I recently bought a new phone, so my old phone, a Pixel 4 xl is now sitting around collecting dust. I thought it could be fun to install an actual non-Google Linux OS on it. Any suggestions?
Graphene os, I’m typing this on a pixel 4xl with graphene os and its my favorite phone ever
Same with pixel 4
If you consider that the phone is not reilable as a replacement in case of emergency, I can propose you two things:
- Use it to learn about Android, Operating System changes and to prepare it cleanly with Free (as in freedom) tools.
- Additional to that, prepare it and give it to a person in need that you know.
I keep my old phone in my car and use it as a dedicated media player/GPS that tethers to my active phone when it’s in range.
Also use it for car diagnostics with a Bluetooth obd2 scanner.
Once you’re finished with whatever projects you choose you can donate it to a homeless or domestic violence shelter.
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tor relay definitely 😎
or if you don’t want to bother with that, you can literally just download firefox and install the snowflake extension
You can also use it as pi-hole, there are several projects for this.
I think our suggestion depends on what you want to do or archive, actual use your phone as phone, or as pi-hole, or as emulator … There are so many projects and ideas.
I’d like to continue to use it as a phone.
Then install CalyxOS as its more usable and faster than GrapehenOS.
I use GrapheneOS every day and it’s very pleasant, why would CalyxOS be better?
Because less apps are crippled + better performance + battery lifetime.
I wouldn’t call it “crippled”. The whole point of Graphene is that it has built-in self-checks for security, and of course that would eat into performance.
In real world the argument does not hold since your hardening becomes pointless once it eats all your battery which makes it unusable in the real world. Or your fav apps just do not work.
It was long crippled, and still is, until the developer made the roll backward and started to sandbox google services because he realized that crippling everything is not what people actually want on a daily basis. However, sandboxing is still slower and there is nothing to argue here, is consumes more CPU processing power which automatically reduces battery lifetime as well as pressures resources.
For me usability is crippled if apps crashing, do not work in the first place, so my argumentation is correct.
until the developer made the roll backward and started to sandbox google services because he realized that crippling everything is not what people actually want on a daily basis
I use a phone with no google services and I’m fine. I just don’t care about the apps that need them. Plenty of people do the same. And if you need something as utterly invasive as Google services, IMO, the performance hit from sandboxing is the price you need to pay for better privacy. It’s like having a rabid lion in a cage to keep it from destroying everyone you love, but someone complains that the cage takes up too much space and that getting rid of the cage will make the room more usable.
Also, plenty of apps that don’t need Google services. I for one have never missed the ones that do ever since switching to DeGoogled LineageOS, and most of the apps I use are on F-Droid anyway, which aren’t even eligible for using Google services because they didn’t come from the Play store.
Well that’s just not true in my experience, I use GrapheneOS daily and my battery lasts longer than stock android and I haven’t really encountered any apps I haven’t been able to run under any circumstances. I’m a really big fan of the Google Sandboxing too, it allows me to run the real google-filled apps (like my bank) in a work profile. I admit that might not be lay-user friendly, but idk, it works for me
Cringe.
