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Well there actually is a problem this can help solve. Malware. There are other concerns that are bigger motivators for Google, but the ability to lock shit down can help control security issues.
Most people can’t get the software they run on their devices. The idea of “you can trust me, bro” is fucking dumb, even in the open-source world. This helps nerf this for the stupid people who buy this shit. It’s a priority because there are more stupid people willing to buy a product and put up with its bullshit than there are smart people willing to put in the effort themselves.
But also money.
It should be as easy to do as enabling developer options on your android. Tap a certain thing several times in a row and it unlocks it, permanently.
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I finally want to switch to android and boom: Custom ROMs and "sideloading" gets swept off the platter. Well ok I guess I‘ll just wait for a good linux mobile OS
Heh, good luck trying to sideload anything on Linux...
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Not corporate IT, but IT for home users, back in the days when things were much less locked down basically every computer i got access too was completely crawling with malware. Had tons of people lose all of their data including family photos and the like because they dowloaded something dodgy off limewire and their system just let them run it.
Why cant you guys understand that the vast vast majority of computer users are not technical? And as such need those safety rails in place to save them from their own ignorance?
Most Android phone owners don't even know they are Android phone owners.
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I'm probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don't seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I've heard) pretty decently: https://furilabs.com/
Biggest drawback is it's based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn't worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.
Collection of different experiences I've variously seen online over the last year or so:
- https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839326
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1j46f2w/flx1_linux_phone_display_out/
- https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/furiphone_flx1/
I don't own one, myself, so I can't give any personal experience but I've seen it around for a few years now but most people don't seem to even know about it. Maybe there's a reason for that? But none I've ever seen anyone say.
You can't sideload in Linux. Not unless you have a PHD in computer engineering.
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The key thing to understand is that there's a big fucking difference between a "repository" and an "app store." One is designed for the convenience of users; the other is designed to exploit them.
There is no functional difference.
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That's a moron take. Plenty of people have no business downloading random apps. It takes all of 15 seconds with a Google search to side load. It's a fucking idiot test.
But yeah I'm sure if this check weren't there people would flock to fdroid
wrote last edited by [email protected]But they would use the Play store wouldn't they. They're not going to use the "dark web" (aka beyond the first 5 entries on a Google search).
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You already can't "sideload" without navigating the options and going through a big scary pop-up saying you better know what you're doing. In other words, it's already locked down enough.
This is not about making grandma safe. It is about control.
Well not really because scammers post things like "install this NOW to protect your system !" and Uncle Eugene clicks it through.
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I get what you are saying but is it really too much to ask for an interface that looks like it belongs there?
I prefer the old school style menus and such. I stopped using MS Word around the time that they came out with the 'ribbon' style menus or whatever it's called, so if they 'update' it I sure hope it's as an option or a fork.
I can understand people who grew up with it or who have spent years using it might like it better though.
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If I ever go insane and write a manifesto this will be on it.
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We'll always need safety rails, I think the thing you're missing in most of the arguments you're seeing here is that people want ways over or around those safety rails, and that those safety rails do not need to be as strict as they're becoming. That is not the case currently and that is definitely not the direction AOSP or iOS are interested in going.
Also, just for the record, comparing the modern era of computing to the limewire era is bananas.
Exactly.
I have no problem with safety rails for those who need it, my problem is that with each passing update these rails become obligatory and non-removable. -
Heh, good luck trying to sideload anything on Linux...
Right? Linus Torvalds keeps that source code under lock and key.
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Because making a power user take a more complicated path to achieve something is better than having an incopetent user brick their entire machine by accident?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Dunno if you saw the recent Android news, but the problem here is that we've passed "Make a power user take a more complicated path" and reached "Forbid them from ever doing it"
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maybe technology is not for everyone. but if grandpa wants to video chat with his kids, maybe it's the responsibility of the kids to help him. set up child limits or deal with the occasional problems. if grandpa cannot determine if an app is safe, they will install plenty of unsafe apps from the play store too, as google play's vetting is not nearly as good as some like to argue, so it's better for them if they just can't do so by themselves.
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Because making a power user take a more complicated path to achieve something is better than having an incopetent user brick their entire machine by accident?
this is not a "more complicated" path. this is a path that will purposely lock you out of other features, some of which you may be obliged to use. that or they won't even make it a possibility and you can go hunting for unpatched exploits to regain control over your own device.
