How de-Googled is Lineage OS?

https://kevinboone.me/lineageos-degoogled.html

by ingve • 2 years ago

136 116 2 years ago

I've been running Lineage with microg for a couple years now, and for the same reasons as the author. I don't consider myself a tin-foiler, either. I think the concerns he expresses are perfectly valid. Anyway, FWIW, I have noticed a night and day difference in the targeted advertising. It's a little amusing, because my wife has an iPhone, and she'll get nearly instant targeted ads based on conversations we have, while I don't. Anecdotal, sure, but there seems to be something to it.

throwaway485402• 2 years ago

Interesting, I replaced my android (with Lineage and without even microg) with iPhone and all the hyper-targeted ads stopped.

kmeisthax• 2 years ago

Apple's long-term play with iOS is to shut all competing ad networks out of the data flow that iPhones generate. This is not solely for privacy reasons. We know Apple runs their own ads in the App Store, and they do collect data on those ads, which they conveniently do not consider to be "tracking" because it doesn't cross an organizational boundary.

And to be clear, every other big tech company operates on this same logic. "Tracking" to both Apple and Google is this really specific technical definition rooted in the same-origin policy of web browsers, in the same way that "malware" to Apple is "anything we didn't sign, including useful developer tools, third-party JIT compilers, and games that won't pay us 30% of their microtransaction sales". In fact, this sort of "we'll protect you from the competition's - and ONLY the competition's - malfeasance" bullshit is why Google isn't allowed to block third-party cookies. The UK CMA is legally enshrining third-party cookies - at least in Google browsers - because all of Google's own privacy posturing with that was just to shut off the data flow in Chrome.

tiahura• 2 years ago

So you go through all that effort just so you can see more irrelevant ads?

deng2• 2 years ago

LineageOS with MicroG is really not much effort nowadays as long as you

- get an officially supported phone with easily unlocked bootloader (which usually means: Pixel or OnePlus)

- get the LineageOS&MicroG bundle from https://download.lineage.microg.org, which should really be more advertised

- don't root your phone, because that'll definitely require more effort fuzzing around with Magisk and Zygote deny lists etc.

There are of course apps that won't work with MicroG, period. Anything requiring hard DRM (Netflix EDIT: according to below list, it's actually working now, but I cannot test), games (Pokemon Go for instance), also quite a few banking apps, so if you can't live without some of those, check beforehand for instance on

https://community.e.foundation/t/list-apps-that-work-or-do-n...

DuncanCoffee• 2 years ago

Not seeing relevant ads is literally my use case. If you see relevant ads it means at best that somewhere there's a list of all your history and preferences, and at worst your devices are actively listening to you

zb3• 2 years ago

Irrelevant ads are better for my wallet (and for me) than seemingly relevant ads meant to exploit my weaknesses

Vinnl• 2 years ago

Keep in mind that when the industry says "relevant ads", it means "more able to influence your actions".

If it results in you buying a T-shirt, it might have been more relevant to you than an ad for something you didn't need. But if it results in you, say, not voting, that would also be considered a success.

aqfamnzc• 2 years ago

Ad relevance is just an ad's ability to manipulate you.

rapnie• 2 years ago

Anecdotal, I use adblockers, and for many years I think "Huh, ads?"

medstrom• 2 years ago

What you describe sounds like the data on both of you gets stored due to your choice of messaging app, and you just don't get shown ads due to your choice of OS. Data may still be there.

akimbostrawman6• 2 years ago

But I’m not paranoid. I don’t think Google is out to get me, or is in league with people who are.

they are a data selling company. anybody now or in the future who deems that data valuable can acquire it. worrying about such data falling into the wrong hands sooner or later is not paranoid but knowing history and learning from it.

i agree that if you are serious about de-Googling that GrapehenOS is a much better fit not to mention superior security, however that is only the first step.

fsflover10• 2 years ago

i agree that if you are serious about de-Googling that GrapehenOS is a much better fit

A GNU/Linux smartphone is an even better fit for this. GrapheneOS uses Google hardware and AOSP written by Google.

akimbostrawman6• 2 years ago

i like GNU/Linux but on smartphones they are inferior to GraphenOS security which is a integral part to privacy not to mention lacking app support.

BadHumans2• 2 years ago

Too bad Linux smartphones fail at the smartphone part of it.

RDaneel0livaw• 2 years ago

I would absolutely LOVE to have a linux smartphone, but as far as I'm aware, there really isn't one that can be used as a competent daily driver. Has that changed recently? For me, a competent daily driver is a device that can last all day on a single charge, do gps mapping, reliably make and receive calls/texts, and install a handful of apps such as Signal and a banking app.

foresto4• 2 years ago

A GNU/Linux smartphone is an even better fit for this.

