Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

f-droid.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 146 posts

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#121

Post by pbhjpbhj »

llanowarelves wrote: post #114
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistency is good. But I find the update flow to be annoying. Touch 'updates' tab, doesn't show you the updates until you pull down (with no affordance), update are summarised but not listed in the big space for updates to be listed, "update all" then doesn't update all but instead lists the updates in that big space, tap "update" on each item listed, you get a popup asking if you want to update it (because the two…

Not being able to update multiple at once is an android security thing isn't it?

Maybe, Google Play can do "all updates", but they maybe do shenanigans.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#122

Post by onli »

urgent_skittle wrote: post #118
onli wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be partly a Lineage problem - with probably some Android culpability mixed in. Lineage had their own very simple to install superuser addon, but that was dropped a few versions ago. Some Android changes prompted this, but probably also their attitude against rocking the boat (no rooting, no signature spoofing, etc). The remaining solution was Magisk. Magisk was equally easy to install, but recently depr…

You make it sound harder than it is. Most (if not all) ROMs offer the boot image as a separate dowload, often referred to as the "recovery"; LineageOS is one of them. You only need to patch and flash it once, after that you can just open Magisk after the OTA update has been installed but before rebooting, and choose the "after OTA update" install option.

Patching the recovery is specifically deprecated now, according to the install instructions. See also the github issue I linked.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#123

Post by rakoo »

iudqnolq wrote: post #112
rollcat wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of automatic updates/upgrades in F-Droid is what keeps putting me off. I completely understand people who want more control over when and which apps get the updates, but this is not a good policy for the general case: I trust the developers of the apps I install from F-Droid to provide me with security, stability and performance updates much more than I distrust them to pull the rug from under my feet. I als…

That's an Android restriction, you need root to allow non-play-services to install apps.

Or use a distribution that actually gives users control. I'm using CalyxOS for instance and haven't had to fiddle with anti-user settings to be able to use my ohone.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#124

Post by rollcat »

onli wrote: post #117
rollcat wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. I haven't rooted an Android device since 2014. I just did some lazy research for the version of LineageOS I'm using. Am I missing something, or is it normal to find the procedure confusing and somewhat scary? There is github.com/LineageOS/Superuser and github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk, it seems I need to build Superuser from source (yikes); Magisk from F-Droid wants to install a newer version from Github (but that doe…

This seems to be partly a Lineage problem - with probably some Android culpability mixed in. Lineage had their own very simple to install superuser addon, but that was dropped a few versions ago. Some Android changes prompted this, but probably also their attitude against rocking the boat (no rooting, no signature spoofing, etc). The remaining solution was Magisk. Magisk was equally easy to install, but recently depr…

> But they just refuse it, and even forbid discussing such topics on their subreddit - that alone shows me that the project is very user hostile currently. I doubt with that attitude they can make a turnaround, but I'd be happy to be wrong...

Somehow not surprising to me. Many large open source projects seem to be more about pushing a political agenda of some sort, rather than serving the interests of their users. Especially distributions, as a class of projects, are uniquely positioned to do that, as the role of a systems integrator doubles as the de-facto gatekeeper.

> Sadly the other bigger ROMs are to my knowledge not better in this category, neither /e/ with their service suite, nor DivestOS with the passionate developer nor CalyxOS or GrapheneOS with their "security" focus are interested in giving the user full access to their device.

I have no opinion on any of these except for GrapheneOS, but I totally understand why they wouldn't want the user to root their device - having root is indeed a security nightmare. I wrote about this more extensively in the context of traditional UNIX-like operating systems. I think it's a very good trade-off IF you provide the user with viable alternatives (let's remember, the original goal was to have unattended upgrades).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32971677

> Android seems to be a dead end here, real Linux is needed.

