Recommend F-Droid Basic instead of Neo Store

Third party clients has all kinds of issues such as not having proper mirror support, etc. Using them is effectively DDoSing f-droid.org.

TL;DR: Neo Store (or any other 3rd party client) recommendation does more harm than good.

Iā€™m inclined to agree, so Iā€™ll open this PR, but can you provide a source on third-party clients DDoSing F-Droid?

2 Likes

They arenā€™t DDoSing F-Droid, but the lack of proper mirror support creates this effect.

My source is this reply from @SkewedZeppelin: F-Droid (FOSS Android App Store) - #10 by SkewedZeppelin

He is knowledgable and a developer of DivestOS, so I trust what he says.

1 Like

I donā€™t feel like creating a GitHub account, so I will just reply to @matchboxbananasynergyā€™s comment here.

Agree with the change, though the unfortunate thing is that the F-Droid apps donā€™t have a way to show you an appā€™s targetSdk, which is what I personally liked about Neo Store, since F-Droid doesnā€™t remove or hide apps with old targetSdk levels, and as far as Iā€™m aware also doesnā€™t prevent them from getting on to the store/updating their apps. Being able to see what the targetSdk level is at a glance is quite significant.

When you try to install an app with old SDK, it gives you a very obvious warning.

Unattended updates came with Android 12 so the appā€™s target SDK is below 31.

1 Like

According to this, the official F-Droid client will support unattended updates in version 1.19. Should we wait until version 1.19 is released and recommend the official client instead of the F-Droid Basic one?

This is unless the reduced attack surface of the Basic client (due to a reduced feature set) is an important factor for the recommendation.

That and F-Droid Basic targeting a newer SDK version were both also important factors, yes. F-Droid Basic is equally ā€œofficialā€ as well.

2 Likes

They will support unnatended updates, but will they target the latest SDK? If yes, will they keep up with Androidā€™s security model or stay behind like they have all this time?

There are a lot of ifs, and F-Droid Basic has reduced attack surface too.

I get your points, I guess only time will tell. F-droid Basic does seem to be the best option at the moment.

Locked as completed