from Hacker News

DivestOS ROM shuts after ten years

by azalemeth on 12/27/24, 8:26 PM with 77 comments

• by flippyhead on 12/27/24, 8:44 PM

  It's funny, I often hear, for the first time, about interesting projects just as they are shutting down. I wish there was some kind of pre-emptive news service that would tell me about them BEFORE they shutdown! Like maybe some kind of quantum computer internet thing that lets you time travel but just via the web browser.

• by surgical_fire on 12/27/24, 9:37 PM

  I used Divest OS on an old phone for a while. It was really good. I later replaced it for Lineage OS, because I needed a few specific apps that needed Google services, unfortunately.

  It was awesome to breathe life into old devices of you don't need Google services on them. Kinda sad to see it ending.

• by replete on 12/28/24, 12:57 AM

  RIP DivestOS, truly a top-tier project.

  Not just the best alternative to GrapheneOS for non-pixel devices, but also a suite of other apps such as Mull, an Android Firefox fork.

  This really was a passion project and SkewedZeppelin deserves much respect for the monumental amount of quality work that was involved in this, at massive personal cost. Wish him the best for the future and whatever else he does next.

  Thanks for the 3 years of faultless updates. Not sure who else could fill those boots to be honest.

• by Evidlo on 12/27/24, 8:38 PM

  This seems really sudden. Is there any other info besides a handful of bullets?

  This was one of the few ROMS that still supported my old Android.

• by BugsJustFindMe on 12/27/24, 8:38 PM

  I guess it doesn't matter anymore, but it took me a lot of clicks to understand what this actually is/does.

• by zozbot234 on 12/28/24, 12:40 AM

  Much of the older hardware that has working DivestOS builds could potentially be supported by postmarketOS or similar projects. Hopefully the code bases and whatever else is needed to make these builds work can get safely archived before the project shuts down for good.[0] Of course it would take a lot of work to try and get the hardware working under a modern kernel w/ no userspace blobs, etc. but it's worth leaving that possibility open if at all possible.

  [0] AIUI, we don't even have a proper list of what hardware was supported by the older CyanogenMod releases that were replaced by LineageOS. (You can find archived builds from the old CyanogenMod on archive.org etc. but the state of completeness is quite unclear.) It's worth trying to avoid a similar outcome here.

• by joemazerino on 12/27/24, 8:39 PM

  DivestOS was a good ROM that combined the functionality of LineageOS with security of graphreem. It will be missed.

• by palata on 12/27/24, 11:40 PM

  Oh, it seems like I will need to find an alternative to Mull on Android, then :(

• by grizzles on 12/27/24, 9:07 PM

  I want a (preferably open source) android phone without spam. I'd pay a healthy amount for it. I don't want to flash roms or do anything like that.

  Anyone tried the Fairphone? How is it for notification spam?

• by gpvos on 12/27/24, 10:46 PM

  This is rather sudden. I see in earlier news that DivestOS was submitted to the FLOSS/fund in November.

• by neilv on 12/28/24, 2:20 AM

  This is led by one person, but with a large community, yet one person can just shut down everything, including Web forums and chat rooms?

  Is the situation that no one else is willing to sustain it? Or no one else trustworthy?

  Also, is there any funds left over?

• by sourraspberry on 12/28/24, 1:20 AM

  Any reasons given?

  Always sad to see projects like this go. This was probably the best alternative to GrapheneOS for non-Pixel devices.

• by blowsand on 12/27/24, 8:59 PM

  https://divestos.org/pages/about https://divestos.org/pages/faq

  “DivestOS is a full-time passion project (not a company) maintained solely by Tavi since 2014. It has many goals, but primarily: prolonging the life-span of discontinued devices, enhancing user privacy, and providing a modest increase of security where/when possible.”