alt Hacker NewsI have been a user of /e/OS for 5 years, and also of GOS and would like to share my opinion on this:
> it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS
What I have seen (and I am not involved in any of those projects) is that GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security.
Not that they couldn't improve their communication style, but usually when they call out technical limitations of other projects (e.g. /e/OS), they are right. And I mean the technical arguments. Then I have seen a bunch of drama, but to be fair I have seen those other communities show toxic behaviour towards GOS just as much as the opposite.
It feels like it is GOS vs "the others", because the others don't criticise each other, and GOS bluntly criticises when they see claims they find are wrong (I have seen claims by /e/OS going from misleading to downright wrong).
On my particular phone, after 5 years with /e/OS, the Fairphone updates were outdated by 4 years. In terms of security I would have been better with the Stock Android. It depends on the phone of course, because /e/OS tends to claim that they support everything and they just can't. Even on a phone that /e/OS supports well, GrapheneOS is superior, period.
But I agree, I could do without all the drama. I guess my point is that it goes both ways.
Replies
/e/OS/ was bad with updates for a long time (I had to switch 2022). IodéOS is very good at it, in my experience (I have used all three)
I guess on /e/OS you can just run Google Maps in a browser if you really want Google Maps features (like searching for a restaurant). Organicmaps works fine if you just need to get from A to B. It does lack live traffic, but you'll have to live with fewer features if you really want to not use Google for most stuff.
I'm also not involved with any mobile privacy/security project, unless OpenStreetMap data and self-hosting can be said to be such
> GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security.
Two remarks:
- There's a difference between "blunt" and hostile or misleading. GOS (owners) are often the latter two from what I read, where by misleading I mean distorting reality about whom you should be protecting from and recommending you should never use anything else to reach your goals (as opposed to GOS' goals)
- They also reply when privacy comes up in other projects, not just security, but they treat it as though it's essential for privacy. Not everyone is running from an intelligence agency or cellebrite border checkpoints, some people just want a phone with as many open components as possible or want to lie to Facebook about which contacts are on their device. You don't need a locked bootloader and be prevented from accessing your own data for that (can't access /data on your own device on any official GrapheneOS build; which is fine if that's what you want, but not everyone's goals are the same)