I have used /e/ as my main phone for 1 year - and I am a heavy user. It’s a bliss! I also got a phone with /e/ installed on it for my 73 years old mother. She loved it. It’s really surprising to see how the bigtech monopoly has nothing to do with the quality of their services, but everything with their unfair practices - Microsoft yesterday, Google today.
pretty much the same story for me. started 3 years ago, and got a phone for my 70 year old mother almost two years ago. she gets help to install new apps, but otherwise it works just fine for her.
How is /e/ making things easier for them? My folks are constantly puzzled by their galaxy phones: not only notifications and sudden app changes, but also touching the edges of the screen triggering unexpected things... What will another OS do better?
well, the problem here is that the general market is not targeting elder people. /e/ at least doesn't so far have any sudden app changes, because their focus and selling point is usability and and privacy, and not the latest new and shiny
"The easy-installer beta version supports 15 devices"
This is the #1 problem, but it's not /e/ developers fault, as supporting devices is a time consuming and costly activity, and the risk of bricking an expensive device is just too high for normal users to want to try. Manufacturers are to blame.
It's not a technical problem but rather a political one; manufacturers should be forced by law to unlock boot loaders and publish at least the bare minimum documentation enough for porting
software to devices that became obsolete either by the introduction of a newer version, or after support has ceased.
Until that happens, I'm afraid we'll see more and more projects supporting only a very small part of the available devices.
It's promising that more and more alternative Android distributions are offering installers to make them more accessible to average phone users. On the Linux phone side, even Ubuntu Touch has an installer that supports 81 devices: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/installer/
But, device manufacturers need to make bootloaders unlockable for these installers to work, and I agree that regulation is a practical way to make this happen. I can see Europe taking the lead on this with the goal of reducing e-waste by encouraging the reuse of old devices.
That looks like a copy of the list of supported devices of lineage. I highly doubt that the e foundation can test their installer on so many devices. They (or their own developer community) would need to get access to these devices at least. I guess the only way to broaden support for the installer a lot would be to work on upstreaming it to the lineage project so that the broader community does the work for them.
LineageOS currently supports 179 models, so it's not a copy of the LineageOS device list.[1][2] These projects support different selections of devices. There are devices that are supported by /e/ and not by LineageOS, and vice versa.
The Mediatek platforms, at least in their early days, were relatively open. The flash utility, which ran off a ROM in the SoC, meant that you could backup and restore the complete state of the device, effectively making them unbrickable. They didn't even seem to have any form of secure boot. Plenty of documentation (only available as leaked, but they didn't care much about stopping that) available if you knew where to look. Huge numbers of devices made with the same platform/reference design, and a correspondingly large (but unfortunately Chinese only) community around them. They were probably the closest to being a "standard Android device" for a while; of course, in the Western world they were mainly shunned due to their low cost and performance, while the lack of (user-hostile) security features was used as a further means of discouraging others away from them.
Device manufacturers are obligated to release kernel sources to end users to comply with GPLv2, but many do not, and Qualcomm's source code releases make supporting Snapdragon-based devices a little bit easier for ROM developers.
It's a shame, since the Dimensity 9000 performs better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
MTK source code is(was?) available from the actual device manufacturer.
I can't say for Qualcomm in particular but from what I've seen in the past, open-source releases are not at all a good substitute for the actual documentation, which tends to be heavily guarded.
And guess what? In some jurisdictions, including some US states, possession and sale of some types of knives is banned or controlled, because they are used by criminals and thugs for larceny and assault.
You're also not permitted to upload whatever firmware you like to your car's engine if you want to run it on the street.
Note also that I didn't argue that uploading alternate firmware to phones should be banned. I'm just pointing out that there are real-world safety reasons for restricting modifications, and if you want the freedom to do so you should at least try and engage on the downsides rather than just yelling FREEEDOM very loudly.
This could be easily solved if manufacturers simply allowed for using a unique password to unlock the bootloader. Want to install a custom ROM? Simple! Put the phone in recovery mode, insert the unique manufacturer-provided password, unlock the bootloader, flash the new ROM, go back to recovery, change the password to one of your choosing, lock the bootloader again, add the ROM's official private key to enable safe boot.
This is entirely possible, and yet nobody wants to make it accessible.
No, the password is only to lock-unlock the bootloader. If you forget it you won't be able to install a new ROM but you will still be capable of upading your OS or factory resetting it
I'm not understanding your argument. You say that unlocking a bootloader is dangerous, so what's your solution? You can't have non-unlockable bootloaders because that would mean a loss of hardware functionality, which you just suggested you consider unacceptable. You can't have easily unlockable bootloaders because that would be dangerous. So now what?
I proposed a very reasonable solution that gives the user control AND responsibility of their own device. If you don't want the responibility (and the control) then stick with your manufacturer's locked bootloader and never touch it.
I don't know about you but I would really like if my work phone had a company-set bootloader lock just like my work laptop has a company-set BIOS lock in case someone steals it or gets lost. There are plenty of professional and personal reasons why my solution would make a lot of sense in my opinion.
I confused you with the person I originally replied to.
Still, my solution still allows to have a passwordless bootloader if you choose to not set a password, so I really don't get what would be wrong with it.
I hate to have to make this argument, but here goes...
...where do you draw the line? An M240 machine gun? A Stinger missile? A PFOS factory? A Special Atomic Demolition Munition?
We regulate private possession of dangerous items all the time, and pretty much everybody draws the line somewhere despite vigorous dispute where that line should be drawn in specific cases.
