Appreciating F-Droid as an app developer | Hacker News Reader

Appreciating F-Droid as an app developer

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I love f droid and wish there was some way that all those apps could get links for iOS too (an iOS index?) - given an option I go for f droid and any iOS equivalent available always

What's the f-droid equivalent on iOS ?

Cydia; but it requires a jailbroken iOS/iPadOS device.

i would say if aurorastore people made an IOS version that does clean UI/ no ads and filter by "no ads" that would be a killer.

i recently saw iPad that a friend bought and the app store, safari, apps are ad ridden shitfest like in pre-ublock days.

i mean, internet surfing without ublock already feels like having unprotected sex and with everything else you can use adblocker but in apple, you are stuck.... yeah unless you use private DNS from some provider, they might help but not otherwise

> i recently saw iPad that a friend bought and the app store, safari, apps are ad ridden shitfest like in pre-ublock days.

This sounds ridiculous.

The App Store complaint I can understand, you have the "Today" tab which is effectively advertisement. And the search is terrible, starting with one (clearly labeled) ad at the top and then "Collections" every few results.

But the rest…

> i mean, internet surfing without ublock already feels like having unprotected sex and with everything else you can use adblocker but in apple, you are stuck.... yeah unless you use private DNS from some provider, they might help but not otherwise

I'm happy to inform you that one can in fact install ad blockers in Safari just fine [1] as well as set up system wide filters with locally running DNS.

Basically, if I dare make the comparison, like on Android (although you have more choice there).

One such example is Firefox Focus [2] which works quite well in my experience (note that it can integrate into Safari as a "Content Blocker"), but there are also payed options like AdGuard [3] (the "Pro" version is a one time purchase).

So I don't think it's Apple's fault that your friend didn't do that. Unless one is of the opinion that they should be shipping one by default.

And regarding apps, there tends to always be the option of not using an app or getting/buying one without ads. Again I don't think Apple is to blame for user choice as long as the ads aren't problematic themselves. For example none of the apps I use have ads in them, but I also payed for quite a few.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

[2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/focus-firefox/Foc...

[3]: https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios-pro/overview.html

The reasons for the absence are pretty self-explanatory. iOS itself is proprietary.

First, someone would need to initiate a project to create a free software clone of iOS, like ReactOS re Windows or even GNU re UNIX. That's a worthwhile project in and of itself.

> iOS itself is proprietary.

That's not a reason at all.

F-Droid is a free software catalogue.

The OS itself being proprietary isn't a reason to not have sideloading or alternative stores.

Windows is proprietary too yet you've always been able to download a .EXE from arbitary web sites.

> isn't a reason to not have sideloading or alternative stores

Who argued otherwise? On the topic of F-Droid in particular not being available for iOS, there _is_ a reason behind it.

Fdroid is great, but their interface to developers could improve a bit.

For example, a test system and an easier method to import projects would have been appreciated

It's the biggest PITA I've ever encountered. Just getting an app added to F-droid is a ridiculous hurdle.

F droid has better discovery than the play store for apps that avoid monetizing their basic features, e.g. a QRcode scanner. Some criticisms about the release model are valid IMO, with it using a different dynamic of trust than the play store. There is no good replacement for f droid.

There's an alternative frontend UX to F-Droid that might be of interest:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/

I was interested, but you still can't zoom in to screenshots.

Aurora Droid was great, but it hasn't been updated since March 2021. I prefer Neo Store:

- Neo Store (GitHub): https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Store

- Neo Store (F-Droid): https://f-droid.org/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/

Thanks, I just replaced Aurora Droid with Neo Store.

Fdroid security tho is bad.

Care to elaborate? Has there been any instances of malware?

They follow bad practices. For example it takes them too long to update apps, with no appreciation to the update (meaning if there was a critical CVE ), and other. Look at this site[1], showing some reasons why google play store is preferred.

[1] https://wonderfall.dev/fdroid-issues/

>For example it takes them too long to update apps, with no appreciation to the update (meaning if there was a critical CVE ), and other.

Fully agree, have some experiences.

Friendly advice: treat Fdroid like any other development dependency and try to be in control rather than being dependent: run your own f-droid repo which people can add to their Fdroid app as a source.

Agreed. Using GitHub is already a better option since it's eliminating another party (Fdroid).

Self-hosting a F-Droid repo means users can easily get automatic updates, which is important for security.

But it requires self hosting.

Would it be possible to host an fdroid repo on GitHub pages?

I don't see any reason why not. After all, GitHub pages is a repo, which you can upload an APK to.

Isn't that up to the developers of the individual apps?

No because they compile the apps and not the developers.

F-droid is flawless in terms of security.

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