Understanding OS's

[chrisRoald]

Hi, looking at a list of o.s. that can be used on FP2, I notice that Fairphone OS and Fairphone Open OS are both Marshmallow…
So what do the 2 o.s. do that differ, and what advantages are there to using an alternative to the o.s. that my FP2 was shipped to me with?

Thanks,
chrisRoald

[Rudloff]

Hello,
They are basically the same OS but Fairphone OS includes Google Play services and Fairphone Open does not.
So Fairphone open contains only free and open-source software.

[paulakreuzer]

• Fairphone OS comes with Google Apps installed
  • Advantage: Everything most people use on their phone will work without effort.
  • Disadvantage: Your data is being mined by a big evil company.
• Open OS comes without Google and only FLOSS apps.
  • Advantage: More freedom, less exploitation.
  • Disadvantage: You can get almost all apps you might want to use to work, but some might take a little work.
• Lineage OS is similar to Open OS only it is Android 7.
  • Advantage: Higher upgrade level means you can be sure that you’ll get security fixes for a while. +Some additional functions.
  • Disadvantage: In a very rare scenario when you run into a very odd issue FP support may not be able to help you because LOS is not officially supported by FP.
• Ubuntu and Sailfish are two non-Android alternatives
  • Advantage: (Almost) no Android means (almost) no Google.
  • Disadvantage: Getting Android apps to work is [I don’t know the current status, but it’s probably either not easy or not free].

[fair2fair]

@Rudloff

So Fairphone open contains only free and open-source software.

Technically, even Fairphone Open contains some unfree closed source components (drivers). Personally I still think it’s an ok compromise.