I really don't want to give Google money so the Pixel is off for me until GrapheneOS supports something else.
For now I consider smartphones as disposable toys that can't be trusted with anything sensitive and use a computer for privacy.
I also don't like the idea of running Android, I still hope for a real linux phone at some point.
Phones, to just give one example, at least have fine-grained run-time permission controls while on Linux apps can just access anything the user can, except if you use something like Flatpak which gives you sandboxing but the quality of that sandboxing is still worse than Android 4.4 KitKat. How can you protect your sensitive info without such permission controls that gate access to your personal data?
Note that this is just one example, there are also other problems with traditional desktop OSes and a large portion of desktop hardware.
The biggest problem with security culture is its obsessive hyperfocus on security. Any change that could possibly be less secure (even in extremely exclusive circumstances) must be wrong. Even if it improves accessibility, it must be rejected out of hand.
GrapheneOS promises to liberate us from the enshittification of Google's anticompetitive moat; but it focuses that effort exclusively on security. Everything else that was enshittified gets carefully preserved as-is in the name of "security".
All I want is a mobile computer that does what I tell it to. Why is that constantly treated as an unreasonable fantasy?
GrapheneOS has many exploit mitigations and those that would break compatability with too much apps are opt-in instead of opt-out. They also have per app toggles so you can decide to use them per app. So they certainly don't sacrifice accessibility for the highest level of security.
> GrapheneOS promises to liberate us from the enshittification of Google's anticompetitive moat
This isn't something GrapheneOS promises anywhere on their website. They aim to offer a secure and private OS with good compatability with Android apps.
> but it focuses that effort exclusively on security.
They focus on privacy and usability as well. Security is actually only focused on because the privacy features aren't enforceable without security.
> Why is that constantly treated as an unreasonable fantasy?
Because tinkering, hackability and unrestricted freedom aren't the purposes for which GrapheneOS was made.