They can revoke usage. Say if you use app version 7 and the required app is version 8 then no transaction can be done. The app can be installed yet unusable. So it’s not because the app is installed and outdated that functionalities have to remain usable. Gaming servers do that all the time.

I’m pretty sure they already do that, not “just” warnings.

Banks sole business is making money by managing others people money, consequently I do imagine that they estimate that whatever they put online is safe enough and insured enough not be pragmatically speaking creating any risk for their consume. I imagine, and maybe naively so, that it’s a well enough regulated business so that if “shit happens” it’s on the bank to cover, not the customer.

what about just using Debian? It’s a bit hassle

What hassle? Genuinely curious.

If I need more installation I can install Aurora back. I do not know how frequently you install apps for me it is very, once a month at most.

Regarding critically typically apps do warn you when it’s the case, including financial apps. Usually if it’s truly critical they’ll stop working until you do update.

Why keep it if I don’t need it?

PS: Thanks for spotting the typo, fixed.

Ordered by preference, cascading down when it’s not present

• F-Droid : I’m used to it and know it relatively well
• Accrescent : comes from GrapheneOS but very few apps
• Obtainium : works well, very interesting principle, but limited shared configuration
• .apk from Website or repository : no reviews so have to do due diligence, updates also manual but just works
• Aurora : that’s my ultimate fallback. I install it, use anonymous mode then uninstall it.

And yes FWIW I do believe obtaining apps for GrapheneOS is the most challenging part. Installing it with the Web installer was trivial. Using it is great, very convenient. Getting apps which are not in F-Droid, not straightforward.

You don’t have to share your personal situation and I’m sorry to read that you are struggling. My point isn’t to argue that you must do like everyone else or that consumerism is good, rather than in the typical case (not a lot of time, hardware getting cheaper of the year, game assets being compressed already) switching to newer hardware is a much much more convenient solution. That’s why I warned about it.

running games on old storage devices that hold less than 32 GB and have terrible read and write speeds.

I’m confused. How about copying that to newer storage devices?

Also typically game assets are VERY well compressed so I would suggest doing a comparison with/without compression before a full on migration. Compression tools help but aren’t magical. If your assets are e.g. .jpg or .mp4 or .mp3 or a combination of that (as typically game assets are, including 3D models with their textures) then you can test yourself to .zip them (or bzip2 or whatever you prefer) and you will seem some gains but they’ll be nearly negligible, e.g. < 10% reduction.

related https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/10397-digital-minimalism-on-graphene-os-deleting-browser-disable-installing-apps/29

Yes, they do. Most users, even young kids, are freaking out when you tell them anybody at Facebook (or Microsoft, or Google, or whatever, or whomever they delegate access to, can be school superintendent, boss, sysadmin, etc) can access their data. They either don’t know about it, or knew about it once but decided it wasn’t “right” enough to keep in mind and ignored it since.

Most users DO care and are concerned but they are so convinced there are no possible alternatives they convinced themselves no matter how terrible it is, there is just nothing they can do about it.

Please ask around, take a random person, close or not, stranger or not, technical or not, and ask them (explain if you most) if they do have such concerns. I bet they do. If they don’t I’ll apologize for my naivety.

A lot of already great advice here, often clarifying that a computer that is not yours… is not yours.

What I would still add though is that you are NOT, and I’m very confident in saying this, the only one there, in your very school, to ask that question. In fact I would argue MOST users have the exact same concerns but they might even be aware that alternatives exist.

So… do not push back, or even just avoid, all this alone. Find others who have similar problems and solve them together.

There might be a Linux User Group already, join them. If there isn’t one, consider making it. It might just be you for few weeks, even month, but at least you will dedicate time and space to improve YOUR situation. Chances are though that others, even if only curious at first, might check what you are up to, if they can replicate that, etc.

Don’t feel isolate, move the needle for yourself first, in your corner, but be welcoming to others who are eager to contribute.

It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge while trying to tackle it with others.

It’s a pragmatic compromise. The assumption is that Google is not literally evil, solely a very large advertisement company which subsidize very cool hardware in order to sell more ads. It’s the same principle as using a rooted Meta Quest when one doesn’t even have a Facebook or WhatsApp account.

I imagine than everybody who is into that situation will move to Motorola or Valve Frame when those will become available. Until then the bet is that the hardware does not have hardware backdoors because so far nobody disclosed any.

If you really are into trusting hardware I recommend checking https://precursor.dev/ and similar initiatives.

I did mention Linux phones too but again that’s not for everyone.

IMHO it’s much better to use a GrapheneOS deGoogle Android device today, knowing the limitation, than using a Googled Android device today, Pixel or not, and complaining about all the limitations about it while waiting for a theoretical better solution that is simply not yet available.

Right, you actually can’t AFAIK but you can disable it.

It’s indeed not the point. GrapheneOS focus is on security. If you want to have complete control you’d better go with a Linux proper phone but AFAICT, unless you are fine with ~4hrs battery and/or can spend 1000€ on a device that very people have, it’s not for most.

Yes, I have a PinePhone and PinePhone Pro both with PostMarketOS so doing this is as easy as few sudo apk add packagename or sudo apk del firefox.

Now… if you want a daily driver then as few others hinted at, it’s much harder. I would instead, if deGoogle Android is an acceptable compromise for you, get a 2nd hand Pixel 8 or above, install GrapheneOS on it, remove the browser and that’s pretty much it already since it doesn’t come with an app store or equivalent. Well, there’s the GrapheneOS equivalent but there are ~10 apps on it at most last time I checked.

I don’t think it actually is. It’s only like that the very first time when you haven’t you this specific distribution itself. Once you know how the few extra step and understand the core principle, it’s trivial.

PS: I did tinker with NixOS, SteamOS and ROCKNIX.

I’m not sure.

I’m a professional tinkerer and I run Debian stable. OK ok it’s not an immutable distro but my point is that I do tinker, just NOT with my main OS.

I’ll tinker in containers, in VMs, in my ~/bin etc but NOT in what hosts all that.

So I would argue that what’s important for tinkerers is to establish clear boundaries on what they want to tinker on and what they do NOT want to tinker on, what can change vs what should never.

Try GNU Taler https://www.taler.net/

I’m aware (unfortunately) of the marketing claims and even if they might be true, as you say it is “for now”. So if it’s only temporary for that arm race, especially if held by a company who leaked its own code just days ago, then I have a hard time understanding why ‘zero-days are numbered’ because this title claims the dynamic itself is gone. That’s now my understanding, especially if other models are just marginally (which is hard to prove with models, finding proper metrics) worst than it.

See comment that shared https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/21/unauthorized-group-has-gained-access-to-anthropics-exclusive-cyber-tool-mythos-report-claims just few hours ago, and that’s not even sophisticated.

Anthropic and OpenAI have multiple times used this arm race rhetoric before and it worked. Their models are supposedly “too dangerous” to be released thus consequently they have to control access.

It might be true but so far what we have witnessed is that roughly equivalent models get released by others merely weeks or maybe months after, sometimes open, but the “moat” never lasted long so I’m questioning why it would be different this time.

That doesn’t make sense. Don’t the attackers have the same tools?

IMHO the question depends on :

• who you are (boring, rando, political dissident, journalist, etc)
• who you talk to (family, friends, work, etc)
• what alternatives actually exist

So… sure Signal is not perfect but if you can’t convince your family members to move to DeltaChat it sure beats using WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.