You said you're concerned with "thugs" using knives to do bad things. That's where you seem to draw the line. I am afraid what you'll try to restrict when you see the reports about these people breathing air.
I use /e/ daily as does a co-worker (we aren't working in tech). It's the one piece of alternative software that I'm comfortable recommending to anyone. It "just works" just as much as Android "just works".
IMHO, this is the real value of /e/! I had a non-technical friend ask me how they could get an Android phone that would not spy on them. I could have suggested GrapheneOS (what I use) or LOS+microg, but instead I sent her /e/ because it hits that perfect balance of privacy and usability for a normal person!
I can confirm that the map in Uber can be janky at times, but the app is otherwise fully functional. Both the Uber web app and the Lyft app (4 out of 4 on Plexus) work flawlessly.
"We are making a mobile phone ecosystem that lets users escape the permanent and industrial harvesting of their personal data."
I have never heard any normal person ever talk about data privacy. It feels like there's this giant bubble that the tech world lives in, and they are the only people who care about this issue.
> I have never heard any normal person ever talk about data privacy.
I hear normal people talk about it all the time. The only place where I hear that only people on HN care about privacy is on HN, constantly.
edit: I suspect that tech people who work on privacy-invading technologies live in a rationalization bubble that tells them that the complaints that they constantly hear are from a vanishingly small nerd contingent that they themselves just happen to immersed in. They don't believe their lying ears.
> I have never heard any normal person ever talk about data privacy. It feels like there's this giant bubble that the tech world lives in, and they are the only people who care about this issue.
Honestly, I don't know if I've just missed your irony here, or if you don't realize there are lots of 'normal' people out there who have been thinking about this since like... the 50s of last century or something? Most certainly, they were talking about it (freely that is) since at least the 90s of the same century. Like, people who grew up under a totalitarian regime which could assign spies to eavesdrop and collect data on anyone, anywhere for any reason at all. Like the GDR for instance[1].
Honestly I am starting to hear it more and more from nontechnical folks. People are starting to realize that tech companies are profiting off their "private" data (just see the mainstream responses to Amazon acquiring Roomba). I now hear a lot of people saying they don't want Google/Amazon/etc to have all their data, but these folks are not sure how to avoid it.
What is your point? You're using loaded terms like "normal" to contrast with people who are tech hobbyists, and you sound as if it is bad for an organization to care about something moral if few people care for it.
Because it's like a trope now where a tech person builds a thing that bothers them but nobody else, and meanwhile most people are like "I just want to do X, why is it so hard". Like why does my Android phone take up 15GB just for system files? I care about having free space more than data privacy. Security would sure be nice too, seeing as I use banking apps from this thing.
Call me crazy, but I think most people care less about Nike knowing what their shoe size is, than they care about keeping their bank account safe or not running out of storage.
> Call me crazy, but I think most people care less about Nike knowing what their shoe size is
They don't care because they don't understand. "Most people" think their shoe size or what ad they see doesn't matter because they're right, those things don't matter. What matters is that all of the data being collected about them will be used against them at every opportunity so that other people can get more money and power at their expense.
The data they give up will be increasingly used in every aspect of their lives. Restaurants will use it to decide how long to leave them waiting on hold when they call for a reservation. Employers will decide to hire them or not based on their purchase history, their health, or their political views. Stores will decide how much to charge them vs their neighbors for the exact same products.
The data they've been handing over will be used by corporations to extract more money from them. It will be used by by politicians who want to manipulate them and to create maps that will limit the ability for their votes to make any difference. It will be used by activists looking for people they can target for doing things they don't like. It will be used by law enforcement who will use that data against someone anytime they think it might help them make an arrest, or win a case in court. It will be used by their health insurance company to raise their rates when fast food spending in their zip code goes up.
The data "Most people" gave up thinking it was about shoe size and ads will be leveraged against them in countless ways by people they've never had any direct interaction with at all. The data never goes away and it ends up in the hands of hackers and data brokers who sell it to others. "Most people" aren't allowed to know who is accessing their data, how accurate that data is, how (or if) it is being secured, or what the people who have their data will be using it for.
Well, although they'll never be allowed to know specifically what their data will be used for, in a general sense they can be pretty sure it will be used to manipulate them, to categorize (and often miscategorize) them and to assign them a position in one or more unregulated digital caste systems that will increasingly limit their options and cause them to spend more money.
They don't care about data privacy now, but as more of them figure out that what they've been giving up is going to impact the rest of their life in ways they couldn't imagine they're going to start caring more and more.
Industrial-scale data guzzling is exactly like every vicious playground rumour (or vindictive people you may still be unlucky to know). Think back to school and remember how the bullies never forgot. How names and reputations were made instantly and never really shrugged. They used that information (demeaning anecdotes) to their benefit in every way they could. You had absolutely no control over the spread of rumours about you.
Imagine that, but on a much grander scale. I wish more people saw that it is the same kind of predation, probably perpetuated by the same types who have no conscience but are now adults.
Because the information is only valuable when tied to you, misuse of it is always against your interest. The use and handling of "personal data" is never neutral, even if "anonymised".
Tech people are talking about it because we understand the problems. The rest of the population will catch up as they become aware of it. I'm not sure how to accelerate that though. One thing I know we need to do is to be better about protecting children's data. We shouldn't be requiring them to sign up for google accounts and handing out locked down Chromebooks to students. We should be teaching them from an early age about the consequences of handing over their data.
Yesterday I was reading that Facebook shares DMs with the police to find people that are thinking of leaving the state to get a medical procedure that is illegal in that state. Data privacy is now deeply relevant to 50% of the population that have reduced rights relative to the other 50%, they just might not know it yet.
