Using only open-source software on Android

https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/29/like-using-open-source-software-android/

by axiomdata316 • 8 years ago

96 83 8 years ago

voltagex_2• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, there's a catch - microG only works with custom ROMs that support signature spoofing. The LineageOS project is against adding support for that feature, citing security concerns, so microG offers its own ROM called 'LineageOS for microG.'

Jesus - this is what the patch does:

https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/blob...

So this allows other applications to appear in the com.google namespace?

This can't be good.

Can't I have this kind of feature and still be secure?

Edit: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/issu... is a slightly better solution - I wonder why it hasn't been implemented.

pwnna2• 8 years ago

From your linked thread:

Restrict the permission to apps in /system/priv-app. This requires to ship microG or two placeholder apps with the ROM (or to allow modification of /system, which is a far worse option). Modifying the permission to be for system apps only is changing one word in the patch (from "dangerous" to "system"), creating a placeholder apps is about writing ~10 lines of XML code and thus could be done in a few minutes.

Lineage for MicroG already does this by default: https://github.com/lineageos4microg/docker-lineage-cicd/blob...

Restricting the permission to a platform level permission essentially means no other installed apps (after flashing) can spoof this. No toggles are necessary either. This should be a secure setup that is as good as any other ROM.

It is possible that users can flash something to /system/priv-app via an update.zip and obtain this permission. However, anything you flash like this can practically already gain root access, so this would almost be a feature if ROMs like lineage implemented this, as then microg's installation would be a small update.zip away. This is opposed to the present setup where microg has to build a completely different rom, although that is another story in itself and likely require some more complications.

voltagex_2• 8 years ago

I don't really understand why signature spoofing is needed at all.

taneq2• 8 years ago

90% of the objections here seem to be "I can't use Google's online services very easily without using Google Play", which is precisely why Google's spent the past few years piping as much of Android's runtime as possible through Google Play. The rest are mainly just that the main streaming and social media companies don't have open source clients.

st26• 8 years ago

I'd always heard that moving more and more functionality into play services was their strategy for end-running the carrier fragmentation problem.

FuckOffNeemo• 8 years ago

That's the crux of it.

Though Google have fixed it in such a way that's benefited them by consolidating services and potential data collection for revenue raising.

I've not used anything but a Nexus of Pixel in years. But carrier fragmentation (and with it, the difficulty for OTA patching!) is a much bigger risk to the Android ecosystem and it's uses than closed source code.

gregknicholson• 8 years ago

The problem more generally seems to be “I'm locked into proprietary services that don't allow me to use libre software”. I suggest that those services therefore aren't very good.

If libre software fails to compete with a proprietary alternative in terms of features, it's reasonable to criticise the libre software. Similarly, if a proprietary service fails to compete with a libre alternative in terms of choice of how you use it, it's reasonable to criticise the proprietary service.

giancarlostoro• 8 years ago

One thing I'd love to see is some Android Tablets that are ROM friendly.

firmgently2• 8 years ago

Quite a few (30-40) listed here https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ - if it runs LineageOS it's probably going to have other ROMS available too

amiga-workbench• 8 years ago

Android tablets are pretty much dead now, nobody ever put the necessary effort into the software experience on tablets, and the hardware has always been a bit of a let down.

New hardware releases have slowed to a trickle and what is being released isn't very compelling.

wilwade• 8 years ago

"...and Firefox on Android still isn't a great experience..."

As a daily FF on Android user, I am not sure what he is finding issues with. I wish he would elaborate so his issues can get fixed.

ChrisSD• 8 years ago

For example I've found the app sometimes freezes when scrolling a page. It's only temporary but it's long enough to be annoying.

Pharylon• 8 years ago

That was my thought as well. I have to switch to Chrome every once in a blue moon to make things work on my Android phone, but 99% of the time, Firefox works just as well.

haZard_OS• 8 years ago

I'll add my voice to mix here and agree that FF has worked well for me on Android. Between Nightly and Focus, I have yet to need a non-FF browser post adoption.

sidlls• 8 years ago

I have a Nexus 6 updated with the latest OS version and FF. I spend about 90% of my browsing time on HN, LinkedIn, and a couple of miscellaneous other news sites. I observe the following problems:

Loss of UI, where the only thing I see is either a white or black screen. Swiping up or down as if to scroll or refresh "peels back" some of this to reveal the web page underneath, but it doesn't become functional unless I end the app. This affects all tabs open.

Terrible latency acting on navigation, where I'll press a link which has clearly been detected (an outline appears around it) and...nothing happens for seconds. Doesn't matter if I have one tab or a dozen open.

Terrible detection of which link was pressed. Sometimes it's bad enough that a link more than halfway down the page from where I touch is activated. This doesn't happen in any other app I have, even when it's happening on FF.

