I tried another third party Grindr client and my account got instantly banned, and the official app doesn’t support GrapheneOS. So not sure how to create an account.

With Brave I need an ad/paywall blocker for the browser itself

I read on the GrapheneOS forums that Cromite lags behind on updates and that Titanium is better

Windows phone failed because it could run apps people expect

That combined with being a locked-down platform, which is a big difference with the open source OSes to people who want to make the most use out of their phone, technical or not.

that’s the same blocker for Linux on mobile

Linux at least supports compatibility layers and VMs so it has more potential

Unless things improved drastically, I really can’t see how it replaces GrapheneOS.

Right now it doesn’t, but GrapheneOS is held hostage by Google until a group of people decide they want to hard fork AOSP even though Linux already exists. Google has become increasingly negligent with AOSP which is not a good sign for the future of either platform. Hard forking would involve maintaining most of an OS and fighting Google constantly if they want to maintain Android app compatibility, whereas the Linux ecosystem is already maintained and work for it improves both desktop and mobile so it just needs UX improvements to be a solid alternative.

My current daily driver is a Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS, and it’s the best experience I’ve had using a phone.

Right now I use a Pixel 6 Pro and it’s also my best experience but I’m pissed that it’s EOL now and I don’t want to spend $1000 on another mediocre Google-ecosystem phone with no expandable storage.

Sure, there are Linux phones being sold, practically nobody would honestly suggest they work as a daily driver. And Windows phones were being sold because MS is a giant company that was willing to burn money trying to make them popular, however even with all their resources, they failed to make them succeed. But you appear to be suggesting that some small hobby vendor will?

I was talking more about Linux devices in general but even for phone use it isn’t that far off, the Pinephone is more capable than the Windows phone that I daily drove for 2 years and ARM hardware support in general is improving. Right this very moment I wouldn’t recommend it to people since GrapheneOS works a lot better, but once AOSP completely enshittifies to the point where people have no choice but to hard fork it or use Linux, I expect that Linux will gain a lot more traction.

As for why Windows phones died off, it’s because they were literally useless. Too restrictive for tech-savvy people (could get a OnePlus phone instead and put whatever open source Android distribution you wanted), and they couldn’t run anything except for Internet Explorer/Edge, Cortana, and Subway Surfers making them useless for normal people. And even through the web browser it wasn’t well-supported like desktop Chromium so even that wasn’t an option a lot of times. So nobody had a reason to buy one.

Linux already has much better app support, is the most powerful OS that’s currently functional in general, and has a solid community behind it. All hardware venders have to do is make it functional, and it’s already a better phone than the Windows phones with an audience that’s growing not dying.

As for Android phones, Fairphone is bigger than a “small hobby vendor” at this point.

Slack in particular is extremely popular with software dev shops.

Non-technical people don’t do software development though.

You can use WhatsApp as an even more mainstream example and it has the exact same problem.

WhatsApp is a bigger issue, agreed.

No not at all. If you mean any vendor at all, we already have smaller but increasingly popular venders selling devices with Linux and degoogled Android preinstalled. Even Lenovo/Dell sell some devices with Linux even though it’s more niche. In the past, Windows phones were being sold in mainstream shops even though you could barely do anything with them. There will always be an audience of people who want to freely install apps, and even among less technically proficient people a lot want to save money through mods and unpaywalled content and are willing to learn. And Slack/Discord are poor examples anyways because most people don’t even use Slack and as for Discord, it’s usable right now and if it becomes unusable it’s popular enough that someone will find a way to get it to work.

I think with Windows the main situation is that there’s barely any laptops that come with Linux and most people are going to use the OS their device came with until it becomes a problem for them. Unless you’re doing software development or want to mess with the internals, Windows isn’t that restrictive either in its current state. A counterpoint is iOS vs Android, where iOS is extremely restrictive making it one of two main reasons people will choose Android. I’ve met quite a few not-very-technical users who despite using proprietary OSes hate ads enough download modded apps, or even on iOS found ways to get them. If Android becomes like iOS then that will boost interest in alternatives for these people. If Motorola starts shipping devices with a freer OS option then that would also help. There’s also the type of people who are so confused by technology that you could give them a laptop with Linux and KDE and they wouldn’t realize it’s not Windows.

