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Comment by tenuousemphasis | Hacker News Reader

What's the benefit to having Signal on F-Droid vs. downloading the APK?

Presence in the main F-Droid repository requires the app to be open-source. A downloaded APK might include closed-source components.

"The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps... The website also offers the source code of applications it hosts... F-Droid builds apps from publicly available and freely licensed source code. New apps, which must be free of proprietary software are contributed by user submissions or the developers themselves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid

The same advantage as having 30 updaters run in the background versus running

    apt update

Imagine every app you install, from your calculator to your chat applications, has to have its own updater. That's why I like F-Droid rather than downloading the Signal APK directly. Already have to do this for Threema unfortunately, as they're neither on F-Droid nor freely available on the Play store.

To help clarify to GP (was going to help reply then saw yours) F-Droid is both the name of the core website hosting the APK repos and build infra, and the name of the Android client which can connect to any F-Droid compatible repo - there are a bunch of projects who host their APKs in their own F-Droid repo, all you have to do is go to their website and scan the QR code to add it or enter manually.

Signal could run their own F-Droid repo and people just add to their F-Droid client without using or touching the F-Droid website or build infrastructure at all, which would allow folks to do as lucgommans explains - one phone client connected to many repos, no manual downloading.

Example: https://www.bromite.org/fdroid

I hadn't even thought of this, that's a good point and (afaik) negates the entire excuse of Signal's not to be on F-Droid.

I think Signal's direct-download APK version (i.e., from signal.org, not from an app store) automatically prompts for updates (can someone verify?).

Correct. I use it on LineageOS

It does, but that's my point: it ships with its own updater rather than leaving me to just manage updates with a proper repository client (like apt, dnf, f-droid, google store, whatever).

Manage your version. Trust your APK source.

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