
Using only open-source software on Android - axiomdata316
https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/29/like-using-open-source-software-android/
======
eadmund
> Firefox on Android still isn't a great experience

News to me! I've been using Firefox on Android for six years now, and I'm
_very_ happy.

~~~
ac29
Scrolling performance is terrible, even on high end devices. I'd imagine its
borderline unusable on mid-range devices.

~~~
sam_goody
I'm use FF a ~$35 one year old Huang, with more than 100 tabs open, and have
had no issues. Not so with the default browser.

~~~
tomcooks
Care to share the model name? Interesting price

~~~
sam_goody
I don't see that particular model now, but a search for $35 phones on
Aliexpress [1] (where I bought it), shows plenty of similar enough phones.

Get the AliExpress mobile app and keep your eye on it for a few weeks, and you
are bound to get a better deal.

Of course, it will probably copy all your data (including speech and
movements) both to Google and 100 Chinese corporations + partnering government
agencies, but that kinda comes with the territory.

(Especially as even brand names phones on Amazon, even when they are not using
a compromised chpset like Rok, might really be cheapo fakes with the right SKU
numbers, that are siphoning off that data as well.)

[1]: [https://he.aliexpress.com/category/5090301/mobile-
phones.htm...](https://he.aliexpress.com/category/5090301/mobile-
phones.html?minPrice=35&maxPrice=38)

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taneq
90% of the objections here seem to be "I can't use Google's online services
very easily without using Google Play", which is precisely why Google's spent
the past few years piping as much of Android's runtime as possible through
Google Play. The rest are mainly just that the main streaming and social media
companies don't have open source clients.

~~~
st26
I'd always heard that moving more and more functionality into play services
was their strategy for end-running the carrier fragmentation problem.

~~~
FuckOffNeemo
That's the crux of it.

Though Google have fixed it in such a way that's benefited them by
consolidating services and potential data collection for revenue raising.

I've not used anything but a Nexus of Pixel in years. But carrier
fragmentation (and with it, the difficulty for OTA patching!) is a much bigger
risk to the Android ecosystem and it's uses than closed source code.

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voltagex_
>Unfortunately, there's a catch - microG only works with custom ROMs that
support signature spoofing. The LineageOS project is against adding support
for that feature, citing security concerns, so microG offers its own ROM
called 'LineageOS for microG.'

Jesus - this is what the patch does:

[https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/blob...](https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/blob/master/patches/android_frameworks_base-N.patch)

So this allows other applications to appear in the com.google namespace?

This can't be good.

Can't I have this kind of feature and still be secure?

Edit:
[https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/issu...](https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/issues/336#issuecomment-284036039)
is a slightly better solution - I wonder why it hasn't been implemented.

~~~
pwnna
From your linked thread:

> Restrict the permission to apps in /system/priv-app. This requires to ship
> microG or two placeholder apps with the ROM (or to allow modification of
> /system, which is a far worse option). Modifying the permission to be for
> system apps only is changing one word in the patch (from "dangerous" to
> "system"), creating a placeholder apps is about writing ~10 lines of XML
> code and thus could be done in a few minutes.

Lineage for MicroG already does this by default:
[https://github.com/lineageos4microg/docker-lineage-
cicd/blob...](https://github.com/lineageos4microg/docker-lineage-
cicd/blob/93cc0e5cb5d47a626f5ef6d072b1954d4808d5ff/src/build.sh#L180)

Restricting the permission to a platform level permission essentially means no
other installed apps (after flashing) can spoof this. No toggles are necessary
either. This should be a secure setup that is as good as any other ROM.

It is possible that users can flash something to /system/priv-app via an
update.zip and obtain this permission. However, anything you flash like this
can practically already gain root access, so this would almost be a feature if
ROMs like lineage implemented this, as then microg's installation would be a
small update.zip away. This is opposed to the present setup where microg has
to build a completely different rom, although that is another story in itself
and likely require some more complications.

~~~
voltagex_
I don't really understand why signature spoofing is needed at all.

~~~
pwnna
The framework Google provides for apps to interact with Google Play Services
checks the GmsCore's signature to validate that it's talking to only their
app.

------
wilwade
"...and Firefox on Android still isn't a great experience..."

As a daily FF on Android user, I am not sure what he is finding issues with. I
wish he would elaborate so his issues can get fixed.

~~~
sidlls
I have a Nexus 6 updated with the latest OS version and FF. I spend about 90%
of my browsing time on HN, LinkedIn, and a couple of miscellaneous other news
sites. I observe the following problems:

Loss of UI, where the only thing I see is either a white or black screen.
Swiping up or down as if to scroll or refresh "peels back" some of this to
reveal the web page underneath, but it doesn't become functional unless I end
the app. This affects all tabs open.

Terrible latency acting on navigation, where I'll press a link which has
clearly been detected (an outline appears around it) and...nothing happens for
seconds. Doesn't matter if I have one tab or a dozen open.

