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Termux no longer updated on Google Play

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Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#201

Post by rvense »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #174
rvense wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is increasingly impossible to live in my country without a number of apps that require an iOS device or an Android device with all the Google services enabled. There's one de facto monopoly payment app[0], a lot of places where you can't park without an app etc., but the big thing is we have a government mandated single sign-on solution. You can still get one-time-pads in the mail, but there's also an app, and som…

Thank you for sharing your experience. My country is doing a soft migration, with some places now refusing cash, but I don't care about them or can use help, and larger places like supermarkets having "no cash" and "cash only" checkout lanes, the latter being faster. Have you experimented with not using your phone for a day or a week and seeing how far you get looking for alternatives? They're usually around, just no…

My (Android) phone is de-Googled, so no apps except from F-Droid, and I only use the one-time pad for the national SSO solution. Following a recent change, not having the SSO apps means I have to have use an extra password + SMS 2FA on many sites when I want to pay by credit card (the alternative being the SSO app).

I don't drive, so I don't know for a fact about the parking situation, but people tell me some places are app-only.

On a few occasions I've had to get my wife to pay for something using the app I mentioned, but it is becoming increasingly "weird" not to have it, and I see many classifieds specify that they only accept payment that way. I was almost cash-only for day-to-day stuff until Covid, but that's been the nail in the coffin. Technically businesses can't refuse cash, but many places will have signs asking you to pay by card, and I'm not going to be an arse about it to some 17-year-old behind the counter like an anti-masker. Thankfully almost everyone accepts credit/debit cards, but the alternatives are cheaper for businesses so maybe in a few years that will also become problematic, and the app-based solutions will have fully overtaken government cash.

I feel like there should be an addition to basic human rights: Participation in the economy. It should not be a requirement for day-to-day life that one carries some tracking device and accepts thousands of pages of ToS from a private company. I can accept giving up many conveniences, but I feel like I should be able to have a place to live and buy food without a Google account.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#202

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

lbrito wrote: post #196

Termux is such a great piece of software. I've been using it as my primary server[1] for half a year now with no issues and very minimal maintenance. That said, it always kinda felt like a kludge when compared to (ideally) using a full-blown Linux distro like PostmarketOS. [1] https://lbrito1.github.io/blog/2020/07/replacing_google_anal...

This point is moot and off-topic.

termux is not perfect because it is already a compromise!

When google scammed us and sold android devices to all the hackers here and then surreptitiously removed our access to the terminal, we said "that's fine, we can still package this as an app like so and so" and termux was born.

now they are removing access from running any code not signed by their store, even if you install termux from the appstore and compile some code yourself, you can't run it. where are we drawing the line?

99% of people cannot use postmarketOS, either because their market do not have access to devices with unlocked bootloader or because their live depend on some bank/school/work app that checks the OS.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#203

Post by searchableguy »

michaelmior wrote: post #193
searchableguy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's safety net API is used to check if the device is rooted/unlocked/tampered. Many apps are using that now and will in future. There's no way around it. You can either have a phone for tinkering or general usage. There is no in-between now.

That personally doesn't bother me. I think it's reasonable for developers to want to safeguard the integrity of their apps. I can choose to use an alternative app without this check on my rooted phone. If there's no alternative, then of course you're left deciding which is more important. I am a developer (but not for Android) and I've never really felt the need to root my phone for many years. I think if you're a pr…

Yeah I don't think the API is unreasonable but many will use this without a purpose other than for compliance or something they saw somewhere that said it makes their apps more secure.

> I think if you're a professional Android developer, it's reasonable to have a second rooted device for development if you really feel you need root.

Safety net API will also fire on unblocked bootloaders, not just root. Android smartphone market is filled with crappy skin from chinese manufacturers and others. I don't want to be spied on by them so I use a custom rom on my phone. That wouldn't work in future.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#204

Post by dmos62 »

gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #202
lbrito wrote: post #196

Termux is such a great piece of software. I've been using it as my primary server[1] for half a year now with no issues and very minimal maintenance. That said, it always kinda felt like a kludge when compared to (ideally) using a full-blown Linux distro like PostmarketOS. [1] https://lbrito1.github.io/blog/2020/07/replacing_google_anal...

This point is moot and off-topic. termux is not perfect because it is already a compromise! When google scammed us and sold android devices to all the hackers here and then surreptitiously removed our access to the terminal, we said "that's fine, we can still package this as an app like so and so" and termux was born. now they are removing access from running any code not signed by their store, even if you install te…

Ironically, the software we create, Android in this case, isn't oriented at us. Castration in Android is considered a feature, because it makes the average user's phone more reliable.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#205

Post by ufmace »

londons_explore wrote: post #132
vorpalhex wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those are by far the minority of apps, and it seems crazy to make a pretty massive security tradeoff for something that 99% of apps don't need to do. Yet oddly, I as the user who paid $550 for my device would like to do that. I understand wanting to put a warning on it, but otherwise my device can kindly screw off and do what I've told it to do, or it will be taking a one way ride out the nearest window. The de…

My personal security metric is "how many bitcoins would I leave in a wallet app on this phone". Currently that number is about 1 ($30k) on an up to date android. I believe that if I had more bitcoins on a phone, and told people about it, there's a good chance a targeted exploit would steal those keys. Even if I had them encrypted, at some point I have to type a password in to decrypt, and that would be the point they…

Yup this. I bought my device to do useful things on and store a bunch of personal private information. I'm a lot more concerned about keeping it working at 100% reliability and keeping all of that data as secure as I can than whether I can run some weird random hack on it for kicks.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#206

Post by AsyncAwait »

amingilani wrote: post #9

Quick note: Google's Advanced Protection program disallows sideloading apps, so you can't install F-droid. Edit: Note that the Advanced Protection program is opt-in for users that require the highest degree of security Google can offer. Regular users won't be impacted by this. Edit: proof https://imgur.com/a/yktPNIc Edit 2: see @haunter's comment for a link to the change announcement

> Note that the Advanced Protection program is opt-in for users that require the highest degree of security Google can offer. Regular users won't be impacted by this.

