Your 2024 journey with /e/OS and Murena (and a V2!)

[GaelDuval]

Your 2024 journey with /e/OS and Murena (and a V2!)

At the heart of /e/OS’s philosophy is a strong belief that individual choices can drive significant change. The decision to use one product over another is a powerful statement about the kind of world we want to live in.

/e/OS challenges users to reconsider their choices, questioning the systems they support through their use of products and services from companies like Google and the net giants.

By opting for more ethical alternatives, individuals can contribute to a larger movement towards sustainability and ethical technology.

Our roadmap for 2024 focuses on more than developing a Google-free ecosystem. It is about inspiring a collective shift towards more responsible consumption and production, demonstrating that technology can indeed be a force for good.

Adopting /e/OS is one of the best way to cast your vote to avoid a global dystopia and to build a better world, together.

Towards /e/OS v2

/e/OS v1 has been a milestone in our OS development, with the introduction of new features such as new App Lounge and Advanced Privacy.

/e/OS v2 is set to be a milestone in OS maturity. Most innovations will lie into 2 years of improvement for all the specific /e/OS features:

• Better application compatibility by default. For the most tech-savvy that means: SafetyNet pass, RootBeer pass, licensing server support, …
• Enhanced Advanced Privacy features, with a more intuitive user interface.
• Improved Camera application.
• Unified Single Sign-On (SSO): once logged into /e/OS with your account, you will be able to reach all services at murena.io in /e/OS’ browser without needing to re-authenticate.

New Advanced Privacy widget

But some changes will also be very visible:

• New launcher! BlissLauncher 3 should be far more reliable than BlissLauncher 1 (and yes, as I can hear you asking: BlissLauncher 2… just failed). It will also progressively add popular features such as landscape mode and widget on all views.
• And with a new launcher what’s better than updated icons and wallpapers?

Icons evolution

Something that users of murena.io digital workspace also noticed is that we have a brand-new Gallery that is able to display a Timeline of all pictures and also a maps of all the places where pictures have been taken.

And this year we will add new features to murena.io, including an online forms feature.

More improvements under the hood!

We have started to work on several topics, so what you can most probably expect by the end of the year:

• An additionnal push notification system: we want to offer a new default option to developers who want to avoir going through the (Google)Firebase Cloud Messaging. How we will integrate into /e/OS is still uncertain but the technology works and is mature enough.

Push Notification PoC on /e/OS

• Something that arrives late will be a “Speech To Text” feature that will be useful in many cases, such as answering quickly a message without typing or interacting with an assistant.
• This leads to an /e/OS assistant: although we’re still exploring various options for it, we’ve proven that even a Large Language Model can run locally on a smartphone. Adding privacy-safe assisting features is among our priorities.
• Parental control will be available to protect children accessing adult contents when they are using a smartphone with /e/OS.
• Backup! a long awaited feature that will ease our life as /e/OS users, so we can easily reinstall a new devices from a previous installation. Today it’s only possible for media contents, calendar, contacts and other files, but not application re-installation and application settings & data.

We’re also considering various options to introduce a new Murena device this year.

And also… B2B!

We have resisted to pursue B2B opportunities until now: we had to focus on our primary project, which was mostly targetted to individual users. But we see more and more organization purchasing Murena smartphones with /e/OS, and they have been asking for pro features on both the smartphone and our digital workspace at murena.io

Murena.io workspace

So expect to see some pro-oriented features, including a corporate workspace, available in our offering in 2024. Professionnals also deserve alternatives to protect their data!

Ready to join our journey to make a positive impact in the mobile world?

Subscribe to our newsletters for the latest latest Murena & /e/OS’ developments and releases (two emails per month in average).

— Gaël & the Murena team.

Follow me on @gael_duval on Twitter, @gael@mastodon.social on Mastodon.

More about Murena products & services: https://murena.com

More about /e/OS: https://e.foundation

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/OS the deGoogled mobile OS and online services

[Doppel-D]

“Currently, there is one alias available, but in the future we plan to get more and users will be able to manage their aliases (to delete and renew them).”

from Newsletter posted on 27 Apr 2022

Hopefully this is still on the todo list!

[tyxo]

@GaelDuval

Improved Camera application

I’m really looking forward to the improvements whatever they may be.

[petefoth]

Will it be possible in /e/OS v2 for users to install Trebuchet and use it as their default Home screen / Launcher? Or will that still be disabled?

[jalmer]

Dear @GaelDuval ,

that sounds perfect. I use e/OS for long and installed it on every smartphone in the family.
If you consider B2B options, could be there also a family options just as easy as the OS.
Like shared folders, adresses, appointments, … and individual folders, adresses, appointments, …
This would make it easier for “normal” family users like me to have a Smartphones that respects your privacy and just works.

Best wishes

[Aizu]

Thanks for the good work it is a great plan, this changes people’s lives.
If I may suggest a feature to send files like KDE Connect.

Cheers!

[lapor]

Yes, incorporate KDE Connect into the /e/OS

[stanwood]

Thanks for sharing this great news! I’m pretty delighted

On the subject of businesses: They may need Android Auto integration (or an equivalent fork) to be able to fully use the services on the move.
Is this also on the Murena roadmap?

Thanks again for your outstanding work!

[Domi]

Especially in regions where data protection is important, such as in the European Union (GDPR), eOS devices should actually be widespread. B2B and the associated marketing is important to promote this. It’s about education: Who actually decided to buy Android phones that send countless requests and information to servers of international advertising companies? I personally keep my fingers crossed for Murena and hope that it will be widely used in the future! Privacy is a fundamental right - which unfortunately everyone still has to protect themselves at the moment, with many invisible attackers.

