tangential: I‘m using a oneplus 6 with postmarketOS but depending on your friend‘s it skills, it might not be ready for him yet.

So far its very usable but I suggest someone must want to swim against the current and do things differently. One could say a „pioneer“ type would be ideal for this.

From recent experience: They read your screen which means the government reads your screen as well. Its okay. if you’re doing nothing illegal, you have nothing to hide! All history books that could tell you otherwise are paywalled anyway!

Peertube

I know. You do get that the normal person does not think their phone manufacturer listens in on the stuff they have on their phone, yes? That is what I‘m talking about.

We have a misunderstanding here. I know that encryption as a whole will do that. But using anything else than imessage for example or whatsapp makes no sense if they can read it anyway. No point in using matrix, threema, signal and whatever. I need to get rid of this phone.

Thanks for offering your opinion. I find it weird to assume the worst at all times yet here we are.

My point is that it makes zero sense to use encryption on iOS devices at all if they read your stuff anyway, no?

That brings me to a recent discovery:

I got a text via matrix, my notifications dont show content, yet the „places“ app suggested a route to an address given in the message.

I checked and had no appointment or other text which the app could have read it from.

This suggests to me two things: apple is reading our screens already, our governments do as well.

Can someone confirm or deny?

And another one! I‘m on a roll recently!

It’s great that you can form your own opinions. You should really refrain from pushing your opinions on others though.

Good bye.

I‘m running it on the OP6 and its pretty good.

The bridge is still encrypting stuff afaik, just not e2e but from the server to the recepient.

Also, signal is only foss on the client side, no? The server seems proprietary to me.

Good luck and feel free to update.

I’m somewhat appreciative of the neutral tone you use in your comment but I’m kind of taken aback by the fact that you seem to think i wanted an answer to the points I made. I find it very rude to try and take apart someones reasoning which was given in good faith. If I wanted your opinion on that, I would have asked.

I can see that it is not what you would do and I you dont seem to understand my reasons for doing what I do. I dont mind that. What I do mind is unsolicited critique or advice.

Have a good day.

Okay. I dont know how it happened but thats not what I wanted to convey. I did want to make clear that you can always pay someone to make it perfect or you can use the great options other people have invested money and time in and decided to share it for free.

Many reasons:

1. you can disable background updates, wifi and mobile data, location, etc. which renders the app useless. They cant collect directly from the phone that way.
2. I have one app for all my messaging needs. No need to switch
3. i will always ask for matrix communication first which takes meta out of the loop
4. i have friends who arent tech savvy or ready to switch so I am not forced to use whatsapp
5. its a fun exercise and I provide feedback for the makers of the bridges which helps development

Uh why do you answer like I asked FOSS to be perfect ?

What gave you the impression?

Anyway seems like its not for me and tnx for the answer .

How come?

can you hand hold me through the process

I can try but I cant promise anything

So I download WhatsApp and make an acc and download matrix and make an acc and then link it ?

You dont download matrix. You download a client for the matrix protocol. The client is your choice but will make a huge impact on your experience. I use fluffychat but I also have element as backup.

You make an account on a matrix instance. tchncs.de is the best public one I can suggest.

You then join their rooms and start asking people for help, politely. I havent used their process but i use the exact same bridges and they work.

Can I then use matrix as a kind of WhatsApp client ?

Whatsapp, signal, telegram and matrix in one app, yes

Can I talk to random users or join WhatsApp groups like I can in the official app ?

I dont know if you need to use a whatsapp client to join a group but you can def talk to anyone and in any group from my experience. this is open source stuff which you need to be aware of. if you’re not the product and you dont pay them, then you should help any way you can and be very patient.

Also can I just delete the WhatsApp app after connecting and not worry about it ever ?

You cant “not worry about it ever” on anything, ever. Either you pay someone to make your experience perfect (the mechanic that repairs your bike or your car) or you help yourself and ask for help politely.

Whatsapp can lose the connection (happened to me once in like 3 months) and you will need a whatsapp client to reconnect and then you can forget it again.

