Google has news on what you will need to do for still being able to sideload apps:

[grote@chaos.social]

@millihertz for all apps you will ever want from F-Droid? And their updates?

[millihertz@oldbytes.space]

@grote yeah, if that's what it takes

[millihertz@oldbytes.space]

@grote i'm guessing it'll take the F-Droid website about two seconds to figure out how to have Chrome automate the process

[heislertecreator2049@mastodon.social]

@grote just wait until they download and inspect, validate, do a security check on, and....

run a jar?

[millihertz@oldbytes.space]

@grote it sucks, but fuck google

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@argv_minus_one Are you talking benchmarks or specific usages? In benchmarks they'll probably always look to come out ahead because they have a LOT of accelerators. Real life usage is much much trickier and really depends on what you're doing. For example, ARM may have some advantages in, say, encoding if the encoder can take advantage of all those accelerators and if it's allowed to still use lots of watts (just less than the desktop presumably) with good heat dissipation.

But in something where accelerators start being tricky to use like, say, emulation or a game, ARM starts falling behind. Often way behind.

The thing about x86/64 is it's very good at general usage.

(I got curious and looked up a benchmark btw. The latest M5 seems to barely claim better SC benches than my CPU)

[millihertz@oldbytes.space]

@grote (sorry, did you think i was coming at this from an "i can see what google is trying to do here" angle?

.....nnnnnnnnope

[tuneintodetuned@mastodon.social]

@grote
This was already hard enough before for most users. The best route will be staying off Google services with a custom rom.

[chand_v_post@mastodon.social]

@grote Wow that is so hard.
I can feel the issue of avoiding people being tricked but with them I have some doubts.
Also why do I need to use biometrics?

[disorderlyf@todon.eu]

@grote According to the image, you can use a PIN instead of biometrics. Nearly gave me a heart attack when I read "confirm with biometrics" in the text.

[terminaltilt@climatejustice.social]

@valpackett @old_angry_queer @grote

You're right. I totally missed that.

[confusomu@twoot.site]

@nazokiyoubinbou @FifiSch @grote Unfortunately, you cannot do complete backups of android devices if you are not rooted. You may have a phone in use currently, which you didn't have the foresight to bootloader unlock and root when you initially got it, and thus installing any custom ROM is not very interesting as you would loose a large part of your data. The part of the data that you would lose is unknown as app/phone backups are opaque, and might also result in losing access to some messaging applications if not done carefully. In the best case, you would have a second phone from which to transfer data from, as a reference (and for messaging apps that can transfer accounts between devices).
At least, that's how I see it. The process itself is easy, but the steps before and after are much more scary.

In all, I do agree with your initial premise that LineageOS and other custom ROMs will become more popular for those that have android headsets that have unlockable bootloaders and have the initial knowhow.
We do seriously need more alternatives to Android and iOS, such as postmarketOS, as the current state of things is getting very dire. Unfortunately, the hardware itself is not very standardised and manufacturers want to keep control to squeeze a few more cents from each device…

[mrmasterkeyboard@mastodon.social]

@grote Google can FUCK right off. NO ONE should have to do ANY of this.

[stellafoxxie@oldbytes.space]

@monapp @grote installing a custom rom is not that fucking easy lol

[bonsai861@mastodon.social]

@grote That's a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through to use your own phone...

[timwardcam@c.im]

@tedmielczarek @grote No, it was a real job I had at a real company. I just wondered whether people would still be able to do that.

[cody@catboy.baby]

@grote@chaos.social What a fucking dumpsterfire, well I guess it's time to develop a RISC-V operating system for phones that is actually open source, and deploy open hardware infrastructure hosted by actual human beings and not FUCKING CORPORATIONS to support international communications with them.
Though in fairness I guess if that even happened corporations would lobby to regulate against it so we'd be fucked anyway ​​
Also idk how we'd do transatlantic shit... I hate the world.

[orsinium@fosstodon.org]

@grote

calling it "sideloading" is already an insult. it's not a sideloading, it's installing an app like we used to (and still do) install apps on PC forever. inventing scary slurs is a psychological trick that we should not accept.

[1hommeazerty@mamot.fr]

@grote So they decided to make it more complicated than installing a free Android distribution.

[7heo@ieji.de]

@ziclaud

You need to make a xiaomi account and bind it to your device. It has a 24+h wait, allegedly. I have no idea how it works, though, I have never done it.

I'd recommend using something else than a phone. 🫠