As Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled in the future. They’re going to eventually ban adblockers for chromium. We need to quickly respond with alternatives to android, we must end this market consolidation.
What are the current viable choices for everyday use? I currently use a Pixel 6a with Graphene and I like it a lot as it does everything I want it to. It doesn’t work with my bank app but I don’t really care about that as I just use a browser when I need to access it.
Ubuntu touch, postmarket and sailfish are the ones I have heard of but I don’t know what state they are in in terms of how usable they are on a day to day basis.
Hey I’m curious. Is there a speciffic feature Graphene doesn’t support that your bank app requires? I’m in Australia, and am planning to use GrapheneOS on a Pixel phone, so I’m wondering if my bank app would be affected too.
When government/corporate services are involved, I suggest doing as much as you can via the web browser as opposed to app, in the interests of privacy and civil liberty.
So long as it’s going through the browser we have a degree of control over functionality and connectivity. Apps strip that away. Apps are you doing everything on their terms, while suffering an ad (their logo) on your home screen rent-free. You can pin browser bookmarks to home as well in Android.
Hello, pixel 8 grapheneOS user here. I was going to say that some bank apps don’t work like chase bank and I went to look for a compatibility list and it said it worked. As it turns out, I just had to enable a setting for that app and now it works just fine. So I guess look at the compatibility list and the comments listed.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
Thanks, my bank is compatible according to that list.
I can only comment on postmarketOS as I‘m using that on a near daily basis. It is great and fund to use. It’s not end user ready yet though. Normal stuff works. Watching videos on firefox or a native app, music, phone, messages. All no problem. Just cameras are a problem atm, next to some quirks that need ironing out.
Stop using Chrome? Firefox works with uBlock Origin just fine.
Yeah. Google want to be a monopoly in any field they engage with. We as consumers don’t have any obligation to treat them as such.
Currently running DivestOS on my second-hand fully degoogled Fairphone 3 and everything works pretty much perfectly (a couple minor things are glitchy but it’s only aesthetic). I get 80 % of my apps from F-Droid and the remaining from Aurora Store. Things like my bank apps also work after setting up microG
My bank won’t support unlocked phones with custom ROMs. For security reasons. But sure, online banking using any browser is no problem…
Well, I’m going to ditch them soon anyway but I wonder whether it will be better with the next one.
You can check your laptop/desktop for banking information twice a day as a compromise until your bank/credit union supports Linux phones.
My banks technically don’t either but after some tinkering with the aforementioned microG they’re none the wiser :)
It’s encouraging to see people making their banking apps on alternative OS, as that would be the main obstacle for me if I wasn’t able to pay with my phone nowadays .
Only issue is that you can’t interact with most corporate services… I want to see Linux phones succeed as well
I‘m using postmarketOS and helping with development.
How long does it take to learn the programming language?
Thank you for your service 🫡
Thats the beauty of it. You dont need to code for any large project to be able to contribute. We need people test it on old phones (and new ones if they wish) and report back their findings in an organized fashion. We need people to tinker with the cameras so we can get them to work at some point, we need help with proper documentation, people to spread the word, you name it.
But to answer your question, its not one language. Its linux, the base is C, then there are the desktop environments. Some is config files written in yaml, some is css. Most people dont comprehend how ginormous linux as a platform really is and how much potential there is to help.
Check postmarketOS.org for opportunities to help out.
Yeah I started doing git with bug testing.
Most devs are happy to have someone file a competent bug report with: issue, environment specs, steps to replicate and screenshots/recordings.
I’ve gone back and forth with devs testing things like game mods and android FOSS apps.
Thats really awesome. Thanks for sharing your experience. We need more people to talk about it and show that its not only for some unknown elite to help with foss development.
I think I will write documentation and work on the functionality for the Pixel 3a xl
I’m working on porting Mobian to the Pixel 3a, pretty much everything works, even eSIM. The kernel dev is already working on upstreaming the patches, some are already in the next Linux release.
I’ve recently posted about the progress: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/19600671
Updates to that post would be that eSIM does work and that the internal microphone will work very soon once the already existing patches are pushed to the git repo.
Oh 😯 is that eSIM support general, meaning other devices can benefit from it too? Lack of eSIM support is currently my main stumbling block why I can’t go back to mobile Linux.
I don’t know how well this is supported for other devices, I only know that some people use an eSIM on other models. 🤔
@erebion great work! 🎉
@poVoq check out @z3ntu’s eSIM manager for Mobile Linux:
https://lucaweiss.eu/post/2024-06-24-esim-manager-for-mobile-linux/
@erebion @Beaver VoLTE support? Us poor USA users need that, I heard rumors it may be working in @postmarketOS but I haven’t been able to check it out yet. I have a spare 3a XL ready in the wings, would LOVE to throw @mobian on it!
