> And I heard that Google stopped pushing Pixel source?
> Yes, Google has pulled back here too. Pixel kernels are now only offered as history-stripped tarballs, available privately on request, with no device trees, HALs, or configs. Thanks to projects like CalyxOS, Pixels will likely remain well supported, but they’re no longer guaranteed “day one” devices for LineageOS. Pixel devices are now effectively no easier to support than any other OEM’s devices. In short, this just makes things harder, not impossible.
These fucking bastards. How far we have fallen in ~10 years of smartphone ubiquity. I have zero hopes that this monopolising trend will ever be reversed without top-down regulation from a big bloc like the EU.
Over recent user privacy (and security) crackdowns from Google, these OS upgrades seem to be becoming more appealing. Can anyone comment on what differs Lineage from something like GrapheneOS?
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS. The third party comparison table at https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm focused on privacy and security provides a good overview. The GrapheneOS features page at https://grapheneos.org/features provides an overview of many of the changes it makes compared to standard Android.
It's great to see Android TV mentioned. Has anyone managed to build a freedom-respecting TV box with Lineage? This is a much needed alternative to "smart" TVs and streaming boxes filled with spyware and arbitrary restrictions.
Well, this looks nice. Tons more devices than Graphene or Postmarket supported.
Which hardware should one get to run this? Which hardware is reasonably ethical? Perhaps the Fairphone 5? There are lots of choices from Motorola and OnePlus but I know nothing about them. (Well I remember the old Moto up to Y2k.) Not sure where to buy them.
The reason GrapheneOS doesn't support these additional devices is because they don't provide proper privacy/security patches or security features. Pixels are currently the only devices with proper alternate OS support with a reasonable level of security. That's why we have an OEM partner we're working with towards their future devices meeting our requirements. The hardware requirements are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. Pixels provide 7 years of proper updates while other devices do not.
Fairphone 4 and Pixel 6 were released in October 2021. Fairphone 4 is on the soon to be end-of-life Android 13 and already end-of-life Linux 4.19 kernel branch. Pixel 6 is on Android 16 QPR1 and the Linux 6.1 kernel branch since it moved to it from Linux 5.10. Fairphone has 1-2 month delays for partial security backports to older releases and years of delays for major OS updates. This does impact another OS supporting the hardware. Fairphone 5 is using the Linux 5.4 kernel that's end-of-life in December 2025 with no plans to migrate to a new kernel. Fairphone devices are missing the security features required by GrapheneOS too including but not limited to MTE (hardware memory tagging) which is the basis for Apple's recent launch of Memory Integrity Enforcement but has been more heavily used by GrapheneOS since October 2023.
GrapheneOS is a much different kind of project than LineageOS and other AOSP-based operating systems. The privacy and security focused comparison table at https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm shows that quite clearly.
Note, GrapheneOS seems to have been able to secure partner access to Android early security releases, but this comes with the cost that the source used to make these special "01" builds is private until general availability. This might not be a tradeoff that LineageOS is willing to take; GrapheneOS has provided the option on a recommended opt-in basis.
I'd love to see a hybrid phone with an embedded stock android for banking, pay and government apps and a regular LinageOS or Linux OS that runs on a separate partition/hw/vm.
Like "gluing" two phones together - just better ;)
It would be great to run an open OS but having to carry a separate phone for banking/paying is not really a viable option.
If you want to check supported devices together with some sustainability criteria and other ROMs, I just updated https://www.sustaphones.com/ to reflect that LOS update.
It has a Mediatek soc, custom roms for these chips are scarce. If you look at the supported devices on the Lineage wiki, you’ll see only 2 out of 550 devices have a Mediatek soc[0], most of them are Qualcomm.
And iirc from the xda forums, even for Xiaomi phones with a Qualcomm soc it isn’t certain anyone will try to make a custom rom. Xiaomi just releases too many devices to have support for all of them.
The elephant in the room in adopting LOS is the diminishing phone brands that allow custom firmware. If this obstacle is not reversed for usual brands (Samsung, Xiaomi) then you are better off get Ala Huawei which is degoogled by default.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 45.3 ms ] thread> Yes, Google has pulled back here too. Pixel kernels are now only offered as history-stripped tarballs, available privately on request, with no device trees, HALs, or configs. Thanks to projects like CalyxOS, Pixels will likely remain well supported, but they’re no longer guaranteed “day one” devices for LineageOS. Pixel devices are now effectively no easier to support than any other OEM’s devices. In short, this just makes things harder, not impossible.
These fucking bastards. How far we have fallen in ~10 years of smartphone ubiquity. I have zero hopes that this monopolising trend will ever be reversed without top-down regulation from a big bloc like the EU.
This requires both phones to use Seedvault though, so it's not an option when moving from the stock OS to LineageOS.
Which hardware should one get to run this? Which hardware is reasonably ethical? Perhaps the Fairphone 5? There are lots of choices from Motorola and OnePlus but I know nothing about them. (Well I remember the old Moto up to Y2k.) Not sure where to buy them.
Fairphone 4 and Pixel 6 were released in October 2021. Fairphone 4 is on the soon to be end-of-life Android 13 and already end-of-life Linux 4.19 kernel branch. Pixel 6 is on Android 16 QPR1 and the Linux 6.1 kernel branch since it moved to it from Linux 5.10. Fairphone has 1-2 month delays for partial security backports to older releases and years of delays for major OS updates. This does impact another OS supporting the hardware. Fairphone 5 is using the Linux 5.4 kernel that's end-of-life in December 2025 with no plans to migrate to a new kernel. Fairphone devices are missing the security features required by GrapheneOS too including but not limited to MTE (hardware memory tagging) which is the basis for Apple's recent launch of Memory Integrity Enforcement but has been more heavily used by GrapheneOS since October 2023.
GrapheneOS is a much different kind of project than LineageOS and other AOSP-based operating systems. The privacy and security focused comparison table at https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm shows that quite clearly.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-p...
Like "gluing" two phones together - just better ;)
It would be great to run an open OS but having to carry a separate phone for banking/paying is not really a viable option.
As long as it'll be the case, Lineage will never be more popular.
But thanks for the great fork. It's already enormous.
I could never get adb in my M1 Air (Tahoe and Sonoma too) to detect any android devices.
I have an OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G.
Same cable and everything works fine on Ubuntu and Windows machines.
The phone is not getting detected in the "System Information" either.
Tried MTP, PTP, USB Debugging, OTG everything.
Anyone faced this issue?
And iirc from the xda forums, even for Xiaomi phones with a Qualcomm soc it isn’t certain anyone will try to make a custom rom. Xiaomi just releases too many devices to have support for all of them.
[0] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/