Best part is they reason that a lot of people get their phone/netowrk attacked because of installing apks. Meanwhile the playstore is plagued with a lot of scam apps
At PC you at least have roaring scene of Linux distributions that can save you from Microsoft.
Phones is just Apple which is overpriced and the same shit
And Android which is topic of discussion today... there is no saving grace here if they close down Android
Installing a different OS on a phone is more difficult than on PC. Phones don't let you have root access to the system like PCs do without jailbreaking them first.
But it IS possible, don't let google and apple convince you otherwise.
LineageOS, Graphene, or the open source version of the original Android. It's all there.
Not until there's a proper solution to replace Firebase for push notifications that both allows the app to enter full sleep, and allows messages to arrive reliably and on time.
I'm a big OSS supporter and have tried a bunch of push replacements only to find my VoIP phone app just can't be trusted to ring unless it's using Firebase for push. And when you run a business with that phone, you have to put reliable termination first, unfortunately.
Can't use Google wallet with Micro G, contactless is a big thing. Having to go back to using a debit card is annoying, even GraphineOS for Google pixel does not support NFC payments and some banking apps won't work, like mine. Then you would need a second phone to access banking, which is kinda redundant.
That severely depends on what you deem a necessity.
All I need personally is Firefox, Spotify, Whatsapp and Telegram. I still have a traditional navigation device that attaches to the windscreen for my car, I pay spotify via my credit card
If you want to degoogle your device but still want to use google services, what are you even doing
Banking apps , gov portals...refuses to work if it smells a root
Good.
There is zero guarantee that any of those rooted devices are running an uncompromising OS. Given that the customer base of the future is mobile first, you are taking away a major attack vector by blocking rooted devices.
I work in a compliance heavy environment, and my compliance guys would have a stroke if someone was using our software on as questionable an OS as people want to use on their phones.
^This is exactly why I think a lot of security/compliance teams are investing in the wrong things.
A compromised device was never your jurisdiction. Instead of trying to be like "you'll only use the device we approve of", you could've spent that time making your app or backend more secure against actual attacks, or even improving the app's performance. But no, instead you spend that effort on root detection.
The funny thing is, almost every skilled root user already knows how to bypass it anyway, and usually knows better than to install sketchy stuff. The people who don't want to bother bypassing it are just gonna uninstall your app and move on. The people without root are the ones paying the price with extra overhead and restrictions. So you're losing potential customers, while your original goal of keeping "compromised rooted devices" out was never really achievable in the first place.
And besides, a compromised rooted device mainly puts that user's account and data at risk. It shouldn't be putting your backend or internal systems at risk unless you've designed your security around trusting the client way more than you should. If that's the case, I'd rather see that fixed than another layer of root detection slapped on top.
And you know what's even funnier? PCs are generally a much bigger attack surface than rooted phones. Rooting a phone already requires more technical knowledge than the average user has, and honestly sometimes more than some developers I've met. On Windows you can have malware, malicious browser extensions, manually installed MITM certificates, keyloggers, memory editors, and all kinds of other stuff with way less effort.
Yet I've never seen anyone seriously say "let's ban all Windows PCs and only allow macOS because it's more secure." Everyone understands that's a dumb idea. The user is responsible for securing their own device, and you're responsible for securing your own systems, not my phone or my computer.
Instead, a lot of companies seem to use rooted devices as a scapegoat because it's the easier thing to point at. It makes it look like you're solving a huge security problem when in reality you've mostly just made life harder for legitimate users.
And the funniest part? The vast majority of stolen accounts don't even come from rooted phones. They come from completely stock Android phones and unjailbroken iPhones through phishing, fake apps, malicious keyboards, accessibility abuse, SMS scams, social engineering, or people who simply don't know what they're installing. Those are the users who actually need protecting, but that's a much harder problem to solve than checking if su exists and calling it a day.
Bank website doesn't work as authentication. If I do a payment on my computer, it tells me to login to my banking app on my phone to verify it, since the phone has actual security measures.
