Calyx OS- Everything you need to know-
Fun fact for the past week I’ve not been using android or ios I’ve been using something called Calyx os and it’s the most fascinating operating system you’ve never heard of. I’m going to tell you why there’s a need for it. What exactly it is? How it’s better than normal android? Like some of the stuff it does is a complete game changer and then how much of a threat. It is to Google. Okay, so the one thing that we need to establish for this to make any sense is that android at its very core is open source meaning that its code is completely public and because of that there are no hidden trackers or spyware, Google made it this way. Because back when it started they had nothing.
They were behind apple in the race for a smartphone operating system and so the way they encouraged people to adopt android and develop for. It was by using the fact that it’s completely free and open but this is changing as android started to explode in popularity. Google realized well hey this is great but we’re not really benefiting from this for as long as android remains open source. The code is everyone’s. It doesn’t really belong to us. What we want is really to channel this user base that we’ve built up and push them towards closed source. Google products that do make us money like our chrome browser. So as the years have gone on Google has one by one been taking the core features of android. The calendar, the music app, the keyboard, the camera and improving them. But then making the improved versions of these apps closed source instead of open.
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They’ve made it such that for you to use YouTube, Gmail maps or even any app that just has Google services. In its code like Uber. Then you have to consent to handing your data to Google play services whose code base and inner workings are completely hidden. We don’t know what data is being collected. We just know that data is being collected an average android phone connects to Google servers once every 4.5 minutes to send them info about you some of it for your benefit to allow your apps to work. But some of it probably not you’ve got to remember that first and foremost Google is an advertising company.
So there’s the obvious implication that at least some of this data will be used to just squeeze more money out of users by laser targeting them with just the right ads at just the right time. But there are bigger implications. Because we know that this data is not always just kept within Google. There are plenty of governments around the world who want to control and censor their populations and Google has been shown to have willingly handed over user data when asked for it by those governments. We’ve even had cases where innocent people have been taken to court because their Google location data has shown that they were near the scene of a crime. How did law enforcement get that data Google gave it to them?
I mentioned that at its very core if you stripped away all those extras from Google and your service providers android is open source right well kalix uses that core but instead of having Google play services as the layer that sits on top of that it uses something called micro g which you could think of as a bit like a fake id for your phone. It creates a random anonymous unique identifier which allows it to be registered as a certified Google device. But one for which your activity can’t be traced back to you. So I can use Google maps, I can watch YouTube videos, I can download apps without needing to sign into a single account and using this os you get not one but two app stores. You have android which provides you with 100 open source applications whose code is completely public and so by their very nature cannot steal your data.
But then also the aurora store which is super interesting it’s basically the play store except when you download an app through it, instead of you going directly to Google and requesting that app it’s aurora. Who goes to Google and gets that app for you. So the only info about you that Google sees is a random email address that the aurora store creates for you. The only thing it can’t do right now is let you pay for apps. I think they’re working on that but what’s really cool is that also unlike the play store aurora tells you for every single app how many and which trackers it comes with you’re starting to get the idea. Calyx os basically has most of the main perks of android but I’ve barely touched on this yet. You will not believe the privacy features for example.
It has a built-in firewall that allows you to restrict what level of internet access that you want each of your apps to have. Let’s say for example that I really want to use the closed source Google pixel camera app because really the quality of Google’s open source android camera kind of sucks but at the same time I’m worried about the faces of my friends and family potentially being stored on a server somewhere. Well now I can still download the app and then just use the firewall to cut off its communications with Google fun fact doing this also removes ads and extends your battery life because you’re limiting the amount of processes that are happening in the background.
I’ve actually got the exact same phone here pixel 5 and this one’s running android and when I tested the battery side by side this isn’t a conclusive experiment but I found that calyx os lasted six percent longer which is still significant plus it gives you supreme control over app permissions including a visualization of how many times each permission of your phone has been accessed but on top of that it has a permanently active free VPN baked into it to make your internet traffic untraceable. That said I’ve turned mine off because the fact that it is a single server based all the way in New York does bottleneck my speed these are just such thoughtful features for example on calyx os. When you go into the dialler and call someone by default instead of using a normal voice call which can be snooped on. It will do a signal call to them which is end-to-end encrypted.
In fact they’ve literally managed to swap every single data gathering app for a clean alternative that doesn’t feel like a compromise. They swapped Google chrome for chromium which is basically chrome but without all the proprietary extras Google maps has gone. In place of open street maps even Google drive is gone and instead in its place you have seed vault which can back up all your files both to a local USB drive and an open source cloud solution called nextcloud. But this whole privacy thing it’s about more than just privacy from Google. It’s also just privacy from everyone else.
For example if you go into the dialler, you have a list of helplines things like the number for domestic abuse in your region or childline or suicide hotlines and this software will know that when you dial those numbers not to save them in your call log. In case someone in your own home tries to pry they’ve even got. I just think this is such a wacky interesting feature a panic button. So if I hold down my power button I can see emergency services and the option to shut down as usual but also this third option and I can configure that button to do pretty much wherever I want wanted to. I can make it hide my private messages, I can make it delete certain apps, I can even make it factory reset my phone. If I get into a really sticky situation I spent the last two days trying to fault this os but I’m struggling like yes the default calyx os user interface is kind of grim but it’s got enough customization controls that you can pretty much recreate.
The look of any other company’s home screen. Yes there are some Google features that you just can’t use on this phone without logging into your Google account even when you have micro g like for example. If I just want to plot a route on Google maps I can do that anonymously but if I then want to quick select from my past routes then I am going to have to log in because Google needs to know which user I am but this is kind of the whole appeal of an operating system like this installing alex. Once is not just going to immediately make you disappear off the grid like you never existed but it is going to give you that control back it’s going to mean that you can pick the level of privacy you want based on the features.
You need as opposed to just defaulting to sharing everything this all seems a bit too good to be true and so at this point I started wondering who made this why isn’t everyone using calyx os instead of android and should Google be worried about this after all it’s basically encouraging people to use Google services without Google getting the full benefit from that. This only works on Google pixel devices besides for the time being at least even though Google and other companies do have piles of data on us and even though there does seem to be a growing population who would go to great lengths to protect their privacy. For the vast majority it’s still not enough of an incentive to go through even the minor effort of installing something like this.
There’s no hard evidence that for an average user in a democratic society giving away their data causes them any harm and so this entire pitch of trying to protect that data. It doesn’t really carry any urgency. I’m the same and to be honest the only reason I can even do this talk tech with you and make a living from it is because of these trackers and spyware that Google uses. So it has its positives too oh while you’re out there. Recently just get calyx os working on a xiaomi phone and I could see the appeal of it let’s just say xiaomi said yeah sure we’ll use calyx os on one of our models then straight away without any effort on their part.
They’ve already got their slogan sorted keep your private stuff private no probably not that slogan actually but I guess what makes this really tricky is that xiaomi would then be running the risk of getting on the wrong side of Google which given how much they rely on them may not be the best idea it’s tricky one. Someone who is more privacy conscious who knows maybe one day this will be the norm okay at this point. I probably don’t need to tell you what a VPN is if you either want to browse the internet anonymously change the location of your device to another country to watch tv shows from that country or just avoid censorship or even if all you want is to escape data throttling from your internet service provider then a VPN is the way to go.