Why GNU? Their runtime stack isn't exactly known as the best fit for constrained devices like a smartphone.

mid-kid• 2 years ago

I think privacy and security are orthogonal, and I'm not convinced that GrapheneOS does a lot more than LineageOS isn't already doing for me in the privacy aspect - some of graphene's touted features are geared towards being able to use google's services in a secure and moderately private manner, but I'd much rather not use them at all. Meanwhile, its security features complicate life a lot with no tangible benefit to me, as I don't have a threat model that makes it interesting. I find my own freedom to modify my device as easily and freely as possible (e.g. by properly rooting it) much more important than locking myself down in the name of security.

akimbostrawman6• 2 years ago

I'm not convinced that GrapheneOS does a lot more than LineageOS isn't already doing for me in the privacy aspect

GrapheneOS has has many more feature that AOSP/LineageOS lack (https://grapheneos.org/features) and also 0 google connections unlike LineageOS (https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections)

some of graphene's touted features are geared towards being able to use google's services

and they are 100% optional and opt-in by default

foresto4• 2 years ago

Using GrapheneOS also means:

- Giving money to Google

- Using hardware that is ultimately controlled by Google

- Hardware replacement costs every time Google support runs out, instead of when the hardware stops working

- Ongoing environmental impact from replacing your hardware every time Google support runs out

It might make sense to accept those problems if your threat model can only be addressed by Graphene, but for the rest of us, something else might be a better (and more responsible) choice. At least for now.

I would love to see non-Google devices with the features that GrapheneOS requires.

sowbug2• 2 years ago

Google sells attention, not data.

If this statement is incorrect, please give me a pointer where I can buy user data from Google, and I'll correct my statement.

shortsunblack• 2 years ago

Google gladly will broadcast you OpenRTB data (which includes meter accuracy location data) with shitty enterprise XML APIs if you are in the lists.

exe34• 2 years ago

just because they're not selling it now doesn't mean that they won't. there's nothing stopping them. money can make them.

wcfields• 2 years ago

You can buy anonymized user data of searches by zip codes. You can get it fairly targeted if you clean room it against other data sets (set top boxes for instance).

I used to work for a media agency’s analytics dept and we got feeds from G, F, and others we dumped into a giant DB for modeling and analysis of our clients ad reach effectiveness.

throwaway42761• 2 years ago

i agree that if you are serious about de-Googling that GrapehenOS is a much better fit

Why would anyone who's serious about de-Googling opt for a ROM that only runs on Google phones?

akimbostrawman6• 2 years ago

because it has superior hardware https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

and with GrapehenOS there are 0 google connections https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections

sulandor• 2 years ago

tl;dr

not much but it's a start

elric3• 2 years ago

I've given up on Lineage, mostly because updates are a pain. Switched to GrapheneOS and am pretty happy so far. I think their approach of sandboxing the Google-foo is pretty sensible, as it strikes a balance between usability and privacy.

It's a shame that the mobile phone market is such a complete and utter shitshow. Can't root your device because a boatload of apps will stop working. Can't have an unlocked bootloader because other apps will stop working. You effectively have a choice between two walled gardens (and never the twain shall meet!), with varying degrees of privacy violations.

How did we let it come to this? For a brief moment we had the glorious N900 and Maemo ecosystem, but that's all gone now. Open phones seem impossible now.

ductsurprise• 2 years ago

Maemo really was impressive, and to think how far it could be with more than a decade development and refinements had Nokia managed keep that team on it.

Sailfish OS still seems to be going, and latest and installable on Sony Xperia 10 V. Though that is based on Meego which was what replaced Maemo and ended up on the Nokia N9 and was no longer Debian based IIRC.

Tizen OS was the other offshoot of Meego and Samsung was working with it, but they appear be abandoning it.

I never had the chance to pick up a compatible device try them out.

elric3• 2 years ago

Nokia was able to keep the team, AFAIR Nokia kicked them out (and Nvidia hired a bunch of them).

I tried Sailfish for a while, but it got progressively slower and I vaguely remember some weird Russian involvement?

keyringlight• 2 years ago

I see platforms becoming less fruitful to tinkering as a characteristic of them maturing, especially when a commercial side is linked either by whoever 'owns' the platform or companies that make use of it. Tinkerers are great for pathfinding the platform and a certain amount of evangelism among early adopters, but when the platform is established among the mass market it seems lockdown is inevitable.

burnerthrow0083• 2 years ago

It's a shame that the mobile phone market is such a complete and utter shitshow. Can't root your device because a boatload of apps will stop working. Can't have an unlocked bootloader because other apps will stop working.

