I want to go full open-source with my phone, which is why I use Lemmy instead of reddit, there are a lot of proprietary built in apps that are bloat and are of course, not open source, Samsung does not let you disable or uninstall any prebuilt apps, any ideas?

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[–] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You can use Shizuku with Canta. You can pretty much uninstall any app that way (even system apps), but you of course can also brick your phone if you aren't careful. There are builtin warnings for critical system apps that will brick your phone.

[–] vodka@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

+1 for canta!

[–] joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Also not possible with developer options on, USB to PC, ADB or Universal Debloater? https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater

[–] lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago

Can confirm, UAD (which is internally just adb) works fine for samsung crap.

[–] TROJANHEX@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks :)

[–] Auster@lemm.ee 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

If you want to gradually move away from closed and/or paid software, afaik, the only way is through unlocking the bootloader and uninstalling programs through there.

Alternatively, there is the nuclear option, to replace the whole system, and start from zero with a distro as close as possible from AOSP. Worth noting it also requires unlocking the bootloader.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago

This is what I would recommend. LineageOS is great.

But if you're aiming for 100% open source, you should account for stuff like radio firmware. You'll have to look at Pinephone or Fairphone. Android contains a lot of binary blobs.

[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 0 points 1 week ago

You can disable the built-in apps.

They can't be removed as pre-installed apps are part of the OS image. It's a bit like the immutable distros now popular in Linux. Any update to the OS would just re-add them anyway.

These apps aren't exactly huge in disk size so disabling them is safe and effective. It will reduce battery and memory usage if you would ordinarily have them running in the background for some reason.