It’s worth watching, yes.
To understand the purpose of CalyxOS, you must understand the purpose of the project, of course.
We can’t simply say that it’s a terrible Custom ROM for privacy, as he did. It was quite wrong and in bad faith to say that a project that, yes, is much better than using a Stock ROM, however, the fact that he compared it to other Custom ROMs that also claim to focus on privacy and showed that CalyxOS doesn’t differ much from them is completely valid and truly a fact.
DivestOS, with only one developer at the helm, was much more hardened than it. Which makes one wonder why CalyxOS, with an entire team behind it, doesn’t follow the same example. It really is disappointing.
Want to prove it? Check out the website (https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm) he shows in the video and see for yourself.
Not only is comparing these not the point (CalyxOS has a different purpose than GrapheneOS), the chart is heavily biased towards Graphene. Take for example the whole section on privacy. They list Graphene specific features, note that Graphene has them, and make other roms look bad for “not having them”, or even provide incorrect information. “Storage Scopes” and “Contact Scopes” for example, two Graphene features, intended to make closed source apps “happy” with giving them fake permissions. Although there’s definitely a use for this feature, being much more FOSS focused, Calyx provides the option to isolate non-foss apps into a work profile. This is effectively doing something very similar, although more limited to the user. Or the “Tracking through Android Advertising ID?” column, which lists only Graphene as “Not part of the system”, and everything else as “Randomized ID”. Graphene runs the official Google play services “in a sandbox”, without modifying or patching anything significant. This also means Google’s implementation of Advertising ID is being used. This is not randomized, and worse for privacy than anything using MicroG. Calyx MicroG and Graphene Google Play Services are both opt in, yet the chart favors Graphene by claiming it doesn’t have the anti-feature.
Thanks for the TL;DR, I figured it would be a uneducated take, you saved me the time of watching it 🫡
It’s worth watching, yes. To understand the purpose of CalyxOS, you must understand the purpose of the project, of course. We can’t simply say that it’s a terrible Custom ROM for privacy, as he did. It was quite wrong and in bad faith to say that a project that, yes, is much better than using a Stock ROM, however, the fact that he compared it to other Custom ROMs that also claim to focus on privacy and showed that CalyxOS doesn’t differ much from them is completely valid and truly a fact. DivestOS, with only one developer at the helm, was much more hardened than it. Which makes one wonder why CalyxOS, with an entire team behind it, doesn’t follow the same example. It really is disappointing. Want to prove it? Check out the website (https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm) he shows in the video and see for yourself.
Not only is comparing these not the point (CalyxOS has a different purpose than GrapheneOS), the chart is heavily biased towards Graphene. Take for example the whole section on privacy. They list Graphene specific features, note that Graphene has them, and make other roms look bad for “not having them”, or even provide incorrect information. “Storage Scopes” and “Contact Scopes” for example, two Graphene features, intended to make closed source apps “happy” with giving them fake permissions. Although there’s definitely a use for this feature, being much more FOSS focused, Calyx provides the option to isolate non-foss apps into a work profile. This is effectively doing something very similar, although more limited to the user. Or the “Tracking through Android Advertising ID?” column, which lists only Graphene as “Not part of the system”, and everything else as “Randomized ID”. Graphene runs the official Google play services “in a sandbox”, without modifying or patching anything significant. This also means Google’s implementation of Advertising ID is being used. This is not randomized, and worse for privacy than anything using MicroG. Calyx MicroG and Graphene Google Play Services are both opt in, yet the chart favors Graphene by claiming it doesn’t have the anti-feature.