Fleeing Google's Apps and iOS, Mandrake Linux Creator Launches 'eelo' Project (hackernoon.com)

Open-source veteran Gaël Duval created Mandrake Linux in 1998. But in a new essay, he writes that "I realized that I had become lazy. Not only wasn't I using Linux anymore as my main operating system, but I was using a proprietary OS on my smartphone. And I was using Google more and more."

Long-time Slashdot reader nuand999 writes: He's creating a non-profit project called eelo.io that's going to release a "privacy-friendly" smartphone OS and associated web-services... eelo is going to be forked fromLineageOS, and will ship with the existing open source bricks put together into a consistent and privacy-enhanced, yet desirable, smartphone OS + web-services. A crowdfunding campaign has just started on Kickstarter to fuel early developments.
"iOS is proprietary and I prefer Open Source Software," Gaël writes on Hacker Noon, while also adding that "like millions of others, I'VE BECOME A PRODUCT OF GOOGLE... I'm not happy because Google has become too big and is tracking us by catching a lot of information about what we do. They want to know us as much as possible to sell advertising..."

"People are free to do what they want. They can choose to be volunteery slaves. But I do not want this situation for me anymore. I want to reconquer my privacy. My data is MY data. And I want to use Open Source software as much as possible."

Comments

a fork for forks sake

[nimbius]

eelo is going to be forked from LineageOS

...and thats where I stopped reading. Lineage is a stable, excellent fork of cyanogen that already supports everything Duval wants. fdroid provides floss apps and adblocking, and even access to Edward Snowdens Guardian repositories for things like secure browsers and newsreaders. As far as web services go, you choose to use them. there are decentralized alternatives to Facebook and Twitter already supported on smartphones tablets and PC. It sounds like this guy is too lazy to look for alternatives.
https://mastodon.social/about for open source twitter
https://joindiaspora.com/ for open source facebook
https://prism-break.org/en/ for secure floss alternatives
https://duckduckgo.com/ for a search that doesnt track

Re:a fork for forks sake

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy built mandrake. You have to keep this in mind when making your judgements :)

Re:a fork for forks sake

[SumDog]

Yea and even with this phone, people will still be able to install gapps. I'd be more impressed with the service architecture they plan on making, and actually replacing Google/Amazon services. Right now a lot of people don't want to give up their core apps (Dropbox, Gmaps, FB Messenger, Hangouts). It'd be better if we saw more F-droid/OSS clients that support FB/Hangouts via the libpurple system and that avoid sending excess data to either.

Re:a fork for forks sake

[jon3k]

Linus Pauling was a founder of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology and then went on to tell everyone Vitamin C cured cancer. Expertise in one area doesn't necessarily transfer to another. And in fact, frequently, extremely bright people believe a previous success in one field would make them successful in other areas outside their area of expertise.

Re:a fork for forks sake

[dublin]

The difference is that Linus Pauling was right, and was a Nobel Prize winner. FWIW, recent research (2017) at the University of Iowa (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231716302634) has confirmed that megadoses of Vitamin C do indeed kill cancer cells, but only when taken intravenously rather than orally, as Pauling, Klenner, et al always claimed was essential.

That said, Gael Duval is probably a really nice guy, but I used Mandrake for several years, and based on the product, can say that holistic, consistent and integrated thinking was not as evident as hoped. (IMO, San Mehat did a far better job with the ill-fated CorelLinux when it was primarily aimed at the decades-ahead ARM-based Corel NetWinder - it was definitely better sorted than Mandrake at the time as a roughly equivalent and ambitious distro...)

Re:a fork for forks sake

[markdavis]

>"The guy built mandrake. You have to keep this in mind when making your judgements :)"

I am not sure what you mean by that, since Mandrake was wildly popular and, at the time, one of the best overall Linux distros. From Mandrake came Mandriva, and from that, Mageia... which is, itself, very impressive (in fact, I am using it right now).

https://distrowatch.com/table....
http://www.mageia.org/en/

Great, if they can deliver.

[sound vision]

I do very much believe there is an untapped, privacy-focused market segment for this kind of thing. It has some overlap, but is not identical to, the target market for the Essential phone. I'm currently in the sub-$100 market when it comes to smart phones, but I would gladly pay many times that amount to have a phone free from Android/Google. It doesn't need to be modular, it doesn't need a huge-ass screen or an octo-core processor, facial recognition, or fingerprint reading... better, in fact, that it DOESN'T have those things. I don't need them, they compromise privacy, and increase the cost.

It DOES need to work, out of the box. No weird reflashing routines, no kernel/driver issues, none of that janky CyanogenMod stuff. It does need to be compatible with Android apps, for most people. (For me, I'd be OK with using an open-source Telegram client, if the official Android one doesn't work for some reason. What few other apps I use can either be replaced or accessed through a browser.)

Google really is one of the big reasons I'm hesitant to use my smartphone for anything non-trivial. They (and Apple) are two of the reasons I didn't even own one until a couple years ago. I couldn't bear to spend $500+ for that. I'm just sitting here waiting for someone to monetize me.

Re:Great, if they can deliver.

[Kjella]

I would gladly pay many times that amount to have a phone free from Android/Google. It doesn't need to be modular, it doesn't need a huge-ass screen or an octo-core processor, facial recognition, or fingerprint reading... better, in fact, that it DOESN'T have those things. I don't need them, they compromise privacy, and increase the cost.

Sounds to me like you don't want a smartphone. More like a dumb phone with a browser. Except no "huge-ass" screen or good CPU, so a tiny and slow browser. That.... doesn't sound like a good product for anyone to me.

It DOES need to work, out of the box. No weird reflashing routines, no kernel/driver issues, none of that janky CyanogenMod stuff.

Unfortunately all those clunky, quirky bits is exactly what you get with low volume hardware. Hell, even Apple with their budget can run into "you're holding it wrong" problems.

It does need to be compatible with Android apps, for most people.

Which basically means it must run Android, give or take a few settings. How's that freeing people from Google when Google decides where it's going and you'd have to keep up to stay compatible?

What people really want...

[Baron_Yam]

Is something that just WORKS, and they don't have to think about it or pay a lot for it.

That's why Android is so popular, even tied to Google. You buy the phone, and it works. It's a little less 'walled garden' than iOS, which is nice.

Would it be nicer to go to the store and get a completely unfettered phone? Yes. But I'd expect that to come with a lot of end-user requirements that are impractical for the vast majority of people who have trouble with a power button.

To each his own

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't possibly give a fuck about streaming music. However, I do want GPS navigation; OsmAnd does that for me, all offline.