Nostr Web Client

There are other options like

Calyx. It's questionable at the moment, as there is some question about the signing keys and the developer who controls them. I'd probably avoid that one.

https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-community/

Lineage of another option. Depending on your hardware there may be builds. These are made by host of developers, so dyor and see what the state is for your hardware.

https://lineageos.org/

I've been using custom Android builds for over a decade. I've used lineage in the past. It was good on some hardware, but had incomplete support on others. FWIW graphene is the most polished of them I have used. I currently run it on a pixel 6a as a secure secondary phone.

It seems counter intuitive that a phone from Google would be the best choice. However security researchers and privacy experts pretty much exclusively recommend it. nostr:nprofile1qqstnr0dfn4w5grepk7t8sc5qp5jqzwnf3lejf7zs6p44xdhfqd9cgspzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qgawaehxw309ahx7um5wghxy6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcnv0md0 is part of the GrapheneOS team, and can explain it better than I. But basically the pixels are the only hardware that have the features necessary for graphene to do what it does.

Final 3mo ago

CalyxOS doesn't even have the 2025-06-05 patch level and their 3 core devs quit. The project founder, who is the key custodian, was pushed out and updates stopped. He is now involved in trying to create a for-profit company with Louis Rossmann. I'd assume it's as good as dead if there is nothing to replace now.

GrapheneOS is a security/privacy focused OS, we arent promoting it as a political campaigning chip against a big tech company. We support Pixels cause of the security properties it provides.

We're negotiating with a top 10 Android OEM to get their newer devices ready to potentially be supported by GrapheneOS, but we can't say much details yet.

Most devices make using other OSes difficult / impossible, don't provide security updates on time and don't even use a secure element to protect against physical attacks. We aren't taking a LineageOS approach to push mixed functionality versions on every device as possible. People will blame us when they use GrapheneOS on some unsafe end of life device and still get pwned.

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Discussion

CappyNate🍁 3mo ago

Thanks for your dedication to Graphene.

Limited device support makes sense from a security and dev simplicity standpoint. But it does impede adoption of course.

It seems like a Raspberry-Pi-like initiative for phone hardware may help FOSS OS initiatives: building phones specifically for Graphene OS. But then hardware specs become an issue. And it's hardware.

The economics of FOSS really needs changing. It's high demand, due to free and open, but devs can't make enough money to support it, so too many die. And the cycle repeats.

We need to solve the FOSS economic system, so FOSS devs can flourish. We need FOSS now more than ever.