this post was submitted on 24 May 2024

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What Rom do you prefer for your Pixel device? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello everyone!

A lot has happened since my last post, specifically talking about my LineageOS inquiries. I had a string of bad luck and broke the digitizer but no cracks to my Pixel 7 Pro.

So I ended up "upgrading" to the Pixel 8 Pro because the store I went to only had the 8 Pro and not the 7 Pro in stock and it was dire that I have a phone.

So this leads me to my next questions:

What is your favorite Android spin for your Pixel Device?

I have used GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and Stock Android (of various versions on my Pro 7)

This leads me down the rabbit hole of deciding which experience I want on my Pixel 8 Pro.

I have GrapheneOS on my 8 Pro right now because I wanted to see if I could make it fit my needs, and I am leaning towards it not working for me. Since I switched, android auto is not connecting even following the instructions GrapheneOS has to offer.

AdAway (nonroot) is not working on GrapheneOS, as it just kills any internet connection to everything on GrapheneOS. So that's another point against me wanting to stick with GrapheneOS.

No AFwall+. Another point against it.

It appears that CalyxOS is going to give me a similar experience with issues related to the ones I mentioned with GrapheneOS.

I had considered trying out LineageOS for microG but unsure if this is the route I want to go because I am unsure if some of the apps I will rely on will work for various reasons. (Mainly unsure if MicroG will suffice for them.)

I am open to other options to, and would love to hear what you are using!

Thank you!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Maybe try some more troubleshooting on GrapheneOS? Also, I'm sure that the folks in the GrapheneOS Matrix channel are ready to help you out. You should be able to get Android Auto to work somehow.

Regarding AFWall+, do you actually need it? GrapheneOS has a built-in firewall, doesn't that work well enough for you? And can't you use something like NextDNS instead of AdAway? Also, the Graphene folks might be able to help troubleshoot the AdAway problem.

If you are going to switch to another OS, I recommend DivestOS. It's the only thing that even comes close to Graphene in terms of security. It's based on LineageOS, but has some significant security improvements, and for example allows for bootloader relocking. It's the only other OS recommended by the Graphene devs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I did end up getting Android Auto to work luckily. However, other things just went sort of south from there. My use case for GrapheneOS wasn't quite fit.

The built in firewall did work well enough for my usecase. However, I didn't want a DNS based adblocking solution as that took away from my ability to connect to my home VPN. I should reach out to see if they can help. However, I did end up switching back to LineageOS since I could use a custom kernel which significantly lowered the running temps of my phone.

I wanted to try DivestOS, but there isn't a Pixel 8 Pro build yet.

Huge fan of what GrapheneOS and the team/community have done to make it better. I am sure going to keep my eye on it going forward.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

As a matter of fact, I spent about a year on my 7 Pro, and just got my hands on a Pixel 8 Pro. I am finishing installing GrapheneOS on it right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

CalyxOS. Uses microG but is otherwise google free. Feels fairly vanilla and has a pretty solid backup solution in Seedvault

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm experiencing some minor bugs with /e/OS on my Pixel 3a. Love the experience (except bugs)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can't say I have ever gone down the rabbit hole of using /e/OS Though I have heard of it. What bugs are you experiencing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For example when sending videos on signal, my phone reboots. The longer the video, the greater chance for reboot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That sounds quite frustrating, wish I had any advice to help but sadly I don't.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am using GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7 and I was successful with Android Auto.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

On my 7 Pro, Android Auto worked great. Since flashing GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8 I have had no such luck.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I use GrapheneOS and all I miss from Android is the custom lock screen clocks and pulling images from any app using the recent apps page.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

DivestOS - it's a Lineage fork, somewhere between Lineage and Graphene. You can relock the bootloader.

I like they've replaced webview with Mull, and how the system updater just works.

I forget what else is different from Lineage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Mull is my current browser of choice, so I like that idea. I will have to give DivestOS a shot. Thank you! It doesn't look like the Pixel 8 Pro is supported by DivestOS, at least not from a quick glance. I will have to look into potentially what it would take to build it for it though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bummer. Guess no one who's compiling it has an 8 yet.

I kind of use Lineage and DivestOS rom availability as my guide to my next phone. If they have a tested rom, then I can upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would have given DivestOS a shot if I was on a Pixel 7 Pro, because that's what I wanted instead of the 8 Pro, but necessity dictated I bought one because I can't be without one for very long.

I will keep an eye on Diveset, but it is looking like I may go back to what I had setup on my 7: LineageOS, rooted, with my necessary tweaks. At least I like tweaking things, so there is that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yea, I stay on slightly older phones so I can run a well-established rom version and I can afford to keep a spare at home, both as a hot spare and for testing. Currently running Pixel 5.

With everything setup right, the home phone syncs everything constantly, only have to do a quick SMS restore and it's just like the previous phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I ended up trying GrapheneOS on my P8P, but it didn't quite fit my use case.