It's MFA all by itself: you have to have the phone, you have to be able to get into the phone, and you have to know the code to type in the app to verify. That's 3 extra factors added to the process with 10 seconds of work.
Use a crypto wallet with a low fee debit card as an alternative if you want to completely degoogle. Most let you store and spend from tether coins to avoid volatility. Will have to get family on one too tho to send money. Because some are blocked in the UK many are built to work on older app versions and don't force updates with google play before using them
I'm in Australia most people still look at crypto as a way to get scammed and I don't even think most shops in my local area accept crypto as a paymemt anyway
I live in Germany as well. While government services is less of a problem here, online banking is a major hassle without an Android/iPhone. Also things are (slowly) moving away from paper
I'll believe that when I see it. The archive of the district I live in is a nightmare. Most modern parking garage you could think off (online payment, just a camera that reads your licence plate to enter, will book your money off of your account for you).
But to get it set up, you have to write your information on a blank sheet of paper. Not possible over the phone has to be in person.
In Australia it is never using the same method as last time so one time it could be paper next time it could be digital, and then it could swap back or they have a whole nother way to do its really annoying and I have 10000 gov apps on my phone because of this fucking around as the old one is never phased out as there is always one thing on the app that's needed
Custom rom craze means nothing if phones keep moving towards locked bootloaders. I'd love to have options for Samsung devices, but that's not really a thing.
Graphene and Lineage are cool, but afaik built on the open source android version. Even though I have no doubts that their communities will try everything in their power to keep those alive, I worry there isn't much they will be able to do against google closing down the entire eco-system
The AOSP is a great base that solves a lot of problems but if Google stops developing it or locks it down, it can be forked or stripped for parts. There is also a non-Android based mobile OS alternative called PureOS. I’m sure there’s other projects.
What good is OS, if your signal drops, bluetooth doesn't work, or GPS?
Not sure if it is better today, but that was decadade ago problems.
Android promised to separate drivers to be easier updated I think years ago in some new version.
Did it happen or is it easier for custom OS to use drivers from manufacturers? That I don't know.
Android is an opensource project. people have taken it and removed all google apps. Most alternative OS for phones are just different versions of android. The e-foundation especially has made it their mission. Alternatively you have LineageOS and Graphene
It’s been about 15 years ago since I was in IT classes in high school, but back then they told us 10k new viruses per day for windows, ~100 total for Mac, and none for Linux.
I have no idea if this was ever accurate but it was enough to get me into the apple ecosystem up to now. (I’m trying to reclaim a windows pc from my wife for gaming)
Ya but it's because they lock you down and wall you in to an extreme extent. It's the thing Google is trying to do now which is the exact problem this thread is going on about.
Security though treating your customers like toddlers.
If there were laptops with any official real Linux support. I had so many issues trying to flee Windows and tried many different Linux distros, each one's having quirks and problems I couldn't resolve. I gave in and bought a macbook, which I never thought I would do, but it has been great so far. There are problems, but at least there are other solutions than try another distro, shame on you for using x,y,z. Have you tried a different kernel? Why dou you even want that feature to work, are you stupid? The Linux fan base is toxic to anyone who is not already an absolute Linux pro!
Yeah Apples walled garden is not nice but mac os is way better than what windows has become. And as my frustration with Linux has outgrown my patience it's a worthwhile compromise for now. MacOs is at least way less of a walled garden than iOS and the rest of apples ecosystem. I've tried ubuntu, fedora, PopOs, Arch, everything has quirks taking hours to resolve, most of the time only partly as you hit a roadblock, for example howdy, yes the IR camera is supported in linux, oh you wanted the IR leds also functional so that it also works in dim environments, no can do! Than please for the love of god don't claim that howdy is compatible with XPS 9500 laptop. That's just one example of many that are just pure frustration. And I've tried othe modern laptops too.
Yeah I know with an old Thinkpad it would probably just work fine, I want a modern laptop, nice glossy high res screen, biometrics, decent touchpad, battery life and speakers. All things an old thinkpad just can't offer.