Also, its not a billion dollar company doing this so it needs testing and you’re the tester so consider submitting your experiences in the form of (rational) bug reports or similar.

**TL;DR: FOSS software will never be “perfect”. It is a community effort to improve it. You always pay in this world: Money, Privacy or Work. If you dont, someone else must.

First of all, mind your tone.

Second, I never said “only tech illiterate”. You’re assuming and exploding over nothing. Calm down.

Let me rephrase: I have met a LOT of people, some of which use grapheneOS. Of these people most are more tech savvy than the normal “user”. There is, however, a very loud, very passionate group inside which tells you on hours how awesome grapheneOS is while having barely an idea of the inner workings of their phones.

That is what I meant by cult like following of tech illiterate people.

And yes, I dont need to know every OS out there. I’m talking about people, not the OS.

Do you use stable because you fear sudden bugs and breakages or for other reasons?

No. I installed it because they said its better for daily use because the other versions might break. I have since used it with few real issues and no serious (as in requires another machine to get back in a working state or serious knowledge of the inner workings). I might try different things but not without having done and checked everything in stable. :)

So you’re using only fluffychat with bridges?

yes

I mean, you have not installed WhatsApp, Signal or Discord clients, right?

Not on the linux phone

But there are unofficial flatpak which should work I guess.

I dont install things I dont need. I have a configuration that works with every service I need and has zero breakage as of now.

Or bridges are the only choice?

I dont know. It is the most complete and privacy friendly compromise that I know of. The more privacy route would be to abandon whatsapp but I guess for you its the same as for me: not an option at this point.

I ask this because while I think bridges are neat, they have their problems and I’m not sure I would happily and painlessly be able to use only them.

Bridges work 99% of the time for me, maybe 100 messages+ per day. It has been months and I had to reconnect two bridges, one time each. This is not proprietary stuff with billion dollar budgets so in my book that is perfect with no issues. If I want stuff to “just work” I pay someone to write it for me. Can someone break it by sending huge files, have 1000 messages per hour or 1000 contacts to sync? Of course. But thats not my usecase so I cant swear to you that everything will always work perfectly. Again. Companies are investing insane amounts of money in these services and if you dont want to be the product and you dont want to pay for it, thats what you get. :)

And, you’re still using an iOS/Android device from time to time to prevent automatic logout from WhatsApp’s bridge and manage Signal’s login, right?

yes, same for discord btw. I am still testing mobile linux so I have two phones anyway.

You know, to be honest the last time I tried pmOS it was specifically the unusable state of Bitwarden and Freetube which made me think “okay, maybe it’s better to wait more time before trying to using it”

Bitwarden as a firefox extension works okay but it needs work. The standalone app which I’m trying to port is pretty tough, not sure what the exact reason is.

How do you primarily install software?

APK, if that doesnt have anything or the program doesnt work well I try flatpak. A LOT of stuff is available. No comparison to more popular platforms though. Mobile linux is in the infancy of infancy so whoever uses it rn is a pioneer in my book. It works well but peeps who use it need to have the correct mindset or they will hate it: You’re not in kansas anymore. Stuff will break and you’re supposed to help fix it and not let out your frustration on others as they dont on you. :)

I hope that helps.

Use matrix and bridges. Tchncs.de has a whatsapp bridge for free I think. Please consider donating because running this stuff is expensive. There are others as well but tchncs is the only one I know. I run bridges for myself and friends but they also chip in.

Astonishing! Who would have thought that be the case? Actually doing the work instead of paying your way to success? That cant be correct! /s

Don’t worry! I‘m glad you asked. :)

Currently I use pmos 23.10 stable with phosh. Depending on the software, using stable vs unstable/edge/etc makes a huge difference.

That said current situation is quite good. I use podcasts, phone, matrix (fluffychat) bridged to whatsapp, signal and discord, nextcloud and a couple more things.

Currently I‘m trying to port the bitwarden desktop app which is quite the endeavor.

