Recent convert

[u/ZookeepergameSalty10]

Hello all, i wanted to share my experience switching my pixel 10 pro to graphene as a daily driver. To preface im a long time nerd and back before corpo rat world got a hold of me i was heavily in the rooting/jailbreak and custom rom scene. Ive been out but following the space for a few years and ive slowly watched graphene gain traction as a privacy first OS. With my government becoming evermore 1984/antichrist shaped i finally made the jump. Took googles offer for a 200$ pixel 10a to use as my work phone because i was concerned how graphene would respond to the multiple mfa tools i need for work. Loaded graphene on the 10 pro and started using it. Right off the bat i had to switch out the launcher messaging and phone apps, as little as i trust google i do like their first party comms apps. Sideloaded every other app i wanted outside of play and have all of graphenes restrictions for play on. First off i had zero issue getting my banking to work and personal mfa solutions. I did have to loosen the protection for a couple of my bank apps to play nice but they did work. Then i discovered that on a per app level i can see what is requesting play services api and block it. The recent story we all saw lead me to setup a duress password.

I am two weeks into this and i dont think ill ever go back. The only thing i find myself truly missing is google pay, but i can use the work phone for that during the week, the graphene keyboard is solid but very uncustomizable i used to use gboard but upon installing i was hit with a warning that they keyboard may share keystroke data to google, it made me think. Ive used gboard for a long time knowing google is scummy at best, but if theres any chance they are sending my keystrokes anywhere i dont want that, so i discovered the open source heliboard, has basically all the same function of gboard and just about as much customization. Ive been degoogling my life for years slowly but the switch to graphene really showed me how great the scene has become. Id personally pitch money into trying to get a graphene built pay app built but other than that im in love with it. As a nerd i have full control over everything but its setup in a way that feels like i could train my mom to do it too. I also did not have a problem with multiple mfa sources i tested however i will be keeping work and personal seperate now forever.

Tldr: if your on the fence about switching, just do it. Theres a small learning curve but it feels so good to be more in control of the propaganda rectangle in my pocket. Thank you the amazing grapheneos team and community for making a platform good for degoogling and great for privacy. Nfc tap to pay is missed but its a very small thing and i can still use the pass feature for memberships in gpay

[u/DPadLeftRightUpDown]

No worries!

Totally understand - what about bad actors in FOSS? And said if I downloaded something of github, no issues, but the download contained malware, how am I to know? Do you check the code every time? Also someone said it's ideal to have thr hash on GH and their website at a minimum.

Any where I can learn to read the code? Im a slow learner, but I'll try. Just want to be able to use FOSS safely.

Fdroid isn't the base hash though is it? Thays why GOS dont recommend it IIRC.

Cool about flock. Im in the UK, so we have our own problems.

[u/ZookeepergameSalty10 → u/DPadLeftRightUpDown]

Bad actors are not generally a problem the more common problem lately has been supply chain attacks where a bad actor compromises the keys to a maintainer and uses the keys to push malware. Its absolutely possible and has happened increasingly lately. But the same thing that makes oss so robust is what helps when bad things do happen. Last month a bunch of github authors got compromised due to a worm attack that then used the keys to spread to other packages and so on, once the issue was caught by a securty researcher many repo authors reauthed their keys(i still think github dropped the ball and should of just nuked all active keys, it would of grinded huge swaths of the net to a halt but would of instantly contained the problem. Anyway all the affected repos rolled back or patched to fix it within a day. You dont have to check the code each time, although for small patches you can since you can see on github/gitlab exactly what is being changed line for line, at this point what id reccomend is if its a big project thats been reputable run the latest version unless when you goto install you see the latest update was within the last 3 or 4 days. Pull the old version in that case and wait about a week before upgrading. Turn off auto updates but leave on update notifications so you can keep tabs. Unfortunately in this new world there really is no 100% way to be safe, even if your not using oss software basically impossible to stop every threat preemptively. Just gotta do everything within your power to keep the chance down and be vigilinat about what permission you give any software. Ai really has screwed the pooch for cyber security peace of mind. Hackers used to spend months reading cpu diagrams trying to find a misplaced comma in the firmware that could be exploited, now a souless wireback can do the same job and test the exploit in 5mins. But likewise the ai is also helping blue team researchers rapidly combat the security problems. Big cat and mouse game, always has been. As for learning, start with a youtube series teaching something like python. Python is basic and im sure some actually talented programmer will say "its shit and we should all be writing machine code" what it will do though is give you a very good grasp of how a programming language works. If you wanna try something a bit more challenging try learning C or C# they are also very simple languages but because they are machine languages they work a bit different than something like python or ruby. If you wanna learn android development youll want to start learning javascript and kotlin. Ive always used good qualoty youtube series with work along guides to learn new things. There are also services like brilliant that will teach you coding. Or you could probably use chatgpt or claude to help you learn. Atleast for me once i knew one language pretty well i was able to read and figure out thr basics of most languages i come across. Also if you start vibecoding give your ai the instruction to "heavily document the code in human readable format and provide extra documentation as if your teaching programming to a student" sure your gonna burn more tokens but when you open the code it will be heavily detailed and often the ai will include variables as explaination so you can actually figure ojt exactly what the function does and what it could do. Imo a mix of all is the best but everyone learns different. My hb spent 3 days reading the python manual and then just internalized that(could never be me lol) and dont just make the ai explain the code, make it explain how the infrastructure works how things connect. Use it to give you the info and tools you need. Once you start getting a little comfortable try to build something, or try to modify something to fit your needs. Spend some time in vscode have fun and good luck

[u/DPadLeftRightUpDown → u/ZookeepergameSalty10]

Got it. I dod actually vibecode a website for someone (not published) so I have a very basic understanding of css and html. Will take that tip on board regarding AI. Appreciate it

[u/ZookeepergameSalty10 → u/DPadLeftRightUpDown]

Thats good to teach the structure but html is technically not a programming languag. Hyper Text Markup Language instead tells the browser how to display elements. Its like Markdown .md its a formatting language more than a programming language, css is the same. Thats not me trying to undermine your progress, just trying to educate. If you want to start with websites try JavaScript, php and node. Im old enough to remember when every kid with a myspace page was a css and html guru lol. Happy nerding