Sure, but it's perfectly understandable. Look at it from the other side: When the majority of your fraud comes from rooted devices and a tiny minority of your users have rooted devices... why would you not ban rooted devices?

elric3• 2 years ago

The majority of fraud comes from rooted devices? Citation needed.

I suspect the majority of fraud comes from users doing silly things without paying attention, like wiring that money the CEO asked them over text. Or from running hopelessly insecure devices which aren't actively receiving security updates.

wkat42428• 2 years ago

Updates a pain? They work really well for me. The only thing is having to run an adb command once a year for a major upgrade but it's really well documented and a 5 minute job. Once a year..

wkat42428• 2 years ago

I’ve subsequently learned that hard-core de-Googlers eschew Lineage OS, because it remains too close to the stock configuration of the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP) on which it is based.

This is true, LineageOS is mainly used by people that end up installing Google Play Services afterwards. They have said themselves that 90+% of people install it on top of Lineage.

They are also very afraid of pissing Google off, and thus they are extremely against MicroG which is an open-source phone-side API for Google Play that is more privacy preserving. For example it replaces the location service with alternatives and supports firebase push messaging without sharing too much data. But Lineage hate it, if you so much as mention it in their IRC channel you get insta-kicked.

I view Lineage not really as a privacy ROM but more as a long term support ROM for the people that want normal Android with Google but their phone has fallen out of support from the vendor.

PS: There is a great fork from MicroG itself: https://lineage.microg.org/ . Of course not using Google at all is even better but the problem is that most app backends only speak to Firebase (google) for their push messaging.

I don’t like Google knowing so much about me, but I don’t believe Google’s data collection is directly harmful to me. My disapproval of Google’s activities (and I know Google is not the only culprit) is mainly one of principle.

For me it's not about harmful or not. I just don't want to be spied upon, whether I receive negative effects from it or not.

I don’t want to be a source of revenue for Google, or to legitimize their behaviour by my own inaction. I don’t want Google to make the Internet more of a hellscape that it currently is.

Well Google and their model of tracked advertising goes hand in hand with enshittification. They're responsible (though not single-handedly) for establishing the model of 'the user is not the customer but the product'. Kowtowing to their services will certainly make things worse.

jraph2• 2 years ago

Of course it's better if you can find your rom on lineage.microg.org, but you can also install MicroG on Lineage using something like NanoDroid [1]. I see FairPhone has something like this too [2].

[1] https://gitlab.com/Nanolx/NanoDroid

[2] https://github.com/WeAreFairphone/flashable-zip_microG

wkat42428• 2 years ago

True but then you need to be rooted to update, that's the problem.

NotPractical2• 2 years ago

they are extremely against MicroG

They are? I thought that was GrapheneOS. (Not commenting on which side is "correct".)

wkat42428• 2 years ago

No. GrapheneOS (or rather its main dev) has a big thing against CalyxOS. Not so much the other way around it seems. The developer of GrapheneOS seems to think they are attacking him but when I read in the CalyxOS community they really don't seem to care one way or another :? I looked at both a while back but I didn't have the right phone for Graphene and Calyx didn't support my model in the end either although they did have plans to do so. But OnePlus made a nasty twist that made it impossible in the end.

I don't think LineageOS has any issue with GrapheneOS or the other way around. They're not really fishing in the same pond. GrapheneOS is a security hardened OS for pixel phones only, whereas LineageOS is more like a long term support ROM for as many devices as possible.

checkyoursudo• 2 years ago

I have been a long-time iPhone user, but my daily driver is Linux. Once, a long time ago, I had high hopes for a Linux phone.

TFA mentions Lineage and Graphene. Are these the only realistic alternatives these days? Why would one choose one over the other?

_heimdall• 2 years ago

CalyxOS is another option, though I haven't tried it personally.

If you need Google services and just want an OS closer to ASOP, I'd recommend Lineage. If you want a de-Googled device and are okay with the limitations that comes with, go with Graphene.

I've been using Graphene for a few years now and have always been happy with it.

mab122• 2 years ago

Honestly except occasional location service/embedded maps not working in some app that only implemented google maps APIs - I have like one app that actually doesn't work (is not usable) and I am using grapheneOS as daily driver for at least 3 years now.

fsflover10• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41356567

codethief3• 2 years ago

I used CyanogenMod/LineageOS for the better part of a decade and switched to GrapheneOS a couple years ago and haven't looked back.

