benefit. Before the goal was to be a hardware company and offer the best hardware possible for cost. Now the goal is to own as large a slice of your life as possible. It's more of a social shift than a technological one. So why would a company, in this new environment, invest resources in making their hardware compatible with competing software environments? They'd be undercutting themselves.
That's not to say that attempts to build interoperability don't exist, just that they happen due to what are essentially activist efforts, the human factor, acting in spite of and against market forces. That doesn't tend to win out, except (rarely) in the political realm.
i.e. if you want interoperable mobile hardware you need a law, the market's not going to save you one this one.
If neither of the two major players can make an open, secure, _simple_, easy-to-understand, bloat-free OS, then we somehow need another player.
Presently (and I confess, my bias to seek non-state solutions may show here), it seems that a non-trivial part of the duopoly stems from regulatory capture insofar as the duopoly isn't merely software, but extends all the way to TSMC and Qualcomm, whose operations seem to be completely subject to state dictates, both economic/regulatory and of the darker surveillance/statecraft variety (and of those, presumably some are classified).
I'm reminded of the server market 20ish years ago, where, although there were more than two players, the array of simple, flexible linux distros that are dominant today were somewhere between poorly documented and unavailable. I remember my university still running windows servers in ~2008 or so.
What do we need to do to achieve the same evolution that the last 2-3 decades of server OS's have seen? Is there presently a mobile linux OS that's worth jumping on? Is there simple hardware to go with it?
komali2•52m ago
Same question, how does Graphene get patches?
AlgebraFox•49m ago
styanax•45m ago
subscribed•39m ago
Currently they're only permitted to release binaries of the patches due to the embargo, this is why these patches are in the parallel stream/optional (so people unhappy with being unable to see the sources won't have them shoved down their throats).
I don't have URLs at hand at the moment but all these questions have been asked many times and explained extensively on their discussion forum.
I, for one, feel safe. I was patched since late October (IIRC) for the vulnerabilities that Android-related outlets were warning about in early December.
It's quite surreal how unsafe the standard Android is. And how Google and the big companies pretend old devices (these running Android 11, 12, 13, not updated for several years) are safe and secure. While all it takes is the user stumbling upon one malicious we page or getting a WhatsApp message they won't even see.