176 points

Imagine all of this talent going to work for grapheneOS and/or hardware company willing to make a phone with grapheneOS as its OS.

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113 points

I’d rather see phones with Ubuntu Touch, PostMarketOS, and Mobian OS’s.

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26 points
*

Same, I’m really tired of the annoying Android logic. I wish we could have a logical OS where we could manage our files properly instead of the filesystem mess we currently have with stuff all over the place.

It didn’t matter when the phones just had a few megs of storage, but you can carry some serious data on those things nowadays.

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10 points

That was one thing that was wild about the Palm WebOS devices. It was just plain old linux. Games? They were just Linux games using SDL. Porting WebOS applications to desktop linux would have been nearly trivial. It would have just been amazing if Palm had pulled it off (alas, they chased a single design, Blackberry-style with small form factor, which missed just so much of the market). The users were utterly oblivious to all this (which is good) and it was just the best combination of capable of great things easily with a power user and able to run whatever the casual user would have needed.

It was still before Android was pretty much a sealed deal in the market (2009 Android was still horribly rough) so it had a shot, but Palm just couldn’t pull it off.

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20 points

i will second this too!

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4 points

Why would you rather see that over graphene? Don’t know enough about either

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6 points

Because graphene is just android without makeup

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4 points

Overlap with desktop Linux means support for that is support for these mobile Linux distros, and desktop Linux gets support from a range of people and companies, not just Google.

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3 points

Same. They just don’t do what I need on my phone. Hopefully that changes, but PinePhone HW kinda sucks (poor battery life and audio quality), and most of the other phones w/ Linux support have some pretty serious caveats.

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3 points

I’m using a pixel 3a xl with ubuntu touch. Works great!

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2 points

Imagine using Ubuntu Touch with Waydroid for Android Compatibility. Would be sick.

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2 points

It works actually. I use this option daily.

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71 points

I’m ready for Linux-phone, but maybe GraphineOS is my gateway. I’m tired of my iPhone not doing the things it should.

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44 points

it is also doing a lot of shit it shouldn’t ;)

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14 points

I’ve been trying to take ownership of my data and simplify my digital life. The greatest barrier to this by far is Apple/iOS.

Sure am glad I picked that walled garden 15 years ago, when I was none the wiser.

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4 points

Isn’t android technically linux?

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1 point

I dunno to be honest.

Just give me mobile Debian, and I’ll be happier.

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10 points
Deleted by creator
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7 points

Does grapheneOS have paid devs or is it all volunteer work? And if they do pay devs, how do they get the money to pay them?

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11 points

Lead dev accepts donations for the project (username “thestinger” on github)

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Not only that, but they apparently also get large amounts of donations in crypto currencies. They also allow donating via PayPal or bank transfer. They set up a whole Canadian non-profit foundation in 2023. GrapheneOS isn’t a small niche project anymore, it’s actually a sizable organization with paid staff (see https://grapheneos.org/hiring). @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world

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2 points

Yeah but AOSP practically does most of the heavy work for graphene.

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1 point
*

ASOP fork, donation model (pay as you feel) pls.

Please voluntary redundancy google staff. Please

(Realistically I know this is a tall ask considering this is people’s livelihoods we’te talking about)

Sign me up babyyyyy

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128 points

I really should switch to Graphene

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29 points

Can I install my bank app on it yet? I remember having problems with attestation in the past.

What about full application backups? I’ve got a few offline apps, I’d like to transfer the data to/from. However, I thought grapheneOS needed the application developer to “approved” this backup/restore method - or you needed root (which invalidated attestation)… I don’t recall which it was (but I really miss titanium backup).

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21 points

my bank app is specificially listed as working but i would def check

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9 points

Which banking app? I can try to install and launch it, tho I probably won’t ask for your login to test that, haha

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4 points

You’re gonna get piled on with requests now.

…on that note, any chance you’d try the Servis Credit Union app?

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4 points

Can you give RBC (royal bank of Canada) banking app a shot for me if you don’t mind?

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3 points

Does Stanford Federal Credit Union launch?

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5 points

here is a list of compatible banking apps, however the list is crowd sourced so trust but verify.

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2 points

Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Original, I thought “hey, everything will work”… but then I started to look into the details. For example, Revolut, it works, then it doesn’t work (due to attestation), then works (after people complain).

I really need to ask myself, if this is the kind of experience I want with my daily driver. On the other hand, I know this is just Google strong arming me into their walled garden. Man, I really hate this dystopian future.

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4 points

And as a follow up question to this, are there any container apps to run those apps that won’t work in a way that they think they are running on stock android?

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3 points

Depends on the bank. Graphene has support for seedvault backups, or you could use syncthing-fork to sync the data over. Or any one of those Foss airdrop clones

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3 points

Nope, but you can use their web apps.

Not sure about backing up apps, never looked into it.

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2 points

They have sandboxed Google services if you need it. But kind of defeats the purpose of Grpahene OS.

I have been on Calyx for a year now. Bank apps in my country totally works with microg.

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3 points

But kind of defeats the purpose of Grpahene OS.

No, it doesn’t. The sandboxing ensures that the Google services have none of the broad access to the operating system they have on a normal Android. For example Google won’t get access to your location unless you explicitly give the permission.

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2 points

I assume Graphene won’t work with my employer’s MDM software. :/

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4 points

What’s making you choose Graphene?

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31 points

Lots of reasons but mostly privacy and a boner for doing nerdy shit.

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21 points

Privacy

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9 points

I also went Graphene, and it’s privacy for me too.

