That's already happening today.

But for the reason an antiquated os like postmarketos are suggested is that the project is being opportunistic thinking this is a chance they can be relevant. Additionally, the population of HN has more sentimental view on these legacy operating systems and view it as a chance to go back to the past and use software they are familiar with.

▲

dugite-code 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I really wanted to like Graphene OS but I ended up bouncing off it due to a few major pain points that badly effected battery life.

- Using the default 5g setting resulted in far worse battery life than stock, telling people to choose 4g isn't a solution. They desperately need something like the adaptive connectivity service.

- Using Homeassistant's GPS tracking feature just destroyed the battery life, even switching to 4g didn't solve this issue. Changing all the GPS settings didn't help either.

- The obnoxious green GPS active icon makes the notification bar useless if using a GPS tracking app (or even gps navigation). The request for a whitelist was either ignored or rejected, the teams communication can come off a bit rough.

No normal user is going to be happy with Grapheneos. From what I've seen postmarketos is much more user friendly.

▲

jstanley 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know what to say about your battery life issue, other than that I don't have any such problems.

What's obnoxious about the green GPS icon? How does it make the notification bar useless? It is on all the time while I'm using Google Maps, it's small and not in the way and is a good reminder if I have accidentally left Google Maps open in the background. What's the problem?

▲

Ghoelian 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't recognise the 5g battery life issues personally. I do 100% agree the GPS thing is such a bad decision. It just becomes noise that no one pays attention to anymore.

I ended up using my public ip address in combination with a list of known ips for home and work and such, and building my HA automations around that. I wanted to do it with wifi SSID's, but that also requires the location permission and triggers the indicator (which is understandable, just wish I could still read SSID's with location services disabled entirely) (or, just let me disable the gps antenna and leave everything else).

	▲	dugite-code 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It certainly could be something else other than 5g but it's one of the first things that gets thrown around when battery drain is mentioned and the mobile internet was the main user of power on the phone.

▲

palata 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No normal user is going to be happy with Grapheneos.

I am a normal user, extremely happy with GrapheneOS. I just don't use HomeAssistant, which seems to have been your dealbreaker in this case.

I genuinely don't see a difference between Stock Android and GrapheneOS, except that I get more updates and I have more privacy controls (like scopes, but honestly I haven't had a need to use them yet).

	▲	rs186 25 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'd wager nobody on HN is a normal user. If you know what AOSP is, you are already way too nerdy to qualify.
	▲	dugite-code 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are very fortunate for not hitting any edge cases, but sorry anyone commenting here typically isn't anywhere near to what you could call a "normal user". I ran into quite few minor issues with the enhanced security settings, my partner would never been able to figure out the solution to that issue and I consider them a normal user. Not to mention the 5g battery drain is a hard show stopper, not just Homeassistant issues. I even experimented with different apps like owntracks but same problem with GPS. I found a solution to the GPS icon but it requires an ADB command so not a great fix.

▲

MYEUHD 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> That's already happening today.

That's not a hard fork. They always rebase on top of AOSP when there's a new AOSP source release

▲

palata 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is no reason to hard fork, as long as Google contributes to AOSP without breaking it.

Regulators in the US decided that Android did not have to be split from Google, but they could theoretically decide that Google is not allowed to break AOSP to gain a competitive advantage. Not that it would matter: TooBigTech is too powerful to care about regulations anyway.

▲

charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't have to be. Most of Android is fine.

▲

realusername 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nobody really want a hard fork, if you can't run Android apps, you might as well use a Linux distribution.

▲

palata 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Well the idea would be to run Android apps on the hard fork :-).

	▲	realusername 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you can run Android apps then you need the same behavior as AOSP or I'm missing something? If you don't rebase from AOSP, the apps won't run pretty quickly.

▲

m4rtink 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How is Postmarket OS antiquated ? Its just a standard Linux distro (unlike anything Android based).

▲

charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent [-]

At least in regards to the security model, it is decades out of date. For example any app can listen to your microphone and spy on you at anytime. Programs can act as ransomeware or destroy all of your files. Stealers can steal your login credentials and access tokens for all your sites including banking ones.

▲

zorked 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think people don't realize how inadequate the Unix security model is.

▲

seba_dos1 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

...except in virtually any case where you'd run something untrusted there you'd use Flatpak or something similar where what you wrote doesn't apply.

▲

tom_alexander 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

> untrusted

I think the important distinction is _everything_ should be considered untrusted because even trustworthy software can become malicious. For example, the XZ Utils backdoor[0].

On Android, everything I run is subject to the permission model and sandboxed. That is not the case on Linux.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

▲

seba_dos1 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's not the case on Android either and it could be subjected to a XZ-like backdoor just as anything else.

	▲	tom_alexander 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Could you be more specific on how to circumvent the android permission model + sandbox? So far I have only thought of two ways an XZ-like backdoor could circumvent that: 1. By being baked into the OS itself, which is unavoidable since the OS is the thing providing the sandboxing + security model. It still massively reduces the attack surface. 2. By being run through the android debug bridge, which is far from normal and something users have to explicitly enable. Leaving you the option to shoot yourself in the foot in an opt-in manner 99.9% of users will never touch isn't the same as Linux where foot-shooting is the default.

▲

j45 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Meaning, it's a way to keep old hardware running linux instead of being a phone.

▲

rcxdude 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

or they already have hardware which postmarketOS supports and grapheneOS does not (or they would just prefer that hardware)