this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
13 points (93.3% liked)

Privacy Guides

18419 readers
99 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
  1. Can I install MicroG in a different workspace and not on the main system?
  2. Can I install Google play if needed on said workspace?

I want to keep all apps that need Google play separate from FOSS and I want MicroG to only be present in the namespace/workspace they are in. Is this possible?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
  1. no. Microg is baked in to try and get around the portions of google bullshit thats baked in.
  2. yes, I have play services running because I cannot not have android auto.

Not in /e/os far as i can see. Maybe in aosp somehow? Frankly, I am not exactly a fan of many of the decisions Murena made. They're motherfuckers about letting me do the things I actually want in the system, for example: just update my apps, dont notify me. I do not care unless you broke or can't update. But no, I have to dismiss every successful app update.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really would like a version of eOS without microG baked in so I can install it in a workspace. Sucks that there's not an easy option for that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Your frustration is understood, but I feer its misplaced. The way you phrased your response suggests you are disappointed that /e/os doesnt behave like you want, when you should actually be frustrated with google for designinjng android that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why should I be annoyed with Google if eOS bundles microG in the base image? I'm not frustrated with eOS, I just would have liked if they could give me a choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The choice is google or microg. If you are cool doing Goole things, pick any other phone. If you have a different alternative that actually give full android functionality, including things like the google search built into the default android launcher, lemme know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't need any of that. All I need isa privacy-focussed ROM which allows me the ability to install MicroG in a different workspace without bundling it in the base image. I think I'm being misunderstood

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Possibly, maybe probably. If you dont want to degoogle, why use /e/os? Thats basically the explicit purpose. /e/is fills the same need as any degoogled ROM but is prepackaged on fairphone devices, no need to buy a pixel in order to use graphene. If you just want android, and the ability to use microg when you want and not when you dont, just use a normal android device.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately, if I'm to use it as my daily driver I will need to use some non-FOSS apps. Mainly the 2FA apps like the ones from MS, Okta, Cisco etc. And Google maps because OSM didn't work for me. And some chat apps because family. Rather than having MicroG in the base system for just this handful of Big-Tech produced apps, I wanted to contain all of them in a workspace. I don't actually care about running eOS specifically, it's just that running GrapheneOS means buying an expensive Pixel device. I want a privacy-foscussed ROM on which I can do this

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Right, I think this is where we are misommunicating.

I use my fairphone as my daily. I also have to use OKTA, and stuff. And I dont use microg for them cause they don't talk to google. I suppose technically the apps dont use microg, just like they dont use google.

The problem you are going to run into though is that google has baked itself into android that you need something to trick android into thinking its operable.

In stock android, you COULD have a workspace that only uses microg, but considering you otherwise MUST have play services... Why?

Alternatively, you can use microg to handle all your google bullshit to sign yourself in locally and actually use the services that require google without actually signing in to google.

Frankly, it sounds more like you want an Ubuntu/Linux (not android Linux) phone or something, but I'm not able to advise on that.