Update I have come to a decision. Thank you to all who contributed suggestions. Please feel free to keep the discussion going to help others.

  • haui
    link
    fedilink
    52 months ago

    Whatever idea you have to phones, you‘re wrong. They can easily make 5 plus years if you treat them right. The more problematic part is daily use and battery degradation/repair.

    But google sucks anyway so I‘ll stay with postmarketOS on my oneplus6 and wait for my camera to come to life some day (hopefully).

      • haui
        link
        fedilink
        12 months ago

        Because android. PostmarketOS is linux (based on alpine linux)

        • Lemongrab
          link
          12 months ago

          Interesting. I have a vastly divergent opinion on linux for mobile, mostly that it is not secure. This is true for Desktop linux but is more important considering the threat model necessary for mobile device Security.

          • haui
            link
            fedilink
            12 months ago

            Feel free to elaborate. Everything I have read over my life (couple thousand pages I guess) suggestd that linux can be a lot more secure than windows and ios.

            • Lemongrab
              link
              1
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              Linux is not security hardened. It does not properly sandbox applications (and there is nothing as secure as android’s sandboxing on linux). In fact, most linux package managers do not feature any sandboxing of applications, period. Linux does not implement verified boot. It does not harden against physical port attacks. It does not use a hardened memory allocator. Privilege escalation is simple because of how straightforward it is to compromise a wheel user (sudo user). Linux does not harden it kernel flags by default. Alpine (and most linux package managers) are not secure (aka does not pass the TUF threat model). Most linux distros dont feature a read-only root filesystem, which would help to improve security. Also, Systemd is a bloated init system and has a massive attack surface. GNU’s tooling is also bloated and freebsd’s would make a good alternative (like what is done by Chimera Linux)

              Here are some readings on linux security:
              Article by one of the Whonix Devs https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html and also are hardening guide from them https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/guides/linux-hardening.html
              Wiki page of Whonix considering many linux distros for whether they make a good base for Whonix’s security distro: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/Operating_System#Alpine_Linux
              Kicksecure’s wiki: https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Documentation

              Here are some Security hardened distros (Note that none meet the threat model for a mobile phone OS as they dont feature verified boot):
              https://www.kicksecure.com
              https://github.com/secureblue/secureblue
              https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/profiles/hardened.nix.

              Special mention which isnt hardened but has great potential: https://chimera-linux.org/

              • haui
                link
                fedilink
                12 months ago

                You do realize that this is bullshit, right?

                Its typical fearmongering (in fact the same article too) that I have been sent a ton of times by low tech users that fanboy for graphene.

                There is no such thing as „physical port attacks“. It also works very different on phones then on computers. You can for example use i2c on an iphone to crack it open which somewhat straightforward to do but still has zero implications for daily use. The linux apps are desktop apps and as such dont have any chance to get through all of the open source community‘s eyes undetected.

                Its a completely backwards take that assumes using bad faith software written in the dark by proprietary vendors which just isnt real.

                • Lemongrab
                  link
                  12 months ago

                  I only mentioned physical port attacks in a much larger list of things Linux MUST improve on. I am not a grapheneOS shill, nor did any of the supporting articles I sent relate to GOS, so I don’t really understand your response. Read through the links I posted and learn more about the operating system you use. I am NOT saying linux is dogshit, I very much love linux. Why not just educate yourself on this topic instead of assuming things from a place of ignorance or constructing a strawman. I spend multiple hours per day reading and putting into practice Linux hardening techniques, I am not just working with a surface level understanding of Linux security.

                  Even open source is vulnerable. Two questions: do you examine all the commits on every app you use? Do you compile every update to the apps you use from source? Sandboxing is important because if an application is compromised it cant lead to privilege escalation or userspace spyware.

                  • haui
                    link
                    fedilink
                    12 months ago

                    I‘m not that bad at rhetoric either but I avoid it when I can.

                    Your argument is empty. Privilege escalation attacks are plain old cves that get found, evaluated and fixed. You need access to the phone, mostly in an unlocked state to get anything to work like that, same as with a computer.

                    I know a couple of pen testers and I would definitely know if there were large differences between operating systems securitywise.