**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.

    • sentientity@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Alas, it looks like none of the devices I own right now are actually compatible with Calyx, graphene or lineage right now. :( I own less popular models of devices, but I erroneously thought any android device would be interchangeable here when I first made this post.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        For LineageOS at the very least, you might be able to find an unofficial ROM for your device over at XDA developers forums. There are often ones built for less popular phones, but they don’t have as much frontline support as the supported devices listed on the LineageOS site.

        https://xdaforums.com/f/lineageos-questions-answers.6082/

        …but it’s exactly as I said earlier. There are technical walls to scale, including whether or not you even have access to the right hardware to start the process to begin with. It sounds like you learned a bunch today, which is good, and hopefully you can either find an unofficial ROM that works for you, or you can eventually invest in a phone that fits one of the ecosystems that you would like to pursue.

        Good luck!