I know a couple in their 70s who literally just switched away from using their ISP email because the ISP is adopting Gmail for the email service. People typically care about their privacy regardless of age or technical ability. Sometimes it just takes some basic understanding of just how deeply tech companies/services can invade their privacy. Most non-technical people simply don't grasp how shockingly omniscient tech corps are. That said, sometimes it can take a while for them to understand, even with regular discussions on the subject.
The elders still sometimes say things like "shush, not over the phone". This didn't use to make sense for like 30-40 years, and, hey, it's a great comeback now.
My grandmother wouldn't give her bank details to anyone. She paid all her bills at the bank, cash in hand. She only had a phone line put in in the early 90s.
I thought it was extreme at the time, but now who is laughing?
A Ford billboard might have a picture of a fancy cupholder to advertise their car has more cupholders; doesn't mean everyone's walking around talking about cupholders. (Though they will if they see that billboard)
this is my #1 complaint as well. These OSs must be easy to install and reliable. Having parts of the OS crash, dealing with the terminal, using ADB over USB... all of that makes zero sense to the average person or someone pressed for time.
I now want my phone to work and that is why i use iOS. Having to replace the OS on your phone is already a step too far for most. The install instructions here require using the terminal and typing commands - not going to happen for most people.
IMHO, the easiest path to adoption is to have a hardware manufacturer put this OS on their phones. No installation required.
/e/ has partnerships with Fairphone and Teraphone to sell versions of their phones with /e/ preloaded. /e/'s sister company Murena produced its own phone (the Murena One) and they also sell refurbished Galaxy S9/S9+ phones preloaded with /e/:
What is shitty is this attitude of accepting the "solutions" sold by Big Tech and finding fault at whatever minuscule issue with the free alternatives.
What is shitty is being on HackerNews and seeing (presumably tech-savvy) people more worried about the product's name and "marketing" instead of discussing the system on its technical merits. Or seeing comments like yours that think that privacy is something that only concerns a "small bubble".
That is just not shitty, it is profoundly depressing.
> - Enables Safetynet checks by default which downloads and executes obfuscated proprietary code from Google
> - Includes proprietary Google Widevine DRM on nearly all devices
While proprietary code, obfuscation, and DRM are all evil, if /e/OS didn't support these things, then a lot of very popular apps wouldn't work on it, which would make it a lot less viable as a platform. Refusing to do those things wouldn't result in any less of those evil technologies. It would just result in less /e/OS adoption.
Linux solves a similar problem sometimes by asking the user if they'd like that feature or not. I'd really appreciate that, of course, while understanding that all these need a lot of extra effort.
Very good list. As a daily user of /e/, I can attest to most of the concerns, which I agree are valid.
Advanced Privacy is a major WTF. Using TOR without mentioning it is strange. And so is their all-or-nothing location faker tool. Sounded nice until I wanted to use a navigation app, which too got my fake location. Then I had to disable the faking, making my location available to all applications - quite a headscratcher.
CleanAPK is another WTF baked-in dependency. I suppose they are running it themselves, just not in the open, because of copyright and other issues maybe? I don't know, they don't tell me, and why are we left guessing such an important thing on a privacy phone?
An update also borked my phone, forcing it into a reboot loop. Granted, it was from 0.something to 1.something, but still, it was the next update in line, I thought the updater could manage it.
Aside from these, I'm still a happy user of the system. I appreciate the degoogling effort over the mainline LineageOS.
I'd like to have a question about DivestOS. Which device(s) do you regard as the main one(s)? I mean, which do you think will receive the most updates, the longest support, and so on? I'd wager the ones marked "Tested working" are the most healthy?
Devices marked tested working are ones I have myself. But all devices receive the same monthly updates. If you're buying a device I recommend a Pixel 6/6a with GrapheneOS instead however.
If you like alternative services, great, but small companies are also prone to getting hacked, don't have resources to fight government warrants and can just go under and lose your data. Many store unencrypted data on common cloud providers like Amazon.
What's the difference from AOSP as it is - can't find that in the article? AFAIK (I have it on my phone) there's nothing Google in there already, no changes needed. Google services and apps have to be installed and I simply didn't do that.
The Google related things that are excluded from AOSP are things that Google doesn't want them to be there, for whatever reason.
The Google related things that are excluded from this project are things that users don't want them to be there at all, i.e. everything Google related.
My point is, there's practically nothing Google related in my phone already. I am going through the settings and apps and can't find anything. Is LineageOS special in this regard? I thought this is the common AOSP experience, I had it the same with other ROMs.
Are you sure about that? Running NetGuard reveals a lot of connections to G where one would not expect them (looking at you, Firefox, too). Also make sure you don't use 8.8.8.8 as DNS.
That said, /e/ is practically LineageOS, except you can buy it preinstalled on new phones.
From /e/'s site, de-googling (because the review didn't go in depth on this):
- To remove or disable any feature or code that is sending data to Google servers, or at least to anonymize those accesses
- To offer non-Google default online services, including for search.
- the Google default search engine is removed and replaced by other services
- Google Services are replaced by microG and alternative services
- All Google apps are removed and replaced by equivalent Open Source applications. The one exception is the Maps Application (Looks like it also uses Google's browser Chromium, though with privacy patches)
- No use of Google servers to check connectivity
- NTP servers are not Google NTP servers anymore
- DNS default servers are not Google anymore, and their settings can be enforced by the user to a specific server
- Geolocation is using Mozilla Location Services in addition to GPS
- CalDAV/CardDAV management and synchronization application (DAVDroid) is fully integrated with the user account and calendar/contact application
I wonder why these FOSS-y projects don't bundle Firefox for Mobile with them. It is a far superior experience with Add-Ons.
