• General

  • Making GrapheneOS mainstream

Personally speaking, i love our own cool features
Those features excite me and are the main reason i use this OS.
I´d much rather see the team working on those then AI etc.

Also i am sure that the team is working at 150%.
If we (the community) want more/faster feature updates the only thing we can do is sponsor the project
88% towards $6,000 per month goal via Github Sponsoring is effin nothing for what the project is doing. Of course i dont see the whole picture here as there are other ways to donate that are not transparent.

According to strcat on Matrix a few weeks ago, there's currently a lack of developers but the funding to hire new ones are currently not lacking. People are reluctant to join the team as developers because of the ongoing harassment campaigns against GOS. They are actively hiring: https://grapheneos.org/hiring

The GOS account on Mastodon/Twitter made a detailed response on the challenges of replacing / building on the stock apps:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111273340265340569
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111273354523009571

    Depends what you define as mainstream. Very common in the security research / privacy communities.
    Most people are not after the features GOS prioritizes anyway, they just want better cameras/cheap price etc.

    I'd say it is as mainstream as Linux on a desktop. Not for everyone, but the ones who do use it know why.
    There are almost no features available on stock Pixel that you can't have on GOS and Gapps.

      23Sha-ger

      23Sha-ger 'd say it is as mainstream as Linux on a desktop

      I strongly disagree that this is the case. In my local area lots of "techies" know and use linux. None of them even know that G OS exists. Let alone they think customs ROMs are dangerous anyway..

            someone1223

            That was my point, Linux among techies is comparable to GOS in the security/privacy communities.
            The fact it requires modern and specific phones limits the adoption for sure, but the goal is to have
            a private/secure OS, most people don't prioritize or even care for it enough to invest time in reading
            about it. Our parents for example.

              I hope I don’t get whacked for this, but I’m having trouble understanding why we care whether GrapheneOS is “mainstream” or not, and why it should be made to run on less secure phones than Pixels.

                Blastoidea why we care whether GrapheneOS is “mainstream” or not

                I imagine its a mixture of (a) some people wanting to help bring privacy/security to others (similar to people who want to bring freedom/democracy to others) and (b) some people making an unfortunate equivalence between "mainstream" and "successful". Its good for GOS to be successful (so we can continue to benefit from it obviously), but I don't see why it needs to be mainstream to be so. The project should continue so long as it maintains a talented developer pool and passionate community.

                  Blastoidea Mainstream means more resources and less (although they are quite few) incompatible apps. It also means globally a better protection of the privacy in the society, thus a better society ...

                      Blastoidea Well, we should care a little. The more ‘mainstream’ GOS is, the more likely 3rd party devs will ensure compatibility with it, more devs perhaps might offer options outside of the Playstore or other Google controlled aspects of their apps. Privacy and security may finally become a mainstream concern, which is a huge benefit to society in general. A phone maker willing to make a phone to GrapheneOS’ team specs. Something that goes against the status quo of Google or Apple. But a few of the many potentials I can see. What do you consider are the drawbacks?


                          mmmm
                          I don’t have a clue, but I can’t help wondering what compromises would be proposed.

                          Right now, there is no other commercially available Android phone with a Titan chip than a Pixel. I would be very leery of anyone’s claim that theirs was “the same”, even if anyone had one.

                          In order to expand and appeal to the general population, I think GrapheneOS would have to become something it isn’t intended to be, and something very different from what it is now, so I would cast one (1) vote for not going mainstream.

                              Blastoidea I don’t consider ‘going mainstream’ as anything other than gaining popularity and exposure. Why would you assume anything else would change, or any compromise would need to be made?

                              GOS is already leaps and bounds ahead of any competitor in security, privacy, ability to just use the apps you’re used to using (with caveats which could potentially dissolve with increased popularity). It’s already ‘general population’ ready, but currently requires a leap of faith as it were.

                              The GOS team have already expressed a big interested in gaining control of the handset side of the equation - gaining popularity could enable this to become a reality. Perhaps an approved handset, manufactured with the teams specs, made with tight collaboration with the os, could eventually become a whole new ‘legitimate’ platform - sold in the shops. That’s exactly what the world needs. An easy accessible, trusted (trustless) and open version of what Apple is pretending to be.

                                other8026 Android Auto is coming soon

                                Really? I read a good while ago it woukd never come because it would need some very privileged permissions. But knowing what cars do with our data, we're better off without ever connecting our phones to cars anyway.

                                Eirikr70 Mainstream means more resources and less (although they are quite few) incompatible apps. It also means globally a better protection

                                Unfortunately, mainstream may also mean Google pulling the rug from under the project (by forbidding relocking the bootleader, etc)

                                [deleted] I have lost count of the number of comments on Reddit where someone refuses to use GOS because they have to give money to Google

                                You can convert all 1000 of them and it still will not become mainstream. Degooglers are sadly a very very small community.

                                Blastoidea and why it should be made to run on less secure phones than Pixels.

                                Blastoidea Right now, there is no other commercially available Android phone with a Titan chip than a Pixel. I would be very leery of anyone’s

                                Those are misconceptions. The GOS team has already stated that the issue with Samsung phones do have Titan equivalent hardware and are just as secure as Pixels. The issue is that Samsung won't allow custom ROMs to access those features. There are posts here on the forum with the links to GOS posts.

                                            Relaks
                                            "Duress PIN/password, per-app toggle for reading clipboard data from other apps, Widevine provisioning proxy, App Communication Scopes, Vanadium content filtering, Vanadium state partitioning and other things are also being worked on by other people."

                                            OMG this pipeline is freaking amazing!