My biggest problem with it (besides the people) is the fact that it still relies on Google’s proprietary black box “Titan” security chip. You know, the one that they pinky-promised to open source but never did.

A lot of the security of Graphene OS comes from AOSP itself

GrapheneOS never claimed anything different, in fact, on their website, they say:

GrapheneOS is a private and secure mobile operating system with great functionality and usability. It starts from the strong baseline of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and takes great care to avoid increasing attack surface or hurting the strong security model.

GrapheneOS just adds to the already solid security of AOSP. The security improvements are listed at https://grapheneos.org/features. Also, a bunch of AOSP security features originate from the GrapheneOS project and were merged into the AOSP codebase. Just so you know.

If you get malware on your device, you most likely can just uninstall it.

This is not the kind of stuff GrapheneOS is defending against. GrapheneOS specifically focuses on persistant malware by improving Android Verified Boot along with other security mechanisms.

I think this is actually pretty useful but I haven’t seen a need for it much in the real world.

There is a real-world need for it. Hardening the system against attacks from commercial/state-sponsored spyware like NSO Group’s Pegasus or Cytrox’s Predator requires extensive defense-in-depth improvements to the entire operating system stack. If you want to see an instance of actual, real world kernel-level exploits against mobile devices, look no further than the case of UAE-based human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor. In 2016, his iPhone 6 was attacked by the UAE government, using the Pegasus spyware made by an Israeli cyber mercenary company known as NSO Group. The attack used a payload delivered via SMS, which contained a link to a malicious website. If Mansoor would have clicked on the link, a zero-day exploit in WebKit CVE-2016-4657 would have been triggered. The attack used the Trident exploit chain, which if successfully deployed, would have remotely jailbroken Mansoor’s iPhone, using, CVE-2016-4655 and CVE-2016-4656, two kernel-level exploits present in iOS at the time. There are very good reasons for a security-focused OS like Graphene to make substantial improvements to all parts of the Android operating system, including the underlying Linux kernel.

However, from my perspective, you should not run apps that are bad for privacy. Running it in the web browser will be more secure than bare metal could ever be.

Some apps simply can’t be run in a web browser, and they require you to install them on your device. GrapheneOS significantly helps with running untrusted applications in a safe manner, especially when using the hardened user profiles feature, which essentially makes you anonymous (in regard to device and profile identifiers, it is still important to use a VPN/Tor, etc.)

I think other ROMs such as Calyx OS take the ethical component much more seriously.

Claiming to be a secure OS while repeatedly missing important AOSP security patches is pretty misleading, and giving the user a false sense of security is not quite ethical. GrapheneOS is very minimalistic, and the user is free to choose how they want to get their apps. Although I support the fact that CalyxOS bundles apps like Signal and F-Droid, some other users might see it as unnecessary bloat. I prefer Graphene’s approach of only including strictly necessary apps, and leaving the rest up to the user.

Graphene purely focuses on security while Calyx OS focuses on privacy and freedom.

A secure base device/OS is what enables privacy and user freedom. It’s not like GrapheneOS is taking away any of your privacy or freedom, in fact, it is very private by default, due to its minimalistic nature: https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections

I realize that MicroG is not perfectly compatible, and some people need apps, but I think alternatives are going to always be better.

The main problem with microG is the fact that it needs to run as root, whereas Sandboxed Play Services uses a much more secure approach for getting Google services, while still preserving user privacy.

One of the most annoying parts about Graphene OS is the development team and some of the community.

Not quite sure what you mean. The GrapheneOS team just really cares about good, high-quality, secure and complete code, and they like to call out any projects that don’t follow these principles. Just like Linus Torvalds has a history of rejecting poor, low-quality code, in order to keep the Linux kernel codebase clean and easy to maintain. They’re just focused on quality, and if people are offended by that, they should really overthink their own approach to writing and maintaining code.

