I have put my 5 year old Oneplus up for grabs due to screen and USB issues and ordered a Fairphone-4. On the OnePlus I have been running DeGoolged LineageOS together with MicroG for years and it works perfectly. But to my great surprise there is no LineageOS image for the FP4 and therefore no MicroG version.
I have looked at /e/ but that is a drama, the amount of manual actions you have to perform is absurd. It seems that /e/ wants to discourage self-flashing in favor of their own pre-flashed but much more expensive FP4
I have been flashing my phone(s) with LineageOS incl MicroG for years, which is relatively simple. Why is so difficult/impossible for the FP4 ?
As is I am going to cancel the purchase and order a Shift6mq which does support LineageOS/MicroG.
There are various different ROMs available for the FP4 apart from /e/, including multiple shipping with microG by default.
As @noodlejetski already said, LOS has just been released as well, which means a LineageOS for microG build will surely follow in the not too distant future.
But even if all of that wasn’t the case, you can absolutely install /e/ yourself. If you don’t like the wall of commands, just put them in a text file add the appropriate extension for your OS (.sh for Linux for example), make it executable and run them as a script.
That’s what I said as well when they released the instructions like that, but I was wrong, people didn’t mess it up (at least not that part…)
The install scripts you get from other ROMs aren’t really that different, you just don’t have to type (rather copy) it yourself, the results are basically the same.
I am not people, I am not going to do that. The only thing I can think off why /e/ is so difficult to install is that /e/ want to push people to there pre-flashed phones. I don’t like that so no /e/ for me anyway
Nobody is forcing you to, I’m not in the business of advocating for /e/, I’m not a fan either.
But I strongly disagree that those instructions were maliciously designed to keep potential users away and direct them towards buying a phone with /e/ preinstalled.
Here’s how the official FPOS factory images are installed (only a snippet from the install script):
flash_fp4_factory.command
# Flashing and other operations
flash_device() {
# Process partitions that must be handled for a full wipe
if [ “${DATA_WIPE}” = “true” ]; then
echo “INFO: Deleting user data”
flash_image_or_abort “${sn}” userdata “${IMAGES_DIR}/userdata.img”
flash_image_or_abort “${sn}” metadata “${IMAGES_DIR}/metadata.img”
fi
# Process partitions with FRP-related data
if [ “${FRP_WIPE}” = “true” ]; then
echo “INFO: Deleting factory reset partition”
flash_image_or_abort “${sn}” frp “${IMAGES_DIR}/frp_for_factory.img”
flash_image_or_abort “${sn}” devinfo “${IMAGES_DIR}/devinfo_for_factory.img”
fi
Basically the same thing.
They have a partnership with /e/, /e/ is Lineage based, so in a way they are helping.
Have fun with your Shift6mq, the more companies flourishing in that space, the better
Well, the /e/OS Easy installer for the Fairphone 4 will come too late in this case, but it’s not too late for thanks for the entertaining read and best wishes for the SHIFT.
Not people … realisation is the first step towards recovery, they say.
Fun fact:
The SHIFT SHIFT6mq was available just about a year when it’s LineageOS version got released, so LOS for the FP4 could even be available quicker in relation to the release date.
But if you take a look at the people involved, many of them are already maintainers or contributors for LOS versions of older Fairphones, other phones or even LOS in general. As impatient as I am on getting my hands on the official LOS, we can consider ourselves lucky that they need just that much time to publish (and of course that they do it at all).
I think the mentality you show with this post is really a bit putting-off. Lineageos an other custom roms are devloped by volunteers in their free time. Get it done yourself or don’t complain. Constructive criticism and questions are welcome for sure, but you cannot just demand others to invest time in something you want for free.
I’m sure there would be a place for a phone that is sold with a privay aware rom out of the box. But that was never advertiesed for Fairphone.
Also why don’t you research a product before buying? I think that would be a better time investment than writing rants afterwards.
Yeah I think they may have donated FP4(s) to one or more Ubuntu Touch developers too and even at least one Fairphone employee has been involved in some of the porting work with UT & PostmarketOS (don’t know if it’s on company time though).
They sure are that is why i ordered one. but i did not do my homework and just assumed that LOS was available, my bad.
I really struggle what to do now, i am 100% not going to use it with Google services and dreading the /e/ install method.