Lead dev of grapheneos is extremely toxic in communication. I don’t trust someone like that developing the software running on a phone.
EDIT: This comment seems to be particularly controversial, with many people praising GrapheneOS as a project, while ignoring the developers views and actions. Although my opinion of the main developer is negative, the project itself and its goals are great. To clear up some confusion, I want to add to my previous statement:
At first, this seems like the standard “separating art from the artist”, however, GrapheneOS is a ton of code, not just art. When it comes to other forms of art, like literature or paintings, an artist maliciously hiding their personal beliefs in their otherwise “unbiased” work might degrade the quality of the final result, but does not have much significant impact outside of that. When it comes to code, programs, OSes, this changes. The artist (programmer) changing their art (code) based on their personal beliefs is not just a degradation in quality, but a security risk for anyone running the code and trusting the developer. Having seen the way the GOS dev speaks about its community and even people in support of him (see Louis Rossman’s video), it becomes clear that the mentioned “risk” of malware is very much present. Like many others, I don’t have the time to verify the source code of an entire Android rom myself, which means I would have to trust the GOS dev to not insert anything malicious, after the statements he’s made. I’d have to trust him after he’s grouped a majority of his community into “people who are after him and are swatting him”. It’s a very real possibility that someone with beliefs like that would add malicious code to his project, and I’m personally not willing to run that risk.
Please note that I am not encouraging people to “go harass the dev”, that is an immoral action nobody should be doing. I am trying to inform people of the developers behavior online, past and current, so they can make a decision for themselves whether to run his software on their personal devices.
He isn’t on the project since last year.androguru Edit: Sorry, meant “he isn’t the project lead since last year”. He is still part of the GitHub team and actively developing.It states that he is the “Founder of @GrapheneOS”, not the current lead developer. So I don’t get your point
His activity on GrapheneOS repositories, issues, etc. indicates he’s still very active in development and in the community.
IMO he can contribute all he wants. His PRs will still have to go through someone else (i.e. the new maintainer / lead dev). I don’t care if he adds new code. That’s much appreciated.
Toxicity is more of an issue if you’re the maintainer since you have control over the project.
You can still be part of a project without being lead, to be part of the “we.” Did he contribute and/or is he part of GrapheneOS, yes? So he’s part of the “we.”
Or does only the lead developer get the “we?” Wouldn’t that make it more of an “I” instead?
You should remember that he founded the original CopperheadOS project (from which he was violently ousted by his cofounder) and has been working on it and this for a decade.
Honestly, a lot of lead devs in fantastic FOSS software have pretty limited patience. I’ve read plenty of that guy’s discourse, and while I think he could be more diplomatic, I don’t see any reason to suspect he’s doing anything malicious with the project.
I’m personally totally fine using GrapheneOS. If you aren’t, there are plenty of alternatives.
“Limited patience” is understandable, but the behavior of the GrapheneOS dev is completely different. I’ve personally interacted with them not too long ago, and nothing has changed since the public accusations from a year ago.
That’s fair. I personally don’t interact with him, nor do I plan to (why would I?), so it really doesn’t bother me. As long as the other devs can manage dealing with him and the quality of the code stays high, I’m happy. If the other devs leave the project, I’ll look for forks.
as long as they do good work i don’t give a shit what they think
I know Daniel somewhat from some years back, and calling him extremely toxic is just wrong. He is and has always been rather bad at communication under stress and is clearly on the spectrum in some way. Technically a genius person, but perhaps doesn’t have the right set of qualities to lead things, except from a strictly technical pov.
Very good decision from him to withdraw from social media. I hope he manages to contribute in the future.
is clearly on the spectrum in some way
This is not an excuse to behave the way he does.
Very good decision from him to withdraw from social media
He hasn’t, still on github, still on HN.
What are some good alternatives to GOS? I want something that can run on most androids that deGoogles while providing general privacy and security. I know nothing will be as good. Bur what is the next best thing?
DivestOS is pretty good. I’d stay away from /e/OS, CalyxOS and LineageOS though, as they have some pretty serious security problems.
GrapheOS now officially supports…
[please… something other than Pixel…]
Pixel 9
They will only support Pixels for the foreseeable future, as these are the only devices that meet their hardware security requirements https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
The problem is that (as far as i know) only pixels fulfill their security requirements, for example that the bootloader is not only unlockable but also lockable. But I also would like to have more devices supporting it
Fairphones should be supported imo. CalyxOS relocks the bootloader and they supported the FP5 right after launch.
Fairphones aren’t even anywhere close to meeting the security requirements of GrapheneOS. Daniel Micay explained this many times, most notably in this Reddit thread (before they left Reddit and switched to their own, self-hosted forum) https://redlib.nohost.network/r/GrapheneOS/comments/10b5x4n/has_anyone_managed_to_install_grapheneos_on_a/j67pbny
I am currently in the market for a new mobile phone. The current’s one battery is basically dead and because of security patches now being about 2 years old I have to replace it whole instead of just getting the battery replaced again.
Pixel with GrapheneOS has been my number one choice for some time but…
- there is no (privacy friendly & legal) replacement for Google Play Protect. My banking app won’t work without it as well as one other app I kind of need too.
- I am also just too used to having a phone in the 250-300 EUR range in the sense that I don’t have to care about it that much.
It’s a “consumable” product for me. Loosing/drowning it is not a big deal, where drowning 800 euros is just hard to justify no matter how much money I make.
I will probably just get the OnePlus Nord 4 instead because of their pledge to do 6 years of updates.
Your bank specifically requires Play Protect? That’s odd, I’ve never heard of something like that before. I’d still check this list to see if it might be compatible with GrapheneOS: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
You can get a Pixel 7a for under 300 EUR, and it is supported until 2028, so you don’t lose out on updates.
- All of my banking apps work, I have 6 of them.
- You can buy an older Pixel, 5 or 6. They’re still great.
I’m not sure about over in Europe but around here the trick to an affordable Pixel is to just buy last years model since you can usually find them lightly used or even new in the $300 - $400 range and updates are only incremental anyway and since they get 7 years of updates now it should be good for quite a while.
For google play protect yeah thats a bummer, I just use my banks website but I don’t know if European banks allow that.
Personally though I love Graphene OS it turned my phone from a device I hated due to anxitey I feel around corporate surveillance into a device I genuinely like again.
i can especially relate to the last part, it’s so freeing to feel in control of my phone!
Just buy an older supported device if grapheneos is important to you. Something like a 6 pro would be fine.
To anyone reading this a 6 is a great pick but its worth knowing that the 7 year update promise only began with the pixel 8 so if you buy a 6 in 2024 it probably only has about 2 years of updates left. However they are only like $150 used I think so the value is probably there even if you only get 2 years of use out of it.
What’s the point of Goggle’s security support when you’re buying the phone for GrapheneOS?
To get Android into a fully patched state, you need both firmware updates that come from your phone’s vendor, as well as OS patches that come from your OS developer (in this case GrapheneOS). GrapheneOS usually only provides OS updates as long as Google provides firmware updates, because they don’t want people to run outdated and potentially insecure devices with old, unpatched firmware. But they have extended update cycles for some EOL devices like the Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5.
Graphene only supports devices for as long as the manufacturer does, maybe slightly longer.
Doesn’t seem like the old CyanogenMod days where you could slap that shit on there forever.
That’s disappointing…
You expect them to backport security updates to pixel 3 or whatever for free when even the manufacturer doesn’t?
Isn’t that what Lineage does?
