**Wanted to update this post with a website I found that has info about this topic for regular people, in case anybody finds this later. ** Privacy Focused OS For Everyone It has info about the different os options as well as apps for phones using regular android.
Pretend I am five and please be nice.
Say I want to free my phone and tablet from samsung/google/skynet but I neeeeeed to be able to use my printer and external cd drives and their silly proprietary apps, as well as flash drives, cds, and normal apps without alternatives like bandcamp and libby and and all that. I also need to be able to use government websites and use my wifi and pay bills and just generally do everything that I do now on samsung’s/motorola’s software.
(Most of these things were issues for me when I tried to use linux years ago which is why I’m listing them. I do not possess the technical ability to solve these problems on my own when they come up. I also do not possess any other devices to use if my main ones can’t do these things anymore.)
Is this realistic in 2024 for Graphene or any other free open source os? And if it is, how do I install it safely and properly?
Are there any known issues with it like slowness or not being able to use the camera, etc? Most of the places with information about this stuff are not written in a langauge I speak.
Edit: does anyone want to work on creating or collecting some simplified tutorials with me? I’m thinking of installing one of these on my phone and it it goes well I will probably write the details down. It might be good to have a place for other people who have done so, or want to, to do the same for their respective devices.
I found the instructions on the website to be completely adequate.
https://grapheneos.org/install/web
You’ll still be able to use Google Play and the apps found there, if you want to. I’d heard of people having trouble with banking apps. I access my bank using their website, not an app.
Just understand going into this that the priority is privacy, not compatibility. Maybe keep your old phone around in case there’s some must-have app that doesn’t work but you need occasionally.
To elaborate on this answer, I found the performance with graphene to be really subpar.
I know it’s supposed to be exactly the same in terms of speed, but that was not my experience.
If You find the performance of your device to be inadequate now you may wish to upgrade first.
I don’t have any complaints about the performance of graphene on my pixel 7a but I don’t do much outside of texting and browsing webpages. I also get about 3 days of battery life out of a charge.