Sounds like an awesome idea. Every person investing some brain power into FOSS is a win for the community.
While we’re on this topic:
Anyone running PostmarketOS for daily driver? I got a Fairphone 4 running LineageOS but am thinking to switch to it. I looked on the wiki but seems the support is incomplete…
From what I’ve heard uBlock Origin Lite only barely falls short of the ad-blocking coverage that regular uBO offers, so there will still be options for Chrome users after this happens, not to mention the multitude of alternative browsers for Android.
I still think that making Linux phones a viable alternative is very important, but it’s not significantly more important now than it was a month ago.
If Manifest 3 becomes mainstream, ad software developers will simply create stuff that bypasses it.
Hypothetical example: there will be a 30 000 domain name blocking limit. Result: ad networks now have 30 001 domains.
I agree with you.
Linux phones have always been important and some ad-blocking controversy (which I don’t know the details about) isn’t making it more important than before.
Linux on desktop is now user friendly and I hope one day will reach that on phones too, even if for now it sounds way too complicated for me.
One can use firefox or deviations.
Won’t stop google from putting in ads in android apps
Ads have been in Android apps for 15 years, you can generally block them all with Private DNS
Pihole might solve that.
Either way, though, I would love for linux phones to become valid alternatives to android.
We need a safe home for ReVanced and to give google less of an argument for removing as it would be ran on a Linux phone os
Tempfixes are good, independence is better
Netguard is also great. I set it to block all apps network access by default, and have a whitelist with apps that actually need it. It has significantly reduced the amount of ads and tracking significantly from my phone.
I have a pihole as a DHCP server. Easy does it.
Sorry but thats not true. A lot of seevices bake ads into their video signal. Neither a dhcp nor a dns can change that. You need to have something that reads that signal and decides on that.
Try Ad-Away
Isn’t Firefox an alternative? Works today.
Google could remove FireFox from the PlayStore
Android has always had support for sideloading
Just use obtainium
Sideloading it or using a different app store would still be possible. Would Google remove the ability to do those things? Would a fork of AOSP not easily restore that functionality? Regardless, I’m all for more OS options for consumers.
I don’t get it from the PlayStore. Android is open source. If they ever go crazy lock down then we can run AOSP or variants.
More importantly, mozilla is in google‘s pocket due to google being by far the largest financial contributor. Expect them to ruin firefox at some point. Also, the recent ad drama should have taught you that one lone competitor does not make a market.
I don’t know if they legally can do that. Would be an antitrust violation.
I dont know if they legally can but that has never stopped them do anything.
Not in the EU. I think they’d face antitrust problems in USA too.
I think they’d get pushback from Samsung too
I’m donating $1 a month to postmarketOS in my retaliation against Google
Cool
Meanwhile, you’ve been able to use ad blockers on Safari for iOS for years and years. Once the EU forces Apple to let developers publish actual other browsers on the App Store (and not just reskinned Safari), iOS should be pretty great in terms of browsing liberty & comfort.
In the EU only. Fuck Apple.
Yes, fuck apple. But also fuck all politicians who are not as stringent with legislature as the EU.
We need to push for more countries to regulate the tyranny of the app store.
What about, ubuntu mobile is that any good?
Yup. We need to get away from Google, if we really want privacy. I’m glad I switched to a Linux desktop, but Google collects a crap load of info.
I run Ubuntu Touch on Google Pixel 3A XL and use Firefox and waydroid for android apps. Runs great even though it was released back in 2019. Governments must legislate all phone boot loaders, and service providers, be unlocked.
This comment right here folks!
Just curious, but does Waydroid open the full emulator OS environment like it does on desktop or does it just open apps in a container?
It opens a full containerized android session.
Does it suspend the Linux UI? Seems like unnecessary overhead to be running two DEs/launchers
Is this something a normie could do? I run fedora on my laptop, but I never really get past anything more than basic GUI stuff. I mainly use it for writing papers for school and some web browsing. My phone, however, I use pretty heavily. It’s where I do 95+% of my web browsing, Lemmy, YouTube, streaming video, and some of my school stuff. Banking apps I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to use on that, but I could always use my bank through the browser, I’d imagine.
It’s fairly straight forward. Just need to make sure your unlocked phone includes the bootloader being unlocked. There’s a list of supported devices for UT on this link. https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/
What does this have to do with Android? 100% expected this to be about the Graphene issue, but instead it’s a simple “use Firefox or a fork.”
