There is also signal-FOSS as an alternative to signal and Molly
Signal-FOSS
https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/
A fork of Signal for Android with proprietary Google binary blobs removed. Uses OpenStreetMap for maps and a websocket server connection, instead of Google Maps and Firebase Cloud Messaging.
add the repo to your app store to F-droid basic
https://fdroid.twinhelix.com/fdroid/repo/
The twinhelix repo is in the droidify and neostore repo list.
I install a full MX-Linux distro on an old 32Gb usb drive.
Particularly helpful when family or friends have IT problems.
I install the latest downloaded distro on a usb with dd:
sudo fdisk -l
sudo dd if=MX-23.5_x64.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress
The /dev/sdX could be sdb, sdc, sdd, or microsd /dev/nvme0n1
boot into the live distro F12,
fully update the live disk.
set it up as you would your new linux device. network manager, web browser, text editor, email, VPN, etc and any tools you want.
whatever you change here goes into your new usb distro settings
once complete, install and run bleachbit as user and as root to clear all the caches and install data.
install another blank usb into the laptop
Open MX-Linux tools to create a snapshot
select Snapshot.
select a different snapshot directory. use the blank usb you just inserted,
usually: /dev/sdb
rename the snapshot to a name of choice.
once the creation of the snapshot is complete, safely remove the usb drive and shut down the live distro.
boot into your daily driver.
Insert the usb drive with the MX-Linux snapshot, and transfer it to a new folder/directory.
insert the 32Gb usb. format it with gparted, fat32 is fine
open the folder/directory with the snapshot.iso
open a terminal
then install the snapshot onto the usb with dd.
sudo fdisk -l
sudo dd if=snapshot.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress
The /dev/sdX could be sdb, sdc, sdd, or microsd /dev/nvme0n1
always double check with:
sudo fdisk -l
I am sure it will creep back up once the MX 25 has been released with Debian 13 on 9th August.
https://mxlinux.org/blog/changes-coming-with-mx-25/
Optional distro downloads for Systemd or sysVinit.
use Mx-Linux on my old T450 laptop.
works great for my needs.
I have been using disktest to overwrite my SSD’s.
I overwrite the SSD’s before encryption. works just as well on HDD’s too.
A 2TB HDD takes about 3.5 hours to overwrite with the encrypted seed
A 250GB SSD takes about 17 minutes to overwrite with the encrypted seed
https://crates.io/crates/disktest
https://github.com/mbuesch/disktest
install with cargo
cargo uninstall disktest
much faster than your usual suspects like dd.
it runs as root: so add this $PATH to the root .bashrc export PATH=/root/.cargo/bin:$PATH
recent test run on 250Gb ssd with just write with no verify:
disktest --write -j0 /dev/nvme0n1
The generated --seed is: omNw4JreY1ZVAfwD4dgooF061R10Ra0vnmYv5SrU Use this seed for subsequent --verify.
Writing /dev/nvme0n1 (512 bytes sectors), starting at position 0 bytes… [15:09 / 00h:00m:10s] Wrote 7.62 GiB (8.18 GB) @ 779.3 MiB/s …
[15:26 / 00h:17m:16s] Done. Wrote 238.47 GiB (256.06 GB, 256059113472 bytes) @ 235.5 MiB/s. Successfully dropped file caches. Generated --seed omNw4JreY1ZVAfwD4dgooF061R10Ra0vnmYv5SrU
Success!
to check my SSD’s I use:
prometheus-smartctl-exporter
sudo smartctl -i -a /dev/nvme0n1
yes, you can still use signal, molly and signal-foss. I have signal on my desktop and some of my family have molly and some signal-Foss.
The signal servers are primarily hosted on AWS with redundancies on Azure or Google Cloud. Molly and Siganl-FOSS use these too.
The official Android app generally uses the proprietary Google Play Services, although it is designed to be able to work without them.
Hence we use the signal-FOSS and Molly on our phones that do not have any google services.
Like any AOSP rom, Lineage, there are no google play services.
Its the google firebase that manages push notifications that seems to be the main privacy issue.
MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush, not google firebase,
https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android