Don’t want to get Vivaldi on Android from Google Play? We give you a choice.
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I had never heard of Uptodown until it was mentioned in the app-store poll on this blog, but I like the sound of this. An "automatic update" mechanism for Vivaldi is desirable, including on Android, and it seems that App stores are the way to do this.
I like that Uptodown scans everything with Virus Total. Despite VT being owned by Goggle, this suggests that Uptodown APKs are actually subject to more scrutiny than the software in Goggle's own Prey store. The only times I've ever seen anyone get a virus on their Android handset, it was bundled in with something they assumed would be safe because they'd got it from the Goggle Prey store.
Because Vivaldi isn't under a completely free (libre) licence, it could never be included in the main official F-Droid store, but it would still be possible to implement an F-Droid compatible repo that F-Droid users could manually add to their client. This would then mean that F-Droid users could have automatic updates without the need to install more than one app store. I suspect anyone with the knowledge and motivation to use F-Droid in the first place, would find it almost-trivial to add an extra repo to the F-Droid client.
I'm also so glad that Uptodown (like F-Droid and Aptoide) doesn't require a user account. I hope enough users start to migrate away from the (cr)Apple and Goggle stores that these companies take note. There is no reason why anyone should need to give away unnecessary details or create an account just to use the basic functions of their device or keep it secure and updated. You've already paid money for the device. The manufacturers and their partners have an obligation to support it for a reasonable amount of time. There should be no need to sell your details or track you in order to make that basic obligation "commercially viable".
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@jamesbeardmore , F-Droid also has apps which a not completly OpenSource, but with an advice of this. See for Example the Gloomy Dungeon games in F-Droid, and others which includes codes which are not completly free, like Vivaldi.
https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Gloomy+DungeonsF-Droid has Free AND OpenSource apps, not only OpenSource., but only the OpenSource apps has beside the Download Symbol in the apps list, the others only in the descriptions page.
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@Catweazle Yes of course, I made a bit of a generalisation there. They can include non-free blobs, such as advertising libraries, but it is fortunately not normally practical to be any more "non-free" than that, and I forget such programs exist because I normally hide apps with anti-features.
As inclusion in the main F-Droid repo requires that F-Droid have to be able to build each APK from source themselves, in practice this normally means that the software has to have sufficient source available, and a permissive-enough licence for them to do this. This normally means that any "not entirely free" stuff in the main F-Droid repo normally fits into the following categories:
- The licence isn't completely free, e.g. doesn't permit modifications to the code even though the source is still available
- Upstream there's an advert or analytics library included in otherwise free-code
- Upstream there's an advert or analytics library included in otherwise free-code, but the F-Droid version is patched to remove it.
I think these games fit cases 2 and 3, because they're mostly released under an MIT (X11?) licence.
Regardless, I like that the F-Droid developers warn you of these anti-features. Just imagine if Goggle warned you of every app in their store that contained a tracker or an adware component!
Sadly I think Vivaldi has too many proprietary components to realistically be built by F-Droid's builds system (and therefore included in their main repo), but I live in hope!
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Too many distribution channels will increase your maintenance costs.
Just keep Google Play and Vivaldi.comThere are many Android app stores in this world and users of these app stores are convincing you to publish Vivaldi on the app store they are using.
You should know that you can't spend several times as much effort on maintaining the publishing channels.
Google Play is the app store with the highest market coverage and Vivaldi.com is the official distribution channel. Non-Google Play users choose to download the installer from the official website, which is the best solution.
Unless there is an automated solution that can automatically publish update packages to each app store, it is not recommended to maintain too many distribution channels if it is done manually
i7-6700HQ 2.6GHz / 32G DDR4 Ram / 128G SATA SSD / NVIDIA GTX 960M
Vivaldi Stable Latest Version in Windows 10 OS Latest Version
Vivaldi Stable Latest Version on Oneplus 3 with Android 9Always update in a first time
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@Poto Good point, but Goggle Prey isn't available in some regions, therefore one additional appstore is a nice courtesy to those users, so that they can still get automatic updates.
The alternative store they've included Vivaldi in is Uptodown. Uptodown has significant usage worldwide, especially in regions where the Goggle Prey store is banned/restricted/unavailable, and is apparently the second biggest Android appstore worldwide.
Based on this, I think the decision to offer a Goggle Prey version, an Uptodown version, and an APK on the web site, is the perfect balance. I think it provides the best worldwide audience coverage at minimal effort. Any more appstores than this would probably be excessive (or wasted) effort (although I have always pushed F-Droid because the poll revealed that it was the most popular app store of all amongst the Vivaldi userbase).
Hopefully there are automated ways to script pushing updates to all distribution channels, so that it doesn't take up too many resources.
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@Poto , for a few reasons, Google Play is still irreplaceable, especially because many official apps for administrations, public services, etc. are only available in this #€@
️__store. -
Another one which has also Vivaldi, include old versions (Online)
Other good alternative to F-Droid, with much more content, all FOSS
https://fossdroid.com (Online)
(It would be nice if you can add these two to the list of search engines in Vivaldi Android, in the same way as in the Desktop, for searching the apps and download the apk file)
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I thought apk4fun or apkmirror will have it. https://routerforce.com/192-168-1-10/ Click this link. I found it here.
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What of Apkpure? I have used it for some time and it seems fairly legit.
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@jamesbeardmore: Actually, virus scan on android is rather ineffective. Even if the installer itself does not contain any malicious code, the app can easily download and run one after installed, thus it can not really be checked by such virus scanners. In practice, you can probably much better protect your device by carefully checking the sources and reputation of the apps you install. After all, installing any app involves some trust in its creators and distributors unless it is open source and you checked the code yourself and compiled it.
