Ri Rua's blog

Sporadically updated

My Fairphone 4 (FP4) has had a problem where I cannot be heard in calls. No amount of troubleshooting has resolved the issue and it has been getting to the point where it is nearly costing my family and I money. So, it is time, frustratingly, for an upgrade.

In steps the Fairphone 5, a device that is purportedly built to last. Here are its stats.

If I can successfully be heard in a few phone-calls, I will keep and use it. Placing the FP4 back in its box and keeping it as a backup device.

Preparation

As I am, in general, trying to reduce the amount of Big Tech in my life. On arrival I will be installing CalyxOS, a more privacy driven Android operating system. There are a few other options, including LineageOS and murena who have an installer too.

As requested by the linux instructions, the image and ROM flasher have been downloaded into the same folder. A right-click from within the folder to open in terminal will make that a breeze. Terminal people will be screeching at their computers, I can imagine. The android-tools are already installed and can be installed, if not, via sudo apt install android-sdk-platform-tools-common; other operating system commands are in the instructions.

Flashing

The process is beyond simple. The isntructions on the Calyx site are amazing. The flashing program works really well, the only 2 bits of worry are when you have to un-plug the phone, turn it off and then start the phone whilst holding 'vol down'.

Press ENTER to continue Unlocking FP5 e2a27b99 bootloader... 5. Please use the volume and power keys on the device to unlock the bootloader

5a. Once FP5 e2a27b99 boots, disconnect its cable and power it off 5b. Then, hold volume down and connect the cable again to boot it into fastboot mode. The installation will resume automatically Unlocking (critical) FP5 e2a27b99 bootloader... 5.1. Please use the volume and power keys on the device to unlock the bootloader (critical)

and this spot I had to lock the bootloader myself

6. Please use the volume and power keys on the device to lock the bootloader Unable to determine if bootloader was locked Press enter to exit.

After flashing the device, it booted up and asked me to install a range of apps like Signal, K9Mail and various Tor Project apps.

It then asked to install from a Seedvault backup, which restores data for apps that are currently installed and points you at the app stores to download, individually, the missing apps.

It took a while to download and restore data but ultimately it worked, especially for apps like Newpipe. I exported and imported data for K9-Mail and Catima (a loyalty card app).

How the FP5 feels compared to FP4

It feels, broadly, like the Fairphone 4. I don't think this is a bad thing per se. It's similarly large, similarly weighty and similarly shaped, so it feels pretty similar and CalyxOS keeps the FP4 and FP5 at the same level of up-to-date, so there's little to differentiate them there either.

I've not really tried out the camera. It's via the LineageOS camera 'Aperture', which is probably not as jazzy as the OEM camera app. I am going to see if I can install the OEM camera app, I was able to on the FP4 though I don't remember how, though it related to this forum post, there's also this post. There appears to be some work to get the camera working and it already works, reportedly, on eOS.

Fairphone 5 and CalyxOS

The combination is something I really enjoy. The deGoogled nature whilst having the option of using microG to get the more normal aspects of Google apps without the behemoth harvesting your data is one I find is a good balance between privacy and usability. The apps that come pre-installed are excellent for maintaining privacy and escaping the clutches of big tech and there's a very usable work profile to keep your work-life balance in check too. The only thing I would prefer is if apps like proprietary camera apps were able to be used or that the APIs weren't locked down to hinder those who rightly don't want Google/Alphabet in their life.

Not sure what else to add, just to sum up. If you have questions please do ask via my fedi account (should be in the footer)

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I have been running AGH as a network ad-blocker for a wee while now and my settings were obviously a bit dodgy as the processing time was long and a significant number of DNS lookups were taking 100+ms.

This was fine for a while but recently it's been becoming a pain and the itch to resolve it (pun intended) was needing scratched. The result was that the average processing time dropped from around 15ms to 3ms!

Read more...

