I always wondered why anyone would choose to use that instead of Signal and GrapheneOS. I mean, removing cameras and microphones is a great tactic, but why use some shady software instead of something that was proven to work many times? Even if that service was authentic, how long would it take for law enforcement to learn about it, seize the servers and collect metadata? There must be people who are competent in tech and also happen to be cartel members.
haha, none at all! I’ve spent like 6 months trying to boot normal NixOS instead of mobile-nixos, got it booting last week, almost nothing works, currently I’m trying to build a newer kernel and maybe fix sound.
I quite like the boot chain that I achieved (bootloader -> tianocore EDK II UEFI from Renegade Project -> normal systemd-boot) and I also installed the whole thing via USB by mounting disks directly.
On Mobian I think at least one camera did work but was purple all over, never actually tested the hardware on android.
All mobile distributions ship without kernel modules that I need, compiling manually on every update is not really sustainable, this is the reason why my setup is so convoluted.
Yes, I mean the 2018 era SDM845 bunch of phones. They mostly work. While postmarketOS is the community that made linux on phones possible, it is not the only thing that you can run on these, there is actual choice. I personally liked Mobian very much.
Making linux phones more widely adopted will require wider community interest and halium is just not the way forward.
Edit: screenshot to illustrate my point, my OnePlus 6T running NixOS in UEFI mode (based on this writeup by /u/chayleaf@lemmy.ml:
why? why is this thing being posted so much everywhere?
linux phone
actually halium
hardware kill switches
I guess I just can’t see the utility vs leaving the phone at home since I don’t arrange 3AM deals by the docks
android app support
all we see is a shaky recording of a screen that looks like some gui to control waydroid settings
we have actual hardware now that works really well, has almost mainline linux kernel support, does not rely on oem hacks and proprietary blobs on top of android kernels to be useful, and is available now for $50 second hand in good condition
I’ve read somewhere that the massive explosion in popularity happened in 2020 when someone stole and cloned the PCs that were used to install the ROMs on Android phones. By then GrapheneOS head dev’s conflict with CopperheadOS team was very widely publicized and GrapheneOS’s security debate was impossible to miss.
Anyway, here’s a phone and a messaging app that will only be provided to you and other criminals, it is very secure