5 ms·

The obvious question: There's F-droid, why use this instead?

cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I haven’t taken more than a glance at the linked site so I don’t know if it’s better in this way, but I’ve always found F-droid difficult to navigate. It’s got a lot of junk, too. The bulk of its utility for me has been for installing apps that I’ve become aware of elsewhere.
- preisschild 2y ago
  There are alternative clients to F-Droid. Personally I use Droid-ify, which works quite well.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    I switched to Droid-ify a long time ago, too, so I second it.
- pferde 2y ago
  It's got a Search section for looking up new apps, and an Updates section for maintaining already installed ones. There's nothing else I need nor want from an "appstore". The only gripe I have is that screenshots on individual apps pages can sometimes be slow to download, but that gripe is so small I'm looking at it through a microscope. :)
- mid-kid 2y ago
  I frequently learn of useful apps through its updated/new section that you see when opening the app. Back in the day when it didn't have this I used to scroll through all the categories - the catalogue was small enough to do this. I wish the updated/new section would filter "update spam" better, but right now it works for app discovery, without requiring f-droid to collect usage data. The search function sorting by "recently updated" also helped a lot in finding well supported apps. There's a lot of room for improvement of the search function though.
mary-ext 2y ago
See this issue talking about WireGuard and F-Droid. https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3110 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3110 OpenAPK here seems to be linking directly to official binary downloads, whereas F-Droid insists on building the APKs for the apps.
- blendergeek 2y ago
  > F-Droid insists on building the APKs for the apps. You could say that OpenAPK blindly redistributes whatever APK upstream is peddling whereas F-Droid builds from source. I see the merits of both systems but prefer reproducible builds so that we can have the best of both worlds
  - jqpabc123 2y ago
    Maybe it's just me but I'm kinda struggling to see much merit in blind distribution.
    - JavierFlores09 2y ago
      Well, for starters it is just a whole lot less work and money to distribute and maintain binaries up from the distributers' side, for the developers it comes down to a lower-barrier of entry to not have to adjust their workflow to whatever x platform may demand for building on their servers and in the end that gives the users more choices to work with. Of course, this is all in a perfect world where the chain of trust isn't broken so easily, which isn't an easy feat but given platforms like Windows thrive in spite of it, it is probably not as bad as many people may think. All of that said, not particularly speaking for OpenAPK here, given their motives seems rather unclear to me. If I am to be charitable, I guess they're just trying to provide a different platform than f-droid for discoverability, but for whatever reason they seem to be marketing the distribution-side of things more which is just odd to me, but alas.
      - em3rgent0rdr 2y ago
        > given platforms like Windows thrive in spite of it, it is probably not as bad as many people may think. There is a lot of extra work done behind the scenes to "thrive in spite of it". Windows Defender (built into Windows after XP) has to periodically download updated virus definitions and always scans programs for potential malware, and still can't catch them all.
Y_Y 2y ago
See also, this large external repo for fdroid: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/

I haven’t taken more than a glance at the linked site so I don’t know if it’s better in this way, but I’ve always found F-droid difficult to navigate. It’s got a lot of junk, too. The bulk of its utility for me has been for installing apps that I’ve become aware of elsewhere.

preisschild 2y ago
There are alternative clients to F-Droid. Personally I use Droid-ify, which works quite well.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I switched to Droid-ify a long time ago, too, so I second it.
pferde 2y ago
It's got a Search section for looking up new apps, and an Updates section for maintaining already installed ones. There's nothing else I need nor want from an "appstore". The only gripe I have is that screenshots on individual apps pages can sometimes be slow to download, but that gripe is so small I'm looking at it through a microscope. :)
mid-kid 2y ago
I frequently learn of useful apps through its updated/new section that you see when opening the app. Back in the day when it didn't have this I used to scroll through all the categories - the catalogue was small enough to do this. I wish the updated/new section would filter "update spam" better, but right now it works for app discovery, without requiring f-droid to collect usage data. The search function sorting by "recently updated" also helped a lot in finding well supported apps. There's a lot of room for improvement of the search function though.

mary-ext 2y ago

See this issue talking about WireGuard and F-Droid. https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3110 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/3110 OpenAPK here seems to be linking directly to official binary downloads, whereas F-Droid insists on building the APKs for the apps.

blendergeek 2y ago
> F-Droid insists on building the APKs for the apps. You could say that OpenAPK blindly redistributes whatever APK upstream is peddling whereas F-Droid builds from source. I see the merits of both systems but prefer reproducible builds so that we can have the best of both worlds
- jqpabc123 2y ago
  Maybe it's just me but I'm kinda struggling to see much merit in blind distribution.
  - JavierFlores09 2y ago
    Well, for starters it is just a whole lot less work and money to distribute and maintain binaries up from the distributers' side, for the developers it comes down to a lower-barrier of entry to not have to adjust their workflow to whatever x platform may demand for building on their servers and in the end that gives the users more choices to work with. Of course, this is all in a perfect world where the chain of trust isn't broken so easily, which isn't an easy feat but given platforms like Windows thrive in spite of it, it is probably not as bad as many people may think. All of that said, not particularly speaking for OpenAPK here, given their motives seems rather unclear to me. If I am to be charitable, I guess they're just trying to provide a different platform than f-droid for discoverability, but for whatever reason they seem to be marketing the distribution-side of things more which is just odd to me, but alas.
    - em3rgent0rdr 2y ago
      > given platforms like Windows thrive in spite of it, it is probably not as bad as many people may think. There is a lot of extra work done behind the scenes to "thrive in spite of it". Windows Defender (built into Windows after XP) has to periodically download updated virus definitions and always scans programs for potential malware, and still can't catch them all.

Y_Y 2y ago

See also, this large external repo for fdroid: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/