Various installation woes

Hi, I just switched to FP Open (18.04 .1). So far everything went smooth (but please could someone point out what to prefer - Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia Cinnamon 64 Bit gives me two fastboot options: fastboot 1.6.0.1+r16-3 or android-tools-fastboot 5.1.1r26+git20160322?).

I easily installed F-Droid, by using the browser to download the .apk of f-droid, and clicking on it. Fine.

Installing Firefox Klar through F-Droid was also a snap.

But I cannot install Opera or Opera Mini. As they are closed source, I went through opera.com. They do support .apk directly, so I do not have to use Googles Playstore. So I downloaded both .apk files. But I cannot install them! I do have “installation from unknown source” activated, but still, when I click on the .apk in downloads I get “file cannot be opened” on both.

Event stranger, I did install Keepass password manager. I could not point it to its copied pw file in Downloads, and after installation, all clicking on .apk files resulted in Keepass (!) trying (and failing) to open those. So I deinstalled Keepass. Still, I cannot install correctly downloaded .apk files…

Then I installed K-9 e-mail client, and wanted to add PGP encryption, so I installed APG, but I could not finish its installation, because it claimed illegal configuration (?) and showed a config item to force use of APG even if open keychain is installed. Unchecking this option did not change anything, I could not complete APG installation, so I removed it.

What am I doing wroing here?

Thanks for your help
Oliver

If you are using this “wannabe” build in file manager (Memory & USB):
Install Amaze (from f-droid) and try installing the apks via Amaze!

There is a similar but german Topic

Thanks!

Hm, that doesn’t sound like a similar topic, Looks like the other user installed FP Open, but after sending the FP in for repair it got reset to Marshmellow, which I would have assumed to happen anyway (most companies reset devices to manufacturing defaults, and that would be Marshmellow.

I’ll try amaze, but why can FP Open correctly open and install the .apk of F-Droid, which was also done via the Downloads folder view, but not the two operas? Shouldn’t the Downloads Folder view always install .apk (given that ‘unknown sources’ is set to allowed)

Sorry, I just realized I should have read the whole thing…

After reading it the topic is similar, but with a twist: I do have those opera .apk in the downloads Folder, but even there I cannot install them. F-Droids own .apk could be installed just from there, no problem. So I do not understand why it does not work with operas .apk.

Could it be that F-Droid is to blame, that it somehow (to protect the user, or whatever the reasoning might be) tries to protect users from installing anything outside of F-Droid?

Btw, I can still start the F-Droid .apk ! But it immediately recognizes F-Droid is already installed, and just asks whether I want to upgrade something at the F-Droid installation…

Sorry for getting a bit off-topic here, but:

  1. Marshmallow is just a name for Android 6, which FP Open is based on too. Support seems to have installed FP OS.
  2. For the FP2 I see no reason why support should have done that since FP Open is an officially supported OS flavor developed by Fairphone themselves.

Did you try re-downloading the apk? Sometimes something can go wrong during the download.

No, they don’t do that. Only G%§$e does that and even that can be circumvented by enabling unknown sources as you already did.

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Yes, I re-downloaded the .apk three times. And after installing Amaze, I could install them with no problem. The .apk are just fine. So it must be something else that hinders opening of the files (if the error message is correct after all).

I wonder why after installing Keepass Droid .apk got opened by Keepass. Maybe there is a (hidden?) setting that tells the OS, or the folder Viewer, what to do with files of the ending .apk and that got first set to Keepass, then to nirvana. But then again, why did F-Droids own .apk continue to work?

Seems a big mystery.

Just a guess but FFOS integrates a plugin to install apks from F-Droids automatically, by-passing the process of “un-trusted sources”.

Maybe this “workaround” also by-pass Keepass.

Indeed, very strange!
I have no explanation for this.

For f-droid, there’s a privilege extension that allows f-droid to work like Google play store. If you want to install any apk gotten from different sources (but be careful it’s really the app you intend to use, go to settings, security, unknown sources. Then you can install them. Don’t forget to disable it, for safety

ALG isn’t super anymore and doesn’t work with k9. It’s supposed by openkrychain, which works great

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I think you meant APG… :wink:

Yep. Auto correction i didn’t pay attention to

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