I agree with the parent. GrapheneOS puts security above freedom, which is wrong. It forces you to give your money to Google and rely on Google hardware, which is questionable in the long term. They refuse to support different hardware "for your security". Their developers are constantly attacking GNU/Linux phones, which are the actual long-term solution for both freedom and security.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44680624

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43675380

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scheeseman486 5 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think I've ever read any solid refutation of the technical choices of the project, mostly just character attacks, the basis of which are dodgy at best. They're completely up-front about the limitations and catches of their choices, too.

Those links don't really help your case, to be frank. Nothing strcat says reads as incorrect or even particularly controversial, they have personal beef with CalyxOS but their criticisms of the choices of the project are largely on point. They're justifiably upset by the mental health accusations too, it's kind of a joke that one of those people in the thread tried to gaslight strcat about how these accusations are somehow not a recurring issue when I, as a third party observer, have seen it come up all the fucking time.

Meanwhile, you're imagining "attacks" on GNU/Linux phones, when most of what I read from them regarding those was sober and reasonable, if not particularly positive, but they're allowed to do that. Their priorities are clearly security and none of those phones really have any.

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fsflover 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is another project that knows what you need better than yourself. People are constantly asking them to add support to other hardware, but the answer is "it's insecure". This is completely wrong and forces everybody without a(n expensive!) Pixel to abandon reasonable security. Even Qubes OS allows installing itself on hardware without VT-d, with respective warnings, and plans to enable GPU acceleration in VMs on demand. Their priority clearly isn't to make as many people as possible more secure but to force Google on you.

Are you calling the above a "character attack"?

I would love to use GrapheneOS on my Librem 5 and Pinephone. No proprietary drivers are required. Yes, some security features are lacking. Yet it would be a win for everybody.

I didn't say anything about CalyxOS: I don't care about this.

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scheeseman486 5 days ago | parent [-]

> the answer is "it's insecure".

Can you give me a quote where they outright say this? Because my hunch is that what they actually say is something along the lines of 'because it doesn't have the security requirements that we desire' which would be true. Whatever their reasons for those choices, it also makes sense to limit scope given the extreme constraints they're working under and that scope is best limited to phones with the widest security feature support for their security-focus Android OS.

> Are you calling the above a "character attack"?

Grow up.

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Ghoelian 5 days ago | parent [-]

'because it doesn't have the security requirements that we desire'

aka, insecure.

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pessimizer 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I am continually puzzled that sometimes people can't put together a denial without including an affirmation as a crucial part of that denial. It's like they're doing the opposite of question-begging, they're saying that you're wrong because you're right.

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scheeseman486 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, those don't mean the same thing.

All phones are insecure to some extent, most phones compared to GrapheneOS/Pixels are less secure and this has largely proven out whenever there's been leaks of the capabilities of law enforcement phone cracking tools.

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fsflover 4 days ago | parent [-]

I just don't see how it refutes any of my arguments. See the example of Qubes OS in my above reply.

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scheeseman486 4 days ago | parent [-]

QubesOS is an OS for PCs which have a standardized hardware interface. Support for older systems is basically "free". Smartphones aren't standardized in the same way and the amount of effort it takes to properly support other phones has a considerably higher cost on developer bandwidth.

Anyone can fork GrapheneOS and build it for other phones if they want, instead of doing this the developers instead focus their time and effort on the most suitable hardware for their needs. This isn't a part of some agenda or a swipe at Linux, open source or Stallman's cholesterol filled heart, it's just pragmatism.

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fsflover 3 days ago | parent [-]

I agree that the lack of resources is a reasonable argument. However this not the argument provided: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30765013

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scheeseman486 3 days ago | parent [-]

Instead there's a bunch of other arguments that are just as reasonable which underline why deploying their security focused OS on such a hardware platform would be a waste of their time. This is your refutation?

It really seems like you're more concerned about hurt feelings than objective fact here. Every link you've provided thus far was framed by you as evidence of poor decisions or behaviour on the part of the GrapheneOS team but you've done nothing to elaborate, and after reading the content of those links for myself there is nothing there that support the things you've been implying.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least not unless I put myself into the mindset of a child and read any negativity expressed towards FOSS projects as an attack, or taking their choice to not target phones I like personally.

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fsflover 2 days ago | parent [-]

I have no idea where you managed to find any feelings in my replies, and I will ignore the personal attacks.

The linked security-related arguments aren't reasonable at all. They talk about improving users' security but instead the actual result is less security for the majority of people, due to (1) the high price of the supported hardware, (2) reliance on Google hardware not trusted by many users (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45101524).

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scheeseman486 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I have no idea where you managed to find any feelings in my replies, and I will ignore the personal attacks.

Your username is fsflover and your posts clearly have an ideological bias that favours purely open source solutions even if it goes against reason.

> The linked security-related arguments aren't reasonable at all. They talk about improving users' security but instead the actual result is less security for the majority of people, due to (1) the high price of the supported hardware, (2) reliance on Google hardware not trusted by many users

All SoCs are a black box and all of them are made by untrustable companies that are likely already working with the security services of whatever country they're R&D'd or manufactured in. There is no good solution to this, so they picked the best worst option.

Nonetheless, most of the evidence that is available shows that GrapheneOS on Pixels are the most secure phones currently available. So, clearly not security theatre, whereas if they also supported phones that didn't even let you lock the bootloader it absolutely would be.

GrapheneOS isn't to blame for every other phone manufacturer dropping the ball.

	▲	fsflover 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> fsflover Thanks for the clarification. Free software ideology is not like a religion, where people believe in a god. Every Stallman's essay explains a very practical reason for following his ideas. FLOSS protects you from the enshittification, walled gardens, backdoors (to a degree) and similar things. GrapheneOS have put themselves in Google's walled garden in terms of the supported devices and now Google can easily make them less secure or even kill them completely at will. This is like saying "you clearly have an ideological bias that favors democracy/ or freedom even if it goes against reason". Sometimes a tyranny is more efficient at forcing people to do a particular thing, e.g., produce weapons. It doesn't mean that choosing it can be reasonable sometimes. > All SoCs are a black box and all of them are made by untrustable companies You clearly can't understand that different people have different threat models. This is a huge problem of GrapheneOS developers: they never accept this possibility and force the single threat model upon everyone. This reminds me of Apple by the way: They do the same. In reality, some people can trust Chinese devices more than Google's ones (imagine that), or trust a particular company that didn't perform a ton of evil action like Google did (that's me and many others). > There is no good solution to this The good solution to this is security through compartmentalization, which is the best security approach ever invented. The more varied hardware people use, the harder it is to make a targeted attack or to mass compromise every single device sold. > most of the evidence that is available shows that GrapheneOS on Pixels are the most secure phones currently available I don't dispute that, and you won't find me saying that GrapheneOS is insecure in itself. I am saying that they did a wrong bet long-term, and their approach leaves a lot of people without Google's hardware insecure. > not security theatre, whereas if they also supported phones that didn't even let you lock the bootloader it absolutely would be. Once again, this is implying one single threat model upon everyone. I never leave my phone unattended, so nobody can secretly reflash it. And whenever I suspect a compromise, I reflash it myself using a disposable VM on Qubes OS. Does it look somewhat secure to you?

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jamesnorden 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Their priorities are clearly security and none of those phones really have any.

As opposed to a black box from Google, that nobody really knows exactly what it does...