Poor download times. The bar indicating progress will occasionally stop at about 80% and pause. Sometimes when it pauses it finishes after a few seconds and other times it simply freezes.

chrisper• 8 years ago

Did you try using the Beta version?

pmontra2• 8 years ago

Definitely not my experience but I believe you. If FF runs so bad on some phones Mozilla has still a lot of work to do. Maybe they should start with a list of phones that are known to run FF well (eg. Sony Xperia Compact) and badly (which phone do you have?) and start digging into what's wrong with ones in the latter list.

ZeroGravitas• 8 years ago

I Have the same phone but don't recognize these issues. I've seen something similar to the blank page thing but it sorts itself out without restarting the app.

I notice you specifically mention LinkedIn. I don't use that site but I did read their recent web development blog post when they admitted that they had a CSS download of 3.5MB that was causing issues for mobile users. Apparently they've fixed that now, would be interesting to see if that was a cause.

new2424141• 8 years ago

i think this is an oreo issue if u just google "oreo lag android" many things will pop up

do this

go to developer options > opengl > OpenGL Skia

also through boot recovery delete chache my nexus 5x became much faster

firmgently2• 8 years ago

I'm on a Note 3 (great phone, 5 years old) with a Snapdragon 800 vs your Snapdragon 805. Seems we both have 3GB RAM.

I do notice that links in FF are harder to hit accurately compared to Chromium - am guessing Chromium increases the hit area on buttons or uses some intelligence to look for the button closest to a touch... because it seems like it's just being forgiving on my sloppy touches (as opposed to FF being inaccurate). Admittedly a better UX in that respect regardless.

Otherwise I don't have any of these issues, FF is completely smooth for me. I wonder if you have some other software causing a problem, maybe FF add-ons?

(EDIT: I'm also on LineageOS 14.1 which is based on Nougat so maybe the sibling comment about Oreo is onto something)

eadmund• 8 years ago

Firefox on Android still isn't a great experience

News to me! I've been using Firefox on Android for six years now, and I'm very happy.

Nexxxeh• 8 years ago

Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin is amazing. Best mobile browsing experience on any platform for me.

Boulth• 8 years ago

I can confirm. I recently wanted to try Chrome for Android but after several vibrating ads I migrated back to Firefox.

tazard• 8 years ago

I regularly switch between Firefox + ublock and Firefox Focus. Both are great in my opinion, just for different purposes.

ac29• 8 years ago

Scrolling performance is terrible, even on high end devices. I'd imagine its borderline unusable on mid-range devices.

TheChaplain• 8 years ago

No issues here, and I use it daily on a 2+ year old S7.

Currently >20 tabs open with Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere addons. No stuttering or delays.

nucleardog• 8 years ago

I use it on a Jelly Pro. A $125, 2.something inch phone running a MediaTek 6737 at all of like 1.3GHz with some barely passable GPU.

Scrolls fine. I mean, I'm sure if I went and pulled out a high framerate camera and checked it's running at a mere like 15FPS or something completely unusable, but it's never been bad enough to catch my attention.

And on a really low end phone being able to install uBlock Origin certainly means that Firefox solves a lot more issues than it might potentially create.

taneq2• 8 years ago

Weird, what device are you using? I used it on my Nexus 5X and now on my non-Edge S7 and it's fine, maybe some slightly-perceptible judders but certainly fluid enough to be usable.

khedoros1• 8 years ago

I use it as my main browser on a phone that was mid-range when it was released 2 1/2 years ago, and I've been pretty happy with it.

KozmoNau7• 8 years ago

It's perfectly fine on my Moto X Play.

sam_goody2• 8 years ago

I'm use FF a ~$35 one year old Huang, with more than 100 tabs open, and have had no issues. Not so with the default browser.

ivankolev• 8 years ago

Now, my Note 5 is probably a bit above mid-range, but it's not true for me, Firefox's UI has been very consistently excellent, I am happily using it since the beginning of the Quantum releases.

tomcooks3• 8 years ago

Low range Asus Zenfone Max2 (z0d10), android lollipop, currently 86 tabs but usually hovering around 120. No problems with scrolling, it's smoother than Chrome

thaumasiotes2• 8 years ago

I tried to use Firefox on Android recently. It felt like my phone was about to melt; I wasn't able to stick with it.

pmontra2• 8 years ago

May I ask which phone do you have? I used Firefox as my primary browser for at least all of 2016 on a Samsung Galaxy S2 (a 2011 phone) and on a Sony Xperia Compact since fall 2016. No problems with performance. Opera has a much better text reflow on zoom but that's all. Chrome, no difference, but I never used Chrome much so I might be missing something.

batiudrami• 8 years ago

I try Firefox on Android about every six months and it is consistently worse than its competitors. Its address bar behaviour is erratic, websites render desktop versions or "basic" versions where I would get a more functional version on chrome, it feels heavy and scrolling still sucks.

This from someone who has had Firefox as my default browser on my computer since I unzipped Phoenix off a CD which came bundled with a computer magazine.

zaarn• 8 years ago

websites render desktop versions or "basic" versions where I would get a more functional version on chrome

Sounds like user-agent sniffing, considered pretty bad practice.