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My younger sister is in her 40s. She's a pretty typical cell phone user.
in that case parental controls would still solve a lot of problems, including this one
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I can't even get people to switch to LibreOffice, not cuz they use some advanced MS Office feature but because the interface "looks dated". So they'd rather pay a subscription for life to use software that spies on them than download free software that does what they need but has a 2010s style interface.
Humans suck so much.
Humans are creatures of habit, and risk averse most of the time. Risk, being change of any sort when things seem "stable."
All you can do is lead by example and enjoy life and tell those poor souls they're stupid for spending money for something they can change the look like MS Office easily.
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in that case parental controls would still solve a lot of problems, including this one
I think your parents should turn on their parental controls because you're going a bit wild, buddy.
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maybe technology is not for everyone. but if grandpa wants to video chat with his kids, maybe it's the responsibility of the kids to help him. set up child limits or deal with the occasional problems. if grandpa cannot determine if an app is safe, they will install plenty of unsafe apps from the play store too, as google play's vetting is not nearly as good as some like to argue, so it's better for them if they just can't do so by themselves.
Nnnno.
Grandpa is not a child. Grandpa is an adult. With, you know, income and independence and a full brain. Grandpa is well within his rights to own appliances that do things grandpa doesn't fully understands but that are useful to Grandpa.
There is value for Grandpa (and for your jock brother that doesn't understand computers, this isn't an age problem) to have access to applications where he pays some company to do a thing for them. Those companies can take some of the complexity out of their hands, and Grandpa should be protected from abusive practices. It's not on Grandpa to do research on technology just to make a phone call now any more than it was for 1960s grandpas.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
The number of people I encounter, even on Lemmy, that genuinely believe and rigorously argue that being able to install or distribute software on devices you own is actually bad because “security” is beyond horrifying to me. They have been brainwashed into thinking that corporate monopolies are not only acceptable but desirable because you can completely and blindly trust Mom’s Old Fashioned Robot Oil to make all your decisions for you, for a modest fee and no opting out, of course.
This is why society is collapsing.
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You're right, it is an inordinate amount of effort.
So much effort, that I don't believe doing it on the scale Android / Google would need to do is possible.
We see Google, Apple failing at this insurmountable effort all the time. Even Linux has failed at it sometimes with supply chain attacks.
And frankly I don't feel that Google can do better than what they've done already in terms of sideloading. Right now of you don't want to go through the app store, you have to ignore two separate warnings when you side load a malicious app. At that point it's negligence.
Because of that I don't feel that adding this restriction to sideloading will help the situation. I believe it's a cop out, if anything they should direct the effort to the Play Store more. There is plenty of actually harmful malware on the Play Store that we can see in the news is a much larger impact than sideloading applications.
That's probably why no one is empathizing with what you're asking for, there is too much showing this change is in bad faith.
We did have that impossible to screw up device in feature phones. But we traded that for pocket computers that enable us to install, and build apps.
As for Linux, I completely agree with you. It still needs to improve user friendliness. It's improved exponentially lately, and could be argued to be better than Windows, but it's still not as good as smartphone computers which are the epiphany of user friendliness (and ignoring the dark patterns being added).
wrote last edited by [email protected]For the record, people are misunderstanding what Google is doing. They aren't enforcing full verification of every app, and presumably they're not preventing third party stores, since regulators have already forced their hand on that front.
They are demanding to keep verifiable ID on the authors of every app for the app to be able to launch from any source. Their pitch is not to centralize, which they would like to do but aren't allowed to do, their pitch seems to be to give you a paper trail where you know who made the malware because Google literally has a copy of their ID on file. Microsoft already has this for Windows as a certification system, but crucially on Windows you get a (deliberately very scary) "this app is unsigned and is probably malware" pop up that you can still bypass. It take a lot of unintuitive clicking, but you can still run the software. Google is saying they won't have that workaround at all now on the subset of devices they flag as "Android certified".
In practice this is fairly neutral in terms of security, but it focuses on enforcement and visibility. Besides the very real question of how to even implement this for distributed development or open source applications of the kind that doesn't bother submitting to Google Play, it may also have a heck of a chilling effect on a whole bunch of things you really don't want chilled in terms of privacy and anonimity for developers. It means if you want to control what software can be on ANY phone you need to get to basically three companies across the planet and that's enough. Likewise if you want to go after someone who made a piece of software for whatever reason.
But that's not what the conversation we're having is about, partly because nobody seems to be looking past the headlines, partly because nobody wants to engage with the nuance of the situation and is looking at it from the myopic perspective of principled access at the cost of added complexity when that's not at all what this is about.