In fact, I don't even use most apps anymore, most websites' web versions are more than adequate nowadays. In fact at least in one instance viz. Duolingo, the web experience is far superior than the app.
I've been searching for an alternative to Android Auto itself. After an update some months ago, launching the app takes me to a settings panel declaring that Android Auto is no longer supported for phone screens (i.e. it is now only designed to run while linked to a car with a compatible display), and the app itself refuses to run as it used to on just the phone.
Add that functionality to the Google graveyard, I guess...
In my humble opinion, relying on custom ROMs running mandatory non-free drivers is a road to nowhere, long term, due to their unavoidable planned obsolescence. And it always has been. Supporting GNU/Linux phones is the way to improve future privacy and security (despite they may not be as secure as some Android custom ROMs are yet).
Unfortunately for that idea, I would like my phone to actually just function normally, and have support for programs that Android uses. You are making perfect the enemy of good here.
I'm using Pinephone as a daily driver (and waiting for Librem 5 to replace it) and avoid all proprietary Android apps. But you in principle can install them with Waydroid or Anbox.
Just in case you're not aware, because you seemingly are trying to convince other people: That fact alone indicates that what you're willing to trade off exceeds by an order of magnitude what the average user requires their main phone to do. And that even extends to the average tech-oriented user.
I am speaking to the HN audience here and expect that most people have more technical knowledge than ordinary people. Also, I acknowledged that today AOS might be superior, but it's important to support alternatives, because it will have problems long term, because it's controlled bu Google and heavily relies on proprietary code.
You can wait for the Librem 5 for a very long time, they haven't shipped any significant software update for a long time for mine and its in the state that if you turn on auto-suspend (i.e. don't always go at full 100% CPU) it freezes and needs a hard reboot.
Linux on phone is still very much in the enthusiasts-only phase. Not for me, not for most. And I'm saying that as someone that is a KDE/Linux geek!
Maybe that will change, but for now the e.foundation OS has most definitely a large potential audience that those phones are not going to be able to fill just yet.
Last I checked the forums, Librem 5 works for 10-12 hours on one charge, without suspend. This is mostly fine with me: it should survive a working day and one can buy a spare battery for emergencies. The work on suspend did not stop. Yes, I am undoubtedly an enthusiast.
Phone calls and SMS work fine (but I don't use them much), mobile data also (and I do use it a lot). Rarely, typically during the use of mobile data, the modem disappears. Reboot always helps. Telegram and Firefox are somewhat slow but generally work reliably. Even calls on Telegram work (with the sound coming from the speaker). Noscript helps a lot. Calendar is not very usable. Heavy usage with high brightness can drain full battery in a couple of hours, but suspend lasts more than 24 hours.
The Galaxy S3 could do everything back in the day, it was and still is plenty powerful. Banking apps, messaging apps, social networks, web browsing, etc. Of course it won't do fancy real-tike Snapchat filters and AI image recognition, but if Android 4.4.x was indefinitely maintained I would have zero problems using one today.
If you're using "function normally" as a euphemism for "be android," then you're misusing "perfect as the enemy of good," because if you wouldn't be satisfied with a non-Android phone, you certainly don't consider it perfect.
Check out sailfishOS. Not a fork of android but you can get andorid app support on it. You can even get microg on it and use the banking apps (worked for me). The problem is that, officially, they support only a small number of sony models.
there's irony in having "degoogled" Phones built upon a platform that is at the technical discretion of Google, but you'd discount a lot of mindshare that grew around Android to say GNU/Linux is the only way long term. I don't know if the community could sustain a AOSP hardfork (or if it's necessary), but combining a mainline kernel with open firmware is a possibility for Android handhelds too.
The software is not a problem, the hardware is. You should be able to run AOSP on Pinephone and Librem 5 just fine. They do not depend on the proprietary drivers and can run mainline Linux.
the road to nowhere is proprietary firmware for hardware, not if it's running an aosp customrom or gnu/linux. I wanted to make this distinction as your parent comment read as if the gnu/linux part is a precondition. I agree on the downside of having less or no say in android product direction, but it's up to the firmware (and carriers frankly as they control the mobile towers) when obsolescence for a device happens.
I think that they should reduce as much as possible, the background services, telemetry, animations, etc to try to allow battery power to last longer, reduce service fees for internet, etc. Privacy is one issue but it is not the only one. (Furthermore, some manufacturers will include hardware kill switches, which might be able to further reduce power requirements and improve privacy and security.) Functions can still be working if the user specifically activates and controls them, though. App permissions could be done by a proxy implementation; this allows better user controls, for example you can create two separate files with the same app and the files don't know each other (and later move them using file manager if wanted), or to make it access a empty contacts list or one filled in with random data instead of the actual data.
I've been running /e/ OS on Fairphone 3+ for the last 2 years or so. My general experience is very good, the only serious downside is that I cannot purchase a premium license for Locus Map (which has to be purchased via Google app store).
I've been reading for a while about LineageOS. If i recall correctly, i felt like the camera didn't work at all.
It was my takeaway that you couldn't have a "full" phone (meaning, calls, sms, camera, full network, etc) if you were planning on migrating away from iOS or Android from the carrier.
Looks like the e phone has the full experience.
I would prefer to buy an older android phone and install my own OS so I'm able to switch away if I want to.
