I am evaluating a migration from GrapheneOS to /e/OS. Previously, I used a combination of Aurora Store and F-Droid to install apps. In /e/OS, I see both catalogues are available by default in App Lounge.
However, as soon as I tried to actually install an F-Droid app from App Lounge, I ran into trouble, because most of the important information about the app was missing.
As far as I can tell, the source code link is not displayed anywhere in the detail page for this app in App Lounge. Nor is the licensing information (it says “License: Issue Tracker”, seemingly a bug), or the list of previous versions, or the changelog, or the actual issue tracker link. Also, there’s “Rating: N/A” which seems nonsensical as F-Droid has no user ratings system in the first place.
Why is all this information missing? It doesn’t seem possible to use App Lounge to install F-Droid apps if you can’t actually tell whether they’re the apps you think they are.
I’m using App Lounge 2.18.3 on /e/OS 4.0 on a Google Pixel 6a (as a test device, to evaluate the migration). Here is a screenshot of the App Lounge page in question:
Just install F-Droid (from their website or from App Lounge) and use that. App Lounge doesn’t add any value for FOSS apps hosted on F-Droid. Similarly, I would install Aurora Store from F-Droid, and use that if you need to install apps from the Play Store. Again, /e/’s fork / re-invention doesn’t add any value.
I mean, yes, of course I can do that - it’s what I did on GrapheneOS. But wouldn’t it be nicer if the pre-installed app store worked well for these purposes, too? I just wanted to check and see if there wasn’t something I was missing, before I filed a bug report against the tracker on GitLab.
as petefoth says, any dedicated client will give a better experience.
Murena made installing f-droid apps work, and that’s it. You can file issues or even a PR, but I don’t think you can get traction.
Last I checked, on the same appid, AL will fetch the f-droid version if available vs playstore. It queries an intermediary API for package details (cleanapk.org) and I guess things are lost / misattributed when that api backend parses the f-droid index files (or relays? f-droid has an api now by themselves).
As to F-droid not fitting a “playstore” view with ratings: not having them is on f-droid. It’s admittedly a hard problem, taking user input - but the threads and issues have book-length by now, the demand is there. It’s a bit lost potential, esp. on the sub topic of app-compatibility reviews for microG.
