>I must say for as much as I like Android how they bundled and force > software to be running and/or installed you may or may not want. Feels > like stepping back in time with operating systems.
I felt the same, until I had an epiphany one evening. I had rooted an android and one of the first things I did was to establish a netcat chat connection from a laptop running ubuntu. The conversation went like this: Ubuntu# Android, I am your father! Android# Linux, I am your future. >Now of course I have updated and put software on my phone that was >never > intended to be on it. However the software is overly bloated in ways >it > need not be. After much frustration with apps doing things unwanted >and > performance sucking. I finally took some action. I would love to see the likes of the "Damn Small Linux" community working on both apps and a port of the software. Let's face it, that community is the best at getting rid of bloat and fitting powerful apps on less than desirable hardware. Granted that we have seen Ubuntu running on the HTC EVO 4g and the Nexus one, it would be awesome to have the OS choices that we currently enjoy on other hardware platforms. http://htcevohacks.com/htc-evo-hacks/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-htc-evo-4g/ Apparently, there is also a version of gentoo used for penetration testing as well. http://www.nsai.it/tag/running-a-full-pentesting-with-android-android-pentest/ >I flat out removed/deleted some unwanted stuff, Gmail, GTalk, > VoiceDialer, VoiceSearch, and its amazing how well my phone performs >now > without them. I even installed Auto Memory Manager[1] and that helps >in > addition to the rest. I did this shortly after rooting. It's like getting a windows machine from <insert name of manufacturer> . Its loaded with apps that I would never care to use. Except this time around, they took it a few steps further in order to prevent the consumer from removing it. The performance of my phone immediately was better after reboot. I could > not believe how much resources those apps consumed and wasted, and I > don't use any of them. It also sucks that one cannot easily remove said > unwanted software. One has to have a rooted phone, and also have some > familiarity with the Linux command line. I dedicated a desktop screen to essentially create a control panel of sorts on my phone. I found that the default method of getting to settings on the phone did not suit my needs. 1) I added a task killer. There are several on the market place. Many more or less have the same functionality. 2) I added communications controls to easily toggle on or off: wi-fi, 4g, bluetooth, gps, sync setting. 3) I added a cache cleaner and an app called fast reboot. 4) Added an icon to take me directly to manage applications. 5) Added DroidWall (iptables control) icon as well as ASpotCat to monitor application permissions. I'm sure there are others, but those come off the top of my head. This "control panel" gives me the flexibility to quickly adjust settings on the phone so that I can use a feature only when I need it. It has increased performance and increased my battery life greatly. I would be interested in hearing what methods could be used to increase security and privacy on this platform. Droidwall is a start, but it seems like the browser could use something like noscript by default. I read about an app that uses a database to fool the phone into syncing locally vs gmail. Im sorry I do not remember the name of the app and a very quick search didnt return results. As draconian as it is, creating hosts file entries from known malware domains may help with security somewhat. http://www.malwaredomains.com/ On Sun, 2011-02-20 at 10:11 -0500, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote: > I must say for as much as I like Android how they bundled and force > software to be running and/or installed you may or may not want. Feels > like stepping back in time with operating systems. > > That its built on Linux sometimes makes me wanna puke. Now I know my > phone (HTC Dream/G1) is getting outdated hardware wise. However when I > think about how long like 500mhz cpus were around. You can still get > some use out of them today, even using X at a higher resolution than my > phone is running. Yet phones are up to 1ghz, soon dual core, etc, > craziness. Next will be virtualization on your phone... > > Now of course I have updated and put software on my phone that was never > intended to be on it. However the software is overly bloated in ways it > need not be. After much frustration with apps doing things unwanted and > performance sucking. I finally took some action. > > I flat out removed/deleted some unwanted stuff, Gmail, GTalk, > VoiceDialer, VoiceSearch, and its amazing how well my phone performs now > without them. I even installed Auto Memory Manager[1] and that helps in > addition to the rest. > > Now why am I posting this to a LUG, aside from the obvious on Android > being Linux based. The solution to removing stuff in part is common > Linux technique. You need a rooted phone, and terminal emulator. But > from there all Linux. Remount rootfs as rw, and you can delete > applications via their apk files :) > > Got the following from a link below[2] > > su > mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblk3 /system > rm /system/app/Gmail.apk > reboot > > In this case I also removed GTalk.apk, VoiceDialer.apk, and > VoiceSearch.apk. Now some talked about GTalk being necessary for the > market to work. My market still works even without that, so not sure > what all thats about. > > The performance of my phone immediately was better after reboot. I could > not believe how much resources those apps consumed and wasted, and I > don't use any of them. It also sucks that one cannot easily remove said > unwanted software. One has to have a rooted phone, and also have some > familiarity with the Linux command line. > > Anyway might want to poke around your Android device if you have one and > see what all your not using, but might be running and using your battery > life, if not bothering you at all. > > 1. http://www.google.com/search?q=android+auto+memory+manager > 2. > http://www.droidforums.net/forum/tech-issues-bug-reports-suggestions/82730-how-delete-apk-files-using-terminal-emulator.html > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
