For those unfamiliar, GrapheneOS is a privacy and security enhanced custom ROM endorsed by Snowden. Despite these big names, plenty of people give it backlash
Even @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml gives it backlash despite being a moderator of Lemmy’s biggest privacy community. A quote here: “grapheneOS trolls are downvoting every single post and comment of mine, and committing vote manipulation on Lemmy. They are using 5-6 accounts.” That was in response to downvotes on a comment posted in the c/WorldNews community, which is entirely unrelated to technology.
One of the reasons is that GrapheneOS can only be installed on Google Pixels due to security compatibility, which makes complete sense considering Android should be most compatible with Google’s own devices. GrapheneOS even lists the exact reasons they chose Pixels, and encourage people to step up and manufacture a different supported device.
One year ago, Louis Rossmann posted this video outlining his reasons for deleting GrapheneOS. Mainly, he had multiple bad experiences with Daniel Micay (the founder and main developer of GrapheneOS) which put his distrust in the GrapheneOS project. Since then, he has stepped down and will no longer be actively contributing to the project.
So, I am here to learn why exactly people still do not like GrapheneOS.
I don’t use it because Calyx is “good enough” and I make a lot of my decisions about which projects to use based on the community associated with them. Graphene has a toxic as fuck community, Calyx is very carebear.
Graphene seems to be the real outlier in terms of its community, which I guess comes back to the tone set by its founder. No other project (in terms of privacy ROMs) has such a toxic culture.
Same, I’ve been team calyx for several years now, the dev rocks and I’m very happy to donate to them for keeping my pixel 3 running.