Sagebath Can anyone explain why they disagree with GOS developers' recommendation for using Google play store? Not why Google is bad, but why the alternatives are safe/secure?
Keep these 4 points in mind:
- 99% of the time, when you see some one mention "[this or that] is insecure" what they mean is "less secure." Furthermore, these people will often compare 97% to 99% and call the 97% extremely weak.
- Many--most?--people commenting on this forum are just as knowledgeable as yourself or slightly more so and parrot what others have said.
- We are on a forum that's on the extreme end of one spectrum--balanced/unbiased views are far and few between. There are lots of people that want to achieve perfection or are extremely paranoid. This leads me into my final point:
- Many technological Icaruses flying too close to the sun would likely recommend: "Throw away your high heels ladies. Adding just 1 inch--2.5cm--to flats increases ankle injuries by 20,000%. Your bones will break soon--heels aren't best practice."
Keep this last point in mind when I say something is less secure or could be malicious in the below text.
The apps that are on google play store, you can also get on the aurora store or at https://www.apkmirror.com .
I think the people that prefer to not use the google play store refuse to have anything google and/or want to try see if the app will run without 'google play services' installed. (Installing the google play store will automatically install google play services.) The google play store will more likely have a clean copy of the app.
F-droid, accrescent, and other app stores
have apps that are made by professionals and hobbyists that work through the weekend to provide a free app for us. Some are amazing or the best available. Some don't have the polish that a billion dollar company could provide, but people put up with it to not get a proprietary app or share their data to a company. Most of these are developed on https://www.github.com .
The apps from the aurora store or https://www.apkmirror.com could possibly be altered and malicious.
Personally, I trust F-droid. They were transparent with their issues and what they did to remedy them. A few people on the GOS project wanted F-droid to implement some changes years back. F-droid chose not to implement all of the GOS team's recommendations. So it is kind of a grudge held + exaggeration--like my 3rd point--type of situation. People still hold issues that F-droid fixed 2-3 years ago over their heads.
If you don't want to use F-droid, you could download .apk files on github and install them--verify the checksum if you wish.
For example:
https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal
On the far right is "Releases." The version listed just below is the newest, stable version. Click the version.
If the only files are source.zip, then the .apk file to install the app isn't here.
The .apk file you want will have one of these phrases in the filename:
"Arm64", "v8a", or "aarch64"
if none of those exist, maybe one that says "arm"