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Comment by gradientsrneat | Hacker News Reader

A fallacy which the author acknowledges.

> "I guess the best way to degoogle right now is to buy from Google"

Google has a monopoly on sort-of-open-but-not-really smartphones. And interoperability on ARM desktop isn't looking pretty either.

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This looks the same kind of situation when I noticed FOSDEM corridors started to be full of Apple laptops, but apparently the irony is lost on new generations.

I remember about 10 or 15 years ago somebody pointed out that a big chunk of the GNOME devs used Apple laptops, even at public appearances, and it answered a lot of my questions about the state of the project.

(and I say this as a user of GNOME)

I think that perfectly explains why GNOME is the way it is.

Funny enough, that's also why Windows is in the state it's in. Funny how that works.

They really don't. It's just that development of custom roms like GrapheneOS are centered around Pixels. Plenty of other devices have unlockable bootloaders. The custom rom scene though is so small that concentrating on a couple devices is the only way to keep development moving forward though. Same reason why Asahi Linux is the only option on Apple Silicon Macs.

Many have unlockable bootloaders (though the number is rapidly declining with Samsung closing up). But not many have relockable bootloaders. This is one of the things that grapheneos have set as a minimum standard, hence the reliance on pixels. There's a few other specific things that the titan chip provides which they rely on but the relocking is the main thing.

To be more specific - relockable with a custom AVB key. I think most devices can relock with the default Google AVB key.

Well they can but not with custom firmware installed. As grapheneos is custom firmware, the google key makes no sense in this context.

"unlockable bootloader" is the requirement to flash anyone alternative on the phone, yes, but the GrapheneOS you mentioned will support _any_ device that is "flashable" and secure enough: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

Currently it's only Pixels from 8 up.

Other alternative firmware projects don't seem to be too concerned about security (eg they don't support relocking bootloader, don't support secure boot, don't release patches for months), so they're not really in the same ballpark ALTHOUGH I agree that they still might be better option than stock OS on the device abandoned by the vendor.

There's simply no choice with hardware now if someone wants it to meet some secure baseline.

No other vendor makes secure android hardware.

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