First rant from a phone without Google services.

Put shitloads of Google/fb etc domains in the hosts file so my phone cant reach those either.

Root firewall blocks everything except for devrant, a download manager, fdroid and firefox focus.

As for my phone, I'm Google free!

Awesome, I hope that I can do the same with my next phone. Was it hard to get rid of all the Google stuff? (Technically, not emotionally)

@404response technically its flashing a custom ROM, enabling adaway, doing the hosts file thing and that's it. Resurrection remix comes without gapps by default!

Tbh I'm not even noticing a difference...

@linuxxx ok, I will do the same with my next phone :)

@irene Nope because fuck Google. If I'd ever have to use it again, it'll be microG !

@linuxxx the only one noticing a difference is google

Wait... But as long as you don't login... What can Google/FB do?

@billgates Not entirely sure but its very known that Google still collects data in the background and sends that home

Sailfish?

@linuxxx
Check if GPS is working ok. It's stupid but many phones do depend in Google framework for that.
And some won't work with nlp replacement from fdroid.

@nbamaral I never use that 😃. Anyways I'll check, thanks!

@Linux AOSP without gapps

To all that want to try it, check yalp store on fdroid. Because you will miss not having access to the play store.

@nbamaral Google play services error (cant find it i think)

@linuxxx
this may work but not always
https://f-droid.org/app/...
You'll also need some backends
Good luck :)

Have you looked at something like Replicant?

@Gophyr didn't know it, thanks!

@MrNielsen If I get some time, good one! If you look back into my posts you'll see that I'm working on a privacy site thingy currently :)

Do most apps even work? I mean Google play services is so deeply integrated with android at this point that I'd expect many things to go wrong when you remove it

@Froot I don't have any Google apps haha. Its still functioning as normal!

@linuxxx Yea but other stuff like eBay, Ali Express or Netflix, Plex, SoundCloud... Anything 😄

@Froot
You're right, some don't work very well, others not at all.
Most you get by with fdroid replacements, but a lot is missing.
Rule of thumb, if it features on amazon shop, it should work.

@nbamaral Is Amazon app store still a thing? I thought that experiment died ages ago... hmmm... interesting

But anyway. What you get is a gimped version of a normal smartphone then?

@Froot Let me try Ali!

@Froot Will download it through my old phone as I don't have a play store now obviously 🤣

@linuxxx o boy. So basically, you went and fucked up your phone and now you think it's better? 🤣

@Froot How did I fuck it up according to you?!

@linuxxx well you said it yourself. You can't even download an app normally anymore 😄

@Froot Obviously. As I said, I don't have gapps installed. Already found a solution though.

@linuxxx Well. That was kind of the point. Android doesn't work well without gapps unless you want to spend more time fiddling with it than actually using it 😄
But hey, do what you like ☺️

@Froot
Haven't checked that in ages 😊
But it was made for phones missing gapps, so apps worked as expected.
More than half of my apps are from fdroid, but avoiding play just because it's Google it's dumb. Yalpstore solves that problem, it gets things from the source. I just don't really trust getting apps from apkmirror and similar sites.

@nbamaral Yea same here. I wouldn't trust any source other than Play Store with my apps. It might seem like a super privacy aware thing to do but you open up so many attack vectors for the actual bad guys that the whole privacy argument goes out the window in my opinion.

Edit: I would probably make an exception for Amazon here since they are trustworthy company. Tho their whole app store system seems kind of hacky and gives no benefit over play store so I don't see a point in using it really.

@Froot don't agree on your last comment but hey opinions be opinions!

Just tried a few apps which officially require happen/Google services but they work great!

Now i want you to get drunk in some wild village and find home past 11 pm. 😊

@linuxxx even LineageOS doesn't require you to sign in to a google account. That said, you can still opt to use some google services built into it

@Gophyr I think Resurrection Remix (the one I use) is based on either CM or Lineage so yah :P

That's tight! congratulations dude! now it's just you and the NSA - google's not invited to the party anymore

@linuxxx how far are you from Richard Stallman? XD

@mt3o Very :)

@linuxxx I heard he mails his pc to fetch an URL and print its source code so he can read it ;-)

Cool, my iPhone doesn’t have google services either.

@Froot 'actual bad guys' is subjective in this case!

@bashlord Apple services though.

@linuxxx the only apple service I use is the app store, and unlike google, Apple doesn’t have a business model where using my data will help them much. Apple doesn’t have an advertisement imperium you know. Also, siri and other apple products that interact with your data mostly store data on-device. I’m feeling like I have a lot more privacy when using an iPhone than I would have using stock android with google services :)

@linuxxx Well no...
There's the guys who spread cryptoviruses, backdoor apps, steal people's credit card info so they can steal your money and so on. Actual criminals.
And then there's the cool-to-hate companies like Google and Facebook where most accusations against them are straight from government conspiracy tin foil hat land.

@Froot Well, yes. Agreed that those people are criminals but look at lavabit for example. They were required to either shutdown or give the feds their private SSL keys.

They decided to shut down because they didn't want their whole user base to be targeted because Edward snowden used their service.

Google wouldn't do that in a million years so for that fact I'd consider them (personally) the bad guys.

@linuxxx Shouldn't you then consider the goverment the bad guys instead? Or would you rather have Google shut down in this instance and stop all the good they're doing for the world?

I see it more as the company being bullied by the government. It's not the fault of the one being bullied, it's the bully's fault. So taking part in political activism to change how goverments operate would make much more sense than to boycott companies they bully here

@Froot Well so how would you describe Lavabit then? As a company who did something good or not? I mean as in, Google is forced (through underground gag orders, that's not much of a secret) to participate in the PRISM network but instead of shutting down they are giving the govt access to all user data.

@linuxxx Yea but would shutting down be better? It would delete a huuuuge company and with it delete all the good stuff they're working on. And let's not even start with shareholders. It would wipe $500bn of shareholder equity away. Things like that will never happen, it's not even remotely plausible. That's just how the world works, and it's not about if the company is good or bad.

As for lavabit. Sure it's a good thing to do for the users. But it makes 0 economic sense that you shouldn't expect any company to follow their lead

@Froot Well then they could at least pretend to care about their users. They've started to create privacy conscious/high security products a few times but either ended up abs abandoning those or silently turn off the extra privacy/security stuffs while still advertising it (Allo is the perfect example here).

If a company does that I'll consider them bad yeah

@bashlord I totally get your point, for real.

With apple devices it comes down to two scary facts for me. One being that they're integrated in PRISM which makes me loose my trust in the company right away and secondly, their operating systems being closed. I don't trust closed source operating systems from a company which is integrated in that damn system.

Other than that, even if they're not selling the data, they're still storing it if it isn't even neccesary :).

Anyways just my opinion :P

@linuxxx any andofidb ROM that is compiled from source doesn't come with gapps (aka Google apps) :)
There's a really good ROM for android devices which focuses a lot on security and privacy, it's called Copperhead OS. Try it out ;)

@RAZERZ I know it! But as far as I know it's not entirely open source anymore?

@linuxxx do you have a blog post or recommendations for this? I’m looking into maybe getting the OnePlus X and maybe load something else on it. I like the UI of ubuntu touch but it doesn’t look too widely adopted so I severely doubt that I can find all the apps I need/want

@DeveloperACE You could literally flash lineage onto it without gapps :)