All in all I love the OS but its nowhere near consumer ready. Peeps who can give constructive and detailed feedback are needed hence my issue with corporate „polish“ and the resulting standards.

Banking is dead at this point and so is the camera for now.

The „separate phone for login“ could technically be a docker container or vm but easiest is some crap phone so their security measures dont get triggered (locking you out).

Its just a bad situation in total. Phone monopolists ruling with an iron fist, having most governments and companies jump through loops for them.

But yes, linux on phone def is the future imo. I think I might check ubuntu touch too just to know what I might be missing.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask more.

I‘m a sysadmin and hobby dev and I am trying to make it work as a daily driver and make it a full replacement of iOS.

Still needs work but I‘d say 80% of my needs are met and I‘m already ahead of iOS in other things (like a full terminal, being able to make my own backups over ssh, being able to control what data leaves my device).

Two things are astonishing: the amount of progress mobile linux projects make and the obliviousness one (I too) has as a proprietary software. We expect things to „just work“ yet we pay for proprietary software either by cash or our data yet most of us are unaware or unwilling to contribute money or work to the cause (translations, writing helpful or nice documentations).

I suggest you give it a whirl and look at it from a „what would I be able to let go of“ perspective.

What a dumpster fire this thread is.

I‘m not a fan of graphene, especially because of the cult like following of tech illiterate folks it has, not saying all users are tech illiterate.

I have neither the time or the nerve to read up about the inner workings but I‘m sure someone meant well writing the OS.

However, I use and work on portmarketOS because I dont believe in android and I do believe in linux both for desktop and phone/tablet.

Trauma care was a nice touch. Took me a sec to realize the 2077 in the beginning. ;)

Thats only the „what if“. You always have to entertain the thought that your country gets taken over by non democratic forces. That then? They dont need any „what ifs“ they are legally allowed to spy on us and enabled by our own tech then. Who had genocide on steroids for 2025?

Agree 100%! Also: Please be the change you want to see and publish a list of these traitors to humanity in your comments.

We need to name and shame, only then will people remember the name when in the voting booth.

We can make these people radioactive by pulling at their thread until they are openly unveiled for their ties to whatever nefarious organizations they belong to.

Education has always been the enemy of autocracy. Depriving people of it is a perfectly effective way to make them gullable and easily swayable by rhetoric.

Of course those in power (0.1%) dont want anyone to come up with alternatives to their supreme reign. Thats why, every push for less education, making it less affordable and paywalling knowledge should be condemned as a thinly veiled attempt at securing their infinite authority. Their kids get the education they need, ours wont.

I always envision us watering our fields with mountain dew in that situation.

I‘m not sure of the legal implications but I would assume that a third party must not have to question the validity of a written license and therefore an action like this makes the person who did it responsible to google and the licensee. Just my impression though, IANAL.

I use linux on my desktop and laptop and dont own a running copy of windows at this point. I‘m switching from iPhone to rooted OP6 with postmarketOS atm and I host my own cloud, music, tv, websites, social media, etc.

My goal never was privacy but ownership of my devices. The privacy aspect is a neat addition.

Some of my friends still have whatsapp so I bridge to them from my matrix server. If I need to use google tools I do so in the browser. I ditched most proprietary apps at this point.

It does lead to people looking at me funny if I say „sorry, I dont use windows“ but I dont care.

I still need to get my sonos to be owned by me but thats a future project.

In summary I would say if I need proprietary stuff for a project thats no big deal. I just make sure I dont go back to using it for other things.

Good luck on your journey.

Put linux on it or go for open hardware right away. :)

Cool attitude! Please spread this! :)

Can you explain what exactly doesnt work for you: i have a laptop with nvidia graphics runnin pop-os without any problems. Maybe we view the experience differently.

The games I play (which might be different from yours) run perfectly, the DE (gnome) doesnt have glitches or crashes for me. I would really like to see what exactly you see as a glitch.

If an application dies and doesnt react because it has a bug, does that bother you? Because its the exact thing that happens on windows (not talking about the additional crap windows has on top).

I‘m somewhat early in the whole linux phone game.

