Graphene is the best by a long shot, security wise and degoogling wise. In fact, you can use GrapheneOS with absolutely zero Google services running on your phone. /e/OS uses MicroG which while better than your usual Android phone, still runs with privileged access to your device. This is in contrast to GrapheneOS' optional sandboxed Google services implementation which gives Google the same privileges any other app on your phone would have.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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Thank you for detailing in one paragraph what I was unable to understand after reading articles about it all last evening.
It is also largely questionable.
/e/OS has MicroG, and that runs as a system service. You can disable most of it, and if you're not using any App that needs Google services, I doubt it really does much.
It is possible to use Graphene without using any Google at all. However... Doing so will break almost every app out there. Anything that needs push notifications, AndroidAuto, a thousands more things. So you end up using Graphene with Sandboxed Google services.
And we get into the debate. Is it better to take the official Google Play Services, which we all consider malicious, and run it in a sandbox, or take an open source private, and trusted implementation (MicroG) and run it as a system service?
It is at the very least largely debatable.
It is best to run GOS or Lineage OS completely Google-free.
It is best from many points of view but, as far as I understand, this community is about providing knowledge and tools, and leaving it up to the individual users to asses their threat modeling and determine the extent of the acceptable compromise?
Edit: in every use of connected technologies there are privacy trade-offs, and privacy may not be the only concern on a user's plate.
The Fairphone mentioned in the opening has the more ethical production and spare parts support, that can be a concern for many users. Ultimately it's for them to decide. Maybe we bore them and they just get a third hand iPhone, which is still largely a privacy improvement over stock Android.