I found an application that could be labeled as “A Superior F-Droid” by featuring all of F-Droid’s applications, plus even applications not supplied by F-Droid which includes Shizuku (Seriously, why is this almost-critical application not included in F-Droid?). So I’m replacing F-Droid with Neo Store. Since Neo Store still connects with F-Droid, I’m not disconnected from the Forum, it’s just now I can discuss a wider variety of applications that F-Droid doesn’t include.
Could Neo Store be more suitable than F-Droid when acquiring Open-source applications? I need answers to this question.
Because it uses the F-Droid Repo. It does not provide it’s own app sources just preloads a bunch of third party repos by default. F-Droid can also use third party repos but does not have any added by default.
Because it also enables extra repositories by default which are normally not included with the standard F-Droid client. Though likewise you are all the same free to add those very same repositories yourself to the actual client.
Doesn’t meet the inclusion criteria.
As I said above F-Droid can do this too the difference is that Neo Store adds a lot of third party repos and enables some of them by default. So with F-Droid you have to do it manually whereas Neo Store just has different defaults so some of the effort is just already handled.
They are both pretty much equally as suitable due to them both being able to access all the same sources. But technically Neo Store could be considered more suitable due to it having so many extra repos bundled in but again that is irrelevant if you are willing to add them yourself to the original client which you can do in it’s settings.
So really it’s more so just down to a case of personal preference on which client you would prefer. Can’t go wrong with either of them.
Yeah, I guess you’re kind of right there, I chose Neo Store for general convenience. That way I can enjoy a larger range of applications. Plus your username kind of indicates you have a nasty hostility towards Google.
No problem with that! If that’s how you want to do it then let it be that way. And I mean you aren’t entirely wrong either. Given your use case Neo Store could be considered the superior F-Droid Client for you. Which honestly I don’t blame you there while I did say you can just add them to the Official client (which is true) depending on how many repos you actually want to add it can be quite the time consuming thing. Neo Store does cut a lot of the effort needed to do this out by already adding most of the popular and most used third party repos.
I wouldn’t say nasty hostility. But I do have quite a bit of distaste for them yes. Their way of doing things is quite problematic in a lot of areas! Although it is important to note I do actually like some of the stuff they make. I think Chromium is Good, I think Android is Good aswell.
I think Safe Browsing (the standard mode not the enhanced protection mode) and RCS are pretty good aswell although do have some problematic aspects like Safe Browsing being restricted to dependence on GMS on Mobile unlike it’s Desktop counterparts and in RCS case Google effectively managed to monopolize the whole thing.
But my distaste is more so heavily focused on their general services that heavily mistreat users like most of their cloud services, (Photos, Drive, Search etc) GMS being forcefully installed and forcefully given privileged full device access (GrapheneOS solves that problem but that doesn’t change the fact the general problem for other devices remains the same)
And their Play Integrity API is absolutely terrible. Honestly I could just keep listing stuff but the point is I don’t blindly hate on Google I do see the value in some of the stuff they make and like I said I even like some of it. AOSP is my favorite general Operating System base as a matter of fact!.. At least currently if they continue down the path they are currently going and depending on how far they go that may change.
However I cannot get past all of their misdeeds as well and how badly they treat people. Hence the name.
Ah, understandable. Google not only has countless lawsuits against them, but is ruining the fundamental rules of Android, what made it popular over iOS to begin with.
However, governments are doing a similar issue: Age Verification. It’s even worse than Google, since it isn’t a company that’s doing it, it’s entire governments, and that could seriously hinder or downright stop F-Droid and similar app repositories if they don’t comply with Age Verification. Both Neo Store & F-Droid are in legal danger if these Age Verification laws continue getting worse.
The only repo that enforces open source is f-droid.org, you know that yes? So… having pre configured repos that contain…random apps built from whataever code does not seem like a “feature”.
The problem with Shizuku is two-fold, as I understand it. Firstly, F-Droid’s inclusion policy requires that developers be informed and that they do not oppose the inclusion - Shizuku’s developers have been asked and they do oppose being included in F-Droid, as that linked github issue shows.
Secondly, Shizuku’s own license has a problematic history. It used to be “fake FOSS” distributed under a modified Apache-2.0 license with an additional clause prohibiting redistribution of “the project as a whole.” The current license, which is intended to be clearer, claims that the appId and permissions are trademarks that redistributors and forks are not allowed to use. Trademark restrictions in and of themselves don’t make something proprietary (and are often used in the FOSS world, for example by Mozilla) but as noted above by @SkewedZeppelin the appId and permissions are required to make Shizuku work. This means - assuming these trademark restrictions are enforceable (and they may not be! but IANAL) - Shizuku remains proprietary software - and, regardless of whether these trademarks are enforceable or not (my opinion is that, at least per US trademark law, the functionality doctrine would apply here), it’s clear that the intent of Shizuku’s developers is to be hostile to forks and redistributors.
IzzyOnDroid repository (which is included by default in several third party clients) includes Shizuku because he got permission from them to. It should be noted then that his repository is much less strict with regards to freeness, and the fact that this repo comes pre-enabled in Neo Store and other clients may create the false impression that F-Droid itself carries these applications.
Neo Store needs quite a bit of RAM to work correctly, like perhaps 5 GB ideally at minimum. So on weaker devices it can seriously lag, like my BLU C5L, with its pitiful 2 GB of RAM, where the bugger occasionally crashes, in that situation F-Droid is far easier on the device. If you have a very strong Android device, Neo Store won’t suffer any serious problems. Otherwise stick with F-Droid.
Plus, I copied all the repositories that Neo Store had, and began shifting them over to F-Droid itself. If I had more massive repositories, I could get F-Droid seriously running.
Just skimmed this review and it’s unclear what’s so “almost-critical” about Shizuku. I’d never use many of the apps, have apps that already do what several of them do, and wonder about potentially missed security gaps from apps on top of Shizuku on top of Graphene. (But that’s just me.) There’s a benefit and possible disadvantage to fragmented app repositories/stores - benefit is that it’s more difficult for predatory monopolies like google/alphabet, microsoft, and governments to compromise or shut them all down, the disadvantage is the duplicated efforts by a limited pool of volunteer maintainers. Shizuku: Unlocking Advanced Android Capabilities Without Root IMHO, YMMV.
Well, Google is cracking down on the accessibility of Android/Data, now you must use Shizuku or a root to access it, eventually that will be removed by the looks of it.
I for one prefer droid-ify. It brings default a lot of the repos I usually activate. And, better by far than f-droid: It can backup and restore my repos.
Yeah. Discovering new apps is much easier on Droidify.
And the UI looks good.
It does what the WIP rewrite of the Fdroid-client promises to do.
The installation process of apps via Droidify glitches sometimes though.