I’m probably overthinking it, but I’m interested to hear how people approach this.
So I’m leaning more into FOSS and degoogling, so I ordered a Pixel for GOS.
However, I recently learned that GOS recommends Play Store before any FOSS app stores.
That kind of broke my brain and had me evaluating my goals and philosophy.
Do you folks just set up a different GOS profile for Google stuff and keep using apps from Play Store without a second thought?
Or do you lean into FOSS apps as much as possible?
Or do you try to self-host as much as you can?
I’m kind of just looking for a North Star to follow here.
I’ve been self-hosting with Immich and Nextcloud for a couple of months and thought I had a new philosophy to live by, hence the Pixel purchase and GOS plans.
However, learning that the values of GOS don’t align perfectly with FOSS has disrupted my posture a bit.
It’s not very satisfying straddling privacy-centric apps/services alongside popular services that want all your data, especially taking into consideration the efforts required to go down the path of more privacy.
I’m nearly fully FLOSS. GOS recommendations are geared for political dissidents and other actively persecuted persons. Take your threat model into account. Most people don’t have that kind of worry.
I think the trick is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I run GOS and have apps from fdroid, obtainium, aurora and play store. I used to have google services in the owner profile but recently moved all my apps that require google services into the private space so my main user space is fully degoogled.
The nice thing about GOS is that while they take a hard-line stance on security the OS itself is fairly agnostic to what you do. You can also change your mind over time about what you are ok with, like I did. Privacy, security and anonymity are all different goals to strive for but its always a a balance. You are already ahead of the curve just for trying. Keep it up!
Appreciate your reply!
My plan is to do one profile for now.
My concern with separate profiles was media playback stopping or being unavailable in the other profile.
I was under the impression that if an app was downloaded from the Play Store (not just banking apps) then it’s basically reliant on Google services and should live in the same profile. Is that right? Or can Spotify and Whatsapp, for example, live in another profile from where Google services is installed and still get notifications and survive okay?
If that’s the case and Google services only needs to be in a profile with banking apps, then that sure does change my mental model on how to set things up.
One profile is a good plan and helps a lot with sticking with it.
Being downloaded from the play store doesn’t necessarily mean the app is dependent on play services. There’s an app called Plexus that can help you check, I have actually found basically all of my major US banking apps work without play services. I am not sure about living across profiles but I think for push notifications to work you need play services to be installed in that profile as well but I could be wrong.
The method that worked for me was to install everything normally in one profile and then see what apps actually required play services and slowly transition one at a time to either an alternative or to the setup I have now which is degoogled main space and play services in the private space.
Thanks for the guidance! Proton relying on Google Play Services for push is already throwing a wrench in my profile plans. It will be fun to tinker with regardless and I’ll figure something out.
Yup have to embrace the tinkering haha. Good luck!
I’ve been using grapheneos for two or so years, I think using some non-foss apps is probably non-negotiable if you want a functioning phone. I personally only use one profile (+ the private space), but separating stuff out isn’t a terrible idea. Knowing that play services are sandboxxed away and that I have much finer control over per-app permissions makes me less concerned about letting corpo stuff cohabitate.
However, I recently learned that GOS recommends Play Store before any FOSS app stores.
As for this, basically the gos devs are just kinda indiosyncratic and have a lot of opinions, I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you know what you’re doing. I use fdroid for most stuff and I’ve never had any issues.
Graphene comes from the security crowd. The reason they recommend the play store is for security reasons as well I’m guessing. The OS also comes with proprietary google firmware blobs afaik.
So if you’re a Stallman kinda copy-left/libre software purist then GOS is gonna be a dealbreaker. But if you want to pursue a more pragmatic approach to privacy then it’s a fantastic choice
You can install apps from whatever source you like after all
Personally I like the pragmatic way, choosing the good over chasing the perfect. Privacy doesn’t have to be all or nothing, the less these companies know about you thw better. Find your own trade-off between privacy and convenience. It might change over time too, maybe you’ll get deeper into it here or get fed up with it elsewhere
I hear you on “black and white” or “all or nothing” thinking.
But I literally don’t even know what’s guiding my decision to pick an app on Play Store vs F-Droid now.
Play Store = More trust but more tracking
Foss = Less trust but less tracking
Self-hosting has been really satisfying, but still, I’m moving my trust model to myself in how I’ve set things up as well as the apps that facilitate it.
It just feels like floundering in this pursuit if the concepts of privacy and security have so many different perspectives and gotchas.
