For a lay person, can someone elaborate how does a custom ROM like Lineage OS fare compared to eOS? Can it de de-Googled to the same extent? Or never.
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Nothing short of source code changes can achieve some of the de-Googling.
The LineageOS developers made a specific and deliberate decision to *not* do this.
> Why do we need a custom build of LineageOS to have microG? Can't I install microG on the official LineageOS?
> MicroG requires a patch called "signature spoofing", which allows the microG's apps to spoof themselves as Google Apps. LineageOS' developers refused (multiple times) to include the patch, forcing us to fork their project.
> Wait, on their FAQ page I see that they don't want to include the patch for security reasons. Is this ROM unsafe?
> No. LineageOS' developers decided not to include this patch for various reasons. The signature spoofing could be an unsafe feature only if the user blindly gives any permission to any app, as this permission can't be obtained automatically by the apps. Moreover, to further strengthen the security of our ROM, we modified the signature spoofing permission so that only system privileged apps can obtain it, and no security threat is posed to our users.