[aklug] Towards a more free Android phone

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Hey guys, I've mentioned I have a pretty deep distrust for my Android
phone, between the proprietary software that ships with it and the
privacy-invading software and Google tie-ins installed. That's pretty
much still where I am... however, I've learned a few rather
interesting things looking into the issue. Here's some things I've
come across so far:

* The official marketplace is, of course, for the most part filled
with either commerical proprietary software (pay to download) or free
(as in beer) proprietary software. However, there is a repository of
free (as in freedom) software available for Android, that is pretty
easy to use through a package manager app, called F-Droid:

https://f-droid.org/

To use it, download and install Fdroid.apk. However, to do this, you
must enable "install apps from non-market sources" in your settings,
or Android will not even allow you to download the file! It may take a
few minutes to first sync with the repository, but after that it is
pretty easy and straight forward to use. At present, there are not a
whole lot of apps (100ish?) but there are some rather useful ones.

* You can root your Android pretty easily with a program called
Androot. (At least, it was easy on my HTC Hero.) This program installs
a "su" program on your phone that allows you to grant super user
privileges to applications that request it. (You must confirm each
initial request.) This is not the same as a full firmware replacement,
but it allows you to do a lot of extra things to control your Android
phone:

http://theunlockr.com/2010/09/27/how-to-root-the-htc-hero-androot-method/

* There is a program in the official market called Rom Toolkit, which
allows you to do a bunch of interesting things to your phone once you
grant the app root privileges. Most significant is the ability to
delete system applications that come pre-installed with the phone,
that the normal app manager won't allow you to delete. Some of these
apps are useless garbage that definitely shouldn't be considered
"system" applications in the first place (e.g., the Facebook app) and
some of them are questionable apps like the "DRM Data Protection System".

Sadly, the Rom Toolkit itself is proprietary... there doesn't seem to
be a FOSS equivalent in F-Droid... but at least the locked-down
version is free.

* In F-Droid, there is a Tor client available called Orbot, which
provides Tor through a Socks proxy on localhost, plus an accompanying
browser called Orweb which can route through this proxy, as well as
provide a number of other useful privacy related services (cookie
blocking, JavaScript blocking, etc.) I'll admit I've had some issues
getting the "transparent proxy" part of Orbot to work (i.e.,
proxifying all network communication automatically) but it seems to
work fine in regular mode (i.e., Tor/Socks capable apps can use it).

Anyway, I hope somebody else finds that info useful or, at least,
interesting.

- --
frigidcode.com
indicium.us
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Received on Mon Mar 19 23:54:26 2012