Hi,
I recently bought a FP6 with the hope to also de-googled my life (I don’t consider /e/ as an option since it only substituting the problem with another)
As a developer, I was hoping to be able to help the effort to build real alternatives, and also interest to hear about already ongoing initiative, so I thought I’ll put a thread together to collect those!
CalyxOS is another. Although I’ve checked their website and there’s been some issue with the bootloader for FP5 and FP4. FP rev 6 is too new to have support yet.
Which one exactly?
(Just making sure this is not about a Murena account as well as their cloud offerings, which are completey optional, but tend to be regarded as mandatory by some too quickly.)
Well, you could also just de-google FairphoneOS. Just uninstall what you want to get rid of. Since you are a developer you should be able to do this using adb. Or make your life easy and use UAD-ng: GitHub - Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation: Cross-platform GUI written in Rust using ADB to debloat non-rooted Android devices. Improve your privacy, the security and battery life of your device.
Calyx isnt working on it yet and doesnt know when or even if they start, they have a lot to do currently with fixing stuff due to something Google did to hinder A16 support
To add: in their beta group Iode mentioned they have no ETA or started to work on it.
The system is still very rough around the edge. Tested it on FP6, and the experience wasn’t really great, with very limited set of systems apps. The cameras was also not working (they were technically functioning, but the resolution, framerate and light was absolutely rubbish - I assume they embed some generic drivers instead of the vendors ones)
Regarding the cloud account, while they are optional, they remain overly present and don’t feel comforting on the direction taken (after all, I’m going to need a fairly stable system for the next 8 years at least, so I’d prefer investing in an OS I can trust regarding the future plans)
Thanks for the advice, but they are many risks and disadvantages with tinkering directly with system files. First, you may break integration between apps (for instance, if you nuke Google Photo, the fairphone camera is unable to show the photos - tested just now lol). There is also risk with being unable to install OTA in the future, and finally this solution doesn’t work for the biggest pain of all, Google Play Services. Sure, with root, you will be able to nuke it, but you will inevitably break a lot of things on your system. In the meantime, this service is responsible for the largest amount of tracking.
So I would prefer to find or port and existing ecosystem which work without this as base, and then install MicroG to get things like YouTube working if needed.
Sounds like LineageOS would be a possible starting point for you.
But it isn’t available yet, here’s a topic to follow … FP6 Lineage development
Oh thank you! I somehow missed this thread. This is great to hear we are already a few trying to get LOS on the way, sounds like some great stuff are about to happen again for Fairphone devices 