Eugenia

You can install LineageOS or e/OS on it (instead of Graphene, if that’s too controversial), and then the 4a is a good phone to use.

I’m not interested in running servers, in fact, my ISP doesn’t allow it anyway. I need something private that doesn’t ask for too much info off of me, and that’s why my solution was matrix, and not signal.

That’s my point. The phone number IS STILL required to create an account at Signal!

I’m using Matrix/element. I rather not give my phone number, you see, which is must-have for Signal. I have installed the app in my family’s phones, and they were accepting, so all is well. I don’t need to communicate through private messaging with anybody else, so who cares if others don’t use matrix?

The problem is that if you run your own email server at home, you get blocked as a spammer these days. Today, to send emails you MUST use one of the big providers, or your email won’t get delivered half of the times. One has no alternative but to use these free services.

I will tell you my secret. I have two phones. Two identities. One that has a normal google phone with facebook messenger and instagram, to keep in contact with family, and to have bank apps. And one, where the Murena e/OS is totally de-googled. Where you will only find FOSS apps, from Lemmy to Mastodon and Pixelfed. That second identity is my real one.

The mistake people make when they write about “moving to Linux” (or similar), is that they try to fit themselves into a box where the modern life doesn’t affords them to. The wiser option is to play on both sides. You have an unassuming, clean-cut identity on one computer and phone, and you have your real self on the other, where it’s ultra-private and secured, and often IP-spoofed if required. And it’s not some kind of closeting thing, or illegal thing or anything, it’s just private. How I would like things to be by default in a Utopian system.

On top of that, I believe that Murena’s e/OS has a modified g-services app so full fledged Android apps, including bank apps, get fooled so they run. But I don’t personally run them on that phone. That phone is FOSS only.

My Pixel5a from google store has it, but my other phone where I installed Murena e/OS (which is based on LineageOS) does not have it.