“Reduced functionality” is subjective, for the average non-tech user you’re right that they’d see it as reduced functionality, but there’s also plenty of people who want a phone that they can choose what apps they can install on it and remove tracking and bloat and ads for a large number of reasons. If Google starts doing what they say they’ll do, then using a web client/wrapper for a single app on a personal phone is a minor hoop to gain much more functionality out of their device, and if organizations use a user-respecting platform like Matrix instead they don’t have to jump through any hoops. Even among non-tech users there seems to be at least some interest in free platforms, so making them more user friendly is important but proprietary apps aren’t going to make that easy so the options to focus on are mods/wrappers or freer platforms, I find it unlikely that they will support such an OS seeing how Windows phones went and defeatism isn’t going to change anything. And if the non-tech users don’t care then they don’t care.

Facebook and Twitter

For social media those sites are such shitholes that I’m actually kindof happy their users aren’t on the fediverse

If people aren’t going to put effort into avoiding proprietary platforms, then the duopoly won’t change and nothing gets achieved there either

EDIT: Also this is about functionality not morality, proprietary platforms are functionally restrictive which is what makes them problematic in this situation

If your workplace requires proprietary slop apps and won’t offer you a phone and you’re doing your best to make it work on your phone, then it seems like their problem if it’s still an issue to them

it’s not the same as having official clients if you actually need to use these apps reliably for work for example.

The web versions are official clients though and they seem pretty reliable IMO

Why not use Revenge for Discord? Or on Linux Equibop and Slacky

Hacker News feels more like a site for Apple enthusiasts than hackers. And the time I’ve spent away from it has made me realize how not great the community there is.

I was just looking for a secure browser for personal safety.

I can’t tell what exactly you’re trying to stay safe from. If it’s exploits and getting hacked, then Firefox is good basically as long as it’s on desktop and not installed through Flatpak. If it’s telemetry from the browser itself, then LibreWolf and Floorp are better choices. If it’s tracking from websites, then having an ad-blocker and light fingerprint protection has basically no downsides which you can get on any Firefox-based browser (although the Chromium forks are more user-friendly for that specifically) but beyond that requires more effort.

I barely know much about technology.

LibreWolf has somewhat aggressive defaults so it’s not the smoothest browsing experience but easy to work with if you know what to expect. Floorp is my go-to recommendation for people who just want a well-functioning web browser that doesn’t get in their way, but it doesn’t have ad-blocking or anti-fingerprinting enabled by default.

Hiding properties of your physical hardware is a lot of work and comes with tradeoffs, and it’s worth asking what exactly you’re trying to accomplish. If it’s being anonymous, then you want Tor or Mullvad browser. If you just want to confuse websites then LibreWolf has fingerprinting protection enabled (and other Firefox browsers can toggle it on), Brave also has that but not as aggressive, but neither will work as well for fingerprint protection especially if you modify the settings or install extensions or even just resize the window.

My guess would be Helium and Titanium

I don’t understand why when I click the link the page loads, but then a popup blocks the screen saying “This page couldn’t load” so I only get like half a second to read it

I have F-Droid Basic and just downloaded F-Droid 2.0 and I can’t tell what the difference is

Vanadium on GrapheneOS and Trivalent on SecureBlue are the most security-focused. Firefox/Chromium/Safari-based browsers on desktop in general are decent for security. Avoid anything through Flatpak, and I believe Firefox-based browsers on Android are still behind as well. For Linux in general, Librewolf and Floorp don’t collect telemetry as far as I’m aware and have the most features. If you’re trying to be as anonymous as possible there’s other options as well.

TBH while I like some of the specs, I don’t want to spend $1k on another phone that can’t run normal Linux distros (indirectly locking it to Google’s enshittification) and lacks expandable storage.

$1000 phones and they don’t even have a good way to keep a large music collection downloaded