I really don’t want Google Play Services running, and GrapheneOS gives me that option. I have three profiles:

  1. main - no Google Play Services, most apps are from F-Droid
  2. work - Google Play Services, and only the apps I need for work
  3. “google” - Google Play Services, and only apps I need occasionally (e.g. Google Watch/Wallet, Maps, etc)

I spend 99% of my time on main, and most of the rest in “work” (need it for MFA). My phone reboots every 4 hours, so Google Play eventually stops running in the background (tried more frequently, and it was annoying).

There are other Android ROMs, but GrapheneOS has really rapid security updates, perhaps faster than anywhere else. The other projects are good too, it’s just the first I tried and I’ve liked it so far.

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1 point

Thank you for this answer. I’m interested in using something like this rather than the mainstream OSs.

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115 points

This is the best way to do headcount reductions imo. In large organisations there’s always someone who’s been there for a long time and gotten tired of the work, and that would gladly take this type of offer if it’s lucrative enough.

To demonstrate - imagine that you’ve been considering quitting your job for a while. Then someone comes along and says that if you do that, you also get some additional cash for free. You’d probably take it, right?

And if you necessarily need to reduce headcount, then there’s also the argument that if someone leaves voluntarily, then someone who wants to stay doesn’t have to get pushed out.

So yeah, I’m not against this

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45 points

In my experience with this format, only the good ones are leaving and you’re stuck with the rest.

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35 points

My last job did this. They offered more for those who had worked there longer. People with over 15 years got about a years pay and they all took it. People who had been there under a year got nothing so they all stayed.

I was going to take then they withdrew the offer for all devs. I think a lot tried to take it and they realised no one would be left. I would have got 3-4 months pay. Loads of institutional knowledge lost though, i left anyway a few months later.

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13 points

Absolutely. The ones who’ve resigned mentally are fine within their positions. The people with all the business connections and references will be the ones to grab the money and simply start something new. It happened at my company. I was only 3 years in, so it wasn’t enough money for me to quit. But loads of good people left the company.

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5 points

Depends on if the good people have better places to go, I guess. My guess is that you’re probably going to lose people who have some amount of tenure, especially if you’re the kind of company that gives equity that vests on a 4-year schedule. Even if you’re not, people with some amount of tenure will be the ones trending towards being checked out already.

Losing people with tenure means you lose organisational memory, which can definitely be negative.

This is all to say that as an organisation, you should think twice about doing any kind of layoff. They are all bad in their own way. This just happens to be the format that is least bad for most workers, which is why I prefer it.

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39 points

Neither pixel nor android teams should need reductions, this is Google being cheap and fucking with employees’ income for no reason other than blind greed.

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41 points

I mean, you’re probably right, but between this and regular layoffs? This every day of the week

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10 points

Well yeah, being given the option is better than the alternative. I just wish folks wouldn’t accept the premise that Google has any legitimate reason to lay anyone off from Android or Pixel teams. Android, of all things, one of the most widely used operating systems on the planet.

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2 points

Neither pixel nor android teams should need reductions

Oh, you work there? Please regale us with your insider knowledge

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2 points

If they did have insider knowledge why would they explicitly say so in a public forum that may not be anonymous?

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-4 points

My thoughts exactly.

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68 points

Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division, and Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

At least there’s some plausible reasoning for this, instead of blanket headcount reduction to pad profits. Reasoning doesn’t change much of course.

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35 points

It’s still just an excuse to pad profits.

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6 points

Probably.

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3 points

The whole market’s about to roll into recession. All the companies are trying to get ahead of their firing before the market goes tits up.

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39 points

I don’t work for Google. I’m but a voluntary product customer. But if they could offer me a way to get away from them, I’d gladly take it.

Right now I’m moving my personal domain over to cloudflare and email to mxroute. Considering setting up some calendar and similar groupware stuff on kubernetes on Oracles free tier as well.

That’s the other rub…if I want to cloud host anything, I get to choose between Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Alibaba. Wonderful selection we have there.

(I recognize there are smaller players out there like linode and ovh and a trillion VPS providers…only reason I’m considering Oracle is because they give so much free “forever”. And kubernetes is fun for me in like a jigsaw kind of way. Not like the puzzle but the guy from Saw)

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31 points

Sorry for being harsh, but if you use the “free “forever”” offering of any company as alternative to what google offers you learnt nothing from using google.

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11 points
*

I think free cloud compute offerings are a bit different. Different motivations. They aren’t trying to harvest your data, they are trying to advertise their product.

They want sysadmins to play around and convince their bosses to buy in on Oracle. They want web devs to build demos and get their clients to host there. They want companies to get their feet wet risk free, before spending tens of thousands of dollars migrating existing workloads to them.

Harvesting data from those customers would be a scandal, and have massive negative repercussions.

And honestly, even with the announcement of Stargate and Oracle being a partner, I’d probably rather give them a couple dollars a month to run a couple small buckets than to give it to Amazon.

I can’t self host at home because no incoming IP. Unless I want to switch to my only other option, Xfinity. Which I don’t.

And…let’s face it…if the government wants to find me, they are going to find me. It doesn’t matter if my Bluesky PDS or my kids Minecraft server is hosted at home or up there. It’s tied to me either way.

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5 points

These are the same people who brought you Oracle DB licensing. They’ll fuck you over someday, the countdown clock is already ticking

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5 points

Just pay the 1$ per month of a lowendbox. Com

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18 points

Forever is only forever until profit margins get tight or they have a bad enough fiscal quarter…

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15 points

I replaced most cloud services with my own Nextcloud instance. I like Nextcloud.

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1 point

It rules!

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5 points

I have two free forever servers, they are alright, but they route weird. When I’m in China they go from Beijing to Japan and then to Korea causing packet loss and delays

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5 points

I’ve seen enough traps set by Oracle to be extra afraid of any wooden horses they are offering up.

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3 points

Oracle has been coasting on legacy crap for a long time. They’re just like IBM.

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