It’s pretty good for desktop apps, but it doesn’t provide CLI applications, so I still have to rely on the AUR. There are some issues with it, but overall I think it’s the best solution we currently have. And it’s very easy to use, which is great for new users and it will become important if Linux continues growing like this.
I would recommend you to try out Linux in a virtual machine and play around with it. You can watch this video if you don’t know how to set this up. You can do much more with a VM than with WSL. It allows you to basically try any Linux Distribution, whereas WSL only supports a few distros. In a VM you also get a desktop environment by default, whereas WSL mostly restricts you to the terminal. Sure, you can run graphical apps in WSLg, but you still don’t have a Linux desktop. Lastly, it’s much easier to take a snapshot of a VM, and roll back in case you break something.
After you get comfortable in a VM, maybe try booting a Live USB of some Linux distribution. That way you will be able to try it out on your actual hardware.
After that, you can set up dual boot. That way, you can still keep your Windows installation, but also use Linux without any restrictions or limitations.
Replacing Windows is always an upgrade
These guys can go removed themselves
The GrapheneOS team is security focused to the point where it is detrimental to the regular user experience. I.e. “Secure App Spawning” increases app startup time considerably on older devices like the Pixel 4a.
That’s why Graphene allows you to disable the security features. Turning off secure app spawning won’t make your device incredibly vulnerable, it will just be set back to normal AOSP security level.
Also, the GrapheneOS team has very high standards for security features supported by a phone. Basically no phone besides Pixel supports those features, which obviously isn’t a big problem for most people (else we’d have a big problem).
You know which phone has basically all of those security features? The iPhone. GrapheneOS is not building something insane, they’re just hardening Android to a point where it’s actually comparable to iPhone security. Sure, usability might not be perfect because Google only releases base Android as open source software and keeps all their fancy apps proprietary, but it’s not in a state where it’s totally unusable either.
Obviously they comply with the GPL, otherwise they would get sued. But Red Hat acts exactly like a proprietary software company. That’s what the quote is trying to say.
The GrapheneOS team has already absolutely dismanteled the Fairphone on Mastodon:
Fairphone is an insecure device with substantially delayed privacy and security patches. It receives the Android Security Bulletin patches consistently 1 to 2 months late and receives the recommended patches years late. It has a broken, insecure verified boot implementation. They have also misled their users about support by claiming their devices will get 6 years of support when they can only provide 2-3 years of security patches. That is not a privacy first device at all.
exactly
It’s not that big of a deal
To quote Software Freedom Conservancy:
For approximately twenty years, Red Hat (now a fully owned subsidiary of IBM) has experimented with building a business model for operating system deployment and distribution that looks, feels, and acts like a proprietary one, but nonetheless complies with the GPL and other standard copyleft terms.
+1 for Graphene
If you want to support a Linux phone project, the PinePhone looks most promising. If you want an actual usable phone that runs open source software, offers great privacy and security, good (open source) app support and doesn’t come with ads, trackers or any other bloatware, get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS and F-Droid.
All the hardware is proprietary. The CPU, the ME in the CPU, the chipset on the mainboard, the BIOS, the RAM and SSD controllers, the TPM and everything else. Even the damn battery controller hardware and software are proprietary. It really doesn’t matter though.
I know that it’s a joke, but find me a distro that doesn’t include any proprietary blobs.
No, they only removeded CentOS, and they made RHEL proprietary last year. Since Ubuntu’s decline, Fedora basically took it’s place. It’s very stable but not extremely outdated, has great security, always supports the newest technologies like Flatpak, Wayland, Pipewire, etc., has good Desktop spins and constantly innovates. The next Fedora KDE release will even completely drop support for X11, which is a good step because it forces developers to adopt Wayland. They also have pretty good immutable spins like Silverblue, Kinoite and others. Other cool distros like Nobara and uBlue are also built on top of Fedora.
This would be awesome. Fedora has really been one of the best distros lately, hopefully they don’t get removeded by Red Hat in the future.
I don’t really know how stable Fedora Rawhide is, because I only used it once. But OpenSuse does a whole lot of testing before shipping any update. From their website:
Why should you consider openSUSE Tumbleweed over other distributions? The answer lies in its rigorous testing and stability emphasis. OpenSUSE is the base for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, meaning it’s secure, stable, and provides most of the software and tools you may need. While some rolling release distributions may offer the latest software packages, openSUSE Tumbleweed couples this with a strong emphasis on ensuring these updates won’t destabilize your system. Every Tumbleweed snapshot undergoes rigorous automated testing via openQA, openSUSE’s comprehensive testing tool, before its release. This process prevents critical bugs from reaching your system, providing an unexpected level of stability for a rolling release.
Mull is even better, it’s hardened Fennec. It’s basically like LibreWolf but for Android.