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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
As soon as you start up a new Android phone, you get prompted to sign in with your Google account—but what if you don't want to do that? Maybe you want to take advantage of Android but limit what Google knows about you, or maybe you just prefer the alternative apps; whatever the case, here's how to live a Google-free Android life.
Right from the start we'll be honest and say it's not easy using Android without Google—but it is possible. If you want a more convenient life, then you need to sign right in when prompted. The big miss if you don't is the Google Play Store, but here we'll show you how to get around that and various other obstacles along the way.
We're assuming you're starting with a brand new Android phone fresh from the factory. You can de-Google-ify an existing Android handset, but you'll need to reset it first through the Settings app, to get back to the original setup screen. That means all your existing apps and data get wiped, so you'll need backups of all your important stuff somewhere.
Welcome to your new (or factory reset) Android phone! The prompt to sign in with Google arrives about five screens in, after you've chosen your language and connected up to wifi. When you're prompted to sign in, hit Skip instead, then hit Skip again to confirm that yes, you really do want to use Android without a Google account.
A couple of screens later, Google very kindly asks if you want to opt in to some extra Google services: Location tracking and system diagnostic reports. If you're not happy with either or both of these options, turn the relevant toggle switches off, then hit Agree to continue (you can't use a phone with regular Google-provided Android on it without agreeing to some basic terms and conditions).
And... you should then be in. Don't worry if you see a few Google apps, because they won't be connected to anything—Google Photos, for example, can work as a local image library manager without actually connecting to the cloud or a Google account. If there are any apps you want to get rid of, long-press on their icon and drag the icon up to the Uninstall link at the top.
[...] The big miss if you don't connect your Android phone to your Google account is the Google Play Store: Try and load up the Play Store app and you'll just be met with the sign in screen again. To get around this, you need to start sideloading apps through your Android phone's web browser.
In times gone by you would need to authorize "unknown" apps (not from the Play Store) in Settings, but modern versions of Android ask for authorization on an app-by-app basis. You've got two choices here: Either embrace the Amazon App Store, which isn't as comprehensive as Google's but has most of the big-name apps, or transfer apps over one by one as you need them from the excellent APKMirror repository.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday July 30 2018, @05:25PM (5 children)
Google open sourced Google Authenticator and RedHat maintains a fork as FreeOTP which is of course available in the F-Droid repo. So far they haven't tried adding Systemd to it or anything else really stupid. And it is open source so somebody else would just fork it again if they go rogue.
And second the suggestion for OSMAnd+ Funny story though; the very first time I tried it vs Google it didn't know where my destination was. Apparently it was an extension to an existing street that got a slightly different name and OSM didn't know. Thankfully I tried the search while still at home with net access, looked up the address on my desktop, saw what was going on and searched on the older street and got a hit. It does work, the interface is different, wouldn't call one better than the other, just different. Since both use the same Android TTS system the Mrs. still calls it the "Crazy Google Bitch." Google Maps got that nick due to some its more "interesting" suggestions... like ordering a U-Turn while speeding along on an Interstate in a city at almost 70 and knowing we were actually on course. GPS apparently became confused or something.
But normally, glitches aside, both Google And OSMAnd+ can navigate without a data plan, something I don't have, but I'm trying to get as much Google out of my life as possible. But do not overly trust any of these map systems yet. Look at the route it creates, study it to be able to follow it manually if you lose GPS lock for a few minutes (or it calls a sudden U-Turn where it shouldn't) and if possible look at the suggested route on a laptop / desktop with a good screen and / or compare to a paper map to see if it is putting you on a sub-optimal route and investigate whether it had a good reason (knows about a detour, road closing, etc) or is just being stupid. Since computers can't even route reliably yet I damned sure won't be trusting a self-driving car anytime soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @08:16PM
OsmAnd has recorded voice as well as TTS.
Multiple friends have independently commented on how sexy the English navigation voice sounds.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:55AM (3 children)
I don't get the systemd hate. It's never done me wrong, and we use it on hundreds of servers at work plus machines at home that have run it for years. Red Hat isn't using lawsuits or hunting people down and threatening them with knives if they don't use it.
Otherwise, thanks for the info. Google Maps and Waze have made me lazy, I don't plan trips in advance and most of the time it works fine. I have definitely had GPS systems go haywire. The first time it happened I didn't recognize the problem and was going in circles for about ten minutes before I realized it was directing me to drive past the same location for a third time. A phone power off, brief pause, and power back on usually fixes the problem for at least a week.
