After the news cycle recently exploded with the announcement that Google would require every single Android app to be from a registered and verified developer, while killing third-party app stores …
We won’t know for sure until they actually drop the code, but I’m more optimistic now that they’ve clarified that adb will still work to sideload. That means there’s still some code path in the package installer that doesn’t do this bullshit, so it should be pretty easy to remove it for the people used to working on custom ROMs.
That doesn’t help those of us users who don’t want to go through the hassles involved with trying to select a device that:
Allows installation of custom ROMs
Will not only currently have, but also retain long-term support of custom ROM developers
Doesn’t have the inevitable instabilities and/or incompatibilities so often involved with such ROMs.
I don’t have the patience or time for that shit anymore - I just want a device that works as it should, while also allowing me to install whatever the fuck I want without the Nanny state’s approval.
This crap of Google’s is purely for show and doesn’t really solve anything. It’s a lame distraction from the fact they can’t (or won’t) make a fucking secure sandbox for apps like they should.
Absolutely. The person I replied to was talking about using a custom ROM, but I would certainly not recommend that for anyone who isn’t familiar with it already.
I would recommend everybody getting into custom ROMs, particularly those not familiar with it. Not learning how to unlock bootloaders and shit but people should know there’s more than two choices - IOS and whatever crazy frankenUI the various android vendors have cooked up while high on meth.
That’s a nice ideal, but we both know the vast majority of users aren’t up to the task. Especially when so many popular devices are locked down to prevent it. Even those who are capable of dealing with it (such as myself) just don’t have the time for it anymore - especially when we have to learn/figure out so much (how to do it, which ROM is going to work - as well as contain the features we want, how to deal with issues that may crop up like app compatibility, hardware that doesn’t function properly, etc.) just to accomplish something we’re only ever likely to do once in a blue moon. I used to love all the custom ROMs back in the day, but it’s become such a headache nowadays for anyone but the most hardcore to deal with.
Which is, of course, exactly how Google wanted things to go.
I mean, as opposed to what? Mainstream Linux phones? The guy is saying that if this goes through he may try dumbphones or Linux phones, I’m saying that degoogled Android may also be able to bypass the problem. How is what I’m saying in conflict with what you responded?
Sorry, I know I’m grumpy, but on this subject it’s been super frustrating the degree to which people just respond to isolated stimuli like a dog seeing a ball go by. Like, zero ability or attempt to grasp context or meaning, just see a word, type the thing they wanted to say regardless of whether it fits. It gets grating after a while.
You say that people who use degoogled phones will be unaffected by this measure and downplayed the impact those measures will have on them. My point is that they will be hurt by it regardless.
If Google makes side loading of apps impossible unless you have a degoogled phone, projects that need side loading to function like F-Droid and other open source apps that do things Google doesn’t like will see their already small user base collapse to only the niche audience that has a degoogled phone. I don’t expect those projects and apps to maintain the level of support they currently have if it is for such a reduced audience.
As a bare minimum it is a blatant attempt by Google to gain even more control over the entire Android ecosystem and I would absolutely not say that we should wait and see where this is going like you did.
I said it because it’s… true? Well, in that this is what they announced anyway. Also, relevant to the post I was responding to.
So how is it downplaying anything? It’s not downplaying it, it’s not exaggerating it, it just… is.
Nobody is arguing with you on this being bad, friend. You just want to be mad at a shill and because you couldn’t find one you’re doing your bit at the first person that said anything other than “Google sucks” even if it was on an unrelated subject.
All I did is expand on the other negative side effects of this measure that weren’t mentioned so people know that the consequences might much worse than what you lead on. This is by no means an accusation, more like a much needed precision as whether you like it your not your statement was downplaying the consequences Google’s actions even if you weren’t aware of it at the time.
You immediately took that as a personal attack and accusation of being a shill. Go read back my original comment and see I did nothing of the sort and simply provides additional info. I’m getting pretty tired of those poorly disguised and uncalled for insults you’ve been throwing my way ever since too.
Go sleep over it and read this all again with a rested head.
For the record, we’re still not disagreeing, technically. In that “All I did is expand on the other negative side effects of this measure that weren’t mentioned” is 100% “I couldn’t find a shill to argue with, so I had the argument all by my lonesome whether it made sense or not”.
Again, I never called you a shill. You just made it all up yourself. You just said it yourself you’re not even disagreeing with my precision. And yet you still cling to the delusion that this precision was an attack somehow and used it as justification to insult me multiple times.
Just because I didn’t return those insults doesn’t mean I’m going to keep taking them. There is no point repeating myself any further. You’re blocked now. You seem more interested in attacking and insulting an imaginary version of myself so you won’t miss me anyway.
Google have already pulled the Pixel-line from the AOSP device tree. I’ve read that their security commits to the open repo will slow significantly down. They’re talking about moving to a unified OS along with CHROMEOS (Still. Again.)
AFAIK, all custom ROMs are based on AOSP. I’m not optimistic.
