194 lines
12 KiB
HTML
194 lines
12 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">
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<head>
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<meta charset="utf-8"/>
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<title>FAQ | GrapheneOS</title>
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<meta name="description" content="Frequently asked questions about GrapheneOS."/>
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</head>
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<body>
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<nav>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/">GrapheneOS</a></li>
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<li><a href="/install">Install</a></li>
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<li><a href="/build">Build</a></li>
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<li><a href="/usage">Usage</a></li>
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<li class="active"><a href="/faq">FAQ</a></li>
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<li><a href="/releases">Releases</a></li>
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<li><a href="/source">Source</a></li>
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<li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
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<li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
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</ul>
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</nav>
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<div id="content">
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<h1 id="faq">
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<a href="#faq">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
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</h1>
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<h2 id="table-of-contents">
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<a href="#table-of-contents">Table of contents</a>
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</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>
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<a href="#device-support">Device support</a>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#supported-devices">Which devices are supported?</a></li>
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<li><a href="#recommended-devices">Which devices are recommended?</a></li>
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<li><a href="#future-devices">Which devices will be supported in the future?</a></li>
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<li><a href="#when-devices">When will more devices be supported?</a></li>
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</ul>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="device-support">
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<a href="#device-support">Device support</a>
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</h2>
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<h2 id="supported-devices">
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<a href="#supported-devices">Which devices are supported?</a>
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</h2>
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<p>GrapheneOS has official production support for the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3,
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Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL. The release tags for these devices have official
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builds and updates available. These devices meet the stringent privacy and security
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standards and have substantial upstream and downstream hardening specific to the
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devices.</p>
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<p>Many other devices are supported by GrapheneOS at a source level, and it can be
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built for them without modifications to the existing GrapheneOS source tree. Device
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support repositories for the Android Open Source Project can simply be dropped into
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the source tree, with at most minor modifications within them to support GrapheneOS.
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In most cases, substantial work beyond that will be needed to bring the support up to
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the same standards. For most devices, the hardware and firmware will prevent providing
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a reasonably secure device, regardless of the work put into device support.</p>
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<p>GrapheneOS also supports generic targets, but these aren't suitable for production
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usage and are only intended for development and testing use. For mobile devices, the
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generic targets simply run on top of the underlying device support code (firmware,
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kernel, device trees, vendor code) rather than shipping it and keeping it updated. It
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would be possible to ship generic system images with separate updates for the device
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support code. However, it would be drastically more complicated to maintain and
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support due to combinations of different versions and it would cause complications for
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the hardening done by GrapheneOS. The motivation doesn't exist for GrapheneOS, since
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full updates with deltas to minimize bandwidth can be shipped for every device and
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GrapheneOS is the only party involved in providing the updates. For the same reason,
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it has little use for the ability to provide out-of-band updates to system image
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components including all the apps and many other components.</p>
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<p>Some of the GrapheneOS sub-projects support other operating systems on a broader
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range of devices. Device support for Auditor and AttestationServer is documented in
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the <a href="https://attestation.app/about">overview of those projects</a>. The
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<a href="https://github.com/GrapheneOS">hardened_malloc</a> project supports nearly
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any Linux-based environment due to official support for musl, glibc and Bionic along
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with easily added support for other environments. It can easily run on non-Linux-based
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operating systems too, and supporting some like HardenedBSD is planned but depends on
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contributors from those communities.</p>
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<h2 id="recommended-devices">
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<a href="#recommended-devices">Which devices are recommended?</a>
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</h2>
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<p>The recommended devices with the best hardware, firmware and software security
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along with the longest future support time are the Pixel 3a, Pixel 3a XL, Pixel 3 and
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Pixel 3 XL. The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are budget devices meeting the same security
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standards as the more expensive flagship devices. Compared to the Pixel 3a and 3a XL,
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the flagships have wireless charging, dual front-facing speakers, the Pixel Visual
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Core supporting HDR+ with compatible apps on GrapheneOS, a higher-end screen, slightly
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more durable glass and of course a stronger CPU, GPU, cellular radio, etc. You should
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get one of the budget devices if these things aren't compelling to you. The Pixel 3a
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and 3a XL do have one extra feature: an analog headphone port as an alternative to
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wireless audio and digital USB-C audio.</p>
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<h2 id="future-devices">
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<a href="#future-devices">Which devices will be supported in the future?</a>
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</h2>
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<p>Devices are carefully chosen based on their merits rather than the project aiming
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to have broad device support. Broad device support is counter to the aims of the
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project, and the project will eventually be engaging in hardware and firmware level
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improvements rather than only offering suggestions and bug reports upstream for those
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areas. Much of the work on the project involves changes that are specific to different
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devices, and officially supported devices are the ones targeted by most of this
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ongoing work.</p>
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<p>Devices need to be meet the standards of the project in order to be considered as
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potential targets. In addition to support for installing other operating systems,
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standard hardware-based security features like the hardware-backed keystores, verified
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boot, attestation and various hardware-based exploit mitigations need to be available.
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Devices also need to have decent integration of IOMMUs for isolating components such
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as the GPU, radios (NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular), media decode / encode, image
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processor, etc. as if the hardware / firmware support is missing or broken, there's
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not much that the OS can do to provide an alternative. Devices with support for
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alternative operating systems as an afterthought will not be considered. Devices need
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to have proper ongoing support for their firmware and software specific to the
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hardware like drivers in order to provide proper full security updates too. Devices
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that are end-of-life and no longer receiving these updates will not be supported.</p>
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<p>In order to support a device, the appropriate resources also need to be available
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and dedicated towards it. Releases for each supported device need to be robust and
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stable, with all standard functionality working properly and testing for each of the
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releases.</p>
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<p>Hardware, firmware and software specific to devices like drivers play a huge role
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in the overall security of a device. The goal of the project is not to slightly
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improve some aspects of insecure devices and supporting a broad set of devices would
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be directly counter to the values of the project. A lot of the low-level work also
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ends up being fairly tied to the hardware.</p>
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<h2 id="when-devices">
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<a href="#when-devices">When will more devices be supported?</a>
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</h2>
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<p>Broader device support can only happen after the community (companies,
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organizations and individuals) steps up to make substantial, ongoing contributions to
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making the existing device support sustainable. Once the existing device support is
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more sustainable, early research and development work for other devices can begin.
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Once a device is deemed to be a worthwhile target, the project needs maintainers to
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develop and maintain support for it including addressing device-specific issues that
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are uncovered, which will include issues uncovered in the device support code by
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GrapheneOS hardening features.</p>
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<p>It's not really a matter of time but rather depends on community support for the
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project increasing. As an open source project, the way the get something to happen in
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GrapheneOS is to contribute to it, and this is particularly true for device support
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since it's very self-contained and can be delegated to separate teams for each
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device. If you want to see more devices supported sooner, you should get to work on
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identifying good devices with full support for alternative operating systems with
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verified boot, etc. and then start working on integrating and testing support.</p>
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<p>It should also be clear that the expectation is for people to buy a device to run
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GrapheneOS, rather than GrapheneOS supporting their existing devices. This will only
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become more true if GrapheneOS is successful enough to accomplish the goal of having
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devices produced based on an SoC reference design with minor improvements for privacy
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and security. Broad device support is the opposite of what the project wants to
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achieve in the long term.</p>
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</div>
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<footer>
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<a href="/"><img src="https://grapheneos.org/logo.png" width="512" height="512" alt=""/>GrapheneOS</a>
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<ul id="social">
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<li><a href="https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS">Twitter</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://github.com/GrapheneOS">GitHub</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS">Reddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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</footer>
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</body>
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</html>
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