The /e/ Google-Free, Pro-Privacy Android Clone Is Now Available

'Gael Duval, creator of the popular early Linux distribution, Mandrake
Linux, wanted a smartphone, which was open source, would run a wide
variety of popular software, and protect your privacy. His answer was
the Android-based /e/ operating system and smartphones. While it's
still in beta, both its code and refurbished Samsung phones running it
are now available. Duval's approach hasn't been to reinvent the mobile
operating system wheel, but instead to clean up Android of its Google
privacy-invading features and replace them with privacy-respecting
one, in which, as Duval said in an interview, "Your data is your
data."

To do this, he's started with LineageOS. This is an Android-based
operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod
Android fork. According to Duval, the /e/ operating system is a
Lineage OS fork. It also blends in features from the Android Open
Source Project (AOSP) 7, 8, and 9 source-code trees. In the /e/ OS all
Google services have been removed and replaced with MicroG services.
MicroG replaces Google's libraries with purely open-source
implementations without hooks to Google's services. This includes
libraries and apps which provide Google Play, Maps, Geolocation, and
Messaging services for the Android applications when they need them.
What this means is that you can run some Android apps, which normally
only work on a fully Google-enabled Android phone on an /e/ phone.
These compatible apps are available via the /e/ app store.

The /e/ platform also comes with its own services, the report notes.
For example, its search program uses Qwant, a popular, privacy-first
European-based search engine, and for cloud storage, you get /e/'s own
cloud, which is based on the open-source NextCloud.

You can download and install /e/ on 85 different smartphone models.
You can also buy an /e/ phone today if you're in the EU.'

-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/25/2129247

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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