Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
After being on a specific custom Android ROM (aftermarket firmware) for a year, I changed to a ROM to fully use Google services for a game that needed it to run. I’ve been using microG which is an open-source implementation of Google services but has limited features and I can’t use it to sign in to the game. Three months in, the game has been updated and I can log in to that game without the need of Google services so here I go again wiping my device storage and installing another custom ROM but this time I discovered a custom ROM that’s been also utilizing microG built-in and has security and privacy features.
Enter CalyxOS. What separates this to other custom ROMs is that this has verified boot and cab relock the bootloader. This is a huge deal in terms of security as this prevents others accessing your information through fastboot. Most custom ROMs out there need to have an unlocked bootloader to function. This method is also being utilized by GrapheneOS, but in this ROM, you can’t use microG and most apps that require it will not function properly. CalyxOS circumvent this by implementing microG to make the device functional in most cases.
From their website, they describe the features as:
you are empowered by the combined expertise of the Internet privacy community
‘de-googled’ Android - does not put your data in google’s cloud or constantly report your location to google
you can make encrypted phone calls directly, using the built-in integration for Signal and WhatsApp calls
you are warned when you make or receive an unencrypted phone call
text messages are encrypted and a timer can be set so they disappear
advertising and trackers blocked via DuckDuckGo Browser and DuckDuckGo as default search provider
web browsing is anonymized via Tor Browser
built-in free “Virtual Private Network” services from trusted organizations protect you from being spied on
your phone is receiving regular, timely, automatic security updates
your data is backed up with strong encryption to your personal cloud server or to USB storage
At first, you can see that this is just another custom ROM with a bunch of privacy features as described above. The security feature of relocking the bootloader is really a big difference of it from other custom ROMs.
Almost a month of using it, I can say that it is very comparable to using LineageOS with microG. Very minimal features has been added from AOSP. This is also my first time using a device with relockable bootloader. There are some minor bugs that I’ve encounter but most of it has been recognized by the developers and their GitLab page is active.
As for the usability, since I’ve been using microG before, nothing has changed in this case. I still get most of my apps from F-Droid which like Google Playstore, but it is a repository of free and open source software for Android. My most used applications are:
AntennaPod: Easy-to-use, flexible and open-source podcast manager and player
Overall, I am having fun using it. I might continue using it until my device has stopped receiving security updates. I’ve been waiting for the first update of CalyxOS for my device to see if I will encounter problems.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” 1
hiime hime!! hime!
suki suki daisuki
hime!! hime!!
kira kira rin ☆
kimi to minna ireba watashi tte zettai muteki
hiime hime!! hime!!
suki suki daisuki
hime!! hime!!
kira kira rin ☆
ookiku naare mahou kakete mo
hime wa hime na no hime na no da
hime!! RABU★hime FAITO ♪
As the season ends, these two songs stood out for me.
After using an Ubuntu-based distro1 for about a year, I decided to distro-hopped again in the past two months. The machine that I’ve been doing this is quite old and showing signs of failing drive and other internal components. Sadly, the Wi-Fi and bluetooth card died and accessing the internet from my phone using USB tethering is quite a hassle too.
Due to a now faulty machine, I decided to get a replacement. Of course it came with Windows as it’s operating system. I installed all the necessary updates on it and after setting it up, Windows is taking 2 GB of RAM at idle. Nice.
So after giving Windows a fair use (1 hour), I immediately replaced it with Debian. I used Openbox as my window manager and the experience is a breeze. The RAM usage as expected is pretty low at around 250 to 290MB. After 3 days of playing around with this new acquired machine and Debian, I read about the new release of Pop!_OS. I’ve heard about this project before but I really haven’t taken a deep look at it since I assumed it is just another Ubuntu-based distro. What caught my attention is their Pop Shell implementation. It is basically a GNOME extension which adds a tiling-window functionality on top of GNOME. Also, the project supports a wide range of hardware out of the box, and the easy setup of having graphics card drivers. These made my try out the iso and will force me to use GNOME for the first time again in 4 years. In the end, I replaced Debian with Pop.
I’ve been using it for about a week now and so far, I’m impressed. GNOME seems to be faster now, and I’m looking to use it for a quite a while. All hardware works out of the box, and what surprised me is that my machine runs cooler now compared to my setup in Debian. The Pop shell is good, although I prefer floating windows for now on this desktop environment. I’m monitoring the progress though on their GitHub page. I’m having fun now using this distro.
So far, my distro hopping came to a temporary end for this past week. I now have time for other things.
Rogue Waves occur when a larger wave appears in a group of smaller waves. In some circumstances these can lead to an exaggerated ‘Spike Wave’, or a crashing wave resembling the Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.
This is cool. Here’s a video from PBS on explaining the history of the Hokusai’s Great Wave.
Linux Mint > Solus Budgie/Mate > Archlabs > Manjaro i3/Openbox > Regolith Linux > Bunsenlabs
Distro hopping history for the past month, I need to settle down.