What is replicant android

Replicant is a fully free Android distribution running on several devices, a free software mobile operating system putting the emphasis on freedom and privacy/security. It is based on LineageOS and replaces or avoids every proprietary component of the system, such as user-space programs and libraries as well as firmwares.
Replicant aims to be an ethical system: it does not ship nor recommend the use of non-free software.

Many different devices are supported by Replicant, to an extent specific to each device. Basic features such as graphics, sound and telephony (if applicable) are supposed to be working for each device (if not, developers are confident they will work soon).

Replicant is a community-led effort, currently driven by few developers. Not every piece of software in Replicant should be expected to be fully-featured nor entirely reliable, even though developers are trying their best.

History

Replicant was founded in 2010 as a way to gather initiatives aiming to free the system running on the HTC Dream, the first publicly-available Android device. The project was started by members of LibrePlanet Italia and Software Freedom Conservancy. The first usable version of Replicant was based upon Android 1.5 as released by the Android Open Source Project: after some work, basic functionalities of the HTC Dream were working. Starting from version 2.2, Replicant stopped using AOSP as a base and instead started using CyanogenMod, which contains support for more devices.

Over time, various initial members of the project retired, leaving Denis «GNUtoo» Carikli as the only active developer of the project. However, in April 2011 Paul Kocialkowski, a user of Replicant, started getting involved in development. After porting Replicant to version 2.3 on the Nexus S and later on porting plenty more devices, Paul became the main developer of Replicant and was doing most of the work on the project for several years. In September 2015 Wolfgang Wiedmeyer started to contribute to the project. He ported Replicant to version 6.0 on the Galaxy S3 and later on ported more devices that were already supported by previous Replicant versions.

Frequently asked questions

Is my device only running free software after I install Replicant?

While Replicant is a fully free system, other components run aside the system, such as bootloaders, firmwares and the modem operating system (if applicable). These components are usually proprietary software. Some devices can also run free software bootloaders: see the documentation specific to each device for more details.
For more information about these issues, read our freedom and privacy/security issues page.

Does Replicant supports devices that can run free software modem firmwares?

While fully free software modem firmwares like OsmocomBB do exist, the only supported smartphones (The Openmoko GTA01 and GTA02) are probably not powerful enough to run recent versions of Android decently as they have only 128M of RAM.

My device is not listed as supported, can I still install Replicant?

Replicant only runs on the listed supported devices . Other devices have to be explicitly ported to Replicant: specific drivers and configurations have to be written so that Replicant can handle the device properly. It is not a good idea to try installing an image for a device that has a similar name: it will fail and may damage the device.
You are welcome to get in touch with us and start evaluating your device as a next target for Replicant!

Is my data safe when stored on a device running Replicant?

While Replicant is a fully free system, some proprietary components that are not part of the system, such as bootloaders, may still be executed (the situation depends on each device). These proprietary pieces have access to the data stored on the device. Hence, they represent a risk for security.
On telephony-enabled devices, if the modem is poorly isolated from the rest of the device, it may also be able to compromise the data stored on the device and apply software changes.
Despite being fully free, Replicant may also be exposed to security issues that were not disclosed and/or fixed yet, like any operating system. Just as well, installing third party applications may bring security issues, especially if they come from untrusted sources. Of course, installing any proprietary application creates a risk for security.

Are my communications safe when using a device running Replicant?

Communications made using the public mobile telephony network should be considered unsafe by nature, as the mobile telephony operator is always able to record and track these communications and is often legally allowed to do so. In addition, it was shown that in some cases, these can be intercepted as a result of the weak encryption in use. Safe communications can be achieved using encryption over the Internet (e.g. through mobile data networks).
However on telephony-enabled devices, if the modem is poorly isolated from the rest of the device, it may be able to access the microphone of the device or access the communications data unencrypted, making any kind of communication unsafe.

Why are some hardware features missing on Replicant?

Most of the time, hardware features are driven by proprietary software in LineageOS. While Replicant is fully free, these proprietary parts are either replaced or avoided in Replicant. Such parts being avoided instead of replaced is the result of missing free software support for that hardware. It happens because developers failed to write free software support for that hardware, as a result of incomplete or missing documentation from the manufacturer, lack of time to perform reverse engineering or generally speaking, lack of proper resources.
Keep in mind that writing free software replacements is a technically complex task that does not always succeed, especially when the manufacturer doesn’t communicate how to use the hardware.

How exactly is Replicant different from LineageOS?

Replicant uses LineageOS’s source code as a base. It is rebranded to provide the Replicant look and feel (wallpapers, logos) and parts of the code are reworked to remove anti-features that can spy on the user. Most importantly, Replicant does not include any of LineageOS’s proprietary components (programs, libraries, firmwares) and instead provides free software replacements for some of these. The rest of the system is also adapted so that the free software replacements can run correctly.

Why is Replicant based on LineageOS instead of OmniROM?