When it comes to security (and privacy), GrapheneOS blows LineageOS out of the water in pretty much every way, e.g.:

  - Arbitrary-length encryption passphrases
  - General security hardening: Memory hardening, sandbox hardening etc.
  - Non-rooted (i.e. much higher security barriers for malicious apps to take over control over your phone) 
  - No userdebug mode (LineageOS ROMs are often development builds which weaken the security of the OS, see e.g. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284#issuecomment-690417436 )
  - Fully secured boot chain (in other words: A thief won't be able to do much with your phone)
  - Sandboxing of Google services (*if* you want to use them), i.e. Google no longer has admin access to your phone
  - Being able to restrict internet access for certain apps (that's a huge one in my book)
  - Being able to grant apps access only to select contacts from your contact list (contact scopes), and only select files/folders (storage scopes)

See https://grapheneos.org/features for a much longer list.

Now that I'm thinking about it, some of the above features have become so natural to me, that I find it wild that other AOSP-based ROMs (including Google's) don't have them. Moving away from GrapheneOS would be incredibly painful for me.

josephcsible• 2 years ago

Not being able to have root on your own device is a downside of GrapheneOS, not a benefit.

e12e6• 2 years ago

I guess it depends a bit on your definition of "phone" and "realistic". I have a pine64 phone I mean to revisit - probably with a version of https://postmarketos.org/ .

I think we might get there unless fuchsia and google abandon the Linux kernel completely - for a more apple like lockdown - but I don't think we're there yet.

replete• 2 years ago

DivestOS is based on lineageOS and while not as good as grapheneOS, does support a number of other devices [0]. I think its the next best alternative to GrapheneOS.

Monthly security updates too.

[0] https://divestos.org/pages/devices

BadHumans2• 2 years ago

As much as I would like an alternative, the downsides to not using Google Play Services is too great for me to seriously consider a degoogled phone. This may be a use case for PWAs but until banking apps and ride sharing apps are fully functional on the webs this isn't an option.

gspencley2• 2 years ago

This obviously isn't 100% "de-Googled' but I use GrapheneOS with the sand-boxed Google Play Services and Aurora Store for the few proprietary apps that I use. I don't do online banking using my phone so I'm not sure how well that works (GrapheneOS' documentation has some words of warning about banking apps), but for ride sharing and other stuff that I occasionally need it has worked pretty well.

The one thing that didn't work well was Location services when my wife and I travelled to Walt Disney World. The My Disney Experience app worked great for the most part, but occasionally I would get errors related Location claiming that I was outside of the country. Uber worked fine though. Fortunately we were travelling together and had her phone to fall back on when we needed it.

jraph2• 2 years ago

This looks like something microG would handle (a free software reimplementation of Google Play Services, including push notifications and location services). I see GrapheneOS is unwilling to support it.

e12e6• 2 years ago

I assume you give up Google pay? I'm surprised at how convenient it turned out to not have to carry a credit/debit card around - just tap with phone.

lawn• 2 years ago

For what it's worth, all the banking apps I've tried have worked without issue using microG on CalyxOS.

fmajid• 2 years ago

My banking apps work just fine on GrapheneOS.

kelsey98765431• 2 years ago

I looked into why I was unable to use a secure encryption password on android devices about a year ago and i was shocked to find the AOSP bug that was over a decade old identifying a max 16 character encryption password, and was absolutely floored to see CyanogenFraud now called LineageOS had willingly not patched this until literally the very latest release, which was not available for my one plus device at that time.

16 character max for a decade is a juicy rainbow table for the small cost of a few petabytes, something most law enforcement is easily capable of paying for.

Between the devils I know I much prefer my apple mobile devices, even with a fix applied I wonder about the intentions of a team that ignored security concerns for over a decade (both Alphabet and Lineage)

e12e6• 2 years ago

16 character max for a decade is a juicy rainbow table for the small cost of a few petabytes

Surely the kdf is salted and not prone to rainbow table attack? If it is, that's a flaw on its own - and much more serious than a 16 character limit?

log2((2*26+10+10)^16) ~98bits of entropy - that's nothing to sneeze at?

z3c0• 2 years ago

I've used both Lineage and Graphene extensively, and contrary to a lot of what I see even here in this thread, I find Lineage (without MicroG) to be a more Google-free experience, at least on the surface. Graphene's sandboxed GApps can still learn information about your usage patterns if you log into the services, albeit far less than they would on a standard Android device. However, it's for the sandboxed GApps that I consider Graphene to be more usable for the average smartphone user.