Terms of Service; Didn’t Read
“I have read and agree to the Terms”
is the biggest lie on the web.
Google it.

[18yt8zhg]

Thanks again and again for everything.

[us3r1d]

@GaelDuval

And with a new launcher what’s better than updated icons and wallpapers?

The icons are fine as they are; they really don’t need to change.

@GaelDuval

This leads to an /e/OS assistant: although we’re still exploring various options for it, we’ve proven that even a Large Language Model can run locally on a smartphone. Adding privacy-safe assisting features is among our priorities.

Please don’t, or please at least make it completely disable-able. Trainable systems like LLMs are fundamentally untrustworthy, and I very much do not want one integrated into my phone.

[Papaito3]

Meu telefone Quando insiro cartão SIM aparece O cartão SIM Bloaueado por NCK, ajuda me!

[Justintin]

Great journey

Do you already have a specific AI assistant LLM in mind?
I know this list https://itsfoss.com/open-source-chatgpt-alternatives/
They can be run locally for most of them.
Phone have not a lot of ram but some models seems lightweight enough (1Go).

[Justintin]

@us3r1d

don’t, or please at least make it completely disable-able. Trainable systems like LLMs are fundamentally untrustworthy, and I very much do not want one integrated into my phone.

If it’s a local LLM, nothing goes on Internet, nothing to worry about

[us3r1d]

That depends what it’s wired into and what functions it has access to; and the very least it would be a waste of CPU and RAM.

[ToughDBlue]

Thank you @GaelDuval. Looking forward to all the new features coming soon. Few questions. Last year it was mentioned that Advanced Privacy would be released as a stand alone app. Is that available? Can we please get the settings back in “Wallpaper and style” to choose our own colors and have Material You in version /e/ OS 2.0? Will /e/ OS 2.0 include Android 14?

[voyager529]

Disclaimer: this is

It’s about education: Who actually decided to buy Android phones that send countless requests and information to servers of international advertising companies?

I don’t think that, exactly, was the decision. Fundamentally, the problem is that the “we care about our freedom and are willing to contribute money to the cause” crowd is way, way smaller than the “Look how easy it is to be entertained after a few ads!” crowd.

The problem is that, for most people, the data harvesting is pretty transparent, and the outcomes don’t manifest themselves in directly visible ways. Moreover, there are no shortage of people who would say that they care, but that concern pales in comparison to the desire to have everything working “just the way it is now”. Even with the Easy Installer, the process of backing up and restoring all of their data and spending a whole Saturday performing the process, AND voiding their warranty AND unlocking their bootloader is going to get a sadly-high percentage of people saying, “y’know what…if that’s what it takes, the advertisers can have my data”…and keep in mind that the iPhone crowd is going to be even more difficult to convert, since iMessage and Facetime are not cross-platform. Green Bubble texts have social consequences, unfortunately…and this is where the issue leaves the technological and enters the psychological.

I personally keep my fingers crossed for Murena and hope that it will be widely used in the future! Privacy is a fundamental right - which unfortunately everyone still has to protect themselves at the moment, with many invisible attackers.

I love Murena as well! I look forward to making another donation as soon as my income tax return check arrives! What worries me, however, is what happens if Murena starts getting “too popular”. There’s lots of speculating I can do (datacenters cost money, Google doesn’t like App Lounge, Microsoft doesn’t like Searx, CDNs, law enforcement…), but the takeaway is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to retain the levels of privacy Murena affords us if they have to scale to even a million users, let alone a billion. The will is there, and I do sincerely believe that Gael would never share data willingly, but /e/OS paying the bills purely on the donations of a small percentage of users, while Google and Samsung can pay their bills by data mining all of their users, is going to be an incredible test of the willpower of this organization.

I’m here for as long as Gael and company will have me, but I cannot shake the concern that too much popularity will work against Murena and the /e/Foundation eventually.

[DjogaRo]

@voyager529

but the takeaway is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to retain the levels of privacy Murena affords us if they have to scale to even a million users, let alone a billion

Why would they have to scale that far? There are other NextCloud hosting providers out there. I bet, when /e/OS’ install base grows like that, those will come up with compatible offerings. Which, I think, would be a good thing. What’s “devide and conquer” top-down, is “devide and prevent an escalation of power” bottom-up.

[merantza]

I gave up on any expectations of privacy years ago. What really attracted me to FairPhone was the possibility of a “ForeverPhone”. Replaceable parts and a promise of long support was what got me.

I resent glued together devices with a battery designed to fail pushing me to upgrade regularly at a thousand dollars + every few years. It’s just a secret subscription service Business Model. It really offends the Socialist in me! I wonder how many more devices could be sold with a ForeverPhone marketing push? I don’t think I’m the only one!!

[GabrielT]

My family has three samsung phones that each have more than 5 years. They are waterproof, though it was still reasonably easy to replace the battery every two years. Parts were available and the design made to be serviceable + we had waterproof phones at least for the first few years + the designs are more compact.
So I don’t think this is true that most phone manufacturers practice programmed obsolescence as most journalist love to say. Yes Apple is really implementing artificial software obsolescence, however, regarding android phones, the biggest and yet small drawback compared to Fairphones is the lack of access to the firmwares, be it for updates or VoLTEVoWifi for example.