[toastal]

This will become increasingly important as Google has boiled the frog too fast while trying to force its new store policies + banning sideloading; however, all of the pieces are now in place for them to try again in a year or 2, which history shows us they will. It’s certainly time to start toying with Linux phones if you haven’t already. This year I picked up an Xperia 10 to flash Sailfish OS on—which has rough edges (many of the hardware issues should be fixed in the next release), but Android App support bridges some of the gaps in application support.

[24t]

> sideloading

It's called installing. Language matters and I see no reason to concede this point in Google's favour.

[griffzhowl]

I agree with the ethos but "banning installing" wouldn't have been correct here.

There should be terminology for installing from the source of your choice which doesn't carry the marginal or sinister connotations of "sideloading" though.

"Freeloading" would have been a good one but... yeah

[green7ea]

Wouldn't it be accurate to say that you can no longer install apps on your phone, only Google can?

[dpoloncsak]

If we're being pedantic, the user still has to perform the final action before the install begins. I think it' more "Google has to allow you to install apps on your phone"

[LtWorf]

And they've never allowed the users to uninstall certain apps.

(interestingly the keyboard app is not among these, so my sister has uninstalled it by mistake once)

[altfredd]

You mean "Google has to perform final action after user petitions it to install"

(not really final, Google can uninstall your apps anytime if they are deemed undesirable)

[24t]

I'm not suggesting a drop-in replacement within that context, just that widening the definition of sideloading does us no favours

'installing from beyond the walled garden' would be a nice fit here imo

[griffzhowl]

extramuraloading?

[__MatrixMan__]

Installing is still the right word, you just need to use more of them:

"Installing arbitrary packages"

vs

"Installing google-approved packages"

[NooneAtAll3]

> but "banning installing" wouldn't have been correct here.

it would

and it would show exactly why it is absurd

[nalinidash]

But currently, the masses know it only as a button in the play store and app store.

[whoisthemachine]

Freestalling?

[graemep]

"Freely installing"?

[cuu508]

"banning installing from anywhere but play store"

[estimator7292]

Language matters, so don't let google turn sideloading into a dirty word. It was called sideloading before Google was even founded.

[embedding-shape]

My first encounter with "sideloading" I think was loading up a MP3 player with music, for some reason that was called "sideloading" by some people. In that case, "sideloading" was just transferring basically, nothing about installing.

But once Android appeared, and there was one Google-approved way of installing applications (Google Store) and one way of installing directly from .apk after enabling "Unknown Sources", then the word started to be used for the second approach.

I don't remember if it was Google who started using "sideloading" or the community itself, but regardless, "installing" would be a more understandable word for anyone to use for the processing of installing an application on your phone, as (what I recall to be) the original meaning was just transferring.

[AdmiralAsshat]

> My first encounter with "sideloading" I think was loading up a MP3 player with music, for some reason that was called "sideloading" by some people. In that case, "sideloading" was just transferring basically, nothing about installing.

Probably influenced by the original iPod, which really wanted you to sync your iPod with your iTunes library (conveniently directing you to purchase all of your music from Apple's platform). "Sideloading" referred to the few extra steps to get your computer to simply expose the iPod as a removable storage device and drag-and-drop your mp3s over that way.

It wouldn't have made sense in the context of other mp3 players, because for many of the ones I remember (like my Creative Zen Touch), that was the only way to add the mp3s. I don't think Creative even supplied a front-end media manager...or if they did, I never bothered installing it.

[raw_anon_1111]

Well actually..

Steve Jobs himself said in his famous “Thoughts on Music” letter that was posted on the Apple home page that less than 10% of users music on iPods were bought from iTunes.

> Probably influenced by the original iPod, which really wanted you to sync your iPod with your iTunes library (conveniently directing you to purchase all of your music from Apple's platform).

iTunes (the software) came out before the iTunes (the music store) and iPods and Apple actually marketed the iMacs as “rip mix burn”.

[ryandrake]

Even before the iTunes store appeared, I always hated the over-complicated import/sync pattern.

1. "Import" your files into iTunes "library"

2. "Sync" that library with a device

My computer already has a filesystem. Why do I need to involve some application's "library"? I hate applications that insist on grafting its own "library" container on top of my already-working filesystem. My OS already allows me to copy files. Why do I need to rely on that application to copy files? Just expose the thing as a mass storage device and let me use my OS!

