(open)bsd on a smartphone : imagine a future?

[hd77]

hello
after few pages of debate about openbsd, Im thinking about the following one :
https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=...20220126191703

as openbsd could run on several different platforms, I was thinking, the reasons of why there is no non-linux alternative, to ios or android-like based phone systems :

-ios/android-likes ate almost all the mobile OS market
-postmarket/pureos/manjaro/sailfish/mobian/ubuntum/etc are all linux-only variants (bsd, where are you?)
-openbsd has reputation of secured-based and reliable system
-it could run on older phone, especially for basics interfaces
-in a period of cyberattacks, of prism or others pegasus stories, a new highly secured alternative is welcomed

i did not found any third-part non-linux, or bsd mobile alternative system... why, how imagine a such project, for the next decades?

i thank you vm for your explainations, comments, ideas or suggestions, to understand better the absence of bsd systems on the mobile..

thank you

[Head_on_a_Stick]

The non-Android Linux mobile phone operating systems are nonsense, Android is _much_ better for that purpose.

Just use GrapheneOS and be happy. Or carrier pigeons.

[blackhole]

headstick is probably right (sadly)...

Have a look here:

https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/

Who is it for?

Contemporary mobile Linux operating systems have a way to go before they can be considered true alternatives to Android or iOS. While mobile Linux isn’t in a state that could satisfy most mainstream electronics consumers, we recognize that a sizable portion of our community is ready to make the jump to a Linux-only smartphone today. The PinePhone Pro has the raw horsepower to be your daily driver, granted you’re ready to accept the current software limitations.

In a nutshell: if you are an existing PinePhone owner and your only wish is for the device to be more powerful and refined, then the PinePhone Pro is for you.

Who isn’t it for?

We’re not in the business of selling empty promises – a much faster mainline Linux smartphone won’t make the existing operating systems more refined, nor will it magically spawn software replacements for your iOS or Android applications. There is a long road ahead of us, all of us, and it will require time and effort for the software to reach a degree of maturity that would satisfy mainstream users.

If you depend on proprietary mainstream mobile messenger applications, banking applications, use loyalty or travel apps, consume DRM media, or play mobile video games on your fruit or Android smartphone, then the PinePhone Pro is likely not for you.

Roughly translated: For $400 you can probably fire up a terminal and ssh into something useful...

This is like going to buy a car and the salesman doing their very best not to sell it to you. The car does not have sat nav, stereo, air con, or heating, or upholstered seating, or any glazing, or a roof... if you still buy it and don't like it - that's your fault.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Speaking of Pinephone, I wonder if they've fixed that minor "catching fire" problem they had:

https://xnux.eu/log/017.html

Meanwhile GrapheneOS has all the built-in sandboxing features provided by vanilla Android along with their own hardened libc & malloc implementations; Google Play is usable but it is fully sandboxed and has no special permissions.

[shep]

1+ for GrapheneOS. In the general landscape where 1/2 the batteries energy goes to sending Apple/Google your information, GrapheneOS is locked down out the box. My battery life instantly doubled.

[rufwoof]

Originally Posted by shep

1+ for GrapheneOS. In the general landscape where 1/2 the batteries energy goes to sending Apple/Google your information, GrapheneOS is locked down out the box. My battery life instantly doubled.

More like 90% in my case. Newish to smartphones last xmas and for months I used it like my former pretty much just a tiny pocket phone system that I had owned for a number of years, had no need for the smarts. Then at around Easter time my son got me to install whatsapp that pulled in loads of google spyware apps and where now even with that turned off the battery drains far quicker. The spyware battery drain rate is so fast that I do wonder if that's due to phones constantly dog whistling (inaudible) tones between each other for proximity tracking purposes.

8.8.8.8 DNS is another ... google controlled dns server, where many request the IP of where they're headed, followed by encrypted traffic flow to a initial web page that is relatively static and open for all to see ... and if you have the encrypted stream, the open stream (web page content) and who originated that communication ... there ain't any secrets left.