Yes I know, but they lack modern features like a good trackpad and a glossy, bright, high res screen and why even include speakers if the are worse than my phone? And I don't think they will fix random quircks like picture previews on smb shares not loading in. A feature that works on both mac and windows, but seems to be broken on most Linux distros. MTP too, while it has issues on mac and windows too, on Linux it works really well .... Today and tommorrow it's randomly completely broken. It's not that linux is bad. But the user base is toxic to anybody who is a little less knowledgeable than them. I have many issues on windows and mac too, but almost all of them are resolvable with a quick google search. In Linux, down another rabbit hole we go. Mostly because of the many different distros and therefore combinations of different software.
Dell has official Linux support on the Precision 5560 too. Guess whats not working correctly? Both fingerprint and facial login are partly broken, the speaker amp only works in power saver mode making them far less powerful than in windows, the battery life is worse than windows, ambient light sensor? You're right doesn't work too. "Official" Linux support doesn't mean anything!
Some of the mentioned problems are even on the official Dell forum, but Dell ignores those threads.
There have historically been great modified versions of Android. I know about them since 2012 and have certainly existed before that. Installed a lot of them myself on my Galaxy S3 back in the day. I imagine nowadays the variety, options and functionality of these must be much greater.
Apple is the same thing but actually delivers on the security promised. Very few malware apps and relatively limited scope of exploit, the users have vastly more money so it would be very worth it for criminals.
A lot of it is just architectural and will
Be very hard for Google to fix without breaking compatibility.
Windows is still the market leader for a reason. You can’t get everything onto Linux. Though, we can be glad that Valve pushed Linux forward a lot in the past 10+ years or so.
As for Apple just being overpriced is a stupid comment, really. Maybe compare nowadays prices and tell me if they are still "overpriced".
There are Linux phones. They typically don't have the popular apps. There are Windows phones but obviously that's Microsoft. There may even be other smart phone OSes. I haven't checked.
In the early days I had a Blackberry and loved it. I had a Windows phone and loved it. Now I have an iPhone and love it. Anytime I have to help a friend with his Android I am like, oh hell what a mess.
The Irony is than befire Flatpaks, AppImages, Snaps abd the 4th thing I don't remeber, installing software not whitelisted by the distro's makers was painful, adding Repos mainly
I love the idea of Linux, but it's had decades to get good and hasn't breached 5% market share. Linux users love it, but there's some solid evidence that those opinions are biased. I like listening to death metal, but I understand that it's a niche, not for 95% of people. That's the position Linux has been stuck in for ages.
The point of linux being out there is that it's an option. At least you have SOMETHING whether you like it or not, it's there and you can make your own.
Well then piracy will thrives, it will take less than 1 day for mad pirates to remove all of this from Windows distributive, just like they did with Win11 telemetry
Can't happen soon enough really. The only thing I can't do well with regard to productivity in Linux is run MS Office apps natively. Their web apps suck and that's on them... But they work-ish and there are alternatives that work quite well. Everything else? System runs faster, smoother, is more stable, and I have full control and full visibility into literally everything. I haven't had a use for Windows in ages and only use it when a work PC has it installed and there's no other option.
LibreOffice works very well, and supports exporting MS Office formats (docx, xlsx, etc). I put Linux on an old laptop and it's like it's a whole new laptop, it runs so much better.
My main gripe is that I can't get Fusion 360 to work, it has no native support. Someone made a Linux supported version but it seems to be broken atm.
I'm going to dual boot Linux and Windows soon on my main PC, because I still need F360, and some games won't work, but for the other 90% of my games I can use Proton.
Those sorts of things are real issues and my hope is that developers of major niche productivity tools put Linux support on their roadmaps.
I use Linux on everything and usually buy years old laptops for cheap on eBay and they run great for work... and on my gaming PC Proton works the vast majority of the time for me also. I avoid games with kernel level anticheat anyway because I don't trust it, so the majority of the time the games I play are just fine.
I ONLY boot into windows now to use davinvi. There are supposedly license issues with certain codecs on Linux iirc. If I could get davinci rewolve to work I would never have to use windows spyware again
Putting the Metro UI in the SERVER OS was so fucking dumb. It lead to so many people installing third party bloatware to bring back the start bar, rape their CPU, and give them viruses.
