Gaël Duval: Exclusive Interview for AT

Another interesting exclusive interview. This time with Gaël Duval, someone who doesn’t need too many introductions in the free software community, since he is the father of Mandrake (Mandriva) and also of the interesting /e/ OS project that I will focus on.

If you want to know a little more about the architect who has made it possible and the alternative to invasive Android, I invite you to read on…

Architecnología: I always start all interviews with three more personal questions before the techniques: Who is Gaël Duval? (Please, describe yourself)

Gaël Duval: I’m passionante about computers since age of 10, I am a software engineer, and I started my professionnal life with the «Mandrake Linux» distribution in the late 90’s. Mandrake has been the first Linux distribution to focus on the desktop.

Then I started new companies, such as Ulteo, in the desktop virtualization field. More recently I started /e/OS to provide a mobile operating system that is fully deGoogled, and more respectuous of the user’s personal data.

AT: When and how did you start being passionate about technology and programming?

G.D.: It started when I was 10, in 1983. It was the begining of the
micro-computers, and me and some friends soon had a computer at home. We could start to learn BASIC!

AT: Do you have a reference, someone who has inspired you?

G.D.: Not anyone in particular, though I’ve always been fascinated by Steve Jobs who literally put his own entire life into Apple. However I remember being influenced as a child by all the SciFi movies and animes, as well as some TV series which children using microcomputers, or even the movie «WarGames» where an Artificial Intelligence puts the earth at risk of a global nuclear conflict.

AT: Why did you decide to found MandrakeSoft and create Mandrake Linux (then Mandriva)? What was the motivation?

G.D.: The motivation was very simple: I personally was fascinated by Unix and then Linux, and found that this kind of operating system was way superior to Windows or MacOS. But it lacked the «ease of use» touch of Windows/MacOS. Most of the time you used it with the command line interface. So I started to wonder if we could create a Linux-based operating system that woul be graphical by default. So basically I forked Red Hat Linux, added the KDE 1.0 user interface by default on the top of it, made a few improvements, like a mechanism to easily mount/umount floppy drives and cd-roms without some command lines…

It all started like this: simple concept, quite simple implementation…

AT: Now you are with /e/ OS. Why this name?

G.D.: We started with another name, but we have been «asked» not to use it anymore by an obscure company that is doing some human resource software…

So /e/ has been chosen urgently as a temporary name, something original that could catch attention. It did, but it’s far from being perfect. Hard to search, people don’t know how to pronounce it… 🙂

It did its job as a temporary name, but now we are introducing «Murena». Murena will be used for all the products like smartphones with /e/OS, Premium plans for the cloud… /e/OS remains for now as the name of the operating system itself.

AT: This is a LineageOS-based operating system. Why LineageOS and not other?

G.D.: It’s forked from LineageOS. We change quite a lot of things, like default apps, settings, etc.

The reason why we chose LineageOS, which is a fork of Android Open Source Project, is that it is supported by a large community of maintainers for many devices. Which is not the case of Android Open Source Project that basically supports 5 different smartphone models.

AT: /e/ has also MicroG and custom firmware. What are the limitations of these services compared to GMS?

G.D.: Not so much limitations actually. Some features remain to implement, like in-app purchase in Android apps, but for the rest it’s really enough.

AT: People who care about privacy and also about the environment have a great product: Fairphone+/e/. Haven’t it? Anything else to highlight about this binomial?

G.D.: Fairphone ships with stock Android by default, which is really a threat to user’s privacy. That’s the reason why we support Fairphone, because Fairphone + /e/OS is really a great combination of ethical hardware and ethical software. It really makes a lot of sense.

AT: The FSF does not support the project because of non-free libraries. Which libraries are they referring to?

G.D.: They never got in touch with us, and as far as I know, they don’t provide more details to motivate their decision. So I cannot answer this question.

AT: Are all Android apps supported or are there any limitations?

G.D.: Basically yes, any Android application can run on /e/OS. There are still some corner cases that make some apps problematic. Most of the time it’s related to SafetyNet.

SafetyNet is a great piece of useless Google software that apps publishers can use to make sure that their mobile application will
execute on a «pure Google Android» (with all the certifications from Google).

This is one of the attempts from Google to make Android proprietary.

We’re working on making SafetyNet pass on /e/OS too.

AT: Is it possible to update by OTA?

G.D.: Sure. We’re soon to offer OTA to upgrade between major Android-based versions too.

AT: What is the difference between the Android and the /e/ permission system?

G.D.: No, we are not reinventing the wheel. But we are progressively adding features to offer better understanding and better control to our users.

For instance they are aware of trackers present in applications. And we will add much more control in the next months.

AT: Does /e/ collects data from users?

G.D.: No but technical traces, like some logs, but we don’t track users, we erase logs…

We don’t have a business with user’s personal data at all. /e/OS was recently reviewed, among other mobile operating systems, by a researcher study at University of Dublien and University of Edimburgh.

The resultat has been that only /e/OS doesn’t catch personal data.

AT: Finally What is the next challenge of the project?

G.D.: Scaling up! We have a few hundred-thousands users, we need to polish the product to go to a larger audience, that is seeking better privacy, better protection from the net giants.