edit: thank you all for your replies! They are all very helpful. I am reading through them and will ask follow-up questions if needed.
I made a post some days ago asking about LineageOS, but my curiosity towards Google Pixels and GrapheneOS has been growing. As somebody who has always used regular Samsungs and iPhones, I hope somebody can clear up some questions I have regarding this OS.
I plan that my next phone is to be either a Motorola (LineageOS/SailfishOS?) or a Pixel (GrapheneOS). My first question about GrapheneOS, or really any non-standard OS, is this:
- how does having an account on the device work? For example, Samsungs require a Samsung account and iPhones require an iCloud account. How does it work on non-standard OSes?
My second question touches on built-in apps that you often get with every phone:
- does GrapheneOS have its own Notes/Drive/Photos/Messages app? If not, how does one go about obtaining these? Related question:
- how do I sync my notes/photos/files/etc to the “cloud” of GrapheneOS?
My third question regards the app store of GrapheneOS. I have heard that the sandboxed Play Store is better than FDroid, for instance; what are your thoughts? Do I go for Aurora Store instead? Is there any major difference at all? Is it possible to use multiple app stores?
- note that I likely won’t be solely relying on FDroid since I need some non-FOSS apps (FB Messenger for contacting family for example).
I know that in the privacy community, it’s very common to fix up a cloud of your own (i.e. NextCloud). I have no experience doing this, but is it something I must do when I install atypical OSes? Then comes the question about pricing, how private and secure it really is, which one to choose… and so on.
I understand many of these questions will sound stupid to those who are experienced, but I have not been part of this community very long. Feel free to link any educational videos or articles that answer my questions. I hope to learn more about this subject and one day installing a more secure system on my phone. Cheers!
Edit: one key advantage of GrapheneOS is the possibility of using multiple users. You can (and I recommend it) separate apps into different user profiles. You can for instance dedicate one user profile to apps requiring Google services, let's call it Gapps. GrapheneOS then allows you to then pipe your notifications between user accounts, so if you are in your main user profile you can get notifications from apps running in Gapps in the background. Very convenient.
Android provides a multi-user setup since Marshmallow(?), definitely with Nougat (I've used it on a stock Android N phone).
Some vendors hid it/didn't expose the UI.
Graphene takes advantage of it and makes it more fluid.
Its interesting, because multi-user is a native functionality of Linux... It's likely always been there, just not exposed.
You are right. What I want to highlight was not that, but the notifications piping which is what makes the multi user profile interesting and usable for a single person, IMO. And that is what I think is unique to GrapheneOS. I did not express myself well in that regard, my bad.
In this case, you can have a primary user with no google services and a secondary with google services (Play store etc) that you can't live without, until you find FOSS alternatives for your main. You can also revoke network permission on any app, including google's. Rocks.