I guess I'll go back to driving the way I did until 2012 or so - research the route thoroughly before leaving the house.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:10PM (2 children)
It isn't just systemd, it is the entire ecosystem it is layering around itself in a clearly announced plan to "replace UNIX". We, the UNIX community at the core of GNU/Linux/X, see invaders who see our accumulated works as something to kill and wear its skin as they try to use it to market their new system to corporate accounts. The fiasco at Debian as RedHat forces rammed the conversion to AlienTech over loud objections should have been a wakeup call. It was, Devuan forked, but apparently you weren't listening. Once systemd appears the rest of the crap is forced in with it. udev, dbus, etc. are annoying enough on their own but now they too have been killed and systemd wears their skin. dhcp and ntp are now just new pustules on the systemd boil. Pottering has SAID his dream is to boot to a "full desktop" without any of the shell packages even installed, no GNU tools either. In other words, Windows atop a Linux kernel.
If you believe the broken bits will get fixed and everything will be OK, consider that Pottering's first disaster, pulseaudio, still doesn't always work right after how many years? The pulseaudio infection was first spotted in a distro before Windows Vista shipped and lead to a decade where audio was mostly unreliable except for those who simply jumped distros to ones without it. Ever wonder why every major audio producing application still supports several audio systems? Because many people still do not use pulseaudio, and audio works first time, every time for those folks.
What benefit does systemd bring? Faster boot? Devuan on a modern laptop boots so fast an external display can't display the boot messages because it won't lock on before the lightdm screen is up. Good luck reading it on the built in panel, it goes by really fast, read the logs. Meanwhile every subsystem it has infected has brought a year or more of pain, loss of features (and often permanent, as Pottering decrees them unneeded) and constant churn making it almost impossible for anyone not participating in active development to understand or troubleshoot them.
Now the idea of Windows atop Linux is not a threatening idea, no more than Android atop the Linux kernel is. What is threatening is RedHat's policy to exterminate UNIX wherever it hides while claiming that its substitute is UNIX.
And the incompetence is shocking. These Pottering types are as incompetent as the Microsoft hacks they probably are. Still have ONE machine running current Fedora. VirGL has been broken since the last version upgrade, power management has stopped working about two weeks ago, sound just started working again (was booting a very old kernel to have sound), last time we tried the grandkids couldn't play gcompris because of too much being broken, etc. Package management is collapsing. There might be thousands of packages but increasingly you have to install pretty much all of them. Example, just got a update notice on glusterfs. Of course I don't use that crap and would like to just be rid of it instead of bothering with updates. Well forget libvirt, qemu, libguestfs and all their deps too.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:12PM (1 child)
Again, are Poettering and Red Hat hunting down the Debian devs and blackmailing them into using systemd? Are they going after SysV init, Upstart, Runit, and GNU Shepherd maintainers and assassinating them? Is systemd under a proprietary license?
The people adopting it are using it because it seems to them to be the best solution available. There isn't coercion at any point. Anyone at any point can say, "I don't like the changes, I'm switching init systems" or "I don't like the changes, I'm forking systemd". There isn't enough interest. The fork "uselessd" (meant as both "UselessD" and "Use Less SystemD") that was to take what the contributors saw as the useful parts of systemd and throw out huge portions of it was widely publicized had just a few contributors before it was abandoned.
Red Hat isn't exterminating anything, it's all open source. Microsoft exterminates. Google exterminates, wrapping the open source of core of Linux in proprietary services so that the open source at the bottom is meaningless. Apple exterminates, offering a Unix that does what they allow and no means to change the core OS. Red Hat products are open source at every layer, all you pay for is support contracts. They can't kill any projects with that model - and they don't want to.
The "shocking incompetence" in systemd and pulseaudio has never hit me, or anyone I work with, or anyone I know that uses Linux.
I can't speak to Fedora. I haven't used it in some time.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:51PM
Physical violence probably wasn't involved but there was a lot of very nasty backroom politics around Debian being assimilated into RedHat's ecosystem that left enough ill will it is doubtful it blows over. Apparently the major (at least publicly stated) reason for the switch was just that, to be better integrated in RedHat's ecosystem and avoid the pain RedHat was inflicting on any distribution not adopting systemd. Few believe that was the major reason however, as demonstrated by the ability of a very few "Veteran UNIX Administrators" to build a systemd free fork. Building out the infrastructure to host the fork was more work than actually removing systemd. The truth is probably a lot closer to follow the money: Too many "Debian developers" now get a paycheck with RedHat Inc. on it. Those who don't hope to and realize publicly opposing them will carry a price.
Uselessd may have failed but Devuan just released a 2.0 and is chugging ahead toward a third release.