A third-party community movement has emerged around Android, taking the basic software and making it better. One of the most important modifications is giving users much more control over the privacy settings than Google permits with standard Android.

One of the best established of these projects is Cyanogenmod. It was preloaded on one of my phones, a new model called the OnePlus One, and I installed it on an older Google-branded phone. Not only do I make use of the enhanced “Privacy Guard” settings, but messaging is encrypted by default — something every phone and carrier should emulate (Apple does, but the Android providers are slow on this).

Cyanogenmod has become more than a collection of volunteers. Some of its creators have spun off a for-profit company, which has raised money from Silicon Valley investors. Like many others in the alternate Android world, I’m worried that this will lead Cyanogen toward bad behavior and away from its user-in-control roots. If that happens, I can try lots of other community-created versions of Android. (This concern also applies to OnePlus, which after a dispute with Cyanogenmod, is moving toward a proprietary operating system.)

My inner nerd—I learned a programming language in high school and have had computers since the late 1970s—finds all of this fun, at least when it’s not annoying. I love exploring the tech I use. For others who just want stuff to work, I wish all this was drop-dead simple. It is getting better: easier, more reliable and certainly good enough. But regaining some control still takes work, especially on the mobile side.

And, after all I’ve done to become more independent, a confession: I’m still using some Microsoft and Google software—making me at least a partial hypocrite. Google Maps is one of the few indispensable features of my smartphone (Open Street Map is a fantastic project but not wonderful enough), and as I mentioned above, I still have an occasional need for Windows. The journey to tech liberty has endless detours, because all of this is endlessly nuanced.

So I keep looking for ways to further reduce my dependence on the central powers. One of my devices, an older tablet running Cyanogenmod, is a test bed for an even more Google-free existence.

It’s good enough for use at home, and getting better as I find more free software — most of it via the “F-Droid” download library — that handles what I need. I’ve even installed a version of Ubuntu’s new tablet OS, but it’s not ready, as the cliche goes, for prime time. Maybe the Firefox OS will be a player.