I got Nvidia working but had to sign the drivers to get them to gel with Secure Boot. Hopefully won't have to do that every major update but we'll see.
That is correct, a lot of basic, popular places that have been in my area for decades were not listed. And I was unable to simply navigate to an address that doesn't isn't explicitly added, which seems like a huge oversight.
Yeah OSM does not meet my needs in my area. I love the idea though. I'm using Here We Go. Good privacy policy, European, not sketchy. It is easily one of the best functioning alternatives to Google, and only 2 trackers: Crashlytics (which you can turn off in settings) and Facebook Login (which you can just not use). You can save locations and access search history without an account. There is a toggle to work offline if you've downloaded maps for your area, which I usually use. If you use it online it has integrated reviews from TripAdvisor, and traffic data, but you have to opt into sharing yours as well which I don't want to. I use GMaps WV for discovery and reviews, and Here We Go for navigation. But you could probably get away with just Here We Go. As I mentioned though it does require Play Store for Android Auto.
Yeah but you know, first world problems. Still a good phone.
Yeah, I do have to say that the Linux community has been improving though.
I tested Bazzite for a while, I liked it. I ultimately settled on Fedora KDE. I could see myself going back to Bazzite if I stop dual booting Windows for gaming and random programs. But...maybe by then I will have upgraded my GPU, and I'll be going AMD if so, and there's therefore less reason to go with Bazzite since I'll have proper AMD drivers no matter what. I could also envision openSUSE Tumbleweed if I wanted to live more dangerously but not go with Arch-based.
I've never understood the Cachy hype tbh. Nothing against it, but if you're going for user friendly Arch, Manjaro seems easier and has been around longer. And why hype Arch in general? Arch is Arch, but hyping it for new users is just a mistake. For moderate to experienced users, if you want to use Arch there's a specific reason, you don't need to be convinced. Does everyone just like feeling badass for picking hard mode?
I had the receipt, a separate piece of paper that they printed with my "name and info", the email, and the text. Luckily I'd also forseen this happening and spoke to the manager when buying the phone, so I had him ready to name drop and he'd put in the notes that I'd "lost my ID" and wouldn't have it for pickup so the guy couldn't really argue with me for long. I did get some pushback initially though, I was a little stressed that they were trying to scam me out of my money but I played it cool.
That's why I like it actually. It forces me to interact with the community, it's more organic that way, and I need to eventually move in with my life instead of doom scroll. I get to the end and go "well that's the end of the internet for a day or two"
Graphene has been the easiest part of the journey so far tbh. The hard part was finding alternative apps and deleting accounts :) Heck, buying the phone in cash was harder than Graphene, dear lord do stores feel like they're entitled to ask invasive questions. I had to order it too because they didn't have the larger storage model in stock so I had to give a fake name with a fake email, a hotel address, voip number, wait over a week, and then argue with them about showing ID until they gave up when I came back to pick it up.
It's surprisingly smooth, basically "just Android" but less bloat, spam, and creepiness. Way easier than my transition to Linux has been (which still wasn't bad), and I feel like I can relax now.
I AM mildly annoyed that I was unable to fully degoogle though. I need Android Auto which needs Play Services. And I need a navigation app, and the one I chose (Here We Go) works in Android Auto ONLY if downloaded from the Play Store specifically, not even Aurora. Literally the only app that did that once I enabled side loading in Android Auto settings, and literally the only app I needed to work on Android Auto. But it was either that or Google Maps from Aurora basically and uh...nah. I found Open Street Map based apps to be unusable.
Still, it's sort of nice to have the Play Store and Play Services. Play Store is most secure for downloads. Notifications are more reliable. I only give network permissions to each and turned off Play Protect so they can't phone home. Most things auto update between Graphene App Store, Droid-ify, and Play Store (Aurora and Obtanium can auto update on my old phone, but not on GrapheneOS). The stuff I have left in Obtanium are just a few game emulators which aren't security critical. I made a new burner account from the phone settings with a VPN on and it didn't ask for a phone number that way. I can make a new burner next time I get a phone. Or not, and I can buy Play Store gift cards with cash if I really need paid apps. I was starting to like Koala Sampler for example, though it does have a few trackers which I'm not comfortable with.
I'm also mildly annoyed that I had to overpay for the hardware just to lose my SD card slot. Gaming is unimpressive, it's barely an upgrade from a Snapdragon 865+. It definitely still has a premium flagship feel though, and the CPU and camera is a big improvement from my old phone.
It's their tough armor case in green. The sticker I created myself with Canva and a Cricut. I may have to remake it and use a bit of glue on the edges though.
They're not that impressive specs wise, somewhere between mid range and a "real" flagship that has a Snapdragon Elite chip. The only reason to get it is the top of the line security features that allow GrapheneOS to function. Or the software if you're into Ai and such and don't want Graphene, but that's like the opposite of privacy.
You've gotten some good answers kn fingerprinting so I won't repeat that. I will add though: it depends on what you are trying to do. Blending in with Tor or Mullvad Browsers makes you less trackable, but logging into an account immediately breaks that. Brave et al will only fool naive scripts, sure, but telemetry and built in tracking is another battle to fight: you're going to want a privacy browser even if you stand out amongst the sea of Chrome and Edge. The more of us who do make it more normal looking. At the end of the day you are probably going to want two browsers per machine:a logging in browser and an anonymous web search browser. So no it does not negate itself and is worth doing, but has use case limitations. I find it best to block everything possible in Brave but use it as the sign in browser. Not using Brave shields doesn't make you much less recognizable anyway, you'd have to use Chrome for that.
i would go through your privacy settings and delete and turn off everything you can, then if you can, change pii to nonsense burner info and deletethe account. Services like that can sometimes be useful, but not for accounts specifically. Personally I dont use them and send delete requests to people search sites myself.
Tor + VPN is a VERY contentious topic. The one thing not to do is turn on a VPN in the middle of a Tor session. That's agreed upon. VPN before Tor... it can make it harder to find who you are in some ways, but makes you seem more suspicious that you feel the need to do all that. It makes your activity stand out, and it may even be easier to bully your VPN provider into giving up your identity (if they have it from payment info, etc). But that's just if they are monitoring the exit node, so mot particularly likely. Still, I avoid mixing them entirely. Of the two, Tor is more anonymous, but VPN is faster, hides all network activity even outside the browser and is just about required in many places due to stupid age verification laws and similar nonsense. So I like Mullvad Browser + always on VPN, but Tor is a good tool.
My view is if he's that open about it not being serious, I would be shopping around. Keep fucking him and hanging out in the meantime if you want. It's not cheating if you're not exclusive. But move on as soon as you can.
The button is getting there! Doesn't always respond but usually.
Ideally it would be an account profile setting toggle like Reddit's app. To be clear I think masking is a good feature. I want it for my main, but I would want to turn it off for my alt though.
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