Yet. Google seems to be restricting Android more and more with each release.

I fully switched to the PinePhone last year because of this.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#207

Post by saagarjha »

This is annoying, but I am not quite convinced that this requires pulling Termux from the Play Store. I mean, to be honest, Android is literally "easy mode" compared to iOS even after this change, and just having access to execmem would be enough for any iOS app to write a very capable Termux–and that's even without proot involved. I'm seeing claims of execmem possibly going away as a reason to not write their own loader (which is basically the only component they need) but that would require banning all alternative web browser engines from the store, which would be a much larger change in policy than banning exec from certain directories.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#208

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

dmos62 wrote: post #204
gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point is moot and off-topic. termux is not perfect because it is already a compromise! When google scammed us and sold android devices to all the hackers here and then surreptitiously removed our access to the terminal, we said "that's fine, we can still package this as an app like so and so" and termux was born. now they are removing access from running any code not signed by their store, even if you install te…

Ironically, the software we create, Android in this case, isn't oriented at us. Castration in Android is considered a feature, because it makes the average user's phone more reliable.

> it makes the average user's phone more reliable.

I would believe that if it was a prime (well described, not difficult to understand, easy to find) option where the user had control.

As it is, it is the same as blocking the second level of a house because 'not allowing the residents to climb a stair makes the house safer for them'.

At some point, we have to see that feature prioritization on android serves only advertising revenue increase, and reduced support costs for google.

This one is for the later. With this feature they can remove tons of cost form app review teams they have. They can just allow every app that downloads crap to the data location and call it a day. It doesn't help the user in any way, only google profits.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#209

Post by shawnz »

saagarjha wrote: post #197
shawnz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good points, although... > Lack of things like w^x enforced across the OS. (the root of this post). Are you sure iOS does this for the filesystem at all? I can't find any documentation besides some comments that they don't allow apps which exec other binaries in the app store. > The quality of SoC and OEM provided drivers being very very poor - there are lots of kernel exploits to be found. And how do we know ab…

iOS apps on the App Store effectively cannot create W^X mappings.

Sure, but the other poster seemed to be talking about software policy-based security measures with that point (like what Android is adding) and not just app store review restrictions.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#210

Post by danShumway »

folkrav wrote: post #171
danShumway wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that unreasonable? Running another OS on a device with physical hardware switches is a privilege right now, so it costs more. There are essentially two companies doing this, and neither of them are even at the point where they can completely honestly say their products are out of beta. The Librem is expensive in no small part because its feature list is fringe, and even ignoring the inherent hardware challenges th…

> Is that unreasonable? Running another OS on a device with physical hardware switches is a privilege right now, so it costs more. There are essentially two companies doing this, and neither of them are even at the point where they can completely honestly say their products are out of beta. The Librem is expensive in no small part because its feature list is fringe, and even ignoring the inherent hardware challenges…

The ultimate goal of Purism is to expand the market, but (opinion me) when I look at Purism's products in general I don't see them ever themselves moving out of niche categories.

If you buy a Purism laptop today, you'll already pay a premium over companies like Dell. I suspect that Purism is happy to see companies like Pine existing, and I know that they want Linux smartphones in general to be a broader market, I don't know that they're seriously thinking about trying to launch $100-200 competitors. To me, it just doesn't match their other products, I don't see anything else they're offering that would fall into that same category.

And while people would like to see Linux completely take over the desktop/mobile space, I think there's a much broader category of people who just want the market to be big enough for us and to be big enough that it is able to meet our needs. Past that it's not the end of the world if it doesn't get larger.

This is also part of what's frustrating about stuff like the "year of the Linux desktop" joke -- in many ways, the year of the Linux desktop already happened a while ago. Linux got good enough that you can pretty easily mainline it instead of Windows without serious issues or downsides. I have not booted into a Windows computer in multiple years, I don't even have a backup install anywhere. It just doesn't come up anymore. In terms of software, Linux support is something that a sizable portion of the indie games market now talks about, and between Steam/Proton and the recent architectural/policy changes happening on Mac you're now about as likely to be able to run a game on Linux (if not more likely) than you are to be able to run it on a modern Mac device. Meanwhile, 'mainstream' Linux OSes finally got polished enough that it's completely reasonable to put a tech-unfriendly kid or parent on a Linux machine without worrying that you'll get tech support requests every week. There's still a little ways to go with some legacy/holdout software in more niche professional fields like graphic design, but if you're a relatively normal user, then at some point Linux stopped being a struggle to run.

So in the same way, when I talk about the success of the Linux phone market in general, I'm not necessarily aiming for "we monopolize the entire space and nothing else exists." I think it's completely plausible that the Linux phone market might grow, not put Apple out of business, but still grow enough that there is a reasonably priced, usable alternative for people who value privacy and freedom.

In them meantime, it's niche. As far as I know, the front camera on the recent Pinephones still doesn't have software support. So yeah, it's currently a niche market for people who have very specific wants and needs. It seems kind of premature to me for people to be complaining about price and hardware when we're still celebrating things like camera support; commoditization is something that happens to mature markets, not new ones -- and that all takes time.

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