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@Zsul , in Android I trust BitDefender. It is a trustworth AV. A good AV OpenSource don't exist, Clam (I don
t know if there is a version for Android, in Linux and Windows is a better placebo) isnt better than Gargle Play Protect. I don't have the skills for checking a complex code in the apps from developers I don't know. -
@zsul: The AV isn't in android, it is online. VirusTotal is also a sandbox which can check for behaviour with multiple sandboxes.
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I need advice , I'm reading up on this app vivaldi and want to know if I can delete google and chrome completely from a android phone?? I'm not tech. Savy and need some advice ..
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@Peanutt69 , you cannot delete Google and Chrome from Android, they are part of the system, Android is a Google product.
The only thing you can do, if you have root access, is to replace Android with Linux, eg LinageOS.
In Android there is no other, to avoid both Chrome and the Play Store, apart from stopping using any other Google app or service, replacing them with Vivaldi and OpenSource alternatives. -
@Peanutt69 Yes you can. Check on XDA Forums for deleting and/or "how to" install a custom rom. In case you don't want to root you're phone and you wish to stay with you're stock rom you can try Aurora Store (since Yalp Store seems no longer manteined) which seems a good project.
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@Peanutt69 If the android is quite recent you can probably disable some google services as "google" [search] and "chrome" [browser] in the app settings without particular issues. On older versions, the only way could be rooting&replacing the rom which is an hard route for non tech users.
Rooting was easier years ago, due a lot of unpatched Android exploits. But most are patched, now. -
@peanutt69: don't worry about deleting them. i know i don't.
either get a better android phone which comes without them (such as pine, fair phone, xda, etc) or in any recent android you can simply disable them (hold on the app, go for "app info", tap disable), which is good enough for all technical details (except it will still take a tiny bit of your phone storage).
you could also just ignore them or remove their shortcuts, but they would still bother you about updates.
the options other folks already brought up are very text savvy.
there's really nothing to work about leaving those apps there, in practice.
now...
if you're worried about privacy issues, that's a whole different rabbit hole! very (i mean really) deep down there's no app you can delete that will keep you private enough on ANY cellphone.
it is a bold privacy statement, but it's also true: cellphones need cell towers. unless you can control the towers your cellphone can be tracked and pinpointed on a map, through triangulation.
in the end, you need to do your own research of what you really want.
personally, i don't even disable them, in case i might want to use em as fallback. but i will eventually get a better phone that comes without them, not due to privacy concerns, but to technical quality and proper consumer incentives on my part. google, unlike i believed for too many of the latest years, completely lost track of what is good software... it was never THAT good really, precisely because it wasn't open source. but the competition being pushed was just so terrible that it looked amazing. to me (worked with computer coding from 1996 to 2016). all closed source, i now finally realized, are rather dreadful in the long run. they always die of some sort of self inflicted cancer.
anyway, my final advice is the same as the first and second paragraph.
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@Zsul When you upload things to Virustotal (the service that Uptodown uses), the various AV vendors often run the software sandboxed to see what it does. I once uploaded a piece of custom software by accident, and the developer called me panicstricken, asking me if I'd installed a bunch of new machines on our network, because their monitoring dashboard was getting filled up with all the AV vendors' test virtual machines, running the executable I'd uploaded.
In fact, many virus scanners on peoples' computers do this, and monitor the behaviour for "suspicious" actions. Surreptitiously downloading executable code when something's not a known updater/installer is one such action that triggers regular AV software's behavioural monitoring (AV has moved on a bit since basic pattern-matching). Even in the case of pattern-matching, a lot of the AVs have signatures for such bundled downloaders.
But I do agree with your general point. It's better to be safe than sorry, and this is why I tend to only use F-Droid, and disable apps with anti-features. That way I only get completely free/open-source software, backed by the reassurance of F-Droid's reproducible-builds system. Trust is everything if you don't read the source code or the software is proprietary!
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@Catweazle I like Android Bitdefender too! The free version is so lightweight and basic it's just what I need. I'd actually pay for it (or another trustworthy AV equallyl stripped-back and simple) if it wasn't free, just to get a non-bloated AV!
Regarding ClamAV you're so right... it provides virtually no realtime protection or disinfection capability (beyond deleting files that aren't locked/active), and its static detection rate is truly awful.
But you can improve the static detection rate to be comparable to Windows Defender, Kaspersky etc., by including the custom databases. Sane Security (UK) and SecuriteInfo (France) distribute a number of databases. I believe the RFXN (Linux Malware Detect) databases are also compatible with ClamAV. The only problem is ClamAV suffers a lot of false-positives and adding the custom databases makes this even worse. I get lots of false positives from the Sane Security databases in particular, unless I restrict it to just a few of them. SecuriteInfo also provide a load of signatures for Android malware. It's just a pity no one has ever ported the ClamAV engine to Android. But you can still scan APKs from your PC if you use those signatures.
When I last tested ClamAV against a folder full of 0-12month old malware, it deleted 25% of the samples with the stock databases, and 95% of the files with the addition of the custom databases. I don't know how many of the samples were unique, as I just saved any spam emails I could find that contained an archive or executable attachment from a generic contact email address. The sample size was also pretty small, only 100 or so.
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@jamesbeardmore , in the network there is a permanent fight between those who manufacture malware and those who fight it, many times the origin of malware are different governments and companies, directed at the competition or enemy countries.
The user is in the middle of this, with more than 100,000 new malware and exploits that appear daily, for this reason a good AV must also receive new information daily, or better as some, receive information in real time, based on the cloud .
If Clam does not receive this information daily by itself, it is of little use if you add external information by hand, this ensures protection for a very short time, apart from heuristic detection, which in Clam is non-existent, which also only acts on demand, say, it does not prevent infection.
