Category: free software

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About phone (and desktop) security

I know at least one former colleague who really cared about privacy and security concerning his mobile phone. And this morning, I’ve heard an interesting interview with Gabe, one of the developers of GrapheneOS, using NewPipe on GrapheneOS on my late brother’s Pixel 3a device – that looked like this:

That’s one and a half hours of a really interesting interview, so it’s really worth it. And I can confirm how secure those mentioned Titan M chips are, not even Google could hack or circumvent those, so if I wouldn’t have been able to guess my brother’s passcode, that device of his would have been an expensive paperweight.

I also liked how Gabe gave lots of credits to Apple because of their long-term support of their iPhones and devices, but yes, with the Pixel 6 and newer, things are improving on the Android side as well.

About desktop security: it’s actually worse than this, the same interviewer has some other interesting videos about that, or tips how to use Tor on your phone.

Recommended listening. And like always, thanks for reading.

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Back to a triple boot, added Debian 12, and a lighter theme again…

The headline basically says it all. I had to slightly shrink one of the partitions, then I installed “Bookworm”, and switched both my environment and also my web page back to a lighter theme for now. So my desktop looks like this now:

Like always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: added a dark/light mode switcher which floats in the bottom right of the page. Enjoy.

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Testing Testing

Due to the installation of GrapheneOS on the Pixel 3a, and thinking about security in general – also on the desktop – I switched Debian back to using Wayland instead of X.Org. That works well, unless you have to work with screen capturing which would additionally require pipewire.

And because I also make music with my PC and until now heavily rely on Jack, I decided to try Debian’s upcoming version named “Bookworm”, or, in repository talk, “testing”. So I set up a virtual machine to try it. In case you’ll also want to do that, you can find the installer here.

So, after staring up a virtual machine with that installer, you’re greeted with something like this:

I decided to *not* use the selected Grahical Install but the “normal” and old-fashioned Install just below it. That’s text (ncurses) based, and looks like this while working:

And, after downloading some stuff which was not included or newer than in the downloaded installer, you’re rebooting into it like this:

And, after a few seconds, you’ll see the few initial (one time) configuration steps, like this:

And that’s pretty much it – takes some 10 minutes from starting the installer until here, and most of that time is spent downloading stuff you don’t already have.

And yes, my first check was whether screen capture works with Wayland (and now pipewire), which it does. Further checks will have to be done elsewhere, since audio recording is pretty much a realtime task, and thus not very well suited inside of virtual machines.

But anyway, I’m looking forward to using the upcoming “Bookworm” – when it moves from “testing” into “stable” later this year. Looking at the open RC (release-critical) bugs, it might already be more stable than stable… 😉

Like always, thanks for reading.

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Most popular on XDA

Well this is interesting. Over at XDA Developers, there’s an article about the “Most popular custom ROMs for Android in 2023“. And of course on top of that list there just had to be LineageOS, as it’s probably the most popular custom ROM anywhere, not only on the XDA developers’ site.

What’s more interesting than that is the place 2 of the list, which is PixelExperience, or PE in short. And that’s interesting because it supports lots of vendors, and it turns their devices basically into almost original Pixel phones (minus the hardware like Titan chips of course). Haven’t tried it yet, but for the Pixel 3a like for many others there’s Android 13 available.

Until now, and both on the Google Nexus 5 and now on the Pixel 3a, I have tried /e/OS, LineageOS, and most recently now, GrapheneOS – so I’ve had basically every possible experience with and without Google services like microG or even the original ones (also on original phones). And all of these have their virtues, and also their different goals. While some of these ROMs simply prolong the lifespan of your device, others try to avoid Google and are built more on security aspects like application sandboxing and memory isolation. All valid reasons to try something different than a Google or Apple (or Samsung or any other) device.

I find all of that interesting. If the 3a (or the 4a) were still my “daily drivers”, then I’d be glad that I have choices, and would try and check if GrapheneOS and the app from my bank like each other. If not, I’d probably try PixelExperience – or any other one which supports the devices longer than Google does. The 3a is out of support since a while, the 4a will soon be, and so on… and anything is better than throwing devices away, isn’t it?

Thanks for reading.

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Trying GrapheneOS

The last update of the inofficial version of LineageOS I had on my late brother Willi’s Pixel 3a phone went bad. Which is okay, not everyone has every device to test, and remember that these developers from XDA do it all for free and in their spare time.

So after reading an interesting poll in AndroidAuthority, together with a test of GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6, I decided to try it on the 3a. And what should I say – it looks *very* minimalistic but is brilliant under its hood, and again I’m learning a lot. Here’s an almost standard home screen from which I removed one app shortcut (the one for the gallery which is empty at the moment anyway):

GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 3a phone

Wonderful.

So to make it short: for now, I answered that poll with: “No, I’m happy with Google’s default experience” because I wouldn’t flash any third party OS onto a device which is still supported. But for an older one – as long as you can get images for them – this is a good choice in my opinion. So in case you *do* have a Pixel phone which is about to run out of support, and if you don’t need the Google Wallet for payments, GrapheneOS is worth a look. It can even run Google’s Play store in a sandbox in case you’d need that (which I don’t).

Like always, thanks for reading.

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A brief stint into Mint

After reading so often about Linux Mint lately – see for instance my post from yesterday about Liam from The Register – I decided to try and have a look at it, which I haven’t done in quite a while. Not that I’d need something else than Debian, but I always recommended Ubuntu for beginners or for people switching from other operating systems, and maybe by now there are indeed better choices?

