deGoogled OS system

  • Thank you for the responses. They are interesting and contributory
  • The situation with duopoly in mobile OS world is terrible. It has many consequences. Like e.g. you have application support only for these two companies. The area where are you pushed to use these applications is bigger and bigger. It is not just the banks applications, but more and more public services like public transport, trains etc.
    I am wondering how guys running PostmarketOS or Ubuntu touch deal with that.
  • Great article provided by ohnonot. It shows how evil is google.
  • I still have feeling the EU totally failed in this area. Sailfish could be supported by EU as investment into research and technology. But it is different topic.
  • Back to the reality. Situation is I have to run android apps, doesnā€™t matter if I want or not. I like many of you are very fundamental against the AOSP. But what is the difference in the end if I run the apps on SFOS or on AOSP ? (and it is necessary to say, often very unstable on SFOS) I agree with the idea if google stops to develop android, all his forks will end up very soon. But does this change anything? And it is very unlikely BTW.
  • Little technical question. Does anybody have idea how Huawei did it, he is able run it completely without GMS ? And does it mean is my privacy safe (I mean against google) then ?
  • Another small one according MicroG, maybe somebody knows. In case you use OS with micro-g and are you avoiding all google apps (google search, maps, youtube, gmail, apps with trackers) is your privacy safe then?
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Do you have experience with Volla OS itself ?
And how do you deal with android apps on Ubuntu touch ?

Lot of things, I will try to reply as best as I can, my situation is the following Iā€™ve got an Xperia XA2 with Sailfish X, and an Xperia XZ2 Compact with community port.

Iā€™m able to run android apps in both phone, one with the alien dalvik, the other with waydroid (Is a virtual machine with android), the first you get a reduced performance, for the waydroid you get much less performance. But in the second case you have a full android. In the case of the second one, I run android only when I need it (Is like having two phone, but the android only stopped), in waydroid I donā€™t have GPS (for the good and the bad)

Iā€™ve got a neightboard had a huawei, he was happy until you need any app that requires GPS (His main problem was youtube, as it was uninstalling automatically or something similar)

MigroG provides different kinds of integration (Iā€™ve got installed in waydroid), it can simply simulate Google Play services without account, and this allows only a small amount of apps to work, or you can start enabling stuff, to make it more compatible, Iā€™ve got some apps (one of the banks) that still say need the Google Play services with everything enabled and green. But with that, yeah, migro-g will avoid all the stuff that google does in the Google Play Services, but if any app tracks you, they will be able to do it, or send data to google, or etc

About ubuntu touch, Waydroid was created originally from ubuntu, with a name andbox or similar. Which means they should have something like that.

I hope I didnā€™t lie with anything and I hope it helped.

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Therefore it is your (our) duty to refuse that while it is still possible. Otherwise weā€™ll be completely stuck, no alternative can ever make it. There are actually people here; and especially using the other ā€œrealā€ alternative OSes that plain refuse to even consider app-locked services.

See above. It is a livable refusal to participate fully. AOSP is basically full participation in the lock-in.
I canā€™t help but think it is good that AppSupport isnā€™t perfect sometimesā€¦ it serves well to highlight the problem.

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in my case it freeze the car hf kit.

the reality from me is that I donā€™t use apps. And actually you donā€™t need it. You can still do everything without it. Some people say that in their countries itā€™s impossible, well I donā€™t believe that. It may be inconvenient but for sure itā€™s possible. So just stop using the apps and if you need one for work then ask your company to provide you a cell phone for this. This is what I did. The phone is used only for work and thatā€™s it. I donā€™t touch it after work hours I donā€™t care what happens with it.
The HR team were quite surprised but yeah they gave me the phone and I donā€™t care. On my private I donā€™t use the apps.

TBH that EU thing you mentioned is interesting. We should make a petition so EU will force companies to start releasing APIs. Banks etc should release the API because right now we have duopoly.

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Iā€™ve never used any kind of Android or Android-Apps.

Iā€™m fine with Ubuntu Touch and/or SFOS, their ecosystems of native apps and some WEB-services.

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A very important question for what I think would be SFOSā€™s private user marketing strategy if it had one. :wink:

Android should actively be considered spyware, little different from having TikTok on your phone. Google has a whopping 260MB a month of data sent to it from Android phones without usersā€™ permission. You canā€™t even opt-out.

