Post by @britter@chaos.social
Received my @jolla phone today. After first excitment about the build quality of the device the frustration started... 🧵
@jolla in the packaging there is a cardboard cover on top of the phone, that talk about privacy and this is your phone.
However, when you first boot, it immediately asks you to create a Jolla account to get access to the Jolla app store, which apparently is required to get Sailfish OS updates.
Why do I need to create an account in order to get OS updates?!
@jolla okay, let's ignore that for now. This means I can't use the build in app store. How do I install apps? Apperently there's something called OpenRepo. Okay, lets go there. Can I install apps now? No, you first need to install Storeman.
@jolla so I try to install storeman, which indicates it was successful, but the app icon never shows up anywhere. So I can't open the store. How to debug this? Use the file browser to open the install log. To bad that I don't seem to have a file browser and I can't install one.
Very disappointing first use experience. I wanted a phone that feels more like Linux. Instead I get the same app store BS again that drove me away from Apple and to some extend GrapheneOS.
1 like
@jolla but if I end up installing android apps through the android app support, I might as well upgrade to a Pixel 10 and continue using @GrapheneOS...
@jolla @GrapheneOS nice! After enabling Developer Mode I can now use the build in terminal to cat the storeman install log. Apparently a linking error!
nothing provides 'libsailfishsecrets.so.0()(64bit)'
I stand corrected. This absolutely is a #linux experience... 😐
@jolla @GrapheneOS tried to pkcon refresh but it just hangs at 10% an never completes. Yeah, I think I'm going to return this.
@britter @jolla @GrapheneOS What a disappointment. 🫤 Sounds like nobody ever tested the "no account" path?
@OmegaPolice @britter @jolla @GrapheneOS graphene don't ask any account but you need 2 or 3 appstore (fdroid, aurora store (playstore)).
The only downside is the lack of "official" (from bank as graphene often fix their crappy security control so the app load) support for bank, state
I hope Motorola to lobby hard for graphene support in the EU level
@maya @OmegaPolice @britter Most banking apps work on GrapheneOS but many have memory corruption bugs and incorrect anti-tampering code requiring our per-app exploit protection compatibility mode toggle.
Around 10% of banking apps are unavailable due to banning using a non-Google-approved OS. Around a dozen banking apps began specifically permitting GrapheneOS in addition to a Google-approved OS which is growing.
There's a good list based on ongoing user reports:
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
@GrapheneOS @OmegaPolice @britter i know don't change the fact of my message that some don't work tough
@GrapheneOS @maya @OmegaPolice @britter Notably, most work with the limitation of disallowing NFC payment. Which is just as ridiculous but oh well, I can live w/o that.
@ljrk @maya @OmegaPolice @britter In Europe, there are multiple tap-to-pay options compatible with GrapheneOS. Curve Pay, PayPal and many European banking apps permit tap-to-pay. Google Pay bans using GrapheneOS and most banks around the work delegate this to Google Pay. There was a trend towards doing it in Europe and many apps migrated to it which ended support for tap-to-pay on GrapheneOS. The trend has largely stopped.
Google Pay has a monopoly outside of Europe which is the main problem.
@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social @ljrk@todon.eu @maya@gs.lexinova.eu @OmegaPolice@hachyderm.io @britter@chaos.social And without GMS? I think Curve Pay uses GMS.
@GrapheneOS @ljrk @OmegaPolice @britter from what i remember curve pay is not very good privacy wise
@maya @ljrk @OmegaPolice @britter Banks and neobanks both have terrible privacy. The private options are cash, Monero and similar options. Many businesses are phasing out support for cash and many governments are placing stricter limitations on it.
@maya @OmegaPolice @britter @jolla @GrapheneOS Instead of F-Droid you can use Obtainium for F-Droid apps and other stuff. Aurora Store isn't entirely wise to use.
@fionescu @OmegaPolice @britter @jolla @GrapheneOS obtainium will crowdsource from github (and since one of my goal is to increase sovereinty using Microslop product is a hard no).
but that don't change the need of multiple store anyway
@maya @OmegaPolice @britter @jolla @GrapheneOS obtainium sources from anything it can source and you want to, f-droid included. that the majority of FOSS is still being hosted on github is not the fault of obtainium. and how is trusting a single app store a necessarily desirable thing in the era of chain supply attacks?
@britter SailfishOS is a massive downgrade for privacy and security from the Android Open Source Project even without the GrapheneOS improvements. It doesn't provide decent patches and combines the insecurity of both desktop operating systems with a low-end Android device without proper updates. It also has much worse usability, app compatibilitiy and battery life.
Unlike the Android Open Source Project which is open source, SailfishOS has largely closed source code for the high level OS code.
@britter GrapheneOS and AOSP are Linux distributions too. Linux isn't glibc, systemd, Bash, coreutils and Wayland. Many Linux distributions use a different libc, init, shell, command-line utilities and graphics layer if they even have one at all. Android having massive adoption and high usability doesn't mean it isn't Linux. Linux dominates mobile already.
SailfishOS doesn't use a typical desktop Linux software stack anyway but rather their own largely closed source UI and application layer.
@britter There's a flagship device from Motorola with official support for GrapheneOS coming soon if you don't want to buy another Pixel. It will be a higher end alternative to the Pixel 10 Pro XL. Pixels will remain the budget option for quite a while, especially since the 'a' series devices have the same 7 years of updates and security features as the high end device. It will take more time before Motorola devices below an ultra high end flagship meet all of our security requirements.
@GrapheneOS I was looking into Jolla / Sailfish OS because to me it feels like Google is slowly closing down Android. I know a lot of the things only apply to Google Android, such as developer verification. But I wonder if at some point the high ups decide it's not worth continuing to support AOSP. And what that would mean for Graphene.
@britter SailfishOS is already largely closed source for the code specific to it and would be a far worse starting point than hard forking AOSP even if it wasn't. There are a lot of stakeholders in open source AOSP and it would be able to continue without Google. The fact that they haven't closed it is why it hasn't been split away by a group of organizations working on it together. Multiple organizations have made hard forks with varying degrees of success but there wasn't much reason to do it.
@GrapheneOS @britter It seems for me that the GoogleBooks are the first solid secure desktop systems compared to the rest.