LineageOS supports more devices than OmniROM, which makes porting a new device to Replicant easier. On top of that, most if not all devices that are currently supported by Replicant are not in OmniROM. OmniROM’s general position may be more friendly towards free software, but it still ships with proprietary software.

Why doesn’t Replicant ship with proprietary components when free replacements are missing?

Replicant is a free software project and thus does not encourage nor enforce the use of proprietary software. Shipping proprietary software is a way of taking the decision for the user to use proprietary software, which is not an ethical nor respectful thing to do.

Why doesn’t Replicant guide users through installing complementary proprietary components?

Replicant is a free software project and thus does not encourage nor enforce the use of proprietary software. Providing instructions to install such components is a way of encouraging the use of proprietary software, which is not an ethical thing to do.

Where does the Replicant name comes from?

One of the goals initial of projects like GNU or ReactOS was to replace nonfree operating systems, like Unix and Microsoft Windows. To do that they could not simply reuse the nonfree operating system source code as it wasn’t free software, so they had to write their own code and reuse other available free software components.

With Android the situation was much easier because even if many drivers were not free software, most of the operating system source code was available.

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So with way less effort, we could have an exact Replica of Android with the same graphical interface and so on. We just had to replace these nonfree drivers.

When trying to find a project name, «Replicant» looked neat as not only we were Replicating Android, but the name was also loosely related to Android as in Blade Runner, Replicants are also Androids.

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Источник

Replicant — a fully free Android distribution steem Created with Sketch.

I guess the majority of the Steemit community already knows that the term «smartphone» is actually just an euphemism for «spying device» — at least when it comes to the default settings provided by those devices. If there is any doubt about this statement please just let me know and I’ll write another post about the spying problem of ordinary smartphones.

Today, however, I would like to introduce you to a remedy for the default spying of modern day smartphones. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Replicant! The name stems from fictional bioengineered or biorobotic androids in the 1982 film Blade Runner. The Replicant project aims at providing a completely free (as in freedom) operating system for smartphones which is based on Anroid and endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.

Before going into details about the benefits of this project, let me briefly introduce some of its limitations first in order to make sure that beginners are not too disappointed if they decide to try it out.

Replicant’s limitations
Due to the fact that there are not many completely free replacements for a lot of drivers, there are several things the ordinary user will probably miss if he or she decides to give Replicant a try. The dire driver situation leads to the following missing functionalities:

Replicant does not provide Bluetooth support
Replicant does not provide GPS support (except for one device called GTA04 )
Replicant does not provide hardware media encoding/decoding
Replicant does not provide 3D graphics
Replicant does only provide wifi support under certain circumstances for certain devices if an external USB receiver is used

Replicant’s benefits
I’m glad you are still reading these lines even after learning about Replicant’s limitations. You might be asking yourself now Why on earth should I be using such a system with which only basic things such as phoning, texting, mobile data, the camera, audio and 2D graphics (mostly) work? Well, let me give you a short list and tell you about more about why I think using Replicant is important:

Replicant’s uncompromising approach guarantees that there are no (known) back-doors in the software they ship
The Replicant developers actually found and fixed a back-door being present in «in most proprietary Android systems running on the affected Samsung Galaxy devices, including the ones that are shipped with the devices». The developers state «However, when Replicant is installed on the device, this back-door is not effective: Replicant does not cooperate with back-doors.»
Replicant’s puristic approach actually could serve as a catalyst to spur development of completely free drivers for the (currently) unfunctional parts listed above.

Installing Replicant
I would not recommend installing Replicant on any device if you consider yourself to be a completely novice user. However, for even slightly advanced users it should not pose a very huge challenge to install Replicant on your device. Please note that Replicant is, however, only available on a handful of devices (exactly 12 to be precise). Replicant’s development is actively continuing and it’s highly likely that more and more devices will be added in the future. The projects provides several recommendations for supported devices and also links to tutorials describing the installation process for each of the named devices.

Источник

Репозиторий

Разработчик	Денис Чарикли, Йоонас Кюльмяля, Фил Бергамо, Пол Коциалковски
Семейство ОС	Unix-подобный ( Linux )
Рабочее состояние	Текущий
Исходная модель	Открытый исходный код
Первый выпуск	Середина 2010 г . ; 11 лет назад ( 2010 )
Последний релиз	6.0 0004 RC2 (22 июля 2020 г . ; 14 месяцев назад ) [±] ( 2020-07-22 )
Менеджер пакетов	APK-файл
Тип ядра	Монолитный ( Linux )
Userland	Библиотека Bionic C, оболочка mksh , собственные основные утилиты с некоторыми из NetBSD
Лицензия	Лицензия Apache License 2.0 , GNU GPLv2 и другие различные лицензии
Официальный веб-сайт	www .replicant .us

What is replicant android

Репликант (операционная система) — Replicant (operating system)

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