63
votes
What we talk about when we talk about sideloading
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- Title
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
- Authors
- marcprux
- Word count
- 1156 words
Mobile phones have already been incredibly successful in normalizing that the expensively bought device you use to organize your entire life does not belong to you but to the manufacturer, and in the case of Android also a random third party that managed to position itself incredibly well since inception.
Root is basically taboo from what I can tell, even though standard Linux manages to make it work perfectly well. Root effectively means that the final authority over the device is the end user instead of the sw maker, that is all.
Loading different software from the stock nag/ad/bloat/telemetryware is also discouraged massively and not very common.
So now there is likely to be forced control over what sw the end user can run and it is honestly not that big of a leap.
This is the result of computer literacy being critically low and basically seen as a nerd thing when it is critically important to the long term personal and societal prospects because of the massive importance of computers. If the end user does not care someone else will be really glad to as we are seeing real time.
It is basically impossible to get standard users to care. I assume because the effect is insufficiently visible to the here and now so can this latest restriction even do that?
I agree with you completely.
I used to joke if I had a child I would give them a Linux computer (or a box of parts and an A+ Certification book) and when they figured it out they would be allowed to do what they wanted to do.
Instead I just didn't have kids because ... gestures widely.
I've been thinking about finding a new mobile operating system for the past few weeks since I heard about Google's changes regarding my ability to install software outside of their garden. The market looks weak. There looks to be very few if any fully viable options.
Do you land at the same assessment?
There is not many options outside Android/ios. It is also complicated by the combination of everyone wanting the user to use app instead of website and sometimes adding sw integrity checks into them specifically expecting Apple/Google approved device.
Additionally a lot of people seems to want to use mobile for general use which I simply don't understand as the experience ranges from horrible to terrible.
Linux phone(I used PinePhone and I think postmarketOS for about a year) was almost enough for using it daily about three years ago. There were hovewer various sw irritants and the hw was not very good, especially the battery life.
I didn't look into Linux phones lately even though I still have the Pinephone but loaded onto a phone with better hw it would probably be perfectly fine. With the large caveat of Android/ios app lock in with insufficient alternatives.
Right now I am thinking that I might alternatively go to Apple if they maintain their current level of how they treat the user.
Unfortunately I've landed at the same conclusion. But objectively, we'd be going to a device that controls even more against the user. I have and rarely use an old iPad, and I've had phones through work which are iOS for many years. I can plainly say I do not prefer using the iOS UX.
But Google deserves to lose me as a customer.
Certain Linux tools, such as Waydroid, work well enough on arm64 Wayland devices that it would be possible to run an environment for apps for which there is no non-Android alternative- apps which require Google infrastructure to work- but it would be better if this were not necessary, and I don't know the path to that ideal.
I switched over to GrapheneOS a while back and have been really happy with it. The level of control it lets you have over app permissions, storage, network behavior, location services, etc was why I gave it a look, and in the end I found I could pretty easily switch all my stuff to it, or find workable alternatives quickly. I went from a thoroughly googled device to googleless with minimal struggle. Their web installer took all of about 15 minutes, and thanks to their users I found a list of stuff like banking apps with steps to get them working where it was necessary. My bank app didn't need any special attention.
By default it doesn't have google services, but they do have a sandboxed Google play implementation that, far as I was able to tell, works just fine. You can of course sideload whatever you like. You might have to mess with some of the security options to get some apps working, but we're talking a toggle or two, nothing huge and it is good about telling you exactly what to look at. You can do multiple profiles too, so it would be possible to separate everything google connected from everything else, along with granular control of app permissions and all that. The OS gets updated pretty often, and they've got a support schedule for different models along with channels for getting security updates faster.
You are limited to a Pixel device for now, is the major caveat. Their documentation goes over why that is, but they are working at making the OS available for other models. It's worth a look IMO, very easy to try if you already have a Pixel phone lying around. They don't seem particularly concerned about Google's changes either, just have to see how that develops but I find that encouraging.
Just curious, in terms of permission control, is it able to block Internet access to certain apps? I was unsuccessfully trying to do it with Android for a long time now.
GrapheneOS does have "Network" as a per-app permission, but when digging through the info on it it says
I can't say I fully understand what is meant by that. I think it is saying that the app could bypass the network permission by using an intent sent to another application, such as the browser, to cause data to be sent to the internet anyway.
Sorry it took me a bit - yes!
With any app you can approve/revoke permissions whenever, including Network, Sensors, whatever it asks for.