Running LOS with microG and AFwall+/AdAway - what will be better with /e/?

/e/OS Foundation & Community Data Privacy
#1

I am just ahead of re-set a S10e - currently running “micoG for LOS”. So this is a serious question after reading some of the topics here - what will be the advantage?
I guess as for me I can’t completely miss google, as some banking apps and some apps that use cloud messaging are to important for me. I try to get rid of tracking as good as I can, but not for any price.

As far as I can see /e/ comes with some preinstalled apps that probably care for privacy. But LOS is rather free of apps, so you can select these by yourself. So is it just to make data protection more easy?

PS: For those want to avoid google in a hardcore way, just use a pure LOS - without any microG. Isn’t that better than installing /e/ and remove it?

#2

Check these out to learn about the differences:

https://doc.e.foundation/what-s-e#degoogling--ungoogling

…Although I think now that /e/OS includes App Lounge instead of the previous Apps package, the equation has changed a bit.

#3

LineageOS for microG is working very well for me on my devices. I use a custom build, which includes the upstreams of /e/'s forked apps (Etar, QKSMS, K-9 Mail, DAVx5, NextCloud sync, NextCloud Notes), and F-Droid and Aurora Store instead of /e/'s Apps / AppLounge.

For me, the privacy and “de-Googling” of this setup is “good enough”, and the apps are better (in terms of bug fixes and new features) than /e/'s forks. I need my ‘daily driver’ phone to “just work”, and this setup has less risk of being broken by the introduction of untested new features. Sad, but true (in my opinion)!

1 Like
#4

That’s actually what I do and have done for a long time on some devices including my daily driver. I don’t need push notifications so all I ever needed was the standalone UnifiedNlp (for location backends) and I was good.
On one with IVPN’s hardcore antitracker turned on I had no Google whatsoever (which of course did break a few things, silently, in the background. Things I find out long after the fact).

For /e/, I never really understood the need for folks wanting to remove microG. As long as you don’t enable device registration and gcm it doesn’t do much but one must remember it provides UnifiedNlp. Other than GPS I don’t know if bare ROMs provide any location services. Not an issue if not needed.