GRUB on Librem 5

Hardware Librem 5
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Has anyone here tried to run GRUB on their Librem 5? It seems like GRUB might serve the same purpose as Titanium backup does on an Android phone. If that works, then perhaps the next step would be to put Android AOSP on to the phone as a second OS (with PureOS still there also). So you install Android too, and then Google the Android up with everything Google needs for any app to authenticate and run correctly. The idea would be to run the phone in PureOS most of the time. But when you need a banking app or some kind of app that won’t run under PureOS, you reboot the phone in to Android and use the apps that you need there before switching back to PureOS. You switch back to PureOS with only a reboot. The benefit would be that PureOS could remain completely pure and uncompromisingly safe for privacy and security, no exceptions what-so-ever in PureOS, to security when you need to obtain any and all of a Googled phone’s functionality. You would then temporarily leave PureOS to get full authentication by Google when needed, in their eco-system too. It becomes a place for very short visits, but not where you live.

In such a configuration, Google and all of Google’s advertisers might only see you for just a few minutes once per day, once per week, or once per month. All they’ll know about you then is what they can get from your few minutes using only a few apps before you disappear again to a place that can not be tracked and spied on. So you disappear for a long time again before you can create or communicate any substantive history there. They also get nothing from your use of PureOS, which is where you are most of the time. But to get this to work, the Librem 5 would need the ability to run a fully Googled instance of Android. Has anyone here got that working yet?

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grub-common package from PureOS Maintainers is installed there by default.

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That would make full partition encryption mandatory for the PureOS root partition.

Getting this all to coexist would be challenging. It’s not a terrible idea if you really can’t avoid Android but I don’t suppose Purism will spend a lot of effort getting it working.

A starting point might be … erase the disk and see whether Android works at all (by itself) on the Librem 5. Of course you would back up the disk (containing your existing PureOS) before erasing it unless there is nothing to lose that you can’t get back.

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This is not exactly true. It would mean that Android would have the access to the PureOS partition and would be able to compromise it easily (the non-encrypted, boot part). You would probably need to use some kind of verification to be on a safe side.

By the way, on a Pinephone, you can boot from a microSD by inserting it, so the main OS can’t compromise the microSD operating system.

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In the case then for Pinephone, you could use a secure OS on the Pinephone most of the time. Then carry a googled-up Androud OS on an SD card in your wallet or on a Keychain. Then swap out and reboot as needed. The only problem is that the Pinephone hardware is not fully secure and that unless you can get PureOS to run on the Pinephone, the OS isn’t fully secure either.

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