[Onauk]

Originally Posted by Head_on_a_Stick

Meanwhile GrapheneOS has all the built-in sandboxing features provided by vanilla Android along with their own hardened libc & malloc implementations; Google Play is usable but it is fully sandboxed and has no special permissions.

Interesting! I use LineageOS but this seems even better.

I think the interest for Linux on mobile stems from all the catching up all privacy-friendly forks of Android have to do to stop Google from spying. Sometimes it can seem easier to go back to a clean slate like postmarketOS did than to try to fight Google on their turf. But it is most likely that we will never see Linux on mobile in less than 10 years.

[hd77]

Originally Posted by Head_on_a_Stick

Just use GrapheneOS and be happy. Or carrier pigeons.

you buy your hardware regarding what software will run on it?
I do not.

Originally Posted by shep

1+ for GrapheneOS. In the general landscape where 1/2 the batteries energy goes to sending Apple/Google your information, GrapheneOS is locked down out the box. My battery life instantly doubled.

not so different than ungoogled lineageos.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I tried running software on my pigeons but they kept pecking me

[blackhole]

Originally Posted by hd77

you buy your hardware regarding what software will run on it?
I do not.

This makes little sense to me.

The OS surely exists to run the software you want to run?

To run the OS you buy suitable hardware.

The software I want to run is the application for train times, ebay and a few other things. It's a convenience, as with anything else, such as an electric toothbrush, washing machine or flushing toilets. "Big Tech" has this sewn up. You either opt in or you opt out (don't buy into it).

Hopefully one day there will be something better, for now there isn't. The nature of smartphones is that they're "lowest common denominator" consumer devices, built around the needs of lazy consumers and feckless individuals who care little about privacy and security. I do very little on mine - i.e. no social networking at all, so the data which google et al, capture from me is not very interesting.

As with social media, you're either in it, or you're not (I'm not and never have been). There is no analogous scenario where you start your own faecebook, consisting of just you.

With smartphones you're mostly stuck with the OS it came with. This is because GrapheneOS only supports Pixel devices as far as I can recall (?) and LineageOS only has support for limited devices (my Samsung A-something isn't supported for example).

If you buy an Android based smartphone, you buy a device with an embedded Linux based OS, which uses mostly proprietary drivers and is loaded with surveillance tech. If that's not OK, the best option is to not buy one in the first place. If you buy Apple, the situation is worse still.

If you browse the web using firefox, chromium, etc - you're also spied on by google. If you also visit websites without blocking content, you're still being spied on. The obvious thing to do is go off grid.

The bottom line is that until there is proper well thought out legislation against this corporate sponsored surveillance and restriction of freedom (which their probably won't be in our life times), it will continue.

The ludicrous thing for me is still that Mickeyshaft got dragged through the courts over IE back in 2001, but we are now confronted with a number of monopolies and restrictions of user choice which are far worse, but which manage to "fly under the radar".

[frcc]

Amen!

I've said this before many times, "If its more convenient accomplishing tasks for you without your knowledge of whats going on behind the scenes, then, Generally, its less secure" when addressing the world in general. But, we are human and our nature prevails at times, so there should be trade-offs in doing so.
Sadly, those trade-offs are hard to find and require effort to use to protect oneself. (2 cents!)

[shep]

Originally Posted by hd77

not so different than ungoogled lineageos.

In GrapheneOS, security hardening is in the main OS rather then the applications:

https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium

Vanadium is a privacy and security hardened variant of Chromium providing the WebView (used by other apps to render web content) and standard browser for GrapheneOS. It depends on hardening and compatibility fixes in GrapheneOS rather than reinventing the wheel inside Vanadium. For example, GrapheneOS already provides a hardened malloc implementation so there's no need for Vanadium to replace it. Similarly, it can deploy security features causing breakage on other operating systems due to the ability to fix compatibility problems in the OS.

For more on the security implementations:

GrapheneOS Features