I ended up back on LineageOS again, so I could have AdAway, AFWall+, and as of today I installed a custom kernel (Sultan Kernel) and I am pretty happy with the outcome.

I still love GrapheneOS but I was having issues with notifications among other things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yea, I like Graphene, really appreciate what they're doing. Plan to run it on my spare in a couple months.

But I also want root, Adaway, AFWall, and a few other thungs, so it's DivestOS or Lineage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

There didn't appear to be a DivestOS image for my Pixel 8 Pro, so I went back to LineageOS since I couldnt have AdAway and AfWall+ among other things on GrapheneOS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My last few devices were running PixelExperience. Can't really complain with the quality, however I don't use an Android device as a daily driver anymore

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Pixel Experience is unfortunately dead now. 🙁

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Just saw the news. Quite a shame, but understandable. It's an unpaid, and a thankless job

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

After 10 years of iOS, I made the switch to Graphene last month, and I'm loving it. Android Auto was functional for me, but none of the music apps were nice to use, so I've left my old iPhone in airplane mode in the car to keep playing my downloaded music.

I've not tried any other options since GrapheneOS is the only degoogled option I'm comfortable with

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Have you tried symfonium?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Never been an iOS user outside the days of the iPod touch, specifically gen 2 and 4. Though, I jailbroke them as soon as it was possible. Are you playing local music? I may have some suggestions for it.

Graphene is a nice degoogled option, when there aren't issues. Unfortunately with my Pixel 8 Pro, I have had a lot of issues that just don't seem solvable without dev changes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

You mentioned exactly the two ROMs I'm currently using. GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. And LineageOS for microG on my Samsung tablet. I'm really happy with both of them.

I don't use that many proprietary tech so there is little issues for me. My car only has regular old plain bluetooth, so I wouldn't know. And instead of some add-on firewall/dns adblocker solutions, I'm just using the ~~Librewolf~~ Mull browser with the uBlock plugin.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

As a former LineageOS for microG user I'm happy to say that it's no longer necessary to use it instead of official LineageOS because they finally added signature spoofing to upstream LineageOS [1].

As far as I understand, this allows microG to work perfectly fine with any app on official LineageOS, without any patching of the ROM needed.

I haven't tried it and there's no reason to switch of LineageOS for microG, but I'll definitely give it a shot on a future device.

[1] https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_base/+/383573

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I love GrapheneOS, but it falls short on any adblocking outside the scope of my browser. I have also had issues using PrivateDNS on GrapheneOS. It seems to kill my network connection.

I can't seem to get away from Nova Launcher because of some features that no open source launchers seem to have, and with Nova being bought out by Branch a number of years ago, it made me uncomfortable giving telemetry and other data to them since they are an analytics company, so introduce AFWall+, I can restrict access to network for Nova. I am doing the same thing with GrapheneOS, so a firewall for that exact issue isn't exactly a worry or a problem for me.

I still use Ublock with my browsers of choice on any android based OS, but the problem that I am having is that for videos, Ublock doesn't seem to block any of the video ads for me.

The big reasson for AdAway for me was because it was root based and didn't hijack my DNS, which also allowed me to VPN into my home network so that I could work on some projects on machines there because I don't have any ports exposed to access such services outside of the ports needed for me to connect to my VPN.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Hmm, if you have a home network anyways... Maybe you can run AdGuard/PiHole there. I've switched to blocky.

I made it listen externally and just configure it in the network settings of my devices to override the automatic DNS server. That way I don't need to install sth like AdAway on all of my laptops and phones, because I have one central instance.

Is there anything else that blocks video ads? I've never found anything except for uBlock which actually works. And I've recently learned that you can enable developer mode in Firefox based browsers on Android and install all the Plugins they don't like you to use on mobile. Like SponsorBlock etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I know it's overkill, I was running AdAway as root, with a Wireguard connection to my home VPN, which was running behind a PiHole instance, along with uBlock Origin, and a few other measures of blocking like AFWall+. But I may just go the route of using PiHole as my adblocking solution (along with my own unbound DNS server.)

Though, you have piqued my interest with Blocky, as I have had some issues with PiHole that I am not wanting to troubleshoot at the moment.

I may have to fine tune my uBlock in order to block advertisements from video (and luckily with Mull I have been able to use SponsorBlock successfully.)

The video advertisements that haven't been blocked are on other video hosts that I have found for various purposes, but maybe with fine tuning my uBlock, and having blocky, or PiHole, or AdGuard home (although if I am being honest, I am avoiding anything that isn't open source as much as possible.)

I know my preferences and use cases are niche, but I really do appreciate the conversation around this! Thank you so much!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Give ReThinkDNS a try.

I've used AFWall for years, it's great as a UI for IP Tables, but it doesn't have DNS filtering (naturally).

ReThink adds DNS filtering, so you get both capabilities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I may have to give that a shot. Thank you!