The camera issue is real. Phone cameras are kinda bad, because they are very limited, and so, a lot of the beautiful magic comes from software. Samsung, quite horrible, put some magic into their kernel, as well as into their camera software. Therefore, one can't just use their proprietary camera app, on a different base system. You can't even shoot slo-mo videos either; I tried the S7 and now the S9 and neither can do it with LineageOS. The still images are not bad with OpenCamera though, although I can't say I'm a connoisseur either.
So full experience? No. But you can slap it on an older phone and enjoy a system that's never even supported officially, and now it's being updated every month. Some rough edges here and there. I'm personally a happy user.
I have been using for years. It is quite usable, improves every day and even replaces things like Google of Office365 clouds (in a self-hostable way). I recently installed on a Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (first version) and I now use it as a laptop whenever I need a very long battery life or something smaller than my full sized Linux laptop. And, it is a real product, one that is thought to be used.
I love LineageOS and have used microG services for so long but forks like this strike me as sad as needing to assimilate to the look and feel of iOS. It comes off as cheap and unoriginal. Now this is harsh criticism I understand but I do appreciate how much effort it must have taken to make all of these app forks. I only wish the effort was spent building something more interesting.
Android launchers are like Linux desktop environments. There are plenty of options, and everyone can pick the one that works best for them. It's easy to install another launcher and set it as the default.
/e/'s Bliss Launcher is going to feel more familiar for people who are coming from iOS. For a more traditional Android experience, Lawnchair* would be a better fit. It's just like how GNOME and KDE are closer in design to the desktop environments of macOS and Windows, respectively.
Every Android distribution has to pick a default launcher. /e/ choosing an iOS-like launcher by default is their way of attracting users who want a simpler user experience.
To me it comes off as Apple fans doing Apple-type shit. I'm not an Apple UI fan, but if someone is, they should imitate what they like instead of trying to invent some entirely new garbage paradigm, without any particular inspiration, when they really just wanted to make a nice distro that they would enjoy using.
I think they have even less amount of effort that they can spend. And all of that is spent keeping the builds up to date, the infra up to date and working, and other low level things like that. I wish they get enough resources to employ more people to increase efforts on QA, UX and other such things.
the forks create a great burden of keeping them up to date, and they can't keep up of course with constrained resources. Though it gives them independence to achieve orthogonal goals.
Having default apps colors aligned is soothing, not sad at all. It's not iOS-y beyond the launcher.
It does look like /e/ mimics iOS by default, though, which is where I think the original poster's criticism is aimed. The screenshot in this article showing bliss is very iOS-y.
I have installed /e/ on my old Xiaomi phone for months now, and it is amazing. The OS is stable, and I can install many apps from the apps store. It also being updated frequently, so at least it has the latest security patch covered. If only my phone doesn't have a charging problem (it is a hardware problem), I might have used it as my main phone.
This is unrelated from the rest of the project, but why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing? To the degree where you can't believe that somebody actually thought this would work? To the degree you can't believe someone with no marketing experience could be this inept?
What is /e/? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? How do I tell people about it? Does it stick out in a Google search (which it does not)?
But on that line, why do we have GIMP, GNOME, Everything starting with the letter K on KDE, KDE itself, Hector Martin's "Asahi Lina" nonsense, and on and on...
I’ve tried to search for supported Samsung devices, especially the S20 FE, and it’s a nightmare to find anything relevant using Google. Google Search ignores /e/, making it all but impossible to find anything about the /e/ project.
I can relate to the OP, /e/ is nit a very handy name for Google searches. It’s like it doesn’t exist. What’s the point of a name you can’t Google, or pronounce?
In case someone might have the same question: the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE is not supported. In fact all recent Samsung devices are not supported. Support for new Samsung smartphones seems to have halted, most recent model in the S-family is the S10, released more than 3 years ago.
Does anyone know why recent Samsung devices are unsupported? After all, Samsung is one of the biggest smartphone makers. It seems odd to ignore such large user base.
In recent years, Samsung phones sold in the U.S. generally have bootloaders that cannot be unlocked, so it's not possible to flash other OSes onto them.[1] The Samsung devices that can be bootloader-unlocked tend not to be mod-friendly. For example, Samsung phones permanently disable the Knox security feature when the bootloader is unlocked, and it is not restored even if the bootloader is relocked after a factory reset.[2]
/e/'s lead developer is based in France, so /e/ does support some non-U.S. Samsung phone models.
I think it’s pretty clear now. The answer is that some people like the person you replied to think it doesn’t matter. The truth is it actually matters a lot.
It matters if you equate success with total domination, or think that something is only worth doing if it can create a huge gathering of people blindly supporting it.
What if we simply don't care about that? Here we have a system that works well, that can do all the things that I need and that respects my freedoms. I've mentioned it to other people already, all of them simply said "ok, cool" and went on with their lives.
Do you think that the name was the reason that it stopped them from changing it, or do you think that the main thing was "wait, but I want to continue using Google/Apple"? Do you think that their indifference made the product any less useful to me and the other thousands of people who use it? Do you think that my identity is tied to the OS of my phone?
Honestly, can you make a solid effort of explaining what matters so much about marketing, and why?
I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that /e/ should rebrand itself, if the new name makes /e/ more accessible to potential users who are searching for it. Good marketing doesn't necessarily mean "total domination", but it can help /e/ fulfill its mission by extending its reach.
Being accessible has nothing to do with being popular.
> I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that /e/ should rebrand itself
Unreasonable, it is not. It is just vapid bike shedding. It is the kind of discussion topic that I would expect from corporate MBA types and useless hacks who never built anything in their lives, not something worthy of so many comments here.
