Why do people still use the "play store" when other repositories like f-droid are arguably better and perfectly available? This is beyond me. The terms of service of the google play store are callous and unacceptable.
I'm a software developer. I'm on HN daily, trying to keep tabs on new technology and such. I used to make android games as a hobby 8 years ago. I'm posting this from an android phone. I hadn't heard of f-droid until just now.
As an aside, there must be a better way to keep track of new technologies. I hate not recognizing something important.
Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid, then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every day at least.
Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS inteceptors that insist on accepting an extra CA.
Some people seem to think that F-Droid is obviously preferable to Googleplay. That is, at the very least, not obvious.
Fdroid maintainers require shipped apk's to have 0 non-free components. The only way to ensure that is to build the apps themselves (so that they can verify code and control dependencies). This means that they can only use their own keys.
No it doesn't. They could check the developer's signature against an APK built from source. It's not that difficult.
BTW. In my case the app they urged me to replace the stock keyboard with a version that had been built without support for Norwegian. Is the language data in Android non-free?
They can, and they offer that, if the developer supports reproducible builds.
Most apps aren’t possible to be built reproducibly, though, as the Android developer toolkit was never designed for reproducible builds and relies on stuff like filesystem ordering of files (which differs between machines).
> Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature.
They do reproducible builds starting from publicly available source. Given the AOSP design where code signatures are mandatory and updates are only allowed if signed by the same key, they're taking the best feasible approach.
Care to elaborate? You're trusting the developer to write the source code and do all the debug builds, what's the problem with building the production build?
Assuming you trust F-Droid, it eliminates the possibility that the developer isn't using their published source code. eg. they might hide their tracking code from their public github repo but build it into their release apk.
> installing and managing apps through it is also easy
but updates are not automatic (unless you root)
I don't dispute that F-Droid is not terribly difficult to use, but the original statement that "It's easier to use than the Play Store" is obviously false as soon as you take into account the mechanics of getting it installed.
It's on every android device by default; to use any other repository you have to 1) know it exists and 2) know how to get it.
Even if 2) does not require rooting your device or voiding warranty it's 1) that damps on the spread of the alternatives, because people in general don't know they have a choice; because they don't look for the alternative as the problem of "how do I get the apps?" is solved for them right at the start.
Right, they have Amazon's app store which is arguably worse than Google Play (and I say that as someone who absolutely detests Google). Their "free forever" apps are only free because you're trading personalized analytics for them, which can't be turned off without removing the app in question.
That being said, Amazon Fire tablets are good cheap devices if you want to experiment with custom ROMs and truly Free app stores like F-Droid without spending a lot of money or sacrificing your main device. Just don't trust FireOS to be any less privacy invasive than Google's Android.
You'll note that I said "experiment", not use as your daily/production tablet. With that said, all but the latest generation Fire tablets are rootable, and they are available at the usual places (eBay, Swappa, etc.) in new, used, and refurbished conditions.
There are Lollipop based ROMs for all 2017 and older Fire tablets (Amazon's FireOS is based on Lollipop so it's an easy base to start from) and there is work in progress to port Oreo to the 2017 Fire tablets:
f-droid isn't strictly better. It isn't really an alternative as a store for a ton of apps, as it will only accept open source apps as a matter of policy. Which is certainly their prerogative and might be good enough for some people.
But I use some apps that are non-free and are perfectly fine with those apps being non-free and want to use these apps anyway. So f-droid will never be a full replacement for me.
The real benefit of the F-Droid ecosystem is that it's easy to host your own repository. And the client is explicitly designed to have multiple package sources avialable, so the developers of these proprietary apps can easily host their own repo.
Afaik there's no readily available payment system. It's not impossible to build one and integrate it with F-Droid though I think.
