F-Droid vs/or Droid-ify

Dumdum

Viewpoint0232 the case of Simple Apps (bought by an adware company) they immediately stopped updating the apps in the F-Droid repo - while you'd still get the "bad" updates through Play or Obtainium.

Google Play, yes. Obtainium, no. Not a single update has been published through github (and therefore Obtainium), only the apps on Google Play have been updated. Users can also just remove the apps from Obtainium anyway.

DeletedUser301

CyberOtter I would rather trust Fdroid than trusting a bunch of different developers to keep my data safe. And it's not like Fdroid is shady like Aptoide. In fact their policies are so strict that not all apps can get into their official repo. Yes I know about the late updates and using their own key to sign the app packages. I can live with that than putting my trust on hundreds of different developers who I don't even know or head of before. If you have the time and patience to verify the source code of each app you download from Github, then it's okay I guess. But being a working person, I do not have the time and I certainly can't trust a random guy telling me on Reddit or XDA that certain XYZ app available on Github repo is safe to download.

Oggyo

DeletedUser301
F-Droid vs Obtainium/GPlay/etc. is like a never-ending discussion of "native app vs PWA" :) It depends on the use case.

About the trust - I like the F-Droid approach of building the apps from the source code compared to the already compiled APK from GitHub. There is no guarantee that (random) developers use the exact source code they published on GitHub.

On the other hand - if the F-Droid infrastructure gets compromised (signing keys, etc.) it can affect all apps you downloaded/installed from its repository. And this is unlikely to happen if you use GitHub/Obtainium as you use different devs/projects for different apps.

User2288

Sempa they both do same thing.
Differences are:

droidify cant do unattended updates, fdroid-basic can.
Droidify looks better and is the most polished of all front ends for fdroid IMO.

You don't need both.

[deleted]

Sorry, I didn't understand, can I get a report? which one is better to use? (F-Droid basic or Droid-ify)?

wuseman

[deleted]
Understand what? Get a report of what?

The post above yours was perfectly clear.

[deleted]

A summary. Between the two which one is best to use.

User2288

This is a personal choice, depends on what feels better to you. You need to install and try both.

But from a functional perspective i think fdroid basic is better because updates are automatic.

SirWolf

It's hard not to depend on F-Droid when only F-Droid allows me to install Element in a way that it does not depend on Google Play Services for push notifications. So while I would be all in for as much privacy and security as possible, I don't want Google Play Services on my main profile, and I don't want to switch to a separate profile for using Element.

stupidcreature

SirWolf If youre into as much security and privacy as possible then use Signal lmao

SirWolf

stupidcreature It's hard to agree with that. Signal wants you to register with your phone number, and the server code is partially open-source. By the way, I'm already using my self-hosted Matrix server for Element, and I disabled federation...

looped_around

SirWolf Same boat, Threema and Element and proton. Although I only installed protons suite because I hadn't realized it yet. But not being able to verify what I'm installing is from the dev is a problem for me.

rerpy

Sempa I know this thread is relatively old, but this post is relevant to the discussion of official client vs forks: https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/16zb6ph/psa_only_the_official_fdroid_client_has_proper/?rdt=44205

Pocketstar

There are good reasons not to use F-Droid, there was a topic about it:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18731-f-droid-vulnerability-allows-bypassing-certificate-pinning/

I only use Accrescent and Obtainium myself nowadays, it works well for me.
The PlayStore is also a decent source for apps, just be careful which apps to pick because many apps are proprietary apps that are monetizing by tracking users.

SirWolf

Update:

Now I install the NextPush app (Nextcloud's UnifiedPush solution) as a notification service on GrapheneOS. In Element, I can set this app as notification service. Given I already have a Nextcloud deployment too, besides the Matrix server, this works out fine for me.
This allows me to slowly ditch F-Droid Basic for installing Element via Obtanium. Most of my apps now come from Obtanium, and I'll continue working towards that.
I don't use Accrescent anymore. I wrote the reasons here: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24151-what-do-you-think-of-accrescent-app-store/22.

(Edit: Forgot to mention @looped_around as you might be interested in this.)