I would love to go all in on one of the newer Linux distros made for phones. Haven’t tried any yet.

I feel embarassed to say this as someone who is fairly techy, but I’m a little confused by the whole brouhaha.

Is Google making changes to Android, or to AOSP?

If Google is making changes to the Android fork they put on their own phones, then fuck 'em. Use Graphene. Use e/OS/, use Lineage…use something that forks their own branch of AOSP and Google can pound sand because those forks are in no way obligated to make the same changes as Google. AOSP is open source for that very reason.

If Google is making those changes to AOSP itself, which means that anyone who uses AOSP as a base have those changes by default, then isn’t Google obligated to keep those changes as Open Source, in which case anyone else who uses AOSP can just remove them from their own fork?

Someone explain like I’m a particularly dim five-year-old, please.

Google can’t control the device if you’re not running Google. GrapheneOS will still work like before, allowing you to run the apps you want. But the jury is still out on how long… I hope we can have a long term GrapheneOS solution regarding hardware.

Install them over ADB like I already sometimes do now

CUSTOMS ROMS BABY

Leaving android

i don’t really use apps on my phone anymore other than for maps. i just my phone primarily as a phone.

Start giving easy to follow de-googling instructions when and where you know them, people.

The bigger and more thorough the head start, the better.

Fuck i don’t think i can unlock the bootloader of my xiaomi anymore…

Sony update fails anyway, because i froze a non-essential app too much. Oh noes, my phone could be hacked with physical access, in a few years! But by then the phone is in their Open Firnware program and it’s back to a custom ROM again.

The apps are regularly updated of course.

I’m gonna get a linux phone. I used a flip phone and windows phone for a long time. I don’t actually need any of this bullshit.

I only run free/libre Android forks, so I don’t care.

Staying on Graphene for the time being. AFAIK should be able to still install apps whatever way I see fit.

Graphene’s team has stated that they are looking into OEM’s to potentially work out a solution to make a suitable device to run GOS, since Google is locking things down.

If it really comes to it, (long term), I’ll make the jump to a Linux mobile device, whether that’s a phone or a custom solution.

Just because corpo’s are making things difficult, doesn’t mean I’m going to cave. I started this privacy journey 6 years ago and I’m not about to undo it because of greed and inconvenience.

I’ll just adb install those same apps from f-droid. But my hope is that I will be using mobile linux more and more as a daily-driver, until it eventually replaces Android 100%

Same thing I do now, don’t use android.