android's at least open source
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Use what you like. Just like Windows, macOS and Linux for the vast majority of people, all these OSes are, are platforms to display apps and webpages. They all have sanded off most of the rough edges meaning that unless you have specific niche needs/wants, you'll just use what is familar and be happy.
Life is too short to have deep feelings about an OS.
Hush
Graphene OS changed my life, seriously. Completely changed my relationship to my phone and made it possible to focus again. Go open source
What specific features did you notice the most? (I'm assuming switching from Android?) 90% of my phone usage is through a browser, so I could probably install Graphene pretty easily.
Yeah, I can't imagine what about Graphene would make that big of a difference. Smart phones and slabs of glass with apps on them. There's very little that truly impacts the experience after you get past specs.
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#1 through #69: no push notifications, no feeds on my home screen, nothing I don't explicitly turn on and configure. No bloat whatsoever, the phone comes practically empty. I got this at the beginning of 2022, before then I kept finding myself reading articles about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Like I could not give less of a fuck about them, that story, whatever. I don't know who she is, and I don't particularly like JD movies except maybe Dead Man from the 90s, he probably beat the shit out of her idk. But for some reason I kept finding myself reading these articles on my phone absentmindedly. That kind of shit ended immediately.
Downsides? Not everything works, because there's no google play, and I couldn't get it even if I wanted it. I can use most google services on the browser, but for maps I have to use Osmand, which works but doesn't give me the fastest way to a place, and its kind of a trick to find a specific house or business without looking it up on a computer first and locating the nearest cross street. Schools, hospitals it has saved no problem, but not the optimal routes ore even anything relatively close. Great for my city where I can get myself 98% the way there already knowing the fastest ways around. Out of town we usually use my wife's navigation.
Those drawbacks are a little annoying but I will never go back to android, and I would never use apple in the first place. I love my phone, it feels like its mine in a way no phone ever has.
Hope this helps, ask if you have other questions
You can get Google play working by sideloading it with adb, and enabling graphene's microG service in the apps menu.
Any further apps installed with Google play, and Google itself, will still be under the default restrictions imposed by graphene, instead of having full access like with stock android.
It can be a little clunky starting out, but once you get used to it, the only major downside I could find was that I couldn't verify my bank details to enable nfc payments, because Google hasn't whitelisted Graphene in their API for "security reasons"
Interesting. Not having a good maps / navigation app might be a bit of a dealbreaker for me, since that's pretty much the last 10% of what I use my phone for. Degoogling myself there will require some effort....
As for push notifications and feeds, I don't really have a problem with that on my current phone with base android. I'm pretty aggressive about blocking random notifications or uninstalling apps entirely if they show me push notifications ads or "use me" reminders. And my home screen is just a clock and calendar.
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"Google is insidious. They're really an advertising data-collection company, but people think they're a tech service company. Their whole strategy is to provide stuff like Chrome for free so that lots of people use it and it becomes a de facto standard, and then they flip a switch and quietly mine all of that data."
15 minutes later...
"Anyway, I prefer Android cuz it's FOSS."
Apple and Google are both part of the NSA's Prism data collection program.
People who prefer android because it's open source usually use open source android because that's what they want.
That being said, proprietary blobs and black boxes are a pox on basically every usable device these days. I hate it.
I had a lot of hope for Android in the early days before Google dropped the n't from their "Don't be evil" corporate slogan.
Do android stans exist? Had always thought android was the lesser of two evils for most people
its most definitely the lesser, but there are still many people who would suck off Samsung and Google if they had the opportunity to.
trust me I've met them
Just as some Linux enthusiasts would from Mr. Torvalds.
It's like with every other fandom: There are haters, normal folks, lovers and the pesky hyper-fan.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What if I just like to suck.
Foss ftw baby
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Laughs in Harmony OS
GrapheneOS FTW
I honestly haven’t seen an “Apple fanboy” IRL in like 10 years lol I feel like that romantic image ended some form ago.
Still, great meme and very true lol
I just had a colleague mock me (good naturedly) the other day for having an android phone. I just laughed and said, I'm no fan of Google but at least I can install what I want on here. That was the end of it, haha.
If you follow a certain orange website, until very recently there's been a big group of apologists who protect the big and mighty if any bad news surfaced.
This has started to change, but the change is very recent. And in the startup ecosystem using a Mac is a standard and if you do not like them, you are considered weird and the latest social note keeping tool everybody else uses in the company has severe bugs on Linux, if it even works.
damn I wish I lived where you lived
Fanboys are not the same as people flaunting wealth. I generally see fanboys as advocates for the product and its feature sets. There is no doubt a lot of people by iPhone because of the image of wealth it displays and because it’s an easy decision if you have disposable income from a “set it and forget it” standpoint. The green vs blue text nonsense illustrates that clearly.
It’s like buying designer handbags. They’re still functional handbags and you don’t have to think about it. But it’s primarily about what the brand says about you. I just don’t consider this the domain of “fanboys.” Like I don’t describe Nintendo fanboys as people who buy Nintendo to show off they own Nintendo products. They buy it because they are staunch advocates of Nintendo and its games, as well as generally unable to critique the company or any of its products, usually electing to constantly talk about how everyone else is terrible and Nintendo is perfect and loves them.
Fanboys are not the same as people flaunting wealth.
while they are not the same, a lot of people who use either Apple or Samsung are both, and will constantly fight against right to repair when they don't know what they're even talking about, for very stupid reasons, and constantly fight against open standards that are just better, like using type-c for their products, etc etc. these people buy iPhones for the image of wealth, I agree, but these same people also argue about its apps and ecosystem's and argue that rich, trillion dollar companies are fine and pose no threat, because it is completely fine to be a monopoly and choke hold the industry. they defend their status symbol in every opportunity they get, and often times I've seen them make it personal, probably because its personal for them.
sometimes I see these same people who buy Apple as a show of "wealth," get into those political arguments when they just have no idea what they're talking about, because for some reason they want to defend the status symbol Apple or Samsing is even if it kills people and the planet.
That's just my observation over the years.
I’ve never heard someone fight against right to repair in my life. This is not challenging you, that’s just WILD to me
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I think that’s because pretty much everything just happens on the internet now. Most specialized applications are either built cross platform or are a website, so it really doesn’t matter what you use that much. It’s just down to personal preference
Damn, in my school class... I thought we are all old enough but my class also consists of Narcisstic and Egocentric people.
I’ve written this a couple of times now, so this is gonna be the last one: it’s not about the wealth it displays, the conspicuous consumption.
Consider the term “Nintendo fanboy.” Do they buy it because of the image? To impress everybody that they own Nintendo products? No, they defend Nintendo and are staunch advocates of the company and their games, unwilling to be critical or consider where other companies/products might be better. They’re basically zealots for a product. Cost and what it says about your status are not top of mind.
There are people who buy Apple products for the social image, to flaunt wealth. That is not the same as the fanboy.
You still get a lot of the old 'android is for poor people' narrative. Age and sub-culture also play a part.
Drake, one of the most commercially successful musicians in the past 15 years, released a song where he says he wouldn't answer a call from a woman because she was calling him from an android.
That song came out just 6 months ago (Oct 2023) and was number one on the charts. A ton of young people will have heard that and been influenced on some level by it, so the Apple fanboy/android hater thing probably won't be going away any time soon
That's also Drake and nobody respects him.
I want this to be true lol
I get that but there’s a bit of a difference in status symbols/conspicuous consumption and “Apple fanboy” culture IMO. But again, I get what you mean.