DivestOS: long term device support with enhanced privacy and security

Yes, I just wanted (some) privacy!

Thanks, at the time I wrote there was no announce about this incident at the site. Glad everything is fine now.

I assumed the people that knew what happened, already knew to which devices it happened. And I was right. I guess the rest are just need to put in their 2 cents anyway.

any chance to insert and support mi 11 lite 4g on DivestOs. thank you so much SkewedZeppelin if you consider my request.

It must have official LineageOS builds first. Don’t count on it.

1 Like

I want to install in xz2c , and I can see that I can download the build and the fastboot and the AVB key. what I have to do with the fastboot and the AVB key? it doesnt explain nothing in the lineage instructions.

I have flash lineageos recovery and I have done this
fastboot erase avb_custom_key;
fastboot flash avb_custom_key avb_pkmd.bin
now the device says that will not start your device is corrupt. I am gonna get the stock again

what I get in a clean stock android:

fastboot update ‘/home/noax/Downloads/divested-18.1-20220116-dos-xz2c-fastboot.zip’
extracting android-info.txt (0 MB)…
extracting boot.img (64 MB)…
target reported max download size of 805306368 bytes
archive does not contain ‘boot.sig’
archive does not contain ‘boot_other.img’
extracting dtbo.img (8 MB)…
archive does not contain ‘dtbo.sig’
archive does not contain ‘dt.img’
archive does not contain ‘recovery.img’
extracting system.img (1575 MB)…
archive does not contain ‘system.sig’
archive does not contain ‘system_other.img’
extracting vbmeta.img (0 MB)…
archive does not contain ‘vbmeta.sig’
extracting vendor.img (604 MB)…
archive does not contain ‘vendor.sig’
archive does not contain ‘vendor_other.img’

Bootloader Version…: 1310-7079_X_Boot_SDM845_LA2.0.1_Q_207
Baseband Version…: 1311-5320_52.1.A.3.49
Serial Number…: BH902BX0BZ

checking product…
FAILED

Device product is ‘H8324’.
Update requires ‘sdm845’.

finished. total time: 0.008s
noax@noax:~$ fastboot erase avb_custom_key
erasing ‘avb_custom_key’…
FAILED (remote: No such partition.)
finished. total time: 0.001s
noax@noax:~$ fastboot flash avb_custom_key ‘/home/noax/Downloads/avb_pkmd.bin’
target reported max download size of 805306368 bytes
sending ‘avb_custom_key’ (1 KB)…
OKAY [ 0.005s]
writing ‘avb_custom_key’…
FAILED (remote: No such partition.)
finished. total time: 0.006s

A recent topic in the chat room has been on the inclusion of various apps.
I’d like some more feedback before I make any changes.

Should a music player be included?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
Should an e-mail client be included?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
Should UnifiedNlp and some NLP backends be included?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
Should the TalkBack screen reader be included?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Bonus poll:
Carriers are currently phasing out 2g and 3g, and making VoLTE required for calls.
DivestOS currently supports VoLTE where possible, however it removes the proprietary blobs that enable VoWiFi (Wi-Fi calling).

Should the proprietary Wi-Fi calling blobs be restored?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

As I’ve said several times in the chat in my opinion divestos has a good selection of preinstalled apps and honestly I don’t see the need to remove anything, but since the problem came up in the chat, in general I think it’s ok not to pre-install a music player or an email client since they are easily installable by the user who can choose what he/she prefers.

But honestly taking away features like unifiednlp or talkback, in my opinion, is more problematic and not very useful since they are not active by default and unifiednlp can be problematic to install since it is a system app (I tried it a couple of times on lineageos and it didn’t work).

2 Likes

I do agree that users can choose, but while I care to use FairEmail vs K9, I really don’t care about the music player as long as it…plays the music. :slight_smile:

So a nice default is useful, and if they want something else…they can just disable them and use whatever.

2 Likes

Has anyone used TrackerControl and what do they think of it? Been using it and it is very handy, some apps are problematic if they ain’t foss but TrackerControl can be disabled for each app, surprising who is tapping into your data.

Or maybe it’s the other way around, everyone has different needs.
For me the LineageOS music player is bad, it has no search and choice by folders and lacks features in general.
The fact that you can’t choose which folders to index audio files from is a no go for me.

We can use that argument for any app, as long as it is deeply integrated into the system. So it doesn’t make sense.

You just said what I’ve said using different more negative words, I can’t even…

The point is, I can consider…

that it’s not a nice default and it is bloat so I would prefer it not to be in the operating system at all.

Even if not all my personal favorites, I feel @SkewedZeppelin selected a great set of defaults to start with, so calling it “bloat” is wrong, IMO.

Also, Thanks @Licaon_Kter for being “only” vote on one side, one more time than me. :laughing:

1 Like

Bloat is not “useful apps that work and do their purpose” but “dumb apps that can’t work okay that I can’t even remove and they take space on storage”.

I guess I should have put quotation marks to avoid misunderstanding.
Disabling the app does not remove it from the storage.

Yes, right, it’s a tricky thing, not sure how Divest does it, it can be done of course, not install as part of system.

There’s the thought of users removing them by mistake but maybe the target audience here is not…like that. :slight_smile:

But is it still really a storage issue to disable one or two apps and replace them? I’ve been using lineageos for the last 6 years, replacing almost all the preinstalled apps, and it’s never been a big problem for me.

Storage should not be a big problem for this.
Yes I think @Licaon_Kter is right on that part, yet we all voted no :sweat_smile:

Yes, I like to have an opposing view for no reason. :laughing:

I answered no to the survey but if you read my comment immediately following you’ll understand that I did it more to resolve the issue brought up yesterday on the xmpp chat, and that basically for me there would be no problem leaving everything as it is now.

I will say keep it simple but useful, where doesnt need to be so tricky to install something like gps for navigation.
So good navigation app tools, and a good private and secure OS .