Downgraded to Aurora Store 4.8.3 and now working well for the moment.
Guys, work on improving Linux phone instead. Google is taking Android away from you and it just isn’t worth arguing with them about it. Let them hang themselves. Build a better alternative.
Disregarding the fact that Android phones are Linux phones, a so-called Linux phone will have exactly the same problems as a degoogled AOSP phone will, plus a bunch more
If you depend on proprietary google-dependent android apps then switching to a so-called Linux phone won’t help you because you will still need those apps, and if you’re willing to forego those apps and become “FOSSed up” then there is a vibrant free software ecosystem for AOSP-type operating systems.
You wish it’d be that easy. Building a phone isn’t the difficult part; building an ecosystem around is a huge task.
Where I live, you are almost forced to own either an Android or an iPhone, otherwise it’s tough luck getting banking, secure net identification, way to interact with the government agencies, bus or train tickets, etc.
I’m having trouble installing most apps from Aurora since last Sunday.
Seems to be working for me (in the EU).
Seems to be working again, but the last couple of days there was no good solution.
- GrapheneOS isn’t John Android. Stop black and white thinking. You don’t have to fit in with people when you post to .ml.
- If you have read the thread you are posting (relevant message 18 hours ago as opposed to this post 13 hours ago), you would have seen that you can just press “reload accounts” to fix it.
people treating graphene like the only android OS drives me up the fucking wall, i’m sure it’s great but holy SHIT lineage has existed for years and years but… now it’s suddenly irrelevant?
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth
yeah, regular AOSP-likes that need you to manually flash them after support for your device is finally added are not particularly relevant compared to a security-focused fork that’s supported by several flagship phones at release. the latter can actually make it into the hands of the average person. the former, not so much. imagine trying to explain to your elderly mother how to flash lineage onto her phone.
Which flagship phones support graphene OOTB with no bootloader unlocking? I certainly haven’t seen any
It’s working fine for me while logged in. It’s always been crap when logged out. This is nothing new.
Isn’t the whole point of it to get apps without login/anonymously?
Install it so I don’t have to have Google Play. Yes, Google can see what apps I have installed, but they don’t have their code running on my device. I consider it a 99% harm reduction.
for some people maybe, but if that was the whole point of the project then why would they even have the option to log in?
just tested it, at first i got rate limited(?) “server busy” but a minute later the updates went through fine
Working fine for me
Classic Graphene users, making this all about themselves. This hurts Aurora users, period.
Ironically, this hurts Graphene users the less because they can sandbox their google play services.
Classic Graphene users, making this all about themselves. This hurts Aurora users, period.
Edit: I ran into the same issue. For now, refreshing the anonymous Aurora account solved it.
Successfully updated an app just now.
It’s on fdroid.
I recommend blocking play store.
They are not blocking the download of the app from playstore. It was obviously not available there in the first place. They blocked API access to the google servers where aurora store was getting the apk files from. They just killed the concept of aurora store (and any alternative playstore frontend) entirely.
What is on fdroid??
this app called ‘aurora store’ which is a foss playstore client
What?
So that is why my Aurora store have been having trouble latley :(
Aurora still works for me for now on Samsung stock OS. I now mostly install Google Play apps with APKPure over Obtainium tho and only use Aurora for those not on APKPure. And most of my apps are from GitHub/GitLab releases and F-Droid. I disabled Google Play and didn’t login to Google account. I don’t want the requirement of a Google account to install an app and Play Integrity to run an app. It is by no means acceptable that a company, using a closed source implementation that also tracks user and breaks Android security model, can censor what apps a user can install and decide what security and privacy compromises a user needs to agree to just use the normal phone functionalities that they pay for and by no mean require those compromises technically. They are turning Android into a service and a prison like iOS did rather than a software.
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
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.)
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
For info - there is an alternative to APKMirror’s app On F-Droid. Still not ideal, but better than their proprietary nonsense.
and distribute the apks on a different website
Or with distributed technologoes such as torrents. Then it’s cheaper to operate any required servers.
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)And also if a server goes down there are still dozens of seeders ready to seed you the files
That’s what a few sites like apkpure do…
That’s insecure
It is if you use cryptography or cryptographically secure hashing.
Seems like clickbait but the graphene devs recommend against aurora store in favor of using a second profile with the sandboxed play store
because graphene devs don’t know what they are talking about, they never do
where’s your Pegasus-proof OS, then?
The Play Store requires a Google account. Using a second profile is extremely inconvenient.
Graphene recommending this at all is extremely sus. My objective of using your operating system is to avoid giving Google any information I possibly can. Don’t know why they always recommend using Google shit in a sandbox like those packets aren’t still coming from my IP.
Its not sus. They’re just hyper-aware of security. And Aurora is just not terribly secure. Its just that you’re now choosing between privacy and maximum security. And I prioritize privacy, personally.
They pretty much only recommend Accrescent.
how is Aurora less secure than PlayStore directly? GOS devs literally never make sense, and of course they recommend a app store that doesn’t even properly label non open/free apps distincly, it is not like they evwr cared about FOSS just vague “security” theater
because aurora store isn’t developed by a big team of professionals with a massive budget, and aren’t getting security audits by other teams of well-funded professionals.
the point isn’t that aurora store is insecure, the point is that the play store is VERY secure (it’ll just also merrily sell your data to palantir)
Isn’t the aurora store just a wrapper around the play-store using an anonimized account? That is exactly the reason that google can easily block them. They obviously found a way to stop the burner accounts that Aurora makes from accessing the store. It would be equal to making a container for each time you renew the anonymous account.
In other words, unless the aurora app has a backdoor (and I believe it is FOSS, so that should show itself easily), it is as secure as the play store ( which has debatable security, I believe it served malware on several occasions )
But please correct me if I’m wrong
AFAIK aurora store is a completely separate implementation, it’s certainly not based on the play store in any way since it’s open source.
I agree. Specifically, it’s privacy AND freedom (free software development model).
If these two are against maximum security, GrapheneOS consistently chooses security. Which is unfortunate for me, because I would consistently choose freedom. (Especially due to long-term considerations.)
You can disregard their recommendation if you wish, I do sometimes. If they were here, I imagine they’d say they don’t see privacy and security as contradicting each other, just that there are different threat models. I think they subscribe to the idea that not everyone is going to be sufficiently informed in order to make a rational judgement, so instead they default to lowering potential risk. They do value accessibility for the tech illiterate as well.
