I'd like to point to my comment on another thread pointing out some poignant issues with F-Droid's design: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507185
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No user accounts, by design
81–90 of 147 posts
Re: No user accounts, by design
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's been professionally frustrating me for years as a developer is how much of the engineering and operational budget for a project is tied up into identifying and tracking users. The first time this happened to me we had some idiot who insisted that we needed to display exactly how many logged on users there were on every page load. There was no point in doing so, and we had proven that it was at least ten percen…
Absolutely. I think your last point is especially good. Facebook consumes a ton of cash for what many people feel are disappointing results. Are they vulnerable to a competitor who is less about what users want than what they need ? A competitor who can do that for 1/10th or 1/100th as much money? That could be very hard for the me-me-me companies to keep up with.
The thing with fads, and adoption cycles in general, is that what people 'want' can be figured out pretty quickly, but as far as I'm concerned, The Trough of Disillusionment is what happens when people figure out that what they need is something else.
So what you're asking is can someone come into the ToD and introduce a new product that steals people away? It's plausible and if I were in a better headspace I could probably name you a bunch of examples. But does it always happen? I don't think so. There are plenty of incumbents who manage to coast through and come out the other side having demonstrated a dilute form of change of heart - just enough to convince the customers that 'something was done' even if they can't quite put a finger on what exactly is better and how much.
Re: No user accounts, by design
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often if I allow stuff to update all the time. I then go through the list of updates in the Play Store once a week or so and install those that I think might improve app…
This still sucks for your usecase on F-Droid. If you look through the available updates and pick 10 to install, you have to click through 10 popups to allow the installation, one for each update, waiting in between each for the previous update to finish before being able to approve the next.
How many apps do you need installed (and why)? I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user, but if I forget to update for a week at most I have 6 apps to manually click through. It seems likes an insignificant gripe considering the other alternatives (Play Store, Amazon, Huawei, etc)
Re: No user accounts, by design
#84I note that F-Droid are hiring contractors right now:
https://guardianproject.info/contact/android-python-contract...
Re: No user accounts, by design
#85F-droid reminds me there are still people out there making software for fun. Thank you Hendroid dev (a man of culture as well) whoever you are.
Re: No user accounts, by design
#86F-droid gets many things right (e.g. verifiable builds), but it's just not usable in practice. Installing applications is a rare event, updating them is frequent, and needs to disrupt the user as little as possible. Android used to not allow alternative app stores to update apps without user interaction, but now supports this through UPDATE_PACKAGES_WITHOUT_USER_ACTION, which doesn't seem to be supported by F-droid.…
Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often if I allow stuff to update all the time. I then go through the list of updates in the Play Store once a week or so and install those that I think might improve app…
Yep, me too. I used to evangelize frequent updates because of the security aspect. However over time I kept getting burned by disruptive or buggy updates that broke things that I depend on.
The last straw for me was a few years ago when my podcast suddenly stopped playing. When I unlocked the phone to investigate why the episode had stopped the UI had completely changed, in a way that I was completely lossed and had to start over learning it from scratch. I was right at the beginning of a long road trip and had pre-downloaded many hours were of stuff to listen to because I didn't have much data in my plan. All of the episodes I had downloaded were gone. Additionally because I was driving, learning a completely new interface was horribly dangerous.
That was the day I disabled auto updates, and now I manually approve each one. Certain apps where I don't want to risk UI changes or new bugs, don't get updated right away. When they do, I always backup the old APK first so I can easily restore it if needed.
Re: No user accounts, by design
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This still sucks for your usecase on F-Droid. If you look through the available updates and pick 10 to install, you have to click through 10 popups to allow the installation, one for each update, waiting in between each for the previous update to finish before being able to approve the next.
How many apps do you need installed (and why)? I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user, but if I forget to update for a week at most I have 6 apps to manually click through. It seems likes an insignificant gripe considering the other alternatives (Play Store, Amazon, Huawei, etc)
These are the apps on my phone that have updated in the past 7 days:Facebook
Google
Instagram
Pocket
Subway/public transit app (see how much money I have left on the cards)
Grab (an Uber competitor where I live)
YouTube
Google Maps
A bank app
Signal
Google Calendar
GMail
Android Auto
Agoda, a hotel booking app
Dropbox
Netflix
AirBnB
A second bank app
A boardgame helper app
Uber
TripIt
Microsoft ToDo
Shopping app for the baby store we order diapers and formula from every few days
Spotify
Proton calendar
Facebook Messenger
Google Docs
Google Photos
Google Voice
Google Sheets
You Need A Budget
Tiktok
Shopee, an online shopping app I use nearly every day
My country's covid vaccine tracking app
Google Translate
Re: No user accounts, by design
#88F-droid gets many things right (e.g. verifiable builds), but it's just not usable in practice. Installing applications is a rare event, updating them is frequent, and needs to disrupt the user as little as possible. Android used to not allow alternative app stores to update apps without user interaction, but now supports this through UPDATE_PACKAGES_WITHOUT_USER_ACTION, which doesn't seem to be supported by F-droid.…
Just FYI, NewPipe has their own F-Droid repo with faster updates. https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
So does Bromite browser. https://www.bromite.org/fdroid
Re: No user accounts, by design
#89F-droid gets many things right (e.g. verifiable builds), but it's just not usable in practice. Installing applications is a rare event, updating them is frequent, and needs to disrupt the user as little as possible. Android used to not allow alternative app stores to update apps without user interaction, but now supports this through UPDATE_PACKAGES_WITHOUT_USER_ACTION, which doesn't seem to be supported by F-droid.…
Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often if I allow stuff to update all the time. I then go through the list of updates in the Play Store once a week or so and install those that I think might improve app…
I also disable auto updates once every six months is enough for me. I really really don't care about the security of these apps.
Re: No user accounts, by design
#90F-droid gets many things right (e.g. verifiable builds), but it's just not usable in practice. Installing applications is a rare event, updating them is frequent, and needs to disrupt the user as little as possible. Android used to not allow alternative app stores to update apps without user interaction, but now supports this through UPDATE_PACKAGES_WITHOUT_USER_ACTION, which doesn't seem to be supported by F-droid.…
Slightly hyperbolic in saying it's "usable in practice", but only slightly, and everything you said is true per my own experience. That just makes these issues super annoying. Normal people won't put up with it, and they shouldn't have to. Hacker types might be motivated to continue using F-Droid, but power users and others probably won't.