Again, this is responding to the guy saying he’s willing to go to dumbphones or Linux phones. If he’s that desperate/aggressively ready to use sub-par solutions, degoogled Android IS an option and it will probably be more functional, despite not being good.
I know that given this community, a lot of people are going to be on a Linux phone already.
But there are some very real drawbacks to Linux phones in 2025. It won’t be a practical replacement for most people.
The hardware is not remotely-competitive with high-end hardware that Android can run on.
Everything I’ve seen has suggested that power usage isn’t as good, probably because Android has had shit-tons of engineers working on cutting power usage for many years.
Some of the reason that I’d want to use a phone in the first place is for access to the Android app ecosystem. Like, that one app that your employer or bank insists you use or you want to use to update firmware on some Bluetooth device because the vendor doesn’t support fwupd. Maybe it’s possible to use Waydroid and a Linux machine for some of that; I don’t know about all.
GNU/Linux has a large software library, but a lot of it is not designed around a touch UI.
One major benefit of Android is that it does a lot to help eliminate a couple things that the general population has had trouble with. The harm from installing malware is mitigated by more-or-less isolating apps. A lot of users just don’t understand the concept of managing memory usage; Android just suspends apps transparently. A lot of users apparently don’t have a great understanding of a filesystem, and the Android app ecosystem tends to hide the filesystem.
And you may not care for your own use, but without scale, it’s hard to get support from hardware vendors and such.
That being said, I remember 25 years back or so when Linux was “never going to be a real server OS”, when it was never going to have games, when it was never going to make it big in the embedded world, and so forth. It often took time, but it inexorably showed up. And the kernel, at least, made it big on smartphones. GNU/Linux can be pretty hard to stop in new markets. But…it can also take a while to get there.
I agree with all this bullets and would love to add one more: the Linux user experience and community. You have to accept that your operating system will be an ongoing project in and of itself, and that the Linux community is not newbie friendly and has a lot of troubleshooting deadends.
Linux on the desktop still isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I can’t imagine a phone being any better. I still had to sneakernet WiFi drivers onto a laptop with a new Linux install, this year. Same shit I was doing 15 years ago.
Still a bad joke. If the custom ROMs can’t get past this it’s either dumb-phone or linux phone next. No compromise.
We won’t know for sure until they actually drop the code, but I’m more optimistic now that they’ve clarified that adb will still work to sideload. That means there’s still some code path in the package installer that doesn’t do this bullshit, so it should be pretty easy to remove it for the people used to working on custom ROMs.
That doesn’t help those of us users who don’t want to go through the hassles involved with trying to select a device that:
I don’t have the patience or time for that shit anymore - I just want a device that works as it should, while also allowing me to install whatever the fuck I want without the Nanny state’s approval.
This crap of Google’s is purely for show and doesn’t really solve anything. It’s a lame distraction from the fact they can’t (or won’t) make a fucking secure sandbox for apps like they should.
Absolutely. The person I replied to was talking about using a custom ROM, but I would certainly not recommend that for anyone who isn’t familiar with it already.
I would recommend everybody getting into custom ROMs, particularly those not familiar with it. Not learning how to unlock bootloaders and shit but people should know there’s more than two choices - IOS and whatever crazy frankenUI the various android vendors have cooked up while high on meth.
That’s a nice ideal, but we both know the vast majority of users aren’t up to the task. Especially when so many popular devices are locked down to prevent it. Even those who are capable of dealing with it (such as myself) just don’t have the time for it anymore - especially when we have to learn/figure out so much (how to do it, which ROM is going to work - as well as contain the features we want, how to deal with issues that may crop up like app compatibility, hardware that doesn’t function properly, etc.) just to accomplish something we’re only ever likely to do once in a blue moon. I used to love all the custom ROMs back in the day, but it’s become such a headache nowadays for anyone but the most hardcore to deal with.
Which is, of course, exactly how Google wanted things to go.
I believe they confirmed uncertified devices will not have these requirements, so technically degoogled Android should still be fine.
You don’t get Google services, but then again that’s also true of every other alternative.
It’s all jumping the gun for now. We’ll see where this goes.
That will still significantly hinder the development of independent apps if only a small niche proportion of people can install them.
Embrace, extend, extinguish
Yyyyes?
I mean, as opposed to what? Mainstream Linux phones? The guy is saying that if this goes through he may try dumbphones or Linux phones, I’m saying that degoogled Android may also be able to bypass the problem. How is what I’m saying in conflict with what you responded?
Sorry, I know I’m grumpy, but on this subject it’s been super frustrating the degree to which people just respond to isolated stimuli like a dog seeing a ball go by. Like, zero ability or attempt to grasp context or meaning, just see a word, type the thing they wanted to say regardless of whether it fits. It gets grating after a while.
You say that people who use degoogled phones will be unaffected by this measure and downplayed the impact those measures will have on them. My point is that they will be hurt by it regardless.
