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> More developers are familiar with Android than the desktop Linux software stack. More work goes into it. Far more apps are written for it, and that includes a

• strcat 4y ago
  > Care to provide any evidence to prove that Purism or its employees are "spreading tons of misinformation and outright lies about the mainstream options"? Since you're doing that yourself, I don't think engaging with you on the topic is productive. I responded here due to the inaccurate attacks on GrapheneOS from people promoting Purism products. Doubling down on spreading their inaccurate marketing / talking points isn't going to deter us from responding and we're more than happy to post a more detailed response on our site and across platforms. I already gave detailed responses and don't intend to repeat much of what I've already said. > The problem is that the Android app ecosystem has a very large number of apps which are based on collecting users' personal information and violating people's privacy, and it is hard for a normal user to avoid all the spyware and malware in Android. In my experience using CyanogenMod/LineageOS and the F-Droid repo since 2015, I inevitably fall back to installing some proprietary apps when using AOSP-derivatives, whereas my PinePhone and Librem 5 USA only have FOSS apps and drivers installed on them. If the goal is to use FOSS as much as possible, you are better off buying a Linux phone in my opinion. There's a far larger and better ecosystem of open source apps for Android than there is for the products that you're marketing, and they can be used on secure devices rather than blatantly insecure ones not even meeting basic standards as I've already detailed in my responses. > The problem is that Google only sells Pixels in a very limited number of countries. Whereas Purism offers free worldwide shipping for the Librem 5, the Pixel 6 is only being sold in 8 countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, UK, USA), so your security requirements exclude over 90% of the world's population from being able to use GrapheneOS. Plus, many people don't want to financially support a company like Google which is based on Surveillance Capitalism. Pixels can be purchased internationally. They don't need to be bought from Google. Purism is a company based around spreading misinformation and marketing their products dishonestly which I know people in our community don't want to support. We're not going to support thoroughly insecure devices from a company which is unwilling to even admit to the limitations/weaknesses let alone fixing them and producing something we could ever consider supporting. The experience we had with them is that they only want to use the name of projects like ours to promote themselves as partners without doing anything on their part. They engaged in libel/harassment/bullying targeting our developers in response to us not supporting their phone as a target and explaining why within our community. I see what you're doing here as an extension of their dishonest marketing and inaccurate attacks on other platforms/projects/products. If this is going to be something that's happening regularly, we'll add detailed documentation / articles to our site about the topic to reference so we don't need to keep writing up the same things. > Not true. Purism has promised to provide updates to the proprietary firmware on the Librem 5, and already provides instructions for how to update the firmware on the WiFi/BT and USB controller. There aren't full firmware security updates for the Librem 5 and what I said is completely accurate. What's even worse is that they do not ship the incomplete updates that could be available and they did things in a way that makes it impossible to even ship all of those as part of an OS. Please don't claim that my completely accurate description of the situation is not true based on something that's not in any way debunking what I said. > What are you talking about? Purism purposely designed the Librem 5 to avoid planned obsolescence, so it looked for component suppliers who support their hardware for a long time. For example, NXP guarantees that that it will provide updates for the i.MX 8M Quad for 15 years (Jan. 2018 - Jan. 2033). They're unable to provide full security updates from day one and the device is already end-of-life in terms of what that means for GrapheneOS. It would have to be marked as end-of-life from day one if we added support for it. We would be unable to declare any Android security patch level for the device due to it not meeting the basic security requirements and not having full firmware security updates available. What I've said is true, and you're just claiming otherwise based on their deliberately very incomplete and misleading marketing. > In contrast, Google only promises to provide 3 years of OS updates and security updates for the Pixel 3/4/5, and 3 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates for the Pixel 6. Qualcomm announced in Dec. 2020 that it will support its Snapdragon processors (which are used in Pixel devices) for 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security updates. Those are minimum guarantees of full security updates, not end-of-life dates and the number of days you get those for the Librem 5 is ZERO. The only recommended devices for GrapheneOS are the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which means that there is at least 5 years of full security updates for the devices we support. You can see from our site that we continue providing extended support releases which we mark as insecure past the end-of-life of devices. A device is end-of-life as soon as any important component no longer provides the proper monthly security updates. How can we support the Librem 5 even aside from all the missing security features which have already been explained elsewhere, when we would be unable to provide anything close to the March 2022 security update, and would be unable to ship all the updates that are available through the OS? > Linux phones like the Librem 5 and PinePhone use separate components which are supported for many years by the manufacturers, whereas most Android phones (like the Pixels) use integrated mobile system-on-chips which are only manufactured for 1-2 years and only supported for 3-4 years by the manufacturer. Because Linux phones use components with long-term support by the component suppliers, the Librem 5 is the first phone to be sold with the guarantee of lifetime software updates, and PINE64 promised to manufacture the PinePhone for 5 years, which is longer than any other smartphone ever sold. This is completely inaccurate. They still use an SoC and the components they've chosen do not provide a longer period of support in the sense that Android expects in order to declare the latest security patch level. Several of their component choices including the radios rule that out, as does the way they are integrated. Your claim of lifetime security updates is completely bogus and demonstrates the extreme lengths Purism goes to in order to mislead people and profit from it. They still need firmware support and all the drivers, etc. still need to be maintained. There's really no point of engaging with people lying through their teeth and pushing all their inaccurate talking points so I'm not going to keep engaging with you much further. Linux doesn't mean systemd, polkit, glibc, GCC, binutils, GNOME, pulseaudio/pipewire, Wayland/X11, etc. It makes no sense to claim these are Linux phones when the vast majority of smartphones run Linux. It's marketing spin. If you want to call it a GNU/Linux phone, go ahead, but what you're doing is a deliberate attempt at misleading people on their part. > The Librem 5 doesn't need an IOMMU, because it uses separated components, and it uses serial buses (USB 2.0/3.0, SDIO, I2C and I2S) that don't allow direct memory access, so there is absolute no chance of the WiFi/BT, cellular modem, GNSS and USB controller being able to access the RAM or the SoC's cache. Unlike the Snapdragon processors in Pixels whose hardware is essentially a black box, we can independently verify by looking at the open source schematics that direct memory access is not possible in the Librem 5. This is not accurate. It still has an SoC with a ton of components aside from the SoC despite your inaccurate claim that it doesn't, and those components still need to be isolated with an IOMMU. The other components which you're talking about using USB are dramatically less isolated than the Qualcomm or Samsung baseband on mainstream devices. You're trying to present something dramatically worse as being better in this regard. Are you trying to claim that the Librem 5 doesn't have components like a GPU and other SoC components? The Librem 5 hardware is also just as much of a black box. It's 100% as proprietary. It does not have firmware or hardware that's any more open and this is a blatant lie. Them marketing the hardware as being more open is thoroughly unethically and dishonest. They've done the same with their laptops and other products, which has done immense harm to projects like Talos actually trying to produce open hardware in any actual sense of the word.