7 ms·

I was very interested in Graphene, do you have other grounds for your suspicions?

fsflover 1y ago
I agree with the parent. GrapheneOS puts security above freedom, which is wrong. It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware, which is questionable in the long term. They refuse to support different hardware "for your security". Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44680624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44680624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675380
- strcat 1y ago
  > It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware These are the only reasonably secure mobile devices with proper alternate OS support. It's not GrapheneOS forcing people to use these devices if they want a device to run it but rather other OEMs not providing what is required. The hardware requirements are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. GrapheneOS has been working with a major Android OEM since June 2025 towards their future devices meeting these requirements and providing official GrapheneOS support. > Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security. These devices provide objectively far less privacy and security at a hardware, firmware and software level. Linux itself is not a long term approach to privacy and security due to being a massive monolithic kernel written in C with very poor security. A long term approach will involve moving over current software onto a reasonably secure base. Moving to a dramatically less private and secure desktop operating system stack would be a huge regression in both the short and long term. It's not advancing as quickly in those areas, would not the usability/functionality people expect and is definitely not the future of secure devices. Android's current incarnation based around the Linux kernel is not the future of secure devices either, but it's far more private and secure today with a clearer path to moving forward.
- backscratches 1y ago
  I have been using google phones since the nexus and have never given google any money or paid more than $300 far a device. I am essentially pirating billions of dollars of expert development from them and they get nothing in return. In a real way I am actively siphoning value from google making them lose money (they get none of my data, which is what they hoped to actieve by producing the hardware).
  - fsflover 1y ago
    If you're talking about buying used Pixels, you are affecting the market effectively increasing the value of Google's phones, which in the end benefits Google.
    - backscratches 1y ago
      I get more out of it than they do.
- scheeseman486 1y ago
  I don't think I've ever read any solid refutation of the technical choices of the project, mostly just character attacks, the basis of which are dodgy at best. They're completely up-front about the limitations and catches of their choices, too. Those links don't really help your case, to be frank. Nothing strcat says reads as incorrect or even particularly controversial, they have personal beef with CalyxOS but their criticisms of the choices of the project are largely on point. They're justifiably upset by the mental health accusations too, it's kind of a joke that one of those people in the thread tried to gaslight strcat about how these accusations are somehow not a recurring issue when I, as a third party observer, have seen it come up all the fucking time. Meanwhile, you're imagining "attacks" on GNU/Linux phones, when most of what I read from them regarding those was sober and reasonable, if not particularly positive, but they're allowed to do that. Their priorities are clearly security and none of those phones really have any.
  - strcat 1y ago
    CalyxOS was not a hardened OS and is a much different space from GrapheneOS. https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm provides a high quality comparison of the privacy and security between different alternate AOSP-based operating systems. CalyxOS has essentially been discontinued, see https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-community/ https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-communit.... It hasn't received the 2025-06-05 or later patch level.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    This is another project that knows what you need better than yourself. People are constantly asking them to add support to other hardware, but the answer is "it's insecure". This is completely wrong and forces everybody without a(n expensive!) Pixel to abandon reasonable security. Even Qubes OS allows installing itself on hardware without VT-d, with respective warnings, and plans to enable GPU acceleration in VMs on demand. Their priority clearly isn't to make as many people as possible more secure but to force Google on you. Are you calling the above a "character attack"? I would love to use GrapheneOS on my Librem 5 and Pinephone. No proprietary drivers are required. Yes, some security features are lacking. Yet it would be a win for everybody. I didn't say anything about CalyxOS: I don't care about this.

I agree with the parent. GrapheneOS puts security above freedom, which is wrong. It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware, which is questionable in the long term. They refuse to support different hardware "for your security". Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44680624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44680624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675380

strcat 1y ago
> It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware These are the only reasonably secure mobile devices with proper alternate OS support. It's not GrapheneOS forcing people to use these devices if they want a device to run it but rather other OEMs not providing what is required. The hardware requirements are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. GrapheneOS has been working with a major Android OEM since June 2025 towards their future devices meeting these requirements and providing official GrapheneOS support. > Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security. These devices provide objectively far less privacy and security at a hardware, firmware and software level. Linux itself is not a long term approach to privacy and security due to being a massive monolithic kernel written in C with very poor security. A long term approach will involve moving over current software onto a reasonably secure base. Moving to a dramatically less private and secure desktop operating system stack would be a huge regression in both the short and long term. It's not advancing as quickly in those areas, would not the usability/functionality people expect and is definitely not the future of secure devices. Android's current incarnation based around the Linux kernel is not the future of secure devices either, but it's far more private and secure today with a clearer path to moving forward.
backscratches 1y ago
I have been using google phones since the nexus and have never given google any money or paid more than $300 far a device. I am essentially pirating billions of dollars of expert development from them and they get nothing in return. In a real way I am actively siphoning value from google making them lose money (they get none of my data, which is what they hoped to actieve by producing the hardware).
- fsflover 1y ago
  If you're talking about buying used Pixels, you are affecting the market effectively increasing the value of Google's phones, which in the end benefits Google.
  - backscratches 1y ago
    I get more out of it than they do.
scheeseman486 1y ago
I don't think I've ever read any solid refutation of the technical choices of the project, mostly just character attacks, the basis of which are dodgy at best. They're completely up-front about the limitations and catches of their choices, too. Those links don't really help your case, to be frank. Nothing strcat says reads as incorrect or even particularly controversial, they have personal beef with CalyxOS but their criticisms of the choices of the project are largely on point. They're justifiably upset by the mental health accusations too, it's kind of a joke that one of those people in the thread tried to gaslight strcat about how these accusations are somehow not a recurring issue when I, as a third party observer, have seen it come up all the fucking time. Meanwhile, you're imagining "attacks" on GNU/Linux phones, when most of what I read from them regarding those was sober and reasonable, if not particularly positive, but they're allowed to do that. Their priorities are clearly security and none of those phones really have any.
- strcat 1y ago
  CalyxOS was not a hardened OS and is a much different space from GrapheneOS. https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm provides a high quality comparison of the privacy and security between different alternate AOSP-based operating systems. CalyxOS has essentially been discontinued, see https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-community/ https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-communit.... It hasn't received the 2025-06-05 or later patch level.
- fsflover 1y ago
  This is another project that knows what you need better than yourself. People are constantly asking them to add support to other hardware, but the answer is "it's insecure". This is completely wrong and forces everybody without a(n expensive!) Pixel to abandon reasonable security. Even Qubes OS allows installing itself on hardware without VT-d, with respective warnings, and plans to enable GPU acceleration in VMs on demand. Their priority clearly isn't to make as many people as possible more secure but to force Google on you. Are you calling the above a "character attack"? I would love to use GrapheneOS on my Librem 5 and Pinephone. No proprietary drivers are required. Yes, some security features are lacking. Yet it would be a win for everybody. I didn't say anything about CalyxOS: I don't care about this.