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, people in my circles and also people on the internet would refer to it as "sideloading" even though none of us were using iPods (I think this was all before the iPod actually, but my memory is a bit hazy), just copy-paste the files with explorer.exe over to the built-in MP3 player storage, people calling it "sideloading".

[cbolton]

You can also install through the Play store. Sideloading is more specific.

[devsda]

Like hacking, sideloading is now a loaded & misunderstood term. It is considered as something only nerds or bad actors do.

Let's just call it alternate install.

[rkachowski]

Or "open install", correctly implying the alternative is closed.

[cbolton]

It's bypassing the usual channel for app installations, so the term is technically fitting and the loaded meaning is also appropriate since it's mostly used by nerds (maybe too strong a word) and bad actors.

There are legitimate uses of sideloading for regular users, for example if you have solar panels that work with a Huawei app, they can't put it on the Play store because of US sanctions. But that's not Google's fault, and that does mean the app is more risky since it's not monitored by Google.

(I'm not saying sideloading is otherwise illegitimate, it's an important feature but it's not something I'd normally recommend to a non-technical user that already chose to use a phone with Google's system.)

[devsda]

> that does mean the app is more risky since it's not monitored by Google.

Why is Google the arbitrator of risk here ?

As a user I'm capable of assessing the risk directly or indirectly by delegating that responsibility to another store or another program a.k.a anti-virus programs, its my choice in the end.

I want Google to build software like Windows Defender and allow others to build similar software. I want the ability to chose my security provider or not have one. I don't want Google to play nanny.

[cbolton]

> Why is Google the arbitrator of risk here ?

Because they do the monitoring and take some responsibility? I'm just comparing "install from the Play store" with "install some apk from wherever". If you bring additional context/knowledge of course it makes a difference.

[raw_anon_1111]

Yes because that has worked really well in the history of PCs with malware, bundleware, ransomware, etc

[__MatrixMan__]

Just because its the channel that google would prefer you use doesn't mean its "the usual channel". What counts as "usual" is user specific. I don't even have google play installed on my Android phone.

[cbolton]

True, I'm speaking of the situation for the crushing majority of users (outside China I guess), not for literally every user.

[dpoloncsak]

>and that does mean the app is more risky since it's not monitored by Google.

This implies the play store isn't hosting tonnes of malware right now

[cbolton]

Yeah maybe it gives the wrong idea. It's still better than no monitoring at all.

It gets tricky with alternative stores like F-Droid. I guess if you use F-Droid as a trusted source then it shouldn't be called sideloading.

[NooneAtAll3]

it's not "alternate" install - it is install

it's google's monopolized install that needs to be called by a long name

[mrighele]

Or manual install.

[exe34]

How about calling the other one "installing from the play store"? installing was there first.

[miroljub]

Exactly. Let's invent a word for "installing from play store". Playstoring?

So we can rewrite the story to something like: Google wants to prohibit app installation on Android phones. The only way to get an app would be through playstoring.

[fainpul]

Corpoloading

[engeljohnb]

I can install on my Fedora laptop through dnf. I've never felt like I needed a new word to describe downloading and running an AppImage. Why would phones be different?

[opan]

`adb sideload` existed as a command for installing an apk from your PC on to your phone. Sideloading was not meant to refer to installing an apk on the phone from the phone.

[nzeid]

I knew if I read enough comments I'd finally arrive at my favorite take.

Installing an APK directly through your phone is in fact NOT sideloading.

[cbolton]

That actually sounds like a good idea, the situation is similar with an official channel of "trusted" software for which the distributor takes some responsibility, versus whatever file you downloaded yourself. It's certainly more risky on a Debian system to install a .deb from some random website, or an AppImage, compared to a .deb from the official repositories. I guess it's the same for Fedora.

[tonyhart7]

well because its not allowed to "install" from third party sources (atleast not yet)

google has control on their android ecosystem behave, same reason why its not allowed in playstation or xbox or ios

[engeljohnb]

The whole selling point of Android up until now was that it allowed you to install any app you want.

The point of the above comment is that Google intentionally introduced the word "sideload" to make "installing an app on your own device which Google did not curate" sound more risky and sinister than it is, and I'm inclined to agree.

I "make" coffee on my keurig. If Keurig decides that making any single-serve coffe pods that aren't owned by the Keurig brand is now called "off-brewing," I'd dismiss it as ridiculous and continue calling it "making coffee."

