
F-Droid at 36c3 - ericdanielski
https://f-droid.org/de/2020/01/09/f-droid-at-36c3.html
======
teruakohatu
I want to love F-Droid I really do. Finding apps is just miserable because
whatever CDN they use, if any, does not play well with New Zealand and
scrolling though apps just shows blank icons. Eventually they load but
scrolling back up they are blank again, there is no caching.

Same with screen shots, it can take 15+ seconds for screenshot thumbnails or
full screen shots to load. It is like being on dial up.

I know it is open source and I should not complain.

~~~
dessant
Aurora Droid and Aurora Store are sleek alternatives for the F-Droid and
Google Play clients. They use the same sources for content, but the apps feel
much snappier and look pleasant.

[1]
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.adroid/)

[2]
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/)

~~~
DarthGhandi
Not sure about Aurora Droid but the Aurora store wont have the same build
guarantees that come with using fdroid. Something to note. Installing malware
through a proxy is still installing malware.

~~~
dessant
Aurora Droid comes with a customizable list of package repositories, including
an F-Droid repository mirror.

Aurora Store fetches packages from the same source as the Google Play client.
There's a legitimate benefit to having access to the Google Play catalog
without depending on Google Play Services or owning a Google account, and not
all apps on Google Play are malware.

~~~
DarthGhandi
> There's a legitimate benefit to having access to the Google Play catalog
> without depending on Google Play Services or owning a Google account

Definitely agree, use store personally, have done all that is possible to
degoogle my phone but the reality is that certain play store apps are
essential for modern living. Yalp was once good but find it unusable now.
Aurora store has good UI and seems to handle the proxy accounts better, or at
least they are not being banned so quick.

------
willscott
The note on Timeless at the end is very exciting.

[https://repeatr.io/welcome/what-is-
timeless/](https://repeatr.io/welcome/what-is-timeless/) explains timeless as
a set of tooling for reproducible builds with a broader and more hash-based
mandate than what's out there currently. While early, it seems like it's a
reasonable path towards getting a reproducible system that won't fall apart as
fast over time, by vendoring the dependency system in the same way modern
language-specific package managers do, but at a language-agnostic/distribution
level.

~~~
RaitoBezarius
Is there any particular difference with
[https://nixos.org/nix/](https://nixos.org/nix/) which is backed by academia
and has years of experience? Never heard about Timeless though.

FWIW, I'm using Nix to package Android app builds in a reproducible way (for
React Native apps).

~~~
qqii
I've gone through their website and I think I have a reasonable grasp of the
difference. Unlike NixOS and Guix which enforce a store, all builds are
performed in a container[0] and produce a self contained executable[1].

I speculate that the container approach will make porting slightly easier as
dependancies can be placed where they are expected, thus no patches are
required for project build systems. On the other hand producing a self
contained executable seems more difficult, and I wonder if they'll go with an
AppImage like approach to minimise patches required.

Overall the vision has overlap but the end result is very different from that
of NixOS and Guix.

[0]:

> Typically, we use an executor which uses “linux containers”. However, for
> the most part, we try to consider that an implementation detail. Executors
> might also be simple chroots; or virtual machines; or other interesting
> kinds of sandboxing. Nor are executors strictly limited to the Linux
> operating system; it's simply the most common place to work.
> [https://repeatr.io/design/executors/](https://repeatr.io/design/executors/)

[1]:

> Radix “Packages” are similar to packages from other linux distributions…
> however, we're aiming to do something not like linux distributions: our
> vision for Radix Packages is that they go anywhere, with or without the rest
> of a distro associated with them. [https://repeatr.io/welcome/what-is-
> radix/](https://repeatr.io/welcome/what-is-radix/)

------
lucb1e
I saw the meetup in the schedule but didn't end up going because I wasn't sure
what it would be about. Looks like some interesting topics were discussed! And
indeed, the congress app updates were on time this year, that was very nice.

------
duxup
I like the idea of f-droid but when I used it felt like searching GitHub while
expecting more of an app store experience.

Now maybe that makes sense for what for what f-droid is but often I couldn't
tell what some apps even did... if they would work on my phone (a surprising
number did not)...

------
airstrike
Link should point to /en/ rather than /de/

------
arminiusreturns
Almost every android app I use is from the f-droid store, due to being on a
unrootable phone so no ROMing for me. I love it, but it isn't perfect so it's
nice to see work still being done on it.

------
app4soft
> _@Bubu distributed almost 5000 F-Droid stickers, through the congress
> sticker exchange boxes and by giving them to interested assemblies (Matrix,
> Nextcloud, FSFE)._

Stickers, really? Is it major thing needed to include in _36c3_ report?

~~~
sp332
Sticker swap is important to a significant sub-subculture of hackers.
[https://twitter.com/tvidas/status/1162771218715557889](https://twitter.com/tvidas/status/1162771218715557889)

[https://twitter.com/spacerog/status/1197613616171749376](https://twitter.com/spacerog/status/1197613616171749376)
&
[https://twitter.com/spacerog/status/1204056842999156736](https://twitter.com/spacerog/status/1204056842999156736)

~~~
app4soft
I know what does stickers mean for hackers, and I also has stickers on my
laptop.

But... I mean, that, as its significant sub-subculture, it should be placed as
last line in this article; not at the core list.

Maybe I'm not sub-subhacker. Yet.

