Should Fairphone Open come pre-installed with f-droid?

Amaze File Manager is already included on FP Open (and on regular FP OS, if I recall correctly).
TrackID is not open source and thus it won’t be included on FP Open.

But, anyway, I think the point here is other than plain convenience: a regular app like TrackID doesn’t need system permissions for any matter, while F-Droid acts completely different if is in the system domain (i.e. is a system app). That means some people install it as a system app and lose it when they update the OS. If you install any regular app normally and you update the OS, then you don’t lose anything.

5 Likes

I see the point, so i would say f-droid needs to be pre-installed. :slight_smile:

Ben

2 Likes

There is good data to back this claim. For example, the 2015 Android Security Report shows that third-party app stores increase the risk of potentially harmful apps by more than 3x.

Fdroid is a fairly specific third party repo, and not only because it builds the apks itself. General considerations may not apply.

8 Likes

I don’t think so. F-Droid was complaining about a signature error. This means that the pre-installed iFixit app is signed differently than the F-Droid version. (They are of course built by different developers.)

Since iFixit is a system app itself it can’t even be uninstalled easily… Actually I’d even opt for not even pre-installing iFixit and Amaze, nor any other app that can’t be uninstalled. This is FP Open OS after all! :wink: Seriously, in my opinion, the best way would be a setup process similar to the one proposed by @chrisse here.

5 Likes

Fdroid is a fairly specific third party repo

Yes, I realized I didn’t do my homework here. Thanks to you and paulakreuzer for the corrections.

That said, we should still consider that every pre-installed system app increases the attack surface of the OS, and the number of things that could go wrong. With Fairphone OS, it is very easy for users to use root-privileged apps and other advanced features. This is a lot of power in the hands of users.

Maybe it would be better if there was a trusted manual that explained how to install F-Droid, and also educated users about the risks involved.

5 Likes

Preinstalled F-Droid means no need to enable root access on the developers settings nor enable the latter at all, :slight_smile: (which is disabled by default for that reason, in fact)

2 Likes

Well I once managed to set up the F-Droid privileged extension trough which F-Droid got system app permissions and I was able to update iFixit. Well I’m 90% certain I recall that correctly - tbh I’m not even sure if it was on FP1 or 2.
After the next OS update F-Droid was sort of bricked and I never installed the extension again.

1 Like

FP1, surely. Privileged Extension is not compatible with Android 5.1+, even the two-days-ago update. If that worked, would solve a lot of problems, IMHO

Edit: Hmmm…

hc: we’re rearchitecting the F-Droid Privileged Extension around that

hc: the idea is so that it is designed to be built into ROMs and signed by the ROM key

Source

That’d can be a solution… when Privileged Extension supports Android 5.1+, though.
Actually, I was searching for the technical reason to not support 5.1+ on their issues when I bumped into this.

Edit 2: Woa! It can be already built into the ROM now! I overlooked that README part:

We need to find if they support 5.1+ or not (the only source telling me that is F-Droid itself when trying to install)

Edit 3:

Installing the F-Droid Privileged Extension directly from the F-Droid
app requires root access and is only possible on Android versions older
than 5.0. It is not possible on Android 5.1, 6.0, and newer.

Source.
I still don’t know if moving/building it into the system works for 5.1+ or what doesn’t work is just the automated F-Droid installation. Will open an issue tomorrow.

8 Likes

I tried doing that a while ago on the FP2, no matter how I did it (through F-Droid or by hand-installing it as a privileged app) F-Droid never managed to recognize the app as correctly installed :confused:

4 Likes

Very interesting poll!
I see that there are several considerations about the app being pre-installed as part of the system, or being simply installed afterwards. I’m not voting because I don’t understand the differences enough to be able to evaluate.

But I’d like to add my piece of bread here:

Reading the comments, I’m wondering if the kind of users answering to this post is representative of all users who installed FP Open OS, in terms of “IT knowledge”.
You already said it: if you are not a tech-savvy, and want to try to live out of Google → use Open FP OS, you’re forced to roam the forums looking for answers to very basic questions like making GPS work, installing an app manager, etc. This is tedious, specially if you are not interested in these topics and consider your phone should do its job out of the box.

I want to do the effort of installing FP Open OS even if I don’t enjoy having to look for answers to everything. But this is the reason why, when I talk about Fairphone to my working colleagues, familiars, friends I never tell them about FP Open OS: most of them would be strongly disappointed to a new device that doesn’t work out of the box.

So if we want to encourage these kind of people to use FP Open OS, preinstalling F-droid is not enough, and actually it’s not necessary. A guide telling about F-droid, GPS and two or three more basic tweaks would do the job (a guide like the one you did for installation of Open FP OS, it works fantastic!). But this is work that needs to be done, that’s why I ask: is there people out there that fit this profile, so the work is worth being done? And do we want them on board?

They won’t be answering the forums, because it’s not the kind of user dropping by, so it’s you who need to think about their needs and opinions, without their feedback.

4 Likes

Hey Neus, thank you for your feedback. Remember that Fairphone Open has to be actively installed by a user. So there is no such thing as ‘Fairphone Open out of the box’. Your friends would, if they’d by a Fairphone 2, receive it with Fairphone OS. That OS is basically Android 5.1 with all google services included.

1 Like

Hi douwe,
You are right. But following your installation guide is fairly easy, and I would expect that once you installed FP Open OS, it would work out of the box.
My point is, if you have a good guide you are way more newbie-friendly. I would talk about FP Open OS if it was more newbie-friendly :slight_smile:

2 Likes

4 posts were split to a new topic: Discussion about “First steps on FP Open” Wiki

How I understand this source https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension#how-do-i-install-it-on-my-device:
“Installing the F-Droid Privileged Extension directly from the F-Droid … is only possible on Android versions older than 5.0. It is not possible on Android 5.1, 6.0, and newer” means for me that for us the passage above “The best way to install F-Droid Privileged Extension is to flash the update.zip file using the standard mechanism for flashing updates to the ROM.” is important.
Unfortunately the update.zip for the last version 0.2 (added 01.11.2016) is currently not available (https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged.ota) maybe because of problems in building process.

I’d like to add my support to making it so that F-droid can be used without having to check the allow-whatever-software box.

F-droid is a great app store though.

3 Likes

@Douwe I think the poll result is quite clear.
Do you think this is something that could be realized soon, or is it more feasible to wait for Android 6?

Thanks all who voted and debated the different sites of the matter!

It is not my call, and I think the chance is big this will wait 'till Marshmallow, but I will make sure that this community vote and discussion is known with the developer team.

7 Likes

I think, FP open should include no store. It should be easier to make f-droid a persistant system app after the user installed it. The open OS should be as slim as possible. Also the included musicplayer is too much for me. I disable it from beginning and install vanilla music. The same with the browser.

1 Like

The thing is: Many of the currently preinstalled apps like Browser, Camera, Downloads, Email and Search can’t compete with other apps of the same purpose and them being preinstalled brings no benefit to anyone. There are more downsides as some users actually think that because these apps are preinstalled they must be good, so they use them - with all the issues that come with them.

F-Droid on the other hand is the poster child of FLOSS app stores and preinstalling it brings additional benefits.
Sure an option to easily install it as a system app - or two versions of FP OS, one with and one without F-Droid would be ideal, but such special wishes probably bring an unreasonable increase of work for the devs as well as more opportunities for bugs.

3 Likes

On the other side, it does not matter. You can deactivate the preinstalled apps you don’t like.
For me I like slim systems with less preinstalled apps, and not on the phone only.
But when f-droid will be preinstalled, please keep the client up to date.

1 Like