We should use the language that makes sense, not the language that happens be good PR for google.

[gruez]

>The whole selling point of Android up until now was that it allowed you to install any app you want.

Could've fooled me. Maybe it was a thing a decade ago when android just launched, but none of the marketing pages for vaguely recent phones has that as a selling point. At best it's a meme that android proponents repeat on hn or reddit.

[tonyhart7]

"The whole selling point of Android up until now was that it allowed you to install any app you want."

we can debate whether this is bad thing or good thing, it would have no ends

what matters is reality, the reality is google have the right to change it.

[makeitdouble]

Would you make the same distinction on a mac when installing Photoshop from the Adobe installer vs installing KeyNote from the MacStore ?

[cbolton]

I'm not too familiar with macOS... How normal/expected is it now to install through the App Store? As mentioned in another comment, for a Linux distribution like Debian there are highly trusted official repositories, and I think using "sideloading" for other sources would make some sense.

[makeitdouble]

On macos I assume most apps are installed outside of the Store, straight from the developper's site. Which would make the Store a "sideloading" channel by that token ?

On Linux you have the default package sources, but for instance adding third party sources will still integrate the same with the system, I also never heard someone call installing Go or Java "side loading", though you're getting an installer from the site you need to run on your own. Same way for building from source.

IMHO "sideloading" would not apply to any system open enough, where adding stuff from multiple sources is expected from the start.

[cbolton]

> Which would make the Store a "sideloading" channel by that token ?

I don't think so, it's still an official channel offered by the OS maker.

> adding third party sources will still integrate the same with the system

but obviously with a higher risk of breakage since it was not tested while the official release was cooking (at least for Debian the official set of packages in stable is expected to have virtually no conflict issues, but as soon as you add third-party sources all bets are off).

> I also never heard someone call installing Go or Java "side loading"

neither have I, but I can imagine that in some contexts it could be a useful term. Like "did you sideload Go?" (implicitly asking if you got the third-party release vs installing from the official distribution repository). I'm not saying people say that, but that the term might also make sense in the Linux world.

> IMHO "sideloading" would not apply to any system open enough, where adding stuff from multiple sources is expected from the start.

Yeah if there's no sense of "main" channels that are more trusted or more stable the term doesn't make sense.

[geokon]

Doesn't feel like any conspiracy.. Isn't sideloading installing through adb instead of from the system itself? (by clicking on an APK or using an app Store like Xiaomi/Googled/Huawei/Fdroid)

"Side" being.. from your computer

[slightwinder]

No, on android, it always meant installing an APK directly, without a store-app. You can use ADB, but you also can just download the APK on your device and install it locally with your browser or filemanager.

[24t]

Yes but fdroid is facing restrictions while adb is not

[geokon]

sure, google is trying to cash in. not saying theyre nice people. but the handwringing over semantics and suggesting Google has a master plan to abuse vocabular just sounds ridiculous

[lukan]

So you do know, they want to make profit.

You also know, what is commonly used for making profit? PR.

And they are all about changing the meaning of words, to achieve a certain effect in people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

What exactly is ridiculous to the idea, that maybe there was a google meeting where the name was debated and the pro and cons of different names evaluated from their buisness perspective?

[tapia]

I just bought a second Fairphone 4 just to play a bit with pmOS. I'm really surprised by the state it is. It's not fully usable as a daily driver yet, but with some work it can get there. Waydroid works also pretty good. Of course, the major problem are banking apps and similar. I hope that some progress can be done in this direction. And, who needs working audio, if you can have python and git in your phone!? :P

[toastal]

I made a partition for Nix on mine so I have all the tools I need while not relying on Jolla to package things (the installable package list is quite barren). My audio works from the speakers, but the patches to make the headphone jack (something you Fairphone users no longer know of :P) work won’t come til the next release. For banks, I just use cash or log into the website on my laptop if required—while I will refuse goods/services that require an apps to the fullest extent possible (couldn’t get around TicketMaster which was a real blood-boiler beyond just the “phone required” aspect).

[tapia]

Yes, I think that just trying to use services that don't require special mobile apps can get you a long way. It is sometimes difficult, but now I'm beginning to move more in this direction :)

[toastal]

It’s the same as unGoogling your life where you can slowly start moving off one service at a time & make sure new ones you use are open or at least otherwise ethical.

[pbmonster]

> Waydroid works also pretty good.