Well, I had a short look only, but I must say that indeed, Mint looks like a thing of beauty:

Linux Mint 21.1 with Cinnamon 5.8, running neofetch in a terminal window

I gave the virtual machine only 2 cores, and 4 GB of RAM plus 16GB on the SSD, but it ran everything I tried beautifully:

My website in Firefox 111 on Linux Mint

Mint is still based upon Ubuntu, at least this version is/was (I think I’ve read of an alternative one which is based upon Debian, but wanted to try the default one) – so it’s hard to say after only a short time which is better. But everything looked very well laid out, there’s even a firewall which you can switch on with a simple mouse click, and I think that new Linux users would have no problems getting around this; the Cinnamon desktop looks much more like Windows than for instance Gnome does. Plus it didn’t take too many resources, that virtual machine used only some 800MB of the 4GB of RAM I’d given it.

So, in case you’re interested in trying a Linux distribution and don’t know which one, I’d still say try Ubuntu because of the huge user base, but Linux Mint is probably even easier, so take that into your consideration as well – especially now that Ubuntu seems to split to a paid support model for companies, Mint looks more like the end-user friendly variant to me.

Like always, thanks for reading. And now, back to my Debian:

Debian 11 “Bullseye” running a conky system monitor on my screen background (picture by myself)
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Some IT news for today (March 17th, 2023)

First, a test of a notebook which runs Linux pretty well. It’s the modern version of one that a former colleague of mine had, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, here in its 10th Generation. Liam Proven checked it on The Register’s site, here:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/10/thinkpad_x1c_g10_linux/

I had a much bigger and heavier Lenovo P50 “workstation” type which also ran Linux just fine, just like my wife’s L380 Yoga 2-in-1, as you now would call them if you can rotate the display 180 degrees and use it with the in-built pencil.

Seems that for Liam, Linux Mint in its latest version has been a good choice. But others will follow…

Next: Debian’s upcoming version “Bookworm” (or Debian Linux 12) is now in hard freeze, which means that bug fixing will be going on full steam by now, and after a short “full freeze” period we’ll get that next version. Announcement is here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/03/msg00004.html

Which I’ve found via the Debian micronews (thanks Laura!).

One last one for today, which this time is about a vulnerability on a Samsung chip. Google’s Project Zero warns about an issue with Exynos Modems, read here:

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/03/multiple-internet-to-baseband-remote-rce.html

Its Pixel 7 devices should be safe already, but in case you have some sort of Pixel 6 or a Samsung Galaxy S22 or others, read AndroidAuthority or other sites about it as well. And turn off VoLTE and WiFi calling until there’s a fix for this.

Ok folks, that’s it for now – and like always, thanks for reading.

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Well – the percentage is right…

… but KDE Connect and GSConnect differ with my phone’s opinion about the remaining battery time – see here:

For me at least, “48:29” – what is that – hours and minutes? Or minutes and seconds? – sounds a bit different from the phone’s display of “1 day, 5 hrs”

Have to check where to send a bug report about that…

Anyhow, like always, thanks for reading.

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Better than official numbers…

C. Scott Brown reports about the Fairphone 2 phone on AndroidAuthority, telling us that it has been supported for 7 years until now, and that this is better than even Samsung’s update policy.

And right he is of course, but forgetting that a) some iPhones were supported equally long, and that b) there are third party offerings like for instance LineageOS (just to name the most well-known one) who easily top that – for the mentioned Fairphone 2 for instance, there’s Android 11 in form of LineageOS 18.1 available.

And that’s far from the end of it – on my Google Nexus 5 I had an (unofficial but still great) version of LineageOS 20 which equals Android 13 – and that was a device which was even 2 years older than the Fairphone 2, and which LineageOS officially supported until 14.1 (Android 7).

So the real question before buying any new phone should be: is it supported by LineageOS and other 3rd party offerings? Do the makers at least give you the option to unlock the devices’ bootloaders so that you *can* install something different than the makers’ version of Android? For Apple’s iPhones and the iOS, the answer is generally “no”, so despite their long support through the maker they still lose against “open” Android phones like all devices from Google themselves for instance. See the devices listing on LineageOS, and if your phone is as old as a Nexus 5, don’t forget to mark the “discontinued devices” checkbox – if you find yours there, then there’s a great chance to also find some newer ROMs on the site of the XDA Developers.

The jury is still out, but at least with Android 13 on my late brother’s Pixel 3a I can even use my banking app, haven’t found many bugs even in that unofficial ROM yet.

So would I like to have a newer phone than that? Definitely yes. Do I really need one? Not so sure yet, although having Google’s quarterly “feature drops” is of course something really nice.

So if you’re reading articles about the longevity and the support cycles from manufacturers, don’t forget the third party aspect, it’s an important one in my opinion.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Hmmm… another one swelling…

When three days ago I asked why things have to grow, I also meant that in regards to a swelling battery in one of our phones – again. This time it’s my Pixel 4a which is kind of hard for me because I consider that the perfect phone regarding size, features, and all…

So my first reaction was to change that battery, and I looked up videos about it and thought: “Oh my…”, because with *this* device it’s really hard. So I looked up an estimation for repair costs at Google, and oh my again…

estimated repair costs for a Pixel 4a phone

Don’t know if you can see that, but it says 326,06€ – which is more than a new Pixel 6a would cost either on mail order or in local electronics shops.

So for now I switched over to my brother Willi’s last one, the Pixel 3a. I had installed LineageOS 20 (Android 13) on it already, and after moving over the SIM card as well as some data, it almost looks the same like on my 4a:

Pixel 3a with LineageOS 20

So let’s see. Haven’t tried everything yet (like my banking app for instance), but so far this looks good…

Like always, thanks for reading.