"just use a second phone" cannot be the answer because 99% of people will just scoff at that. Instead of buying a second phone, why not just buy one that works?
And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact.
And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact.
Here we are talking about installing PostmarketOS/Linux on a smartphone. The next milestone is not to get everyone on it. First we need a base of early adopters that are willing to use it despite the drawbacks. The more user those alternatives will get, the more they will be developed, the better it will get.
Sure, for the next years, it will be way behind Android or iOS in terms of ease of use, but that's the price to pay to get back control on the device you own that is probably the main computer you use everyday.
For me that's not worse than using Linux in the early 2000s, and like Linux in the early 2000s, it may even be _fun_ to be an early adopter of Linux on the smartphone.
Now we don't need to migrate everyone to PostmarketOS, we _just_ need an alternative OS for at least the ones who are willing to play with it.
That didn't work that well for Linux, though. It's still a very niche OS even on desktop.
Also, please stop with security nihilism, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975
And good luck spoofing it these days cause they are usually backed by hardware backed tpm encryption. Which is why windows 11 only installs if there's a tpm 2.0 device detected.
It's become super dystopian in the past 10 years and I don't see it changing.
Always thankful that I got to live through the wild West days because that's going away.
The overwhelming majority of users call it "Linux" and don't care what the operating system's pronouns are.
Many Linux systems are running today without GNU coreutils or userland.
It's time to stop posting this flame bait.
It is the best answer at the moment. You can keep an absolute basic phone with all the banking and such apps loaded and nothing else. You treat it like an appliance. Your daily driver will be separate and can be running PostmarketOS or LineageOS etc.
There are several benefits off the top of my head:
1. Since you only install banking/govt type apps on your "important" phone, it stays more secure vs. putting your random game app along with the banking app on the same phone.
2. When you upgrade your daily driver, you don't need to deal with tons of re-auth steps for banking/govt apps.
3. Your daily driver can be customized to the nth degree because the pesky banking app won't be on it to refuse login because, say, you turned on developer options or rooted the phone.
4. You can even leave the basic phone at home for extra safety, if you wish, without affecting your daily driver.
5. You can root your daily driver and put as much adblocking setup as you want to boost your privacy. Your basic phone won't have enough activity outside banking/govt. to build much of a profile.
With this being the trend, you're already more likely to leave what you called "daily driver" phone home, and only take the "important" one with you.
All the Google stuff is disabled, open source Contacts app,^1 no Google Play Services, no access to remote DNS, Netguard for application firewall and port forwarding, with computer I control as gateway. 1. Have yet to find any other app that can access contacts when storing them this way, even the Meta's biggest Trojans
Meanwhile, new phone, "important phone", stays offline. Wifi off. Location off. path?.xtracloud.net blocked. Phone is used for texting and phone calls, no internet access
The "banking app" argument, i.e., either install a custom ROM or give up or submit to surveillance, is a false dichotomy. There are other options
I don't use a phone for internet banking, I use a computer I can control; there is no "banking app" (talk about high risk, geez)
The "banking app" problem is a common refrain on HN but in the real world I know many people who do not use a phone for internet banking
Mobile OS just suck. It's like being forced to use MS Windows
And for the rest, well, "just works" for what? With a little time and effort, it may even get to the case of the "just works" part is a siloed unit like a SIM card that is just installed to the device, making it opt-in and user owned...
Not That i want to kick the can down the road, but the ultimate solution (barring actually fighting for our privileges over the systems we buy) is to have that second phone, and control it either via vnc, or via a kvm which presents vnc. I know, its really absurd, complexity wise, what with tunneling and figuring out where to house said setup. However, the latter is ultimately transparent to the phone, outside of allowing a second monitor/hid to be connected to it. You could, given a VNC client then go ahead and control it via laptop or another phone.
Providers of all the service types aren't driving this because they believe locked down phones are a Good Thing. They're driving this because they explicitly don't want you to do the very things you'd want to do with your VNC idea.