Did you test apps that need sensors and notifications? If I want to run an OpenStreetmaps apk (there's no good way to run OMS on Linux natively), do I get GPS and compass heading? Do I get turn-by-turn navigation? Even if the app is in the background?

[Ghoelian]

Organic Maps has a flatpak, though oddly they don't refer to a desktop app on their website anywhere so idk how trustworthy this is.

Unfortunately CoMaps doesn't seem to have desktop client builds at all yet.

[Vinnl]

They do mention it at the bottom: https://organicmaps.app/#community

But it's less full-featured than the mobile-only versions.

[palata]

What I never get is: why not prepare to fork AOSP? I like the security model of AOSP :-).

[realusername]

Some people (like myself) prefer the desktop userland which is more familiar and works like you would expect as opposed to the android quirks.

eOS is basically what you are looking for for most phones or GrapheneOS (pixel only)

[charcircuit]

That's already happening today.

https://grapheneos.org/

But for the reason an antiquated os like postmarketos are suggested is that the project is being opportunistic thinking this is a chance they can be relevant. Additionally, the population of HN has more sentimental view on these legacy operating systems and view it as a chance to go back to the past and use software they are familiar with.

[MYEUHD]

> That's already happening today.

That's not a hard fork. They always rebase on top of AOSP when there's a new AOSP source release

[palata]

There is no reason to hard fork, as long as Google contributes to AOSP without breaking it.

Regulators in the US decided that Android did not have to be split from Google, but they could theoretically decide that Google is not allowed to break AOSP to gain a competitive advantage. Not that it would matter: TooBigTech is too powerful to care about regulations anyway.

[realusername]

Nobody really want a hard fork, if you can't run Android apps, you might as well use a Linux distribution.

[palata]

Well the idea would be to run Android apps on the hard fork :-).

[realusername]

If you can run Android apps then you need the same behavior as AOSP or I'm missing something?

If you don't rebase from AOSP, the apps won't run pretty quickly.

[charcircuit]

It doesn't have to be. Most of Android is fine.

[raw_anon_1111]

Outside of China, to a first approximation no one once to use an Android device without Google Play Services.

[palata]

I would love to, for the record.

[dugite-code]

I really wanted to like Graphene OS but I ended up bouncing off it due to a few major pain points that badly effected battery life.

- Using the default 5g setting resulted in far worse battery life than stock, telling people to choose 4g isn't a solution. They desperately need something like the adaptive connectivity service.

- Using Homeassistant's GPS tracking feature just destroyed the battery life, even switching to 4g didn't solve this issue. Changing all the GPS settings didn't help either.

- The obnoxious green GPS active icon makes the notification bar useless if using a GPS tracking app (or even gps navigation). The request for a whitelist was either ignored or rejected, the teams communication can come off a bit rough.

No normal user is going to be happy with Grapheneos. From what I've seen postmarketos is much more user friendly.

[jstanley]

I don't know what to say about your battery life issue, other than that I don't have any such problems.

What's obnoxious about the green GPS icon? How does it make the notification bar useless? It is on all the time while I'm using Google Maps, it's small and not in the way and is a good reminder if I have accidentally left Google Maps open in the background. What's the problem?

[Ghoelian]

I don't recognise the 5g battery life issues personally. I do 100% agree the GPS thing is such a bad decision. It just becomes noise that no one pays attention to anymore.

I ended up using my public ip address in combination with a list of known ips for home and work and such, and building my HA automations around that. I wanted to do it with wifi SSID's, but that also requires the location permission and triggers the indicator (which is understandable, just wish I could still read SSID's with location services disabled entirely) (or, just let me disable the gps antenna and leave everything else).

[jstanley]

> I do 100% agree the GPS thing is such a bad decision. It just becomes noise that no one pays attention to anymore.

It's not noise for me, I only ever have GPS on for Google Maps, and I like the indicator because its absence reassures me that nothing is using GPS in the background.

[oneshtein]

I also want to have audible notification or, even better, a loud siren when GPS, or WiFi are activated without my direct action. Sadly, SafeDot doesn't work properly on Graphene.

[dugite-code]

It certainly could be something else other than 5g but it's one of the first things that gets thrown around when battery drain is mentioned and the mobile internet was the main user of power on the phone.

[palata]

> No normal user is going to be happy with Grapheneos.

I am a normal user, extremely happy with GrapheneOS. I just don't use HomeAssistant, which seems to have been your dealbreaker in this case.