Terrible detection of which link was pressed. Sometimes it's bad enough that a
link more than halfway down the page from where I touch is activated. This
doesn't happen in any other app I have, even when it's happening on FF.

Poor download times. The bar indicating progress will occasionally stop at
about 80% and pause. Sometimes when it pauses it finishes after a few seconds
and other times it simply freezes.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I Have the same phone but don't recognize these issues. I've seen something
similar to the blank page thing but it sorts itself out without restarting the
app.

I notice you specifically mention LinkedIn. I don't use that site but I did
read their recent web development blog post when they admitted that they had a
CSS download of 3.5MB that was causing issues for mobile users. Apparently
they've fixed that now, would be interesting to see if that was a cause.

------
rubenbe
I tried this for a while and I consider the experiment failed.

No closed source means no Whatsapp, etc. Let's face reality, no-one is using
XMPP ;)

In the end I started the policy "Prefer open-source software on Android",
which works pretty well:

* Note taking using orgzly

* Tasks using opentasks ([https://github.com/dmfs/opentasks](https://github.com/dmfs/opentasks))

* File Sync using Syncthing

* Contacts, Calendar using davdroid & nextcloud

* Firefox for browsing (this is a no-brainer)

~~~
jhasse
Try Telegram instead of WhatsApp. It's a good drop-in replacement.

~~~
mxschumacher
the trouble is to get your friends to use it. A vast portion of my daily
communication runs over Whatsapp. A realistic migration would entail
convincing 25+ people to switch apps.

Network effects are powerful.

~~~
jhasse
Let them try Telegram's awesome desktop clients. It's quite a good argument
for many as I hear lots of people complaining about WhatsApp's.

~~~
mxschumacher
I've been using the Whatsapp Web version since it was released and it has
worked flawlessly

~~~
jhasse
Telegram Desktop works without your phone and also is a much leaner native
desktop app (written in C++ with Qt).

------
_bxg1
Also, the Brave browser is a great FOSS option. It's a chromium fork that only
adds privacy/adblocking features and doesn't require google services.

~~~
jhasse
Unfortunately not on F-Droid.

~~~
_bxg1
It is on APKMirror, a trusted (run by Android Police) mirror of the Play
Store, which has been essential to ditching the latter.

------
Squarex
Is there a decent free software Android keyboard which supports sliding? It's
the last thing keeping me from going full Google and Microsoft free Android.
Right now I use Swiftkey and firewall to keep it from accesing the network.

~~~
Squarex
To answer my own question, I've found out that latest AOSP keyboard supports
sliding.

------
clircle
I've been running Lineage with microG on my Nexus 5X for about 5 months and
I'm pretty neutral about the experience. I do cheat a little bit though -- I
install Google Maps and Gboard. The biggest annoyance was updating from
Android 7 to Android 8. I had to reinstall stock Android 8 on my Nexus to get
the new firmware, then install Lineage with microG version 8. Quite annoying,
but I suppose it was necessary. Other than that, I quite enjoy the extended
battery life that comes with the ROM, I have 87% left now, after about 12
hours of very minimal use.

I don't use my phone too much, mostly just navigation, texting, email, HN, and
reddit. Though I'm considering switching back to stock for the better Google
hangouts experience.

------
_bxg1
A much better rule imo, which I've had success with, is "no software from the
Big Five" rather than FOSS-only. This has a bigger impact on actual privacy
concerns and gives you more leeway when it comes to media apps, etc.

~~~
icebraining
Sorry, which are the Big Five? Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon... Apple?

~~~
majewsky
yes

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jancsika
> There are no FOSS clients for Plex, Netflix, Hulu, or Spotify.

Hm... there's a client that is suspiciously absent from that list...

> In other words, I couldn't listen to any of my music, unless I copied the
> MP3 files from my Plex server to the phone's internal storage. I couldn't
> stream any TV shows or movies, either.

Ok, that's just technically inaccurate. The author _didn 't want to_ use a
particular open-source app (or perhaps category of apps) to stream video/audio
to the Android device.

There is certainly a persuasive argument as to why one would refrain from
installing such apps. But a piece about following FOSS-only dogma which omits
a discussion of that app category is misleading. Especially when there are
probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users who currently
have such a FOSS app installed on their Android devices.

Edit: typo

~~~
JackCh
What client are you referring to?

I've used VLC on android to stream media from my DLNA server. Is that what
you're talking about? Or is there a better solution available? (I've found VLC
to be unstable in this configuration, it often crashes for reasons I haven't
yet bothered to dig into.)

~~~
phito
Maybe Kodi?

------
giancarlostoro
One thing I'd love to see is some Android Tablets that are ROM friendly.

~~~
firmgently
Quite a few (30-40) listed here
[https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/) \-
if it runs LineageOS it's probably going to have other ROMS available too

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fithisux
I agree with the title.

