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Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users (gitlab.com)

submitted 3 days ago by FirmDistribution@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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[-] bruh@nord.pub 12 points 2 days ago

I was wondering cant we just scrape Play Store and distribute the apks on a different website? most apks has checksums so we will know nobody has changes the apk

[-] vas@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 days ago

and distribute the apks on a different website

Or with distributed technologoes such as torrents. Then it's cheaper to operate any required servers.

[-] leduvisc00l@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

And also if a server goes down there are still dozens of seeders ready to seed you the files

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 days ago

this would be an ideal use case for IPFS, since that returns the same content address even if you upload something completely independently. I.e. no need for specific torrent files, just upload whatever apps you got and you'll automatically be helping existing uploads.
(with the one caveat that you need to use the same settings, but if everyone uses the defaults that's not a problem)

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 7 points 2 days ago

There are a bunch of sites like apkmirror etc. that do that but eventually the large ones started enshittifying their service. On apkmirror for example you used to be able to just download the apk's, now they've invented a special "format" that can only be installed through their app. Needless to say that was the end of that, I'm not keen on giving install capability to any more apps than I absolutely have to. (Zero is the ideal answer in case you're wondering, but in practice it's usually one, the system file manager. Any other app can download apk's to /Downloads or go fuck itself.)

[-] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 days ago

For info - there is an alternative to APKMirror's app On F-Droid. Still not ideal, but better than their proprietary nonsense.

https://f-droid.org/packages/app.pwhs.universalinstaller/

[-] SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

now they've invented a special "format" that only can only be installed through their app

If I'm not mistaken, that's the .apkm bundles right? That's not their own format but another one Google invented to be able to dynamically install only the relevant parts of an app for a specific device type, locale, etc.

Android can't install this on it's own (I wonder who's fault that is 🙄) but it can be installed via adb or through special installer apps like the Play Store, Aurora or I'm assuming the APKMirror app