Do you use a device with open source Android firmware? What device, which distro and what do you do with it? I have a Samsung tablet with LineageOS and apps from F-Droid. Other than displaying dire warnings about the unlocked bootloader every time it cold boots, It’s great for a “recliner system”: email, Web browsing, E-book reader and MP3 player. What do you have, what do you use it for, and how well does it work for you?
Pixel 6Pro, GrapheneOS. It’s my daily driver and minus battery life (soon to be upgraded) it’s great.
To be pedantic though, Android (AOSP) is open source either way, it’s the Google shit that isn’t. On firmware though, they all have the proprietary blobs in there, no way around that. Same goes for Lineage, as well as Graphene. Only difference with Graphene is there’s a lot more protections in place. But that’s not an option for a Samsung. But Lineage as long as it’s been further De-Googled is fine for a non daily use (phone) device is still pretty descent.
I tried Lineage (actually /e/OS) on a Samsung phone, and it was great, except voice calling did not work. It turns out that the Samsung VoLTE hardware has never been figured out by open source devs. Graphene looks interesting, I may trade in my phone to try it.
You might want to consider CalyxOs since runs Android without any Google, just microG. Very easy on your battery 🔋
It does, but also means that things like paid apps are likely dead, lots of banking apps have issues with it, and you’re at the mercy of things like Aurora which Google has been fucking with hardcore lately.
There are easy ways around it. People should be happy with whatever their decision is and try different options/softwares
Therea no way around the play store verification subscription when an app implements it. Not like the old days when you could crack apps, which is stupid from a security standpoint anyways, but either way that’s gone, and many apps are moving to that.
That said, yes, people should try different things, but should know all the up/downsides of the decisions so they don’t waste their time as well. microG giving people push ability doesn’t really do the job anymore for many peoples use cases.
A couple months ago when Google out a beating on Aurora and everything was near useless because of rate limited accts and people either had to log into Google accts or not get anything done, a shitload just went with Graphene and the sandboxed play services that they didn’t have to worry about. The Matrix room full of new installs showed that on a daily basis for weeks.