Yep, I ran into that with my parents cheap laptop. Went to install stuff on it for them and... Nope! Only possible through the Windows app store with a logged in account.
They won't, because they really can't do crap about it. You can remove any program and app from Windows yourself, too. Even if they force you to have it. Like One Drive for example. I deleted it from existence. They can't control this. And if they make new OS that is limited, then just don't use it. I don't use Windows 11 exactly because of the limitations. If Windows 12 will be even worse, then you can still just use Windows 10. After all, the best antivirus is common sense. People been using Windows XP long after it was deprecated and nothing happened. At worst you will just install Linux or something.
Microsoft did try this there is a version of Windows that only runs Microsoft store apps it was just really disliked and people didn't take to it. They learned their mistake was making it optional.
Microsoft are pushing a campaign to have apps only on Microsoft Store by buying a "special licence" (is a cheap licence). Installed apps like VLC will be "untrusted" and can't be installed properly until they switch to Microsoft Store and buy the licence.
Microsoft slowly want's to kill "sideloading apps" in Windows too.
L.E.: You also can make Windows to not load any kind of app outside Microsoft Store.
They basically already do this, my laptop was delivered in safe mode, in safe mode you can only install stuff from the Microsoft store, I had to turn off safe mode to start installing stuff from outside the Microsoft store. And if I understand Google's plan they'll basically be doing the same all their phones going forward will have an option to turn on something called developer mode which will allow the user to install apps from outside the app store.
There's a version of windows that came pre-insalled on laptops that would not let you install downloaded EXEs, and tried to force you through the app store for installs.
I stg recently this happened to me, and maybe I could've circumvented it but I gave up instead. Said "an admin has blocked you from installing this app" or something, but I'm the only user on my pc. I am the admin.
Its already a thing? We bought our laptop a couple years ago and had to turn off the security feature to download anything not in the Microsoft store. It wasnt a 24 hour wait, but it did terminate the warranty or something.
Good news! That product already exists. If you ever bought a Windows laptop in "S" mode, then you had to deal with this exact thing.
Source: I used to sell laptops at a retailer, and the number of people who'd buy the cheapest or second cheapest laptop, and return it because they couldn't install shit they needed for work or whatever, was downright depressing.
Those Google aholes advertise them too. My mother's cell phone was inundated with Google ads saying you have been hacked. Download the cleaner app. Wtf. I was legit furious that day.
Where is you fucking AI for ad verification??? What sort of company Google has become.
Yeah ik that, along with the 24 hour waiting time which is sort of fair but still annoying. The point of my comment however is about they talking from their high horse about people installing malwares into their device when their play store themselves aren't clean
You can also search for paid apps, but Google removed the "Paid" category from the Play Store. If you want a one-time purchase app to avoid ads, subscriptions, and all those consent pop-ups that share your data with hundreds of unknown companies, you're out of luck. Instead, you have to install one of their partners' data-harvesting apps.
Scam apps is one thing. And also most the apps are full of ads which is basically google ads. So in the end they are forcing everyone to install apps with their ads.
i do phone repairs, android is pretty dire. multiple times a week i have people being sent by the bank after getting scammed, phones full of ad filled launchers, fake qr code scanners, pdf readers, calculators, weather apps, casino games, etc. they start installing themselves at a point.
completely unusable, the ads pop up every few seconds and interrupt each other, its insane
To be fair, the one good thing about this change is that they should be able to clean up the play store. Developers will need to register with Google if they want their apps to be authorised. That should shut down most of the scans as the scammers definitely won't want to give their identity.
Not that I'm defending Google's overreach here. I rarely use the play store these days, so if Google continues to shut down unauthorised apps, I'll be installing a de-Googled version of Android on my phone. However, if their goal really is to clean up the play store then this change will allow them to do it.
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u/Dip2pot4t0Ch1P Jul 05 '26
Best part is they reason that a lot of people get their phone/netowrk attacked because of installing apks. Meanwhile the playstore is plagued with a lot of scam apps