Who said that is hard to find it? Is it hard compared to what? How much does it cost (in times and resources) to make it "easier" to find it? The people working on it are doing it for free (as in, it cost me literally nothing to download and install /e/OS on my phone) and you think you still feel entitled to get "good marketing" on top of it?
If you think that the product is lacking in some part, how about you CONTRIBUTE to make it better instead of just diminishing the work of others?
It's like if your buddy created an awesome website that provided a great free service and then called it jflasdjfjasdfjkereifsd.yzy
You'd wonder they shot themselves in the foot like that. It would've been easy to give it a good name but instead they severely limited the potential of their hard work for seemingly no reason.
I don't need to type the address to use it. If the site is "awesome", I will use it regardless of the name.I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE NAME, I care about what it does and what are the guiding principles.
I am confrontational because your "confusion" is just stupid concern trolling. Do you think that it is important to get more people to be less dependent on Big Tech? Then here is an operating system that works pretty well. This is what you need to be telling people, not how you think that the name is bad. Stop worrying about the "marketing", and just use and promote better alternatives. By being and acting self-conscious about something that does not matter, you are not collaborating at all.
> I will use it regardless of the name.I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE NAME
Your preferences are not consequential. We are concerned with how the public behaves. And names matter a lot for discoverability.
If you really cared about more people using /e/, you should be concerned that the name is needlessly reducing its reach. I plan on trying /e/, but you are not doing the project any favors with your attitude.
Speak for yourself. I am not "concerned" about anything so abstract as "public behavior". All I am "concerned" about is my personal ability to keep my freedom and my choices, and by extension I am concerned about others having the same freedoms. Being concerned about "behavior" is the last of my worries.
> And names matter a lot for discoverability.
It didn't stop you from finding out about it, did it?
> you are not doing the project any favors with your attitude.
Why? Are you worried that if people see you using a phone with /e/OS you will be associated with grumpy rude graybeards?
> why do open source projects in general have such inexplicably bad marketing?
Because they don't pay a marketing team to work 9-5 alongside them? That's probably the reason why all the art is ugly too, their website kinda sucks, et al. But that's not really the main appeal of this project, and I think it's honorable that they're focusing all their effort on the product rather than the vanity. If they did spend time writing marketing double-speak, the HN refutation du-jour would be that they're not focusing on privacy enough.
> But on that line, why do we have GIMP, GNOME, Everything starting with the letter K on KDE, KDE itself, Hector Martin's "Asahi Lina" nonsense, and on and on...
Why was one of the first NES emulators called Nesticle? Who knows, and who cares? The quality of the software spoke for itself, and it opened the doors to decades of unsuccessful litigation from Sony and Nintendo. The same thing happened for Linux, Nginx, Kubernetes, BSD... you name it. The utility of these projects far outweighs their respective sex appeal, so why even bother making a pretty landing page?
While we're on the topic, why does Apple have such a bad history of choosing names for their stuff too? "Xcode" doesn't confer anything to me as a user, at least "Visual Studio" tells me I'm about to be using an IDE. Also makes it sound like an x11/Xorg tool, which it certainly isn't. Similarly, "Logic Pro", "Final Cut" and even "iTunes" are dorky titles. Even Microsoft, the patron saint of bad UX design, has the balls to just call their app "Music" and "Photos".
I'm a little hung up on the fact that you think between "Xcode" and "visual studio" that the latter is the one that more suggests you're about to be writing code in an IDE.
On every Unix box I've ever used, any tool prefixed with 'X' usually relates to the display server technology. MacOS is the only outlier here, and the 'X' doesn't really mean anything to me as a user. The word 'code' hints that it's a tool for development, but altogether it could mean anything from a compiler to a Xorg IDE. At least Visual Studio conveys the idea that you're going to be using a GUI application with designer/compositional tools, and adding 'Code' to it clarifies that it's a visual tool for manipulating code.
It's a bit of a reach, but if you think the average iPad user could tell you what "Logic" does, I'd be inclined to disagree.
I'll never use a custom ROM that includes microg by default. LineageOS with no gapps of any kind is my preference. I can get apps from f-droid or even aurora store, and everything I need works. I don't want any google stuff on there, not even a slightly less sketchy version.
Sure, but, unfortunately, a lot of apps require Google Play Services to work at all, so microG is the only sane alternative. The fact /e/OS includes it pre-configured OOB is a positive for my use case.
My primary device runs GrapheneOS, but a secondary device with /e/OS is the next best thing for apps that refuse to work without Google Play Services. Or those that I just want to keep off my main device.
I might be misunderstanding it, but microg is not (like the name suggests) a stripped down version of the google services. It is a reimplementation of the APIs that the google services provide to installed apps. It doesn't reuse any code (it couldn't, because the google services are not open source) and doesn't connect to google servers, afaik.
As per their motto, MicroG is "A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries". They absolutely do connect to Google services, just not with the proprietary Google implementation of the softwares, but with a reimplementation. I think this is very similar to NewPipe for example. Google's proprietary services, with an open source frontend.
How are you using Google services on LineageOS now? Do you have microG preinstalled (LineageOS for microG)[1], did you install GApps, or are you not using Google services at all?
/e/ has microG installed, just like LineageOS for microG. Compared to the proprietary Google Play Services in GApps, microG is a FOSS library that allows apps to access Google services. microG lets you selectively enable/disable push notification access for individual apps that depend on Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, and also lets you choose a location provider other than Google. On the other hand, microG is not compatible with all apps that depend on Google Play Services. For example, Android Auto and Google Pay are not supported.
