Vik

There’s also the handy public instance https://send.vis.ee

Appreciate the additional context! Have thankfully not needed to use the safetynet module with microg either.

I appreciate that you’re trying to inform me but if you make such a claim, you should be able to prove it.

A friend was able to provide some context, regardless:

• The one binary I’m aware of microG downloading (assuming it still does) is the SafetyNet “DroidGuard” thing, which it only does if you explicitly enable SafetyNet, which is not on by default. There is no other way to provide it.

• microG only has privileged access if you install it as a privileged app, which is up to you / your distribution, as microG works fine as a user app (provided signature spoofing is available to it). Also, being privileged itself really doesn’t mean giving privileges to “Google”.

• Apps needing Google services may indeed contain all sorts of binaries, generally including Google ones, which doesn’t mean they contain Google services themselves. Anyway, they are proprietary apps and as such will certainly contain proprietary things, and it’s all to you to install them or not. It’s not like microG includes them.

• Its also just a reimplementation of a small handful of useful Google services, such as push notifications, or the maps (not the spyware stuff like advertising) and each can be toggled on/off.

• Also all apps on android are sandboxed

I appreciate the info. For my own learning, could you provide a link to some context around the types of official binaries leveraged by microG? The only firm info I have of its behaviour is that it will pseudonomise as much user information as possible.

I’m familiar with sandboxed google play on grapheneOS and have used it in the past.

Can you elaborate on being misled there?

As for google devices - yes, there’s irony in the notion that the most de-googleable phones are theirs, sure. They’re often sold at a loss around the holiday season, though.

I also use calyx but I’ll agree that graphene is technologically superior of the two. I’m more comfortable with the idea of using MicroG as opposed to sandboxes google play but that’s not to slant the implementation in any way.

Wonderful! I don’t suppose you’ve also checked out echopoint nova? the demo got another small update for this next fest

Thoroughly enjoyed this. You may also enjoy severed steel.

Oh I see, appreciate the background.

Yeah it was very sad to see the byran situation unfold. I was also a fan of that series.

I gather they are or were associates / friends with bryan lunduke, who is an extremely controversial character in the Linux space. That might explain the “bit crazy” remark but I really don’t know much about the nature of their relationship

That works. Which service do you use ooc?

Ordinarily I’d agree, but for now, WhatsApp is tied to your phone number. I’m not sure if you can use some kind of service to create alias numbers but for many people, that’s a big blocker when it comes to making another account following any kind of infraction.

I don’t think meta would shift in requiring a phone number per account either,

It is to

A: the continuity of said project (DMCA) and B: to the individual end users.

You can use FOSS clients for things like Discord or the Google play store but you still run the risk of getting banned.

Yes, I already aluded to this. Point being, I don’t think you’ll find a viable FOSS front end since it would violate their TOS.

I see, fair enough. I don’t know if you’ll have any luck with a FOSS third party client which does t violate their TOS. There was something on fdroid years ago, a wrapper that effectively allowed you to use WhatsApp Web on another phone (or perhaps even the same one), but it ultimately requried the use of the official clients

Signal I suppose would be the closest analog

Speaking from my experience with fedora and windows 10 and 11 within the same system.

1. As others have stated here, If you can, please keep each operating system on it’s own physical disk. Disconnect others if you perform a new Windows install on any, as it’ll attempt to store its bootloader on disk 0 regardless of the OS destination drive.

2. LUKS2 is part of the fedora workstation setup, I imagine it will be presented to you upon install with Mint. If you’re on separate physical disks, you shouldn’t have much to worry about, but as far as I’m aware, you’re okay to use disk encryption on drives partitioned with two systems.

3. There’s a Dropbox .deb and .rpm for linux as far as I can tell, but I cannot attest to its quality or how well it integrates with a given file manager. Cloud accounts are generally well supported amongst the key desktop environments, for which I’d consider Cinnamon to be a part of.

4. Modern, mainstream distributions are pretty GUI friendly. I fully expect you to be able to get by on Mint without needing to touch the command line much if at all. That said, I grab CLI oriented tools from the terminal and graphical apps from the app store. Enabling flathub will give you access to a broad selection of graphical software so by all means, go for it.

5. I’m not wise so I’ll hold back here. I will say that Fedora has allowed me to approach linux as an absolute casual for nearly 6 years now.

Very key points! Some distros will also accommodate window’s default timekeeping if a win install is detected, and also need to be changed retroactively to prevent wonky behaviour with DST

I don’t know what I was expecting when I saw the headline. I fully assumed it would be something goofy like a German Shepard holding a glock in its mouth.

This is far bleaker, though perhaps not as upsetting as asking a good boy to do harmful things.

I suppose it is a fairly recent development all in all, but I hope you find what you’re looking for