Will LineageOS, Graphene and /e/OS be affected by Google’s changes to prevent sideloading? Is UbuntuTouch or Sailfish OS promising in the long term?
I understand that right now we are in a bad place, but in your opinion, what OS do you think people who care about freedom should rally around?
Which alternative ROMs will work with F-Droid after the changes to Android go through?
Any ROM with ships a degoogled version as an option as the changes are in Google Play. So e.g. LineageOS and GrapheneOS are not affected.
Ok thanks, as someone else explained to me the real issue is that Google is blocking device makers from allowing other OSs to be installed (but oddly Google devices aren’t among them).
It seems fairphone is the only option right now but Graphene doesn’t have a release for them.
No, device makers are in charge of unlocking their bootloaders, not Google. Google itself as a device maker allows unlocking of their bootloader, on current Pixels.
This comment said:
This comment seems about potential EU legislation designed to lock bootloaders so that the phone radios are guaranteed to run a particular proprietary baseband blob.
OK
I assume any that don’t have Google Play Services, which would be those you have mentioned already plus any forks (iodéOS, for example). They would all die if they were made subject to these changes, so the fact that they aren’t panicking about it suggests they are safe for now.