I've been reading some articles about mobile Linux and many of them state one must be an "advanced user" or that the software isn't secure. How true is this?
I already use Linux on my laptop, but I'm not a software developer or anything like that. Would I be able to slap a new OS onto an old Android phone and be on my way, or would I run into problems?
> mandatory sandboxing, permission control, full-system MAC, verified boot
Those are actually not mandatory when all your apps are free software, you don't have to sandbox a program you know what it's doing.
That's utter nonsense. Open-source doesn't necessarily mean private or secure. In fact it's quite easy to build an open-source app with a bugdoor which is very unlikely to be found just by looking at source code, especially if you use memory-unsafe languages, as long as it's not just a tiny code base. The things I mentioned are important security measures and shouldn't be neglected just because you run open-source apps. They are the basics of modern secure OS's.