What I use

I'm probably tech-savvy in that I know my way around a comptuer via the graphical itnerfaces but I cannot code to save myself, I managed a hello world a few decades ago and that's been it ever since. I use Yunohost via a virtual machine on an old laptop. This was the smoothest way for me to install the software without having to learn about stuff that fried my brain. I realise I could've installed Yunohost as the operating system itself but hey-ho, when the laptop finally stops working I'll upgrade the machine to a MiniPC.

Vital VM stats

  • 2 cores
  • 3.8 GiB of RAM
  • 36 GiB of storage

I can't recall why they have those stats, except that the laptop has 4 cores, a lot more storage and 8 GiB of RAM. So there's some scope for increasing resources if required but broadly, I don't need much more except for storage for backups.

For storing backups on Yunohost I discovered there's a great way to shrink the backup process and it's by using BACKUP_CORE_ONLY which, unfortunately, is only available in the command line and not the graphical interface.

Programs installed

I have several programs installed and only one of which is to automate anything. I'll link to the yunohost catalogue for all of the apps, as their websites are on the page there.

  • GoToSocial A great bit of fediverse software that's amazing for single-user, or several-user, instances. Someone managed to install it on their car. I really like it, it's been super simple for me to apply blocklists and tune it to my preferred experience, like having interaction policies. I use an add-on, Streetpass for Mastodon, to stumble across people who are on Fediverse.

  • Phanpy Is a really cool alternative front-end for various Fediverse/Mastodon instances. It has things like the 'Boost Carousel' that gather the boosts into one spot, so you can keep up with what folk are sharing whilst keeping the main timeline filled with people's personal posts.

  • WriteFreely This is a really simple and easy to understand blogging platform. You type, you format with markdown and you publish. Simple.

  • FreshRSS With this I am able to keep upto-date with current affairs without having various “personalisation” alogrithms choosing what their organisation wants me to read. One odd bonus is you can clue into various headline click-baity strategies they use to draw you in. It all runs from RSS and I use an add-on called Feed Indicator to spot RSS or Atom feeds on various websites.

  • AdGuard Home This program has been a wonder. I've reduced the number of adverts that I see across my home network by an extraordinary amount. I managed to set up some DNS over HTTPS which means I can use ad-blocking on my mobile from afar and allows me to have a more stringent set of rules for Firefox. The setup looks more complicated than it was, I installed it and opened some ports via gufw on my computer and then opened the same ports on the router. I then pointed the DNS on the router to the IP of the machine running AdGuard and within seconds it was running.

  • Unattended Upgrades This really just makes it easy to upgrade programs without having to manually upgrade things that often. The only time I, currently, have to do so is when there's some sort of major upgrade like a kernel.

Added stuff

Reticently, I use Cloudflare for some DNS and bot-stopping stuff. I am looking to use someone else, perhaps Bunny Net, to get more of my digital footprint within Europe. Why? Probably for fidgeting reasons. I'm aware they're not good for open web, in a way, so it'll be good to get them hoofed.

That's probably everything related to the self-hosting, except the why

The Why

  • I chose to self-host in part because I thought it sounded pretty awesome. Running your own tiny corner of the internet and having the internet in a machine in a cupboard interested me a lot.
  • There are no adverts.
  • I like that if I want to change things I can, although that often causes me more problems than it solves.
  • It's also, literally, a laptop in a cupboard!

Follow me within the Fediverse. Drop the RSS Feed into your RSS reader of choice

I used to keep my blog, that I sort of abandoned at write.as. As I have become used to self-hosting via Yunohost, through which I now self-host GoToSocial, AdGuard Home and FreshRSS for keeping track of news without ads and without “personalisation”, I have brought WriteFreely into it too.

I quite enjoy the interface of WriteFreely, it's simple and allows Markdown which makes formatting a breeze.

I've exported all of my old blog posts and am unsure if I should upload them here too. I'm wary of double-posting across platforms, even though it is still my writing on both.

Anyway welcome, I'll try and utilise this more as a space for thoughts that I don't think fit into micro-blogging.

Follow me within the Fediverse. Drop the RSS Feed into your RSS reader of choice