That was my reflection in 2016, when I changed to SailfishOS full time, and remained the case in 2019, as I switched again, to iOS. I keep an Android device or two around just to keep testing the waters, but for my personal goal of having a usable phone without Google, indeed looks like a dead end.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#125

Post by hilbert42 »

throwaway2056 wrote: post #93
roytam87 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you prefer old f-droid interface, you can try foxy droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nya.kitsunyan.foxydroid/

Even better... https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.bubu1.fdroidclassic/

Love it. How did I miss this for so long? (Reckon I must have been living under a mushroom or something.)

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#126

Post by aorth »

Hasnep wrote: post #14
geokon wrote: post #8

I didn't realize the app was still being worked on. It's been years since the UI update and it's always been amazingly buggy (across 3 different phone). I'm always impressed by how broken it is - especially if you have a slow connection. Downloads will randomly go into a weird frozen state where they can't be stopped. The download status will change when you change tabs/sections. Sometimes download will go past 100%…

I recommend NeoStore [1], which is an alternative frontend for F-droid. I can't say it never crashes, but I prefer it to the F-droid app. [1] https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/

Looks nice! Unfortunately they don't support repositories that use plaintext HTTP. I get the idea, but my repository is private and only accessible over my personal Tailscale network so that's annoying.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#128

Post by urgent_skittle »

onli wrote: post #122
urgent_skittle wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound harder than it is. Most (if not all) ROMs offer the boot image as a separate dowload, often referred to as the "recovery"; LineageOS is one of them. You only need to patch and flash it once, after that you can just open Magisk after the OTA update has been installed but before rebooting, and choose the "after OTA update" install option.

Patching the recovery is specifically deprecated now, according to the install instructions. See also the github issue I linked.

Indeed, and I was talking about the boot image, but some still refer to it as the recovery, i.e. LineageOS. I see LOS have changed their download pages now and correctly call the boot image boot.img instead, that's good. So anyway, just download the boot image alongside the ROM instead of extracting it, and rerun Magisk install before rebooting after an OTA, and it's all very doable. Not as easy as before, but not too hard either.

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#129

Post by onli »

urgent_skittle wrote: post #128
onli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patching the recovery is specifically deprecated now, according to the install instructions. See also the github issue I linked.

Indeed, and I was talking about the boot image, but some still refer to it as the recovery, i.e. LineageOS. I see LOS have changed their download pages now and correctly call the boot image boot.img instead, that's good. So anyway, just download the boot image alongside the ROM instead of extracting it, and rerun Magisk install before rebooting after an OTA, and it's all very doable. Not as easy as before, but not to…

LineageOS seems to make a name change just now with the boot and recovery thing. For reference, https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html is what I reference. The file you get instructed to path is the boot.img. Note how "you have to do something after every ROM upgrade" does not get mentioned - so it is a little bit better than I thought if Magisk has an action in the app that can be run before the reboot, but that's still way too brittle to be useable.

(I vouched for your comment, it was hidden, that's normal for new accounts.)

Re: New F-Droid repository format for faster and smaller updates

#130

Post by stinos »

urgent_skittle wrote: post #119
stinos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you on the bugs, but my main problem with it is that the search just never seems to return what I need. I don't know if it's me but I usually end up searching the internet for 'best foss android ' or so. Let's see: search for ssh (with the intent of finding an ssh client, that's not too far fetched?), these are the top matches: HACS Hackspace Access Control System, KOReader Ebook reader, AVNC VNC client, FTPCl…

Sounds very familiar. I switched to Foxy Droid, an alternative F-Droid client, years ago partly because its search functionality is miles ahead of the official F-Droid app. The popular and newer Droid-ify and Neo Store are forks of it I think, so should offer the same improvements. Top results for 'ssh' in Foxy Droid: ConnectBot (SSH client), SshDaemon (ssh server), RSSAid (RSSHub... nothing to do with SSH), Easy SSH…

Those results do look spot on. But I just installed Neo Store inspired by comments here, and it shows none of the apps I currently have installed through F-Droid..
Post reply on HN