Here is a page that isn’t written by me that sums it up: https://opinionplatform.org/grapheneos/index.html

That website almost feels like a shitpost. Any source that tells you to “Avoid [GrapheneOS] like the plague”, but claims that LineageOS is “Good to go!” shouldn’t be taken seriously. Recommending people a highly insecure OS that doesn’t even allow for locking the bootloader is straight-up user-hostile. I could go through each one of the “arguments” brought up against GrapheneOS, but they are so bad that I don’t feel like wasting my time on a whole bunch of them. But let’s just go through one example:

https://opinionplatform.org/grapheneos/strcat-tactical-licensing-20230409.html

This post suggests that GrapheneOS is somehow against open-source software, and shows the following chat log:

backpacklaptop: Do anybody know what happened to bromite?

Apr. 9, 12:59

joe: it’s not actively maintained Apr. 9, 14:32

there’s no proper announcement or notice, that’s the bigger issue Apr. 9, 14:35

strcat: we’re working on completing state partitioning including for cookies in Vanadium, and we’ll be adding other features like content filtering

collaboration welcome

Bromite was using nearly all of our work on it and they decided to start disallowing us from using their work in return by strictly licensing it only as GPLv3 Apr. 9, 14:46

so we switched to using GPLv2-only with additional permissions (to make it more permissive) which blocked them using our code since GPLv2 forbids GPLv3’s additional restrictions

may have something to do with it dying, don’t know

it’s possible we can switch back to MIT licensing if it’s dead but I’m not going to do that yet

Apr. 9, 14:47

Bromite literally used Graphene’s code and then changed the license to prevent GrapheneOS from using any of the Bromite code. In response to this anti open-source move, GrapheneOS changed the license for their Vanadium browser from MIT to the more restrictive (but still FOSS!) GPLv2 license. But apparently GrapheneOS is “using tactical licensing changes against bromite”. What a stupid argument. Anyone who spreads such garbage on the internet can’t be taken seriously. The chat log also shows the GrapheneOS main dev (strcat) saying:

collaboration welcome

But the exact same post on that troll website claims that GrapheneOS is “discouraging cooperation between developers”. I think I gave more than enough examples why this shit can’t be taken seriously. It also shows really well how hostile some parts of the community are against GrapheneOS, for no real reason and with absolutely no arguments.

Another example of this is Jonah Aragon, who posted a really stupid toot on Mastodon, comparing the GPLv2 license of GrapheneOS to FUTO’s source-available license. This claim is so infinitely stupid, and by Jonah’s definition, the Linux kernel isn’t FOSS since it’s also licensed under the GPLv2. These are the kinds of people that Graphene devs have to deal with all the time. A bunch of trolls and absolute morons.

I am not going through this wall of BS point by point but here is a fine example of how I know you have no clue what your talking about…

One place I strongly disagree with Graphene OS is the sandboxed Google services framework. They say having Google in a sandbox is more secure. It may be more secure, but it isn’t going to be as private as MicroG.

MicorG has privileged access to you phone, it literally has no privacy benefits over even standard Google Play. You are just choosing to trust MicroG with that level of access instead of Google.

Honestly just don’t use GOS if you don’t believe in its benefits or at least sack up and post this on their official forum.

I don’t care which is better. But I can share certain unique features which make me personally chose GrapheneOS over all other options I know of:

• it is possible to relock the bootloader
• you can disable the internet permission
• the location service is independent on google services, even if you install them
• you can use mutliple profiles and pipe notifications from one profile to another
• you control native app debugging (and its off by default)
• you have storage scope (as well as contacts scope)
• you get all the latest security patches and really fast
• and more…

Use what you like! No reason to fight people over which OS they want to run.

GrapheneOS is very clear they are security focused, and not anonymous.

Nothing is stopping people from using fdroid on GOS, the default GOS install has no opinions, nothing is installed.

Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Pin Randomization are some of the security and agency over user data that helps users have a better experience with combative apps like whatsapp

The core problem with microg is that it runs privileged, which is counter to the GOS principles of minimum privileges for non-system components. (update: MicroG does download and run binary blobs from google on demand in the privileged system) DivestOS does have a form of microg running as a normal app, so that could be a interesting approach in the future https://divestos.org/pages/faq#microgEnable

Micro G has to run on the root level. If that isn’t a concern for you then Graphene OS probably doesn’t fit your needs.