Also, /e/ and LineageOS support different versions for different devices. Since LineageOS supports Android 12 on OnePlus 6T,[2] while /e/ has that device on Android 11 (R),[3] LineageOS for microG may be a better choice on that device. Both /e/ and LineageOS support Android 11 on the OnePlus 3T.[4][5]
have been using microG (as LOS for microG) up until about two years ago. but it seemed less and less actively developed, so I switchted to vanilla LOS. No GApps. Everything I need works (even stuff like Signal or Google Maps). Only type of apps that don't work are some actively and unnecessarily screening for Google Services or stuff like Uber which uses an integrated map.
> LineageOS for microG may be a better choice on that device
LOS for microG always seemed a bit fishy - the way the project is run and executed. Seemed less transparent than vanilla LOS. microG's release schedule is a bit gappy for my taste. sometimes no updates or fixes for several months :/
The versioning of /e/ seems to be about as confusing as the project name itself but as far as I can tell from that table there is no device with a version beyond R. so, I'd assume they just need some more time to release it?
I noticed when apps are installed on Chinese androids they generally magically work just fine. I remember reading that at install time the app detects if it's on a western or Chinese phone and it reconfigures itself accordingly (this was with Signal)
The issues appear when you install on a western phone and disable Google play services and the apps keep trying to access them
For instance on my mainland xiaomi Instagram works just fine, but on my Taiwanese xiaomi (with the global ROM) it won't do notifications and I don't know how to fix it
If there a way to have apps install in this Chinese mode?
It depends on how the developer chooses to implement the notifications and on how the app is distributed. The Play Store distribution of Signal uses Firebase Cloud Messaging (via Google Play Services or microG) and falls back to WebSockets if FCM is unavailable. The website distribution[1] of Signal only uses WebSockets. I don't think Signal tries to detect whether the phone is Chinese, only whether FCM is available.
Since Google services (including FCM) are blocked in China, apps that serve both Chinese and non-Chinese users usually find some way to support both FCM and the Chinese equivalents. For example, Airbnb serves users both inside and outside of China, so they distribute two builds of their app. The Play Store distribution of Airbnb relies solely on FCM for push notifications. The Chinese distribution of Airbnb,[2] according to an App Manager[3] tracker scan, bundles push notification libraries from JPush,[4] Xiaomi, Huawei, and Vivo.
Developers can choose to have one app distribution that support all of these services, or they can release separate builds that each handle some of these services. This varies from app to app.
Ohhh, releasing multiple apks. That hadnt occured to me but it makes sense. I do use the Huawei app store which may be why I generally don't have issues
Im still not super clear why Instagram/Messenger don't give notifications. It could be that they started using Google services at some point and I hadn't noticed, though I'd find that surprising given theyre competitors. Maybe I should try this AppManager. Also LINE will not work - but I've never had that work in the past. Another workaround that sometimes works is finding a "Lite" version or the all. But they've been mostly deprecated in recent years
It has some preinstalls that make onboarding more straightforward (and opinionated of course). These include MicroG (takes care of some Google services dependencies, should some apps need it), an App store which fronts Google Play, a navigation app. Updates are possible from within the system. With their Advanced Privacy app, you can block trackers in apps (TrackerControl fork I believe), fake your device location, or force all network traffic through Tor.
There's so much here that is embarrassing that we'd have to have about five beers to even cover it on a surface level. So much that was just lazily copied verbatim rather than anyone TRYING to do something original, or even do just a slight, semi-creative variation.
Google Pixels generally have the best support for alternate OSes, especially from a security POV. See CalyxOS and GrapheneOS, which primarily/only support Pixels thanks to their ability to re-lock the bootloader.
I doubt third party Android distributions pose any real threat to Google given that 99% of people will stick to the default.
They haven't done that so far, and the predecessors were getting plenty of traction (CyanogenMod, LineageOS). Neither have they controlled the alternative Chromium distributions too much. Nevertheless, the project depends on Google on the long term.
after being an android user for about 13 years i switched to an iphone se this year, and i’m very satisfied. you just can’t compare apples and oranges, android is sluggish even with a high end phone
Surely you haven’t tried all Android phones out there, so why make such a generalizing comment? I’m daily driving a mediocre Pixel 4a and have no such issues. I also tried an iPhone 11 Pro alongside my Pixel for a few months. What an unwieldy brick that was and they’re only getting heavier. Notifications handling and navigating the settings suck big time, and overall it felt very restricting to use.
I suppose it's all personal preference past a point..
I tried switching from an old Pixel 3 to a new iPhone recently and just couldn't get on with it. Simple things like not being able to order the home screen how I want it drove me nuts.
Dropped back to a Pixel 4a (5G) and I'm very satisfied. No issues with sluggish performance that I've seen.
I switched to an Iphone 11 Pro last year after many years with Android, but I'm going back to Android when two years has passed (I'm on agreement to be able to switch every 2 years), although I would happily look into /e/ instead.
One and a half years with IOS has been a misery so far, due to lack of separate media volume the switch is almost always on silent - thus I regularly misses many calls. I feel shortage of RAM on IOS, and the way they have solved it is by having some form of pseudo multi tasking.
Cool, except... What alternatives are there? With the caveat that phone calls (roaming too), SMS and mobile data must work reliably. Is there an alternative that provides this? Librem 5 maybe? Last I checked neither PinePhone nor Purism were there yet.
The problem with Android based "alternatives" is Googles licensing. The licensing agreements for Googles apps require that Google gets to decide which android forks device manufacturers are allowed to sell if they don't want to be completely cut of from Googles ecosystem. So if you actually plan to use it for anything bigger you wont even be able to find a manufacturer willing to touch it, even Amazon had problems getting the Kindle produced. Any attempt to de google Android will be stuck as a niche product for enthusiasts.
