this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
92 points (95.1% liked)

Privacy

31108 readers
413 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Im considering buying a new phone and i don't really consider a Pixel. I really like Fairphones approach, with the self repairable stuff. Even though they don‘t have a headphone jack. But well… I can’t change it. I’ll definitely go with the adapter over wireless headphones.

But to my question: What private OSes are there? Fairphone sells FP4s with eOS, how is that? And does it work on the FP5? GrapheneOS only works on Google Pixels right?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I found the following website to be a definitive source for comparisons of all sorts, including this one:

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Too bad it's hosted on Microsoft's GitHub. Wish open source proponents would stick to open source solutions

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Personally, and thanks to some comparison charts, Graphene is the best, followed by DivestOS for most devices. Others are weaker, and Calyx is not useful as we have stronger Graphene.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah Fairphones all are fair and whatnot until you find out their software isn’t fair and they don’t give a shit about managing security properly nor collaborating with others such as GrapheneOS.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes, GrapheneOS only works on Pixel devices, because the project has some pretty extensive hardware security requirements: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

The Fairphone is a highly insecure device, which comes nowhere close to the (hardware) security of a Pixel. On top of that, the Fairphone company doesn't even know how to maintain their own Fairphone OS. The verified boot implementation is fundamentally broken and very misleading, since it's signed with the publicly available (!!!) AOSP test private keys. This is such a blatant disregard of security practices, that should have made it impossible to certify their devices. It's not a surprise either that Fairphone regularly misses important Android security patches, or delivers them months later. That's also why GrapheneOS will never support devices like the Fairphone. There are more issues with Fairphone's misleading update policy that I haven't covered in detail.

I highly recommend against purchasing such insecure, and poorly maintained hardware. DivestOS is the best option for "damage control", if you already own a Fairphone. Its developer actually cares about users and their security, and the OS is properly signed.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago

I've never heard of Fairphone and have only barely heard of DivestOS.

load more comments
view more: next ›