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Termux no longer updated on Google Play

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Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#281

Post by rstuart4133 »

drKarl wrote: post #50
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

Wow! That is a very big deal!!! Almost all of the Apps I have on my Android phone are installed from F-Droid, and I try to avoid installing any Apps from other sources, exceptions force upon me by my social circle, like WhatsApp. I have a PinePhone but it is not yet ready as a daily driver, and also the difference in hardware performance between my Android phone (which I bought this year) and PinePhone (or even Libre…

> Almost all of the Apps I have on my Android phone are installed from F-Droid ... I see that, at least for now, it's optional and you can un-enroll, which is good.

I can't see it going away. Google uses it to fend off monopoly accusations, viz you aren't locked in, you can always use another app store. Apple doesn't, and they are in a much more threatening territory when it comes to anti-trust law suites against their app store because of it. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-subcommittee...

Google has far worse anti-trust problems than Apple in general because they own 80% of some markets, and is being reminded of it repeatedly by ongoing law suites being brought in various countries. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/16/22179085/google-antitr... But for Google Play they have a free pass, and I don't think they aren't likely to give it up any time soon.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#282

Post by kazinator »

That seems hard to enforce.

I mean, you can block the kernel level execve, but perhaps user space can be hacked to do a user-level execve. Just unmap and re-map the right pieces of memory, close the right file descriptors, do the right stuff with signal handlers and whatever not. No?

Look, Cygwin is able to simulate fork and exec on Windows, both of which are completely missing.

One thing that would put a damper on things would be disallowing executable mapping at all. But you can't just do that since it breaks shared libs. A mechanism that allows shared libs to be mapped executable and then drops the map-execute privilege wouldn't be secure. It would be annoying, but possible to bypass.

The only way it would work is if the entire process setup logic shared libs were moved into the kernel, so that the very first instruction that runs in a process is in a context that can no longer map any pages executable. Or else, it's still in user space, but the dynamic loader is specially privileged, and before dispatching the very first instruction in the loaded executable, it drops that privilege. Either way, so much for trampolines, JIT and other techniques). dlopen could not work either, unless it's moved into the kernel, and allows only "blessed" plugins.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#283

Post by app4soft »

saagarjha wrote: post #199
driverdan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect them to continue supporting a 5 year old OS version?

I know some people do this for iOS, so I would have expected it to almost be the norm on Android where many devices frequently fall behind on updates.

> I know some people do this for iOS

Apple devs has a smart trick how to declare you to buy new iPhone {n+1} just next day after it out: Apple devs just may decrease performance of your previous iPhone {n} fully remotely without any prompts to you and without your permission.[0]

And such remoted control over users costs only $500M single pay - not too much as for Apple at all.[1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965119

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465829

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#284

Post by anderspitman »

danShumway wrote: post #272
themacguffinman wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General purpose computing is one possible safeguard, it also has pretty big and clear downsides for many consumers and isn't obviously the right choice for most. And again, the proof is in the pudding. If closed-down markets degrade and become awful over time, the market will eventually reflect and account for that in the future. Long-term consequences eventually materialize into immediate consequences after all. In…

> the market will eventually reflect and account for that in the future. Which won't help unless we're willing to break apart duopolies and enforce government antitrust. The point I'm making is that when you get rid of consumers' ability to solve their own problems, they lose the ability to solve their own problems. They don't magically get that ability back when the market starts being terrible. Take a look at Amazo…

> And unless you're currently buying stock in Purism or Windows Phone

OT but if Microsoft released a reasonably-open Linux phone, all would be forgiven as far as I'm concerned. They've always made fantastic hardware, and they're one of the few companies who could potentially break into the market in a real way.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#285

Post by anderspitman »

user-the-name wrote: post #219
iagovar wrote: post #4

We have to replicate somehow the PC ecosystem into mobile phones. I'd like PostmarketOS / Manjaro to take off, hope it becomes ready as everyday driver one day.

The PC ecosystem is laughably insecure.

Pretty sure GP was including Linux in "PC", and I'd trust the software repository maintainers of a typical distro way more than I trust Appoogle.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#286

Post by unix_fan »

danShumway wrote: post #212
unix_fan wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, a braille display can be had for around $400-$600. We also have multiple manufacturers, with multiple models and prices you can choose from. I don’t see that happening with open source hardware.

From where? Genuine question, I was interested in trying to play around with one a while ago, and I spent a fair amount of time searching and could not find a single monitor for under $1000, and most of them were in the $3000 to even $7000(!!!) range for a device that can literally only display a single line of text at a time. If there are manufacturers making cheaper devices, or even just doing anything interesting…

https://www.orbitresearch.com/product/orbit-reader-20/

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#287

Post by anderspitman »

higerordermap wrote: post #43
iagovar wrote: post #4

We have to replicate somehow the PC ecosystem into mobile phones. I'd like PostmarketOS / Manjaro to take off, hope it becomes ready as everyday driver one day.

The majority of people don't see any value in it, sadly. At least we can hope terminal + tools as separate app bundles approach takes off.

> At least we can hope terminal + tools as separate app bundles approach takes off.

But think of all the wasted engineering hours that could have been spent doing something useful, but will instead be spent conforming to Android's draconian security policies. This would all be solved if there was a switch that allowed users to disable W^X protections for specific apps.

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#288

Post by anderspitman »

fsflover wrote: post #51
badRNG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there actually any phones for "normal" Linux users? I've used GNU/Linux as my desktop OS for nearly a decade: Fedora for years, then openSUSE, then Pop!_OS for the past couple of years. These distros seem to have provided a good, current, stable out-of-the box experience (Out-of-the-Box + RPM Fusion and Packman for the former two.) I just don't enjoy constantly fixing issues on my personal systems, in fact, after…

If you prefer stability over feature set on desktop, choose Debian stable. It's rock-solid. > I remember reading an article full of workarounds to get a dialer app to work on some project phone. Currently, phone calls and sms work fine on both Librem 5 and Pinephone. The development rate is amazing. Only the good battery life is lacking yet, but it's improving every month.

Your experience is basically the exact opposite of what's described here[0]. I bring this up as an optimistic PinePhone owner. I just don't think it's there yet.

[0]: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11754

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#289

Post by [deleted] »

app4soft wrote: post #109
thetinguy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 5 years of support is reasonable.

No. Beside Android 5.x/6.x devices, I has Symbian 9.x (Nokia N82) smartphone which works perfectly. And there are a lot of new apps for it: - https://old.reddit.com/r/symbian/new P.S. My 10+ year-old laptop perfectly works with latest MX Linux distribution (based on Debian 10 buster ) and all modern FLOSS desktop apps (GIMP, FreeCAD, Inkscape, etc.) works like a charm on it. So, software devs should NOT declare users…

[deleted]

Re: Termux no longer updated on Google Play

#290

Post by endgame »

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

> Regular users won't be impacted by this.

Yet. Next step is to make it opt-out for the "safety" of the public.

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