I'll admit to not really understanding what about the AOSP is inherently bad other than being maintained by Google. To my understanding, it's only the GApps binary that remains shrouded in sinister mystery, and obviously that's not present in Lineage.

oaththrowaway• 2 years ago

I've moved from Lineage+MicroG to /e/OS. Overall it's fine. I don't feel like I'm missing anything from a full Google experience

motohagiography• 2 years ago

the way to do mobile privacy well would be to run an android image with a VoIP phone number in a cloud container and then actuate the image using another handheld via wireguard.

I don't know that market well, but it seems like you should be able to run a virtual cloud android devices as a digital twin. secure hardware is a honeypot. disposable hardware with keys you manage is the best possible.

aesh2Xa1• 2 years ago

I don't think secure hardware is unimportant, let alone a honeypot.

For example, what happens when someone just takes your disposable handheld in your model of private Android?

Springtime• 2 years ago

One caution about changing the captive portal as described in various de-Googling guides is you can shoot yourself in the foot, as ime the entire cellular (and even Wi-Fi) connection can fail to work if the captive portal domain doesn't return the correct 204 status code (which can happen when some independent servers randomly fail or their HTTPS cert isn't renewed), which becomes frustrating to troubleshoot as the issue can be intermittent.

Additionally the guide I've seen referenced the most (from Reddit, which a popular Youtube video is directly based upon and which this article covers the main points of) suggests an outdated HTTPS URL which no longer works. I'd imagine many are just blindly copying adb settings and encountering problems (the burden of which often falls onto LineageOS community support as people spend time trying to identify an issue).

rty32• 2 years ago

I just keep it disabled, and live with the disadvantage of longer GPS start-up times.

The reality is that it is extremely painful to spend minutes locating satellites -- it is a battery drain and very difficult to deal with, almost in every case you need to use GPS (location, navigation etc). It is a dealbreaker for me personally and probably most of people.

wkat42428• 2 years ago

Yes but MicroG does allow to use AGPS and cellular location through services other than Google.

Unfortunately Mozilla was the biggest one and they just shut theirs down. But there's a plugin for apple's and you can also use one that automatically caches cells wherever you have been, which works really great if you end up in the same places a lot.

ndr2• 2 years ago

My Pixel 6 Pro just started making a sound anytime I take a screenshot. There's no way to turn it off[0].

I don't care about the de-Googling as much but I'm considering wiping to something freer, maybe Lineage OS. How destructive is that going to be?

[0] It doesn't do it when I take a picture with the camera (mCameraSoundForced=false) and I'm in a country where that would be unnecessary anyway.

dotBen• 2 years ago

That's your reason to use something 'freer'? To avoid a screenshot sound?

I mean, you do you but that's kind a extreme.

ndr2• 2 years ago

It's maddening that I tell my phone to stay quiet and it disobeys.

All that code and settings live in a protected partition. If I have to root my phone for this at least I'd like it to be nicer to hack on.

foresto4• 2 years ago

They're talking about agency. Having control of the hardware they bought. The screenshot sound is just a convenient example.

noman-land• 2 years ago

If you have a Pixel, use Graphene instead. It's incredibly easy to install and is better by every metric.

Eavolution• 2 years ago

I really want to use Lineage, I really do. I have a device thats supported and can easily unlock the bootloader, but I'd need my bank apps all to work, and I know that they don't. Even if they did, I don't want the uncertainty of them not working when a few don't have a internet banking without an app, and others require an app for 2fa, otherwise I'd use Lineage in a heartbeat.

This feels like an issue for the EU to step in on, a functional duopoly created by apps for essential services that almost everyone needs requiring one of 2 platforms to work.

burnerthrow0083• 2 years ago

This feels like an issue for the EU to step in on, a functional duopoly created by apps for essential services that almost everyone needs requiring one of 2 platforms to work.

Never going to happen, for the same reason the EU forced Apple to open the NFC chip: They're working for European businesses, not European people. European banks depend on a having a trustable platform for their apps. They are going to lobby hard against such rules because they don't want to be overrun by fraud.

Maybe Apple will help you out if you're lucky. They seem to hold a grudge, and maybe they will lobby the EC for such a rule just to fuck over the banks who forced them to open up the NFC chip.

wkat42428• 2 years ago

They are going to lobby hard against such rules because they don't want to be overrun by fraud.

The vast majority who run a degoogled phone knows what they're doing. And it's such a niche phenomenon anyway. They're not going to be overrun by anything.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 years ago

Same. The hardware attestation made it so no open source os can run with full functionality. Not grapheneos, not lineageos. I'm stuck on normal android, and probably stuck on a pixel because I want updates and Samsung keeps delivering horrible uis and phones that break on my wife

SubzeroCarnage• 2 years ago

Please see https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

How de-Googled is Lineage OS?

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