GrapheneOS (previously named the Android Hardening Project) is an Android fork made by the lead developer of CopperheadOS, after he left/was-removed-from the company backing it; as such, I think it is fair/reasonable to call GrapheneOS the successor of CopperheadOS.
Project explained
GrapheneOS claims to be heavily security focused, with patches to its libc, and work on what appears to be remotely verifiable boot. The long term plan sounds very much like a Qubes-style security model, based on Xen, though with the eventual goal of replacing Linux years later with a compatibility layer (the dev here mentions gVisor) running on top of a microkernel.
Regardless of those future aspirations, the main dev’s focus on security has me quite interested. There are currently only builds for the Google Pixel 2, 3, and 3a phones, which while disappointing from the perspective of wanting to re-purpose existing hardware, is somewhat reassuring. “Do it right, or not at all” is the correct approach for a security-focused project, especially one with limited manpower at this time.
Disclaimer and Enthusiasm Reasoning
I should be absolutely clear that I have not looked through the source/patches myself at this time, as I would not know even where to begin; so my enthusiasm here is mainly informed by reading about the project and the main developer’s comments and decisions. I find myself continually thinking, “that makes sense” or at least, “I can understand that decision”.
In the GrapheneOS subreddit, I found a rather fair assessment from the main dev about how he sees a comparison between GrapheneOS, iOS, and the Android ecosystem as a whole:
Lack of Videos/Reviews
You may notice that there is very little in the way of anecdotes/reviews/videos about GrapheneOS, and this appears to be intentional. The main developer has asked the contributors/users/community to avoid making videos of it until (as I understand) the project catches back up to where CopperheadOS was before the quasi-fork.
In fact, the dev became a bit snarky after someone made a video review recently. I can understand the irritation with a new user using the username “GrapheneCommunity” as it can be seen as one person trying to speak on behalf of the entire group without their consultation, but he appears to threaten to not provide builds because of the existence of the video itself, which seems more than a little petulant:
The releases are made available with the understanding that they are a preview of an OS hardening project in an early state. They’ll stop being available for the time being if people treat it as something finished and miss the point behind it. If I need to hold off on public releases until it’s further along, I can do that.
Not providing builds is perfectly understandable, but presenting it as a tool to prevent other people from making videos/reviews seems wrong. Though maybe he was just having a bad day.
Discussion Topic
Does anyone have an experience with Graphene OS, or thoughts about it?