CypherKnight777 on Nostr: Respectfully, this is a bad take. GrapheneOS generally works very well and is ...
Respectfully, this is a bad take. GrapheneOS generally works very well and is considerably more secure than CalyxOS or the stock Android distro, both of which sacrifice security for performance.
I do agree that GrapheneOS needs to improve UX, especially the stock AOSP apps which all need to be replaced with modern Kotlin + Jetpack Compose apps.
GrapheneOS makes Google entirely optional. Instead of replacing the first party privileged code with less battle-tested third-party privileged code in the form of MicroG, GrapheneOS coerces the real Google services to run unprivileged in a normal application sandbox, and therefore under the user's full control. There may be some performance issues currently as a result of this workaround for Google's horrible software practices.
Using MicroG is probably why others have called CalyxOS less secure than stock Android, and this may be true. MicroG still communicates with Google and, unless I'm severely mistaken, is still privileged code. The only thing you're gaining is transparency into the code of MicroG. There isn't any additional security, and as I noted above, this approach is considerably less battle-tested than Google Play, meaning that in fact it probably is less secure than stock Android. It may also have more compatibility issues with apps than the approach used in GrapheneOS.
I'm not saying you're wrong for using a less secure OS, but please try to understand the differences before calling one better than the other. You're sacrificing a lot of security for those small performance gains, and I haven't even started describing the plethora of other security hardening GrapheneOS adds. Ultimately, use what meets your needs, but don't discount what GrapheneOS offers. It's an incredible project.
I do agree that GrapheneOS needs to improve UX, especially the stock AOSP apps which all need to be replaced with modern Kotlin + Jetpack Compose apps.
GrapheneOS makes Google entirely optional. Instead of replacing the first party privileged code with less battle-tested third-party privileged code in the form of MicroG, GrapheneOS coerces the real Google services to run unprivileged in a normal application sandbox, and therefore under the user's full control. There may be some performance issues currently as a result of this workaround for Google's horrible software practices.
Using MicroG is probably why others have called CalyxOS less secure than stock Android, and this may be true. MicroG still communicates with Google and, unless I'm severely mistaken, is still privileged code. The only thing you're gaining is transparency into the code of MicroG. There isn't any additional security, and as I noted above, this approach is considerably less battle-tested than Google Play, meaning that in fact it probably is less secure than stock Android. It may also have more compatibility issues with apps than the approach used in GrapheneOS.
I'm not saying you're wrong for using a less secure OS, but please try to understand the differences before calling one better than the other. You're sacrificing a lot of security for those small performance gains, and I haven't even started describing the plethora of other security hardening GrapheneOS adds. Ultimately, use what meets your needs, but don't discount what GrapheneOS offers. It's an incredible project.