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Privacy-focused tablet: LineageOS or /e/ OS?
(lemmy.ml)
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I do not have a high opinion of /e/OS or Murena. It is LineageOS but "degoogled" which is a meaningless buzzword considering LineageOS already does not contain Google services/apps (you have to install those yourself). Instead it's connected to its own "Murena cloud" which itself uses OpenAI for a speech to text service. But hey, it's not google so it must be okay, right...?
https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509
It might be opt in (or opt out? dunno) but this sort of thing should not be a cloud thing, it should be a local service.
It also comes with at least one proprietary app built into the OS and their app store offers proprietary apps with some sort of "tracker detection" thing. I do not trust any "app store" that purports to tell me which proprietary apps are "good."
LineageOS comes with no google apps, no cloud apps, no proprietary apps, etc. It's just a perfectly usable AOSP system. It doesn't even have an "app store" but you can install F-Droid on it. I think GrapheneOS is the same (it supports "sandboxed Google services" but it doesn't include them by default)
As far as I know the only options that exist are LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and maybe non-Android Linuxes if you're brave enough. There used to be DivestOS which although based on LineageOS brought several security, privacy, and freedom improvements, but that project has been discontinued. None of these "degoogled privacy OS" LineageOS reskins impress me.
I saw DivestOS was discontinued and that was disappointing, I had used some of its apps. Thanks for your perspective on their proprietary cloud and programs, I'll keep that in mind