Hello everyone!

A lot has happened since my last post, specifically talking about my LineageOS inquiries. I had a string of bad luck and broke the digitizer but no cracks to my Pixel 7 Pro.

So I ended up “upgrading” to the Pixel 8 Pro because the store I went to only had the 8 Pro and not the 7 Pro in stock and it was dire that I have a phone.

So this leads me to my next questions:

What is your favorite Android spin for your Pixel Device?

I have used GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and Stock Android (of various versions on my Pro 7)

This leads me down the rabbit hole of deciding which experience I want on my Pixel 8 Pro.

I have GrapheneOS on my 8 Pro right now because I wanted to see if I could make it fit my needs, and I am leaning towards it not working for me. Since I switched, android auto is not connecting even following the instructions GrapheneOS has to offer.

AdAway (nonroot) is not working on GrapheneOS, as it just kills any internet connection to everything on GrapheneOS. So that’s another point against me wanting to stick with GrapheneOS.

No AFwall+. Another point against it.

It appears that CalyxOS is going to give me a similar experience with issues related to the ones I mentioned with GrapheneOS.

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I had considered trying out LineageOS for microG but unsure if this is the route I want to go because I am unsure if some of the apps I will rely on will work for various reasons. (Mainly unsure if MicroG will suffice for them.)

I am open to other options to, and would love to hear what you are using!

Thank you!

  • @[email protected]English
    11•6 months ago

    You mentioned exactly the two ROMs I’m currently using. GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. And LineageOS for microG on my Samsung tablet. I’m really happy with both of them.

    I don’t use that many proprietary tech so there is little issues for me. My car only has regular old plain bluetooth, so I wouldn’t know. And instead of some add-on firewall/dns adblocker solutions, I’m just using the Librewolf Mull browser with the uBlock plugin.

    • ChewyEnglish
      4•6 months ago

      As a former LineageOS for microG user I’m happy to say that it’s no longer necessary to use it instead of official LineageOS because they finally added signature spoofing to upstream LineageOS [1].

      As far as I understand, this allows microG to work perfectly fine with any app on official LineageOS, without any patching of the ROM needed.

      I haven’t tried it and there’s no reason to switch of LineageOS for microG, but I’ll definitely give it a shot on a future device.

      [1] https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_base/+/383573

    • Hellmo_luciferrariOPEnglish
      2•6 months ago

      I love GrapheneOS, but it falls short on any adblocking outside the scope of my browser. I have also had issues using PrivateDNS on GrapheneOS. It seems to kill my network connection.

      I can’t seem to get away from Nova Launcher because of some features that no open source launchers seem to have, and with Nova being bought out by Branch a number of years ago, it made me uncomfortable giving telemetry and other data to them since they are an analytics company, so introduce AFWall+, I can restrict access to network for Nova. I am doing the same thing with GrapheneOS, so a firewall for that exact issue isn’t exactly a worry or a problem for me.

      I still use Ublock with my browsers of choice on any android based OS, but the problem that I am having is that for videos, Ublock doesn’t seem to block any of the video ads for me.

      The big reasson for AdAway for me was because it was root based and didn’t hijack my DNS, which also allowed me to VPN into my home network so that I could work on some projects on machines there because I don’t have any ports exposed to access such services outside of the ports needed for me to connect to my VPN.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•6 months ago

        Give ReThinkDNS a try.

        I’ve used AFWall for years, it’s great as a UI for IP Tables, but it doesn’t have DNS filtering (naturally).

        ReThink adds DNS filtering, so you get both capabilities.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•6 months ago

        Hmm, if you have a home network anyways… Maybe you can run AdGuard/PiHole there. I’ve switched to blocky.

        I made it listen externally and just configure it in the network settings of my devices to override the automatic DNS server. That way I don’t need to install sth like AdAway on all of my laptops and phones, because I have one central instance.

        Is there anything else that blocks video ads? I’ve never found anything except for uBlock which actually works. And I’ve recently learned that you can enable developer mode in Firefox based browsers on Android and install all the Plugins they don’t like you to use on mobile. Like SponsorBlock etc.

        • Hellmo_luciferrariOPEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          I know it’s overkill, I was running AdAway as root, with a Wireguard connection to my home VPN, which was running behind a PiHole instance, along with uBlock Origin, and a few other measures of blocking like AFWall+. But I may just go the route of using PiHole as my adblocking solution (along with my own unbound DNS server.)

          Though, you have piqued my interest with Blocky, as I have had some issues with PiHole that I am not wanting to troubleshoot at the moment.

          I may have to fine tune my uBlock in order to block advertisements from video (and luckily with Mull I have been able to use SponsorBlock successfully.)

          The video advertisements that haven’t been blocked are on other video hosts that I have found for various purposes, but maybe with fine tuning my uBlock, and having blocky, or PiHole, or AdGuard home (although if I am being honest, I am avoiding anything that isn’t open source as much as possible.)

          I know my preferences and use cases are niche, but I really do appreciate the conversation around this! Thank you so much!