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Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users (gitlab.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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[–] 40 points 3 weeks ago (21 children)

Well looks like its time to start making alternatives or scream for Linux to come out with a phone.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Linux phones work, but they depend on many Google Android apps to be daily usable by normal people.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Honestly, at this point we just need alternatives to some of these Google apps in general.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    The google apps themselves are largely replaceable, but stuff like banking and communication (WhatsApp, Outlook) is where things tend to get problematic. You can run Android apps in Linux, but it might not be the most convenient thing to keep running at all times, and many banking apps will fail as they recognize the device as "insecure".

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  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

    What alternative are you going to make? My bank only publishes their app on Play Store. I can either use Play Store app or Aurora to install it. You think that if you build alternative, open source store my bank will publish their app there? You think any bank will? F-Droid already exists, do you see any banks publishing their apps there? Do you see any of them dong Linux version of their apps?

    The alternative here would be some other corporation building independent app store and getting everyone to publish their apps there. Amazon tried that many years ago. Maybe Samsung could do it now. It's definitely not something we can make.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Thats why we need an alternative.someone, some company, anyone that can make software that dosent rely on Google just to work.

    Its crazy that even in the degoogle world, we still have to rely on Google. if the whole point is to not use Google, then what's the point? We should have our stand alone apps should we not? We can't make them but someone our there can.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

    We should have our stand alone apps should we not?

    We should but I'm afraid that ship has sailed and without EU's intervention it's not going to change. I was trying to buy a train ticket recently and the app for local train requires Google account now. It will just keep getting worse and more and more apps will rely on Google services and require play services and google accounts. This will not be solved by open source apps. Legal solution is required.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    I was in the same situation, but I slowly started to get rid of android/ios only services. Now my new bank offers every service on their web page + it has very convenient REST API where I can monitor my account.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I don't know about FOSS stores but banks have been known to make apps and publish them on alternate stores (Samsung, Huawei, Amazon) if there are enough users. Off the top of my head, Revolut and ING Turkey have apps on the Huawei app store right now.

    IMO this needs a regulatory push. If the EU encourages or requests EU-based app stores with relevant twists (regional for example), they will appear, and Google will have to accept them, and the banks will put their apps there.

    No app developer wants to deal with Google Play, it's ass and a pain in the. If a company has a local audience (like a national bank) and they get a store that caters specifically to that country and it's easier to publish (and cheaper) than Google Play, they will use it.

    Local stores don't have to accept all apps, either. They can be regulated stores that are only open to certain entities in that country like banks, government apps, telecom, utility, public transport etc. That would take care of the most immediate needs for their citizens and liberate those from Google's control.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    100% agree that regulatory push is needed. Everything uses an app now and it's not possible to force all the different developers to support deGoogled devices just by user pressure. There's simply not enough of us. EU has to treat it as strategic issue for their US tech sovereignty and start acting.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Everything uses an app now

    Speaking of which, that's an issue in itself. The vast majority of "apps" are basically webviews. And yet I've seen banks deprecate their website in favor of app-only access, which firmly locks them (and us) into the Google and Apple ecosystem, even when the website and the bank UI are one and the same.

    I guess they won't learn until there's a major outage. I've had apps installed from Play that refused to start and were unusable for a whole week because Google fucked up something accidentally about the dev's account. If that were to happen to a bank's app they'd understand the issue. Especially if it's one of the banks that are exclusively online, like Revolut.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    On one hand apps are convenient. It's nice to have my flight info and boarding passes on my phone when traveling. It's nice to confirm my transaction with a finger print instead of writing codes that I get in SMS. It's nice to buy a ticket in my app rather than stand in like to some machine. But it's only nice when it works without tracking and mandatory google accounts. More and more apps are tied to google but since almost everyone is using them the alternatives (like websites) are slowly disappearing.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Why not use their mobile site?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    PostnarketOS sends their regards

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    But does it actually work like a phone? Calling, texting, no issues?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    entirely depends on the phone and the setup you go with, postmarket is kinda more of a platform than a single specific OS, like if fedora made you choose one of their spins.

    I've only used it on a pinephone (which isn't exactly the ideal hardware..) and my experience on that was that you could probably survive using it as a fancy feature phone.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    See that's my gripe with Linux. I don't want a PDA, I can do all of that tinkering on PC.

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