If Google makes side loading of apps impossible unless you have a degoogled phone, projects that need side loading to function like F-Droid and other open source apps that do things Google doesn’t like will see their already small user base collapse to only the niche audience that has a degoogled phone. I don’t expect those projects and apps to maintain the level of support they currently have if it is for such a reduced audience.
As a bare minimum it is a blatant attempt by Google to gain even more control over the entire Android ecosystem and I would absolutely not say that we should wait and see where this is going like you did.
I said it because it’s… true? Well, in that this is what they announced anyway. Also, relevant to the post I was responding to.
So how is it downplaying anything? It’s not downplaying it, it’s not exaggerating it, it just… is.
Nobody is arguing with you on this being bad, friend. You just want to be mad at a shill and because you couldn’t find one you’re doing your bit at the first person that said anything other than “Google sucks” even if it was on an unrelated subject.
Don’t do that. That’s a bad thing to do.
All I did is expand on the other negative side effects of this measure that weren’t mentioned so people know that the consequences might much worse than what you lead on. This is by no means an accusation, more like a much needed precision as whether you like it your not your statement was downplaying the consequences Google’s actions even if you weren’t aware of it at the time.
You immediately took that as a personal attack and accusation of being a shill. Go read back my original comment and see I did nothing of the sort and simply provides additional info. I’m getting pretty tired of those poorly disguised and uncalled for insults you’ve been throwing my way ever since too.
Go sleep over it and read this all again with a rested head.
Yeeeah, maybe take your own advice there.
For the record, we’re still not disagreeing, technically. In that “All I did is expand on the other negative side effects of this measure that weren’t mentioned” is 100% “I couldn’t find a shill to argue with, so I had the argument all by my lonesome whether it made sense or not”.
It’s still bad.
Again, I never called you a shill. You just made it all up yourself. You just said it yourself you’re not even disagreeing with my precision. And yet you still cling to the delusion that this precision was an attack somehow and used it as justification to insult me multiple times.
Just because I didn’t return those insults doesn’t mean I’m going to keep taking them. There is no point repeating myself any further. You’re blocked now. You seem more interested in attacking and insulting an imaginary version of myself so you won’t miss me anyway.
Google have already pulled the Pixel-line from the AOSP device tree. I’ve read that their security commits to the open repo will slow significantly down. They’re talking about moving to a unified OS along with CHROMEOS (Still. Again.)
AFAIK, all custom ROMs are based on AOSP. I’m not optimistic.
Yeah, no, it’s not gonna be good.
But neither is Linux on phones.
Again, this is responding to the guy saying he’s willing to go to dumbphones or Linux phones. If he’s that desperate/aggressively ready to use sub-par solutions, degoogled Android IS an option and it will probably be more functional, despite not being good.
I’m already on a degoogled android ROM, I consider it the superior solution.
Go SailfishOS! Ironically enough, you can sideload apks there even though it’s not Android.
Last time I checked (granted, years ago) experimental linux phone builds supported more devices than SOS. How’s it doing nowadays, moving forward?
Some 5 or so devices are supported officially, and many community ports.
I know that given this community, a lot of people are going to be on a Linux phone already.
But there are some very real drawbacks to Linux phones in 2025. It won’t be a practical replacement for most people.
The hardware is not remotely-competitive with high-end hardware that Android can run on.
Everything I’ve seen has suggested that power usage isn’t as good, probably because Android has had shit-tons of engineers working on cutting power usage for many years.
Some of the reason that I’d want to use a phone in the first place is for access to the Android app ecosystem. Like, that one app that your employer or bank insists you use or you want to use to update firmware on some Bluetooth device because the vendor doesn’t support
fwupd. Maybe it’s possible to use Waydroid and a Linux machine for some of that; I don’t know about all.GNU/Linux has a large software library, but a lot of it is not designed around a touch UI.
One major benefit of Android is that it does a lot to help eliminate a couple things that the general population has had trouble with. The harm from installing malware is mitigated by more-or-less isolating apps. A lot of users just don’t understand the concept of managing memory usage; Android just suspends apps transparently. A lot of users apparently don’t have a great understanding of a filesystem, and the Android app ecosystem tends to hide the filesystem.
And you may not care for your own use, but without scale, it’s hard to get support from hardware vendors and such.
That being said, I remember 25 years back or so when Linux was “never going to be a real server OS”, when it was never going to have games, when it was never going to make it big in the embedded world, and so forth. It often took time, but it inexorably showed up. And the kernel, at least, made it big on smartphones. GNU/Linux can be pretty hard to stop in new markets. But…it can also take a while to get there.
I agree with all this bullets and would love to add one more: the Linux user experience and community. You have to accept that your operating system will be an ongoing project in and of itself, and that the Linux community is not newbie friendly and has a lot of troubleshooting deadends.
Linux on the desktop still isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I can’t imagine a phone being any better. I still had to sneakernet WiFi drivers onto a laptop with a new Linux install, this year. Same shit I was doing 15 years ago.
I love your stance!