I use Firefox Android daily and it's consistently more useful than Chrome;

* Firefox Sync lets me send tabs between all my devices

* I can run a scriptblocker, which has saved me from atleast two Script Injection attacks

* I can set DDG as search engine

* I can open tabs in the background which is useful when people post links with commentary or multiple links

barbs• 8 years ago

Same here - works perfectly on my S5 with LineageOS installed

jhasse12• 8 years ago

Links which can be handled by apps (e.g. YouTube or Reddit) won't open in the app but in Firefox instead. This is a show-stopper for me :/

ealhad• 8 years ago

On my phone (I use Lineage), I have control of what app opens what link.

commoner• 8 years ago

In the current version of Firefox for Android (59), you have 2 options to open a link in an external app:

1) Long-press the link, and choose "Open in <app name> App". (This won't work if the destination is hidden behind a redirect, as in Google search results. Use DuckDuckGo, instead.)

2) Navigate to the address, and press the Android icon in the navigation bar.

nedp• 8 years ago

not gonna say it is best to use bleeding edge but since releasing their photon ui on ff58 nightly for android it was the best experience i had :)

clircle• 8 years ago

I've been running Lineage with microG on my Nexus 5X for about 5 months and I'm pretty neutral about the experience. I do cheat a little bit though -- I install Google Maps and Gboard. The biggest annoyance was updating from Android 7 to Android 8. I had to reinstall stock Android 8 on my Nexus to get the new firmware, then install Lineage with microG version 8. Quite annoying, but I suppose it was necessary. Other than that, I quite enjoy the extended battery life that comes with the ROM, I have 87% left now, after about 12 hours of very minimal use.

I don't use my phone too much, mostly just navigation, texting, email, HN, and reddit. Though I'm considering switching back to stock for the better Google hangouts experience.

_bxg13• 8 years ago

A much better rule imo, which I've had success with, is "no software from the Big Five" rather than FOSS-only. This has a bigger impact on actual privacy concerns and gives you more leeway when it comes to media apps, etc.

icebraining• 8 years ago

Sorry, which are the Big Five? Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon... Apple?

majewsky• 8 years ago

yes

_bxg13• 8 years ago

Also, the Brave browser is a great FOSS option. It's a chromium fork that only adds privacy/adblocking features and doesn't require google services.

jhasse12• 8 years ago

Unfortunately not on F-Droid.

_bxg13• 8 years ago

It is on APKMirror, a trusted (run by Android Police) mirror of the Play Store, which has been essential to ditching the latter.

jancsika• 8 years ago

There are no FOSS clients for Plex, Netflix, Hulu, or Spotify.

Hm... there's a client that is suspiciously absent from that list...

In other words, I couldn't listen to any of my music, unless I copied the MP3 files from my Plex server to the phone's internal storage. I couldn't stream any TV shows or movies, either.

Ok, that's just technically inaccurate. The author didn't want to use a particular open-source app (or perhaps category of apps) to stream video/audio to the Android device.

There is certainly a persuasive argument as to why one would refrain from installing such apps. But a piece about following FOSS-only dogma which omits a discussion of that app category is misleading. Especially when there are probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users who currently have such a FOSS app installed on their Android devices.

Edit: typo

JackCh• 8 years ago

What client are you referring to?

I've used VLC on android to stream media from my DLNA server. Is that what you're talking about? Or is there a better solution available? (I've found VLC to be unstable in this configuration, it often crashes for reasons I haven't yet bothered to dig into.)

phito• 8 years ago

Maybe Kodi?

Squarex2• 8 years ago

Is there a decent free software Android keyboard which supports sliding? It's the last thing keeping me from going full Google and Microsoft free Android. Right now I use Swiftkey and firewall to keep it from accesing the network.

Squarex2• 8 years ago

To answer my own question, I've found out that latest AOSP keyboard supports sliding.

fithisux• 8 years ago

I agree with the title.

rubenbe• 8 years ago

I tried this for a while and I consider the experiment failed.

No closed source means no Whatsapp, etc. Let's face reality, no-one is using XMPP ;)

In the end I started the policy "Prefer open-source software on Android", which works pretty well:

* Note taking using orgzly

* Tasks using opentasks (https://github.com/dmfs/opentasks)

* File Sync using Syncthing

* Contacts, Calendar using davdroid & nextcloud

* Firefox for browsing (this is a no-brainer)

jhasse12• 8 years ago

Try Telegram instead of WhatsApp. It's a good drop-in replacement.

heinrich5991• 8 years ago

It doesn't encrypt end-to-end by default though.

mxschumacher2• 8 years ago

the trouble is to get your friends to use it. A vast portion of my daily communication runs over Whatsapp. A realistic migration would entail convincing 25+ people to switch apps.

Network effects are powerful.

unicornwizard• 8 years ago

Even better, Signal.

Rotareti3• 8 years ago

I tried this for a while and I consider the experiment failed.

Me too, that's why I'll go for a two phone solution. One main driver (FOSS) and another one for the crap ;)

Using only open-source software on Android

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