I genuinely don't see a difference between Stock Android and GrapheneOS, except that I get more updates and I have more privacy controls (like scopes, but honestly I haven't had a need to use them yet).

[rs186]

I'd wager nobody on HN is a normal user. If you know what AOSP is, you are already way too nerdy to qualify.

[dugite-code]

You are very fortunate for not hitting any edge cases, but sorry anyone commenting here typically isn't anywhere near to what you could call a "normal user". I ran into quite few minor issues with the enhanced security settings, my partner would never been able to figure out the solution to that issue and I consider them a normal user.

Not to mention the 5g battery drain is a hard show stopper, not just Homeassistant issues. I even experimented with different apps like owntracks but same problem with GPS.

I found a solution to the GPS icon but it requires an ADB command so not a great fix.

[m4rtink]

How is Postmarket OS antiquated ? Its just a standard Linux distro (unlike anything Android based).

[charcircuit]

At least in regards to the security model, it is decades out of date. For example any app can listen to your microphone and spy on you at anytime. Programs can act as ransomeware or destroy all of your files. Stealers can steal your login credentials and access tokens for all your sites including banking ones.

[zorked]

I think people don't realize how inadequate the Unix security model is.

[eikenberry]

Linux doesn't solely rely on the Unix security model. Linux security is mostly based on trust, the trust of the distribution and its maintainers. But if you want to run random, untrusted apps you'll want a different model. Linux is slowly addressing that need w/ a variety of different approaches which could be picked up and used for a mobile OS.

[m4rtink]

Well, isn't the idea that you use apps compiled from source by distro maintainers, which are separate from the upstream maintainers ?

Frankly, I still trust this model much more than black box Android apps automatically updating in the background, sending tons of telemetry and demanding random permissions so they can spy on you.

Not to mention the security model preventing many useful things from working properly (try to get a SFTP working on an Android system so that you can copy out photos taken by the phones camera.

[hollerith]

>isn't the idea that you use apps compiled from source by distro maintainers

That might work if the main danger was upstream maintainers with bad intentions. But the main danger is security holes that no upstream or distro maintainer knows about, which allow attacks by parties that are not open-source maintainers.

Big picture is that GrapheneOS is much, much more secure than PostmarketOS.

[palata]

> Frankly, I still trust this model much more than black box Android apps automatically updating in the background, sending tons of telemetry and demanding random permissions so they can spy on you.

You're comparing a security model to... apps? I don't see how that makes sense.

Apps you install on Linux can do more than apps you install on Android, period. That's part of the security model.

Of course I like that I am an admin on my computer, but I don't need that on my phone. And one can enable root on Android and still keep the apps sandboxed...

[j45]

Meaning, it's a way to keep old hardware running linux instead of being a phone.

[seba_dos1]

...except in virtually any case where you'd run something untrusted there you'd use Flatpak or something similar where what you wrote doesn't apply.

[tom_alexander]

> untrusted

I think the important distinction is _everything_ should be considered untrusted because even trustworthy software can become malicious. For example, the XZ Utils backdoor[0].

On Android, everything I run is subject to the permission model and sandboxed. That is not the case on Linux.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

[charcircuit]

>where what you wrote doesn't apply

You can configure your flatpak app so that it will have permission to read microphone in the background or have full access to the disk. Many flatpaks of real apps request dangerous permissions that users have been conditioned to ignore. For example Blender is such an app which has full disk access and background microphone access, and I'm sure many people have installed that. This is unlike Android where these are locked down for every app.

[toastal]

One of the other appeals of the Android ecosystem was a large selection of hardware for user-specific needs. GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel phones which do not compare to the sorts of hardware postmarketOS or other Linux OS support.

[rcxdude]

or they already have hardware which postmarketOS supports and grapheneOS does not (or they would just prefer that hardware)

[gwbas1c]

> I picked up an Xperia

I had an Xperia for awhile. I liked it while it was new, but after a year the back started peeling off.

Pretty lousy for a phone that was supposed to be waterproof. At that point I realized that the Japanese change out their phones every 6-12 months, thus Sony didn't realize that the market demands much longer reliability in a smartphone.

[toastal]

They do a good job contributing upstream to the kernel & are one of the few phones out there that still allow users to unlock the bootloader & they support headphone jacks + microSD cards.

[gwbas1c]

Honestly, if mine didn't fall apart after reasonable use, I'd probably still be an Xperia user today.