It sounds interesting but I cannot connect the dots.
So, the Google-authored apps' use can become illegal in future on a specific ("bigger") fork of Android you say? But that's just the license terms of Google apps. I don't understand what would a manufacturer be afraid of, exactly? (Does Kindle need any Google apps?...)
Most big manufacturers currently sell Google approved Android with Google apps. Selling even one not approved Android device voids the license for Google apps on the manufacturers entire existing lineup as far as I understand. It is either all or nothing.
Imagine yourself convincing Samsung to dump entire warehouses filled with Google (TM) Android phones and any chance of future success in that market in the trash over a handful of ebook readers. That is what Amazon had to deal with.
> Selling even one not approved Android device voids the license [...] on the manufacturers entire existing lineup
Ummm, that is not how licenses work legally, so I had trouble believing that exact link in the reasoning chain.
But I went and check... And you are right. It turns out that Google Apps are services, by which I mean they are governed by ToS not the license. And with ToS anybody could be cut off, duh.
I've been using SailfishOS for 3 years now as my daily driver, never had any problems with calls, sms or mobile data. Roaming or not. It is not a fork of android but if you get the paid version you get android app support on it. At one point I even got microg on it to see if my banking application would work and it did. Officially they support a very small number of phones, I think only some sony models.
I feel like I wouldn't use this based on the name alone.
How do I say it? forward slash ee forward slash?
I don't understand why anyone would think it was a good idea to name it this!
I don't understand either; especially the fact that no one seemed to have done any research on any existing usage of /e/. The only explanation that makes sense is they were deliberately referencing the 4chan board, which is indeed a place best visited with privacy.
I have been following this project for years. I think they lost their original name to a copyright claim (the claim seemed a stretch, but whatever). /e/ was supposed to be the temp name, and they have forever been discussing how it needs to change.... Not sure why it has never happened.
A solid product name is important for marketing, to be sure.
However, it's also a way that native English folks prejudice against foreign products that are arguably very useful and valuable.
I'm not saying you're wrong in doing what everyone does and allowing the marketing naming to sway your decision. However, I would gently suggest that you take a more critical approach and evaluate the actual product instead of letting something as simple as naming deter you from using a product.
After all, kubernetes is complicated and stupid sounding, but we can just rebrand it to "Google Cloud" or whatever and people will love it. Same can be done for /e/... they'll just call it "NextPhone" or some other catchy name.
something named /e/ has literally no obvious means of pronunciation in any human language. This really is on a different level of stupid for a name.
You mention Kubernetes. I raise you Microsoft Kaizala. That is such a stupid name in English even though i recognise and know the language it is from - Marathi.
Naming is a delicate game and there are numerous examples of brand names that transcend language - Ikea, Nissan, Mitsubishi and so on.
I see how you latched onto the bad Kubernetes example and clearly ignored the “discounting non-English products” part.
I’ll grant you my Kubernetes example was bad but I have no idea what you’re getting at with Microsoft Kaizala. Probably cause I’ve never heard of it or Marathi.
I think it’s understandable that people judge a name, but at the same time, judging can be a form of discrimination. I feel it’s important to ask myself how I might be biased when I make off the cuff judgements based on just a name.
Also, I think the reason Nissan, Mitsubishi, etc transcended languages is because the product was good even if the name was different or weird for the time. People saw the product was good and didn’t care what it was called.
the original name was eelo. then they discovered that eelo was a trademark owned by someone else. /e/ was a stopgap measure, while they were looking for a new name. already some years ago they said they had a new name, but they were working to make sure the name was rock solid (trademarking it in several jurisdictions i guess).
i think murena is that new name. i don't know why they don't use that for the OS. but i guess it's because once you have a brand, it's difficult to change. maybe over time when murena is more well known they will try to rebrand the OS too.
branding is hard. rebranding is even harder. especially if you don't have a large marketing budget.
When the title said "Android alternative", I was actually expecting an alternative OS (like Sailfish or Ubuntu Touch), not a mere LineageOS fork. That's like calling Ubuntu a "Linux alternative".
OsmAnd is a heavyweight with more features, including an advanced OSM editor, trip recording, Mapillary street view, and other plugins, for those that need them.
Yes, Organic Maps is a fork of Maps.me. The original Maps.me was acquired by Daegu Limited, a subsidiary of the financial services company Parity.com, and they stopped publishing source code afterward.
What I'd really like is for all OSM apps to agree on a place to store the offline OSM data.
I don't mind having multiple navigation apps with different strengths/weaknesses but I don't want to download several gigs of offline maps for each app I might use.
In my experience, where the open source apps often come up short is not really mapping but rather turn by turn navigation. The first, most obvious indictor being the voice prompts. If they sound like a bad video game from the 90's, you can bet the directions are equally flawed/bad.
For me, the biggest issue is business information.
I rarely use map apps to find directions, except while hiking or having a stroll, in which case, yes, OSM is superior.
Most of the time, I need to either:
A) Look up a certain type of business, check its opening hours and (if applicable) menu, phone or message them to ask any questions, and only then drive to the business in question
or B) get somewhere without a car, and figure out the fastest route by public transportation without having to find multiple different websites and cross-reference their respective timesheets
These activities aren't really the job of a mapping or navigation map, they're the job for a data mining app.
OSM often has better paths than Google Maps, but Google's commercial and transportation databases aren't going to get beaten by any open source service any time soon.