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when theyā€™re not even in use? ā€¢ The Register

I donā€™t know how much of this is Android vs Google apps but unless Google comes clean, Android is presumed spyware.

I presume that App Support blocks any basic Android data leakage.

Jolla is kinda remarkable in this day and age in that it refuses to abuse our data. I personally feel that this should be supported, and I think itā€™s important to have a viable alternative to iDroid. For me, itā€™s more than viable ā€“ itā€™s easily the the better option and I feel good about supporting the underdog who shares my values.

Secondly, Material Design is really ugly. Using Android apps on SFOS means you never see it (unless the apps use it). SFOS is very pretty in comparison.

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Huawei also uses AOSP (like every mobile OS except the Pinephone and Postmarket OS as far as i know) and a self developed GMS called HMS similar to microG (donā€™t got the reference right know but i can search it, tell me if i have to).

Yes, should be, if you donā€™t use Google apps/services or apps using them and are fine with Chinese companies tracking you.

Recommendation: Donā€™t use play services at all. On some apps you will encounter limitations but you will be able to live with it or to find an alternative app.
Statement: AOSP at least is open source.

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but Without VoLTE and VoNR (5G), the AOSP is totally no go.
Thatā€™s why I made another topic, regarding community device. That all forks and non forks like Jolla and Ubports should create a phone, and abstraction layer on top of which they can build their systems. That should handle VoLTE and VoNR (5G).

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If i get you right your are missing VoLTE and VoNR as working feature and think this is AOSP related?!
If this is the case then isnā€™t the most promising way to get this achieved by developing a patch for AOSP fixing this (or let someone patch this, if this is not already work in progress) and propose Google to incorporate this patch in AOSP?

Nope, you got me wrong :wink:

What I mean is that AOSP and all derivations will be dead if they wonā€™t implement VoLTE or VoNR once 3g and 2g will be turned off.

itā€™s a joke right? I donā€™t have proper equipment to do this also, as we see here with SFOS, it looks like thereā€™s some NDA required. Besides I donā€™t wonā€™t to support Google in any way and doing anything for AOSP means you do support Google cause they would benefit from that.

Ok, now itā€™s my turn to not understand what you mean.
Iā€™m typing this on a Fairphone 4 5G with CalyxOS, which is an AOSP-based Android. VoLTE works fine.

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And on how many phones that works?

Maybe I still donā€™t understand your point?
The way I understand it, the answer would be: I guess on every phone which is physically capable of doing VoLTE and which is able to run Android 12+, at least if I understand this correctly:
https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/ims-service-entitlement?hl=en
And even in AOSP 9 there seems to be VoLTE, at least it is mentioned here: https://source.android.com/docs/setup/about/p-release-notes?hl=en
But as I think I might be missing your point (or misunderstand you or the technical details), I guess Iā€™ll better stop here :smiley:

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No no donā€™t stop. It seems that the entitlement functionality is there. But still you need to handle the VoLTE itself. For this, some devices have everything ready out of the box. My understanding is that itā€™s kind of built into the chipset. These phones are the best for AOSP and should have VoLTE working without any additional work. Other phones need additional firmware and here were it gets complicated. Thereā€™s also third thing. The carrier need to allow your phone to use VoLTE. For Example Pixels are quite foggy in regard of VoLTE in Poland. Some networks require you to call them so they will enabled this. Other networks just doesnā€™t allow this. At least from what I see on the network.

yes, if you can find more info about HMS ā€œmicroGā€ implementation, I would appreciate that

Still I donā€™t get it.
If I run android apps on AOSP we will be stuck in android monopol forever, but if I run them on SFOS world will be better place ? How this will influence problem with android monopol ?

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yes, I do not need use apps. I can connect to bank via web browser.
And before pure maps was ported to sailfish there was no navigation on SFOS. And yes, I do not need to use navigation. I can ask people around for the direction ā€¦
With this logic in the end I do not need phone itself ā€¦

I totally agree google android is spyware. It is fact. Sad fact.
But again. What is the difference in the end if I run the apps on SFOS or on AOSP ?
If I run them on SFOS, google will stop be evil, otherwise not ? I still do not understand your point