F-GNU/Linux (TM)

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F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.

And F-Droid makes available different versions of each app, for selected different hardware types.

What/Who is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for GNU/Linux portable devices, particularly phones and tablets?

It seems there are a variety of application “stores” usually closely associated with each distribution. There are some ways of making applications portable between different distributions. Is there something similar to F-Droid/Android, making available different (“trusted”) versions of each app, for different hardware types and different distributions? (particularly for phones and tablets)

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Sounds like Snap and Flatpak are what is fitting. The other choice would be using distribution-agnostic package managers like GNU Guix.

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Thanks for the suggestions.

Snap and Flatpak are what is fitting.

Snap and Flatpak are different, because they allow and distribute apps with proprietary license. Examples:

(Negative comment about Canonical history almost withheld :smiley: )

package managers like GNU Guix.

Certainly more “pure” on licensing, and close to what I asked. Gotta have some doubts about how well these packages would work on phones/tablets, but maybe.

(My previous experience with Guix as Operating System on PC was disappointing.)

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Yeah, GNU Guix is what comes to mind here. It can be run either as an OS or as a package manager on an existing GNU/Linux system.

I run Guix on top of Mobian on my PinePhone and the packages themselves “work” about as well as a native Mobian package, which is to say it is hit or miss. The real issue with Guix is that it’s fundamentally a source based package manager, although it can get binaries from a build server. As can be expected, most of the work is put into x86-64 and although aarch64 is technically a supported target, some packages don’t have binaries for that platform and some won’t even build (I had a “fun” time trying to build a Haskell package for my phone).

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Flathub does classify those apps as proprietary, as one can see in the links provided. Therefore it is the user’s choice if they want to install them or not.

P.S. Try Codium as a free software build of VSCode on flathub :wink: (One still has to vet the extensions they install on top.)

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Flatpak & Flathub work great :+1:

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True enough, but it does not meet F-Droid’s minimum standard -[only] “FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications”.

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what about appimages? Self contained and able to run on almost any os. Not to long ago I was able to (on a rooted android) able to get containers working and I got docker to almost run correctly. I think an F-Droid appimage would be cool. Honestly.

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