this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023

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Rooting of Adb? confused about the concepts (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all, ultimately I'd like to experiment with a whole new os, but I gotta save up a little to buy a pixel. I'm currently working with a galaxy s21 ultra.

I never quite understood the reason to root and so I never really researched it. But now that I'm venturing more into the foss world and learning a bit more about tech, I'm realizing it might be useful for utilizing certain apps that require root and possibly helping to get rid of google and such services for good, but again idk the extent of what root offers and I also read it can be dangerous, so I'm lost to say the least.

My recent interest in rooting is purely because I have some foss apps that require root for me to use the full capabilities that I want. I also heard about adb and that it may be similiar to rooting but without actually rooting?

I'm just quite not sure how I should approach this and what things I should be aware of or NOT to do, to ensure I don't end up bricking the thing lol

Thanks for reading

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What apps require root that you want? I would highly advise against rooting if you can help it, because especially if you don't know what you're doing, there is very high potential to brick your device or open up security issues. I would recommend learning what root actually means and what it entails, and learning everything that happens when you root so you can decide for yourself if that's something that is necessary. Rooting modern hardware just to run an app is not really all that important nowadays. You might as well buy an android that has a custom OS already installed centered around privacy if that's your thing.

Additionally, to actually answer your question, adb is not root. It is just a development bridge that lets your PC talk to your phone, so you can push apps or do other development related stuff. It just happens to be a part of the toolset when rooting.

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

Gosh sorry for the late reply, I've been hot and cold with lemmy; its still a weird concept to me lol. The apps that I've found that require root are any of the system scanner apps like debloaters, tracker removers, app permission managers, and other things in that ballpark; basically security type apps I guess?

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

Fair enough. Here are three ways I can see this going:

Get a privacy focused phone like PinePhone or Librem. I can't speak much for them since I don't use them, but I've heard good things. This is the "all-in" approach. Depending how focused on privacy you are, you may want to go this route if you want a completely stripped down Android experience without any of the Google parts.
Get a Google Pixel. Pixels are a very clean Android experience. No bloat from vendors or carriers since Android is Google already. Plus. Android 13 already has a lot of focus on permissions and such, and it's only improving with the upcoming Android 14. Routinely apps' permissions will get disabled when the app hasn't been used in a while. You can also disable ads tracking in your Google account and in the Android settings.
Root a phone. I saw in another comment you likely won't do it, but leaving it in for fairness. If you are going to, make sure you know how to root it, what it's doing, and if that root method will work for the phone you're going to buy. You can search "how to root xyz phone xda-developers" to get info there. XDA-Developers is the name of the forum that is home to the rooting community. I don't recommend this path for reasons I suggested before, and if your end goal is more privacy, typically it's either "go big or go home". Rooting and doing a couple small things for half-privacy is just not worth it.

[+] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

One correction, you don't use adb to flash custom ROMs, it's just for interacting with a working Android device.

For flashing you use other tools which can write partition images to the phone's partitions and know the format that the vendor packages those images and the partition structure on the phone. fastboot is a standard tool for that but some manufacturers don't follow standards and there are other tools made specifically for them.

Also, TWRP is not a bootloader, it's a recovery. The recovery is sort of a cross between a PC BIOS and a rescue disc, it's a mini-OS you can boot into and perform maintenance operations. Phones already come with a recovery built-in but it's super-basic so most people prefer a TWRP-made recovery because it has much more features.

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

location works fine without google

there are foss apps for speech synthesis

once you degoogle there are few (none) that can't notify without push

reminding in order not to discourage op

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

Thanks a lot, I am weary about rooting and will probably not do it. So what are some other similar ways you could utilize the adb route?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you're considering rooting, I'd say don't. Rooting is like blowing a hole in the wall of a castle. It breaks the Android security model. A rooted device is insecure and cannot be made secure no matter how many Magisk modules you flash. Do not root a device you do anything important on.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My recent interest in rooting is purely because I have some foss apps that require root for me to use the full capabilities that I want.

Example? I personally just deleted unnecessary apps with adb and went on. Google Play services are still running but that is really it. After rooting getting updates will be difficult so you will want a custom ROM. Decide if that is what you want to do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Some apps I've found that could be very useful with root are exodus, permission pilot, warden, app manager, and probably many others. Not sure if there's a way to fully utilize the good features of these apps without root