Sorry to have you go. I find your judgment a bit harsch though, because you probably have in mind how important our mission to create products that help people escape the permanent collection of their data by private organisations.
I understand your frustrations, that can happen of course, but sometimes we (the team) also need some acknowledgement about how huge what as been done in the past 7 years.
Launching such an ambitious project takes a bit of time, with periods of doubts, and periods of joy, and we’re not helped a lot.
Also I find a bit ironic what you write here:
Anyway, yes, we want to push what we do to the largest number of users, because we don’t want Privacy (whatever you put in it) to be something available to only a little number of people, like people who could pay for it, people who are skilled enough, people who can spend a lot of time learning about things. No. We are trying to preserve fundamental rights that are totally ignored in the mainstream industry, and give this option to live in a better digital world to as many people as possible on this planet.
So yes, we introduce more features that are currently missing to fit with most users’ usage. We work with hardware manufacturers to make the best possible combo between the hard and the soft.
We give choice. We are transparent and we explain what we do, and how we do.
The satisfied majority is often silent, so: I am a very happy user since several years. Keep going /e/OS & Murena, you are doing great. Thank you for your hard work and endless efforts!
It sure is complicated to prevent faults or dependency failures, but in reality to remove most of the unnecessary applications is well possible, if one doesn’t want to use some Murena-/e/ OS specific features.
Just did that by manual removal of most (for me) unused applications:
The Murena account manager, which I don’t use (I don’t sync it in this way)
SpeechToText
ParentalControl
two unnecessary hotwordenrollment-googleblibs which were left in this Community version
FindMyDevice
BlissWeather (now using another weather tool)
WebCalendarManager
OpenKeyChain
Mail
Browser… and some different ones.
Checked everything else, works still fine so far. Advanced Privacy does its job, App Lounge works.
Only thing one shouldn’t do is to click the remaining links in “Settings” towards Parental control and Find my device, else Settings will close (that’s expected). Most other links are gone, so no risk.
Test was completed in two ways:
First to test if the non-root variant which uninstalls it purely for the actual user (it is still on the phone, but doesn’t run anymore in the background for the given user) will work on those system packages, as well.
Then proceeded to remove them completely by adb root (which requires a rooted phone), as well without bigger hassles. In the end removed the related data by pm clear commands.
Now there’s only the stuff left that I prefer on /e/ OS - until the next big update, at least.
Newer versions of those system applications could be reinstalled by big updates, but they’re removable, again, so that’s acceptable.
Three hours of work and some preparations and I’m fine with whatever way Murena decides to go with /e/ in terms of bundled applications. My positive opinion of /e/ is back for now.
Actually, with /e/OS adb root only requires activating Rooted debugging in the Developer options beforehand, it doesn’t require rooting the phone as a whole .
I wondered about that part in the other topic already …
… because this here method is OS update-proof in my experience, the “uninstalled” (disabled for user 0) Apps stay that way after OS updates.
Worth considering depending on priorities.
good to know! Last time to need adb root was like 15 years ago.
Couldn’t (due to missing update) verify that aspect, I personally prefer to remove the applications directly from the remounted system folders.
My reason lays in a full factory reset which else would restore them for the “fresh” user 0 (which I don’t want).
But for users which don’t want to go a very risky way (no restore without reinstalling), the disabled for user 0 method is definitely more reliable, as the uninstall (for the actual user) could probably be undone by
“adb shell cmd package install-existing com.whatever.package.org”.
Aside from 2-3 little bugs, the uninstall works fine on my device - but the process for sure is not recommended universally, as it was an experiment with just one device, one Community build of /e/ OS in one version.
But so far I’m happy with the results, the removed applications had no usability for me.
.