this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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Ugh... sorry to say but if your goal is "what a phone without Google services" then your father did not understand that. He might be able to help you but he might not. The point though is that have to clarify with him WHY you want to try that. Only then can he help with the how.
Anyway for music I recommend
VLC, it even has an option to become a Web server to receive file. If you do exchange files often with your Linux desktop I also recommendKDE Connectwhich helps for SMSes too and more, you can even define custom commands. I recommend removing thePlayStoreentirely and relying solely onF-Droidand on a case by case basis potentially on.apkfrom sources you trust, e.g.SignalWebsite.KDE Connect seems to send identifying broadcast packets constantly (just like gapps), not the best for privacy on public bing chilling router WiFi. Android itself technically does too, but you can just change your device name to " " (space).
AFAIK the packets are for discovery of other devices relying on mDNS / DNS-SD which is used by plenty of other services.
More importantly though, does it matter? What are you actually broadcasting while doing so? That you are using KDE Connect? Also the typical use case for it are on trusted networked, e.g. home WiFi but if it's problematic on public networks then do not use KDE Connect on other networks?
Edit: what alternative solution could be used by KDE Connect to make it more private on untrusted ntetworks?
That + device name which is probably pretty unique. Chinese routers scrape all of that. IIRC mDNS is actually disabled on Linux for now because it was conflicting with Avahi which broke some more stuff.
Last time I used it, I don't recall a toggle for that in either the Linux or the Android clients.
Exactly as it is right now but on a whitelist.
Offtopic but I am really annoyed by how many custom ROMs (especially LineageOS) disable MAC randomization at build time and make zero mention of it on the wiki/forum/whatever page. That's just as important.