alt Hacker NewsI don't care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine. Most Android apps just work, and the ones that don't are the kind of malware I am happy to do without.
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I have a pixel 10 pro and have tried no less than 5 times to get my apps to work on graphene, no luck.
I'm no slouch either, I've developed for android for almost a decade.
I'm not disagreeing with ya, just adding a comment so folks are aware that the "Graphene just works" crowd is sometimes a bit hyperbolic.
I'm running GrapheneOS too and while I've experienced the same, I'm dreading the day any of my banking apps update and suddenly start demanding full Play Integrity API support (GrapheneOS only has Basic) causing them to fail to open. Hasn't happened yet but it could.
Being a Graphene user is fine and all, but if this continues it will have a chilling effect on OSS Android development. And that will still effect you.
Devs have been warning F-Droid about this for years:
It's quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store and that should have been stopped years ago since it was used in many cases for scamming and squatting on package names clearly belonging to others. Package names are meant to start with a reverse domain belonging to the owner such as app.grapheneos for our grapheneos.app domain. They could enforce this based on domains authorizing usage without enforcing ID verification and that's what we would have proposed.
This is one of the ways F-Droid has ignored standard best practices including security practices in a way that's already causing problems but is now a massive issue for them. If they had started doing things properly many years ago when it was first brought up, then they'd be in a much better situation today. They're going to need to deal with this by renaming all their package names to org.fdroid. to avoid issues with the proposed changes. This is problematic because existing users will stop getting updates. It's better to use a prefix than a suffix where a developer could end up changing their mind about whether it makes sense resulting in conflict over the name, which is fair since they still own it if it's their reverse domain.
How can you trust graphene or it's contributors and supply chain?
Google could lock out Graphene too, whenever they like, with no warning. I hope Graphene has a plan.
That's a great attitude until slowly but surely 90% of apps used in day to day life won't function for you: banking, dating, social media, e-commerce, communication/messaging etc slowly freeze you out.
First they came for the stock Android users, and I did not speak out for I was not a stock Android user.
I use GrapheneOS too. Most of the time it works great, with some weird bugs around group messages and needing to restart every now and then to get to a fully functional state between the browser and keyboard properly working with each other and the network connectivity going away. I do enjoy full control on network connectivity and notifications.
But beyond whether the OS is good or not, "fuck you, I've got mine" is not only sad as a position in general, it is also a bad tactical choice, because over long enough timeframes you can't assure that you can keep yours if others are deprived.