I have been running lineageOS on my OnePlus 2. I liked it, but Lineage has stopped supporting my phone. There are two options that I have been able to find as replacements - postmarketOS and /e/OS. Any thoughts on those or other recommendation? Anything that gets security updates, is open source, and is functional meets my needs.
On android there are three recommended operating system:
GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS starts from the strong baseline of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and provides substantial privacy and security improvements from the bottom up, such as:
You can find a partial list of grapheneOS features here.
GrapheneOS has also experiments support for installing the official releases of:
com.android.vending
com.google.android.gms
com.google.android.gsf
as unprivileged, sandboxed apps like any others and GrapheneOS implements shims to make them work without the many privileged permissions and SELinux policy extensions these apps usually require. This approach fit the android security model, unlike microg.
CalyxOS
CalyxOS starts from the strong baseline of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and minimizes the tracking, surveillance, and spying done by phone manufacturers, mobile phone service providers, internet service providers, advertising companies, data miners, and malicious hackers. It provides some privacy and security improvement, such as;
You can see the full lost of features here
In addition, CalyxOS bundles some application in order to protect user’s privacy and security, such as;
CalyxVPN and RiseUP VPN
Aurora store and F-droid
duckduckgo browser and Tor browser
Signal, k-9 and openkeychain
LineageOS
LineageOS is a ROM focused on costomization and compatibility with different devices rather than improve privacy and security. Nonetheless, It comes with a few privacy and security improvements, such as:
You can see more detail about LineageOS features
However, this ROM severely weaken the security model of android in different ways:
using SELinux in permissive mode instead of enforcing mode, which is a very bad approach
disabling verified boot which ensures that all executed code comes from a trusted source, rather than from an attacker or corruption
using userdebug builds, which is a bad approach because builds released with userdebug do have serious sandbox holes. In fact, Even if lineage supported verified boot, you could easily disable it as it is a userdebug build. So malware could just disable verified boot on lineageos if it wants to due to userdebug and achieve full persistence.
lacking of rollback protection which means that an attacker could downgrade the system to a vulnerable version for further exploitation even if the bootloader was locked.
Moreover, LineageOS still support phones which don’t have vendors support anymore. So, closed source components such as the bootloader, modem firmware, and other firmware no longer get updates.
/e/
/e/ is basically a LineageOS reskin.
conclusion
It’s important to understand that this is not a comparison. These operating systems are different projects; they offer different things, have different goals,thus they have different approaches. Therefore, I’m not saying what OS you should use. You have to choose according your own user case and threat model. And please, if you can read the documentation I linked about these project.
Also, these project have really active community, so if you have any questions you should ask there:
GrapheneOS’ Matrix Room
CalyxOS’ Matrix room
LineageOS’s Reddit
LineageOS don’t use permissive selinux and disabled nearly every function of userdebug build except for root functions over adb (that is disabled by default).
The only real danger about LOS is the unlocked bootloader, but it can’t be solved by LineageOS developers, since it depend deeply by manufactorer.
Still, even if it is a security risk it depend a lot about your threat model and if you usually install only trusted apps and navigate on trusted sites (or usually disable JavaScript) the actual attack surfaces isn’t really a problem for the common users, and there are only theoretical risks.
The great thing about official LOS is the support of a lot of devices (and not only Google made) and the big community approval needed for every change.
Community standards for LOS are actually really strict, and you can be pretty sure to have a stable system when you use official LOS on your device. Since there are dozens of supported devices it gives users a lot of freedom.
LineageOS weakens SELinux policies.
LineageOS still uses userdebug build. Userdebug builds are primarily development builds that are supposed to be given to closed beta testers hired by a business. These builds are not considered to be secure. Security isn’t even a concern as these builds are purely for development purposes.
Verified boot ensures that all executed code comes from a trusted source rather than from an attacker or corruption. Moreover, Verified Boot checks for the correct version of Android with rollback protection which helps to prevent a possible exploit from becoming persistent by ensuring devices only update to newer versions of Android. Verified boot it’s not only useful against physical attacks, if a remote attacker has managed to exploit the system and gain high privileges, verified boot would revert their changes upon reboot and ensure that they cannot persist.
Also, rollback protection can be enabled even with bootloader unlocked. However, Lineage doesn’t have rollback protection either.
That’s not really a good argument. The majority of users have bad habits regarding good security practices, they usually install applications without check the signature, for example. You just assume that users will act in certain way, but in reality you don’t know that. It’s not real security, it’s security through obscurity. The risks are not only theorical, as I explained above.
Doesn’t seems so. All the problem I pointed out still remain. Also, they don’t add any relevant security or privacy improvement, instead they weaken the security android model.
If you prefer/need/want to use lineageOS then go for it, it’s up to you. However, freedom it’s not equal to privacy and security.
Hello GrapheneOS propaganda account, nice to meet you. Nice security theater you are fooling everybody with.
Great general info! Thanks for taking the time to put it together. Specifically, Graphene and Calyx support a combined total of 12 devices 11 of which are Pixels. Great for those users and it might inform what I buy in the future. Lineage supports tons of devices - great for anyone reading this who doesn’t care about the softened security (or doesn’t have another choice). Lineage is out for me specifically because my device is old/unpopular enough. /e/ still list support for my device, but I am guessing that since it is based on Lineage it won’t get meaningful support either.
It depend, /e/ could still continue to support your device if trees aren’t so outdated. Still, check frequently at least the security patch version
Thanks for the distinction. Just for the record and anyone asking the same question - /e/ does still support even though lineage dropped my device.
I recommend you learn about the levels of lunacy I debunked regarding the security theater GrapheneOS and its fanboys have created. https://lemmy.ml/post/73800/comment/66676
The poster above deleted a lot of comments where we had a discussion, a month ago.
Maybe if I am ever looking at graphene I will. As I said it isn’t available on my device.