The OP6 works decent enough for my needs atm. I use it for matrix chats on fluffychat, browsing with firefox works well. I can use it as terminal client which was important to me since I have some servers that I need to work on remotely sometimes.

So far I havent realized my idea to use it with a usb/hdmi or DP adapter as a mobile computer but thats something I‘ll try.

So far I havent managed to put a sim card in it since I dont have a spare and my old phone still works so I‘ll get to that at some point.

To your problem:

The pinephone is open source. You can look in the schematics and check if the motherboard gets enough juice and what if anything is broken afaik. The pinephone is not an end user device imo, the OP6 very much was but postmarket isnt. The documentation of the pinephone should also be somewhat extensive.

So I‘d suggest you either stick with graphene or start embracing the tinker mentality. :)

One plus 6. works very well so far. Have you tried fixing your pinephone? Its open source hardware so you should be able to, generally.

Understandable thought process imo. I‘m in the opposite boat.

For years I didnt care about data privacy and the amount of phishing attacks and spam mails skyrocketed.

I had all the social media accounts, connected to each other for convenience. Bit tech cloud managed my pictures and everything else. Stuff started vanishing off of my favorite streaming services.

Then I started to migrate away from big tech and started my own home server. Ripped all my old dvds on there so I dont have to put them in the player. I disabled my facebook account, twitter, instagram, you name it.

Now I can chat with people on my Linux phone (postmarketOS), watch videos on my peertube instance, write this comment over my lemmy instance, etc. Is it easy? No. But its doable.

I do still have whatsapp but i dont use the app and have bridged the 2.5 people that dont have matrix to it. Same for signal and discord. I only use matrix and a couple people switched because matrix can help them use one app only.

Now comes the hard part: is this end user ready? No, not at all. Stuff can break like every half a year and some people are just tech illiterate and will have constant problems because they have no patience.

I cant promise you that it works for everyone. But it should work for the 80% or so who are able to follow a basic video tutorial on how to cross sync new devices in matrix for example.

Oh and the whiners will also have a bad time. If you need „perfect“ and „polished“, apps wont always be up to your standards and you should embrace big tech. They make it perfect for you you give them your data. Thats their way of saying thanks /s

Addition: The general idea for those who can tinker should also be to not only use but contribute. Either financially or otherwise. The software is dependent on it.

There is literally no difference between web and app. What makes a difference is if proprietary data hogs made them or open source devs.

Thats actually not a bad idea. Long term selfhosted cloud solutions will have to compete on availability/redundancy. You might want to help the NC folks to implement that on their docker setup or something?

Check out my setup if you want.

Costs depend on a lot of factors. If you are technically adept you might be able to get away with 20 bucks a month for the whole setup but most folks wouldn’t imo. I also have some old hardware I was able to use and upgraded it. Initial invest for a homeserver varies greatly depending on who you know.

If you want to know more please ask. You can also hit me up on matrix. Link in bio.

Every time I read news like this I‘m glad I moved to my own cloud.

I‘m not really in the mood rn to discuss this at length but I see your point. The conclusions you draw arent really logical to me though.

Yes, we should put things in place that make a government obsolete. Thats what the fediverse and FOSS is for.

No, taking out the government instead of reforming/replacing it with something better will only make it worse since the influence of the powerful gives them the advantage.

The guillotines prove my point: there was a pretty famous anarchic movement during the french revolution iirc that got coopted by psychopaths inside the movement which led to it just forming another oppressive entity after. The guillotines that we need are federated replacements for every single service the megacorps and governments out there currently lord over us and then we have the power to take over.

The issue with violence is always psychological. The bullied often dream of violence and rarely does anything happen. If it does it never has the desired effect. I know, I have been there. Since then I started to engage in my local community to counteract this stuff. I‘m one of only a couple people doing this. Most folks dont do shit.

Its the silent majority that needs to move their butts, not a vocal minority screaming for violence. Also, those in power will always send people who start violence to give them reason to use violence against us. Its self defeating.

So it was rhetorical. Good to know. Blocked.