⚡️Progressive Web App for F-Droid In Development
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The F-Droid team is working on a progressive web app for browsing F-Droid repositories.

Progressive Web Apps or PWAs are web applications that look and feel like a mobile app thanks to some tweaks and the ability to add them to the phone's home screen. They're much easier to build than mobile apps.

The app is still in development with the following features:
-displaying basic repository informations;
- Providing a link/QR-code for adding the repository to your F-Droid client;
- Browsing and searching for apps;
- Displaying app details and app downloads.

The most exciting part about this announcement is their plan to expand F-Droid tooling to iOS. This could potentially mean that iOS apps can be distributed through F-Droid.

Since the EU is forcing Apple to allow sideloading apps (getting apps from outside the App Store) in a few years, F-Droid could eventually be home to open-source apps on iOS.

Read more:
https://f-droid.org/en/2023/06/16/progessive-web-client.html

Code:
https://gitlab.com/uniqx/fdroid-webdash

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⚡️ Fedora Wants To Add Telemetry to Its Linux Distribution
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A recent proposal by a Fedora developer and Red Had Display Systems Team suggests the inclusion of the Endless OS metrics system into Fedora.

The Endless OS system is an optional, anonymous telemetry system where events are recorded locally and submitted to the developer's server. It does not report a specific computer, but an OS image ID which correspond to a specific version of the operating system. The system can record events by individual applications, hardware information, and/or user sessions.

The proposal introduces what metrics it might gather, such as clickthrough rate and hardware components metrics in order to improve usability and performance.

My take -
On one hand, improving software without data or user feedback is definitely a challenge - its almost impossible without actually watching how people use things. And the most common thing i hear from mainstream technology users is that Linux isn't user friendly enough - so would telemetry begin to improve UI?

On the other hand, telemetry is a slippery slope - first it gets used to test what settings pages are being used most, but down the line it could be used to optimize certain behaviors on the operating system. There's the added threat that even though the anonymous ID isn't computer specific, the collection of hardware information, what apps they're using could be used to create a fingerprint.

A fingerprint is almost guaranteed seeing that eos-phone-home is an additional package that uses hardware vendor & model, current OS version, and a GeoIP lookup, with an ongoing ping every 24 hours. This is used to measure retention, and is already used in Ubuntu - 90% of users have the full metrics enabled. The IP address does get discarded, and the server side code is open source but again we must take their word that its the same code that's running.

Its a complex issue, at least there is a lot of discussion happening in the community. I personally think the system should be neutered more and an analysis done of how unique user's fingerprints could be.

Interesting points:
- The KDE projects allow users to configure how much they want shared
- Clear ways to present and disable the telemetry are encouraged

What do you think? - share with us on our 🗯 CHAT GROUP
- Should open source software offer telemetry to improve their software?
- What other ways can OSS get feedback?

Link here:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-privacy-preserving-telemetry-for-fedora-workstation-system-wide/85320/38

Metrics system:
https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2023/07/05/endless-oss-privacy-preserving-metrics-system/

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⚡️ChromeOS Has More Than Half of The Desktop OS Linux Market
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I was reading this opinion piece on TheRegister today where the author makes the point that ChromeOS has 4.15% of the market while Linux has 3.08%, and that is something that should be celebrated since ChromeOS is technically Linux.

—
But that's not the case for ChromeOS. Underneath its unique GUI layer – which, unlike the one in macOS, is open source – it's a relatively standard Linux which can run standard Linux apps, out of the box, on both x86 and Arm. As such, it's the most successful desktop Linux there is.

It's not a typical Linux, because typical Linuxes are tools for nerdy hacker types, and that kind of OS will never, ever go mainstream unless someone forces people to use it.

But in every way that matters, it is mainstream, it is commercially successful, it's a polished end-user desktop OS, and it's a Linux.

—
There's a few things that point to ChromeOS' success. One, it has millions of dollars to put into distribution so you can buy it at stores. That can't be said for any other Linux distribution.

The other is, that people are forced to use it. Especially for schools and the workplace, where Google has strong-armed their Chromebooks. These could total up to millions of computers, no wonder they have a significant market share.

Lastly, the author cleverly worded it to imply ChromeOS was open-source when its not, its completely proprietary. We have little idea of what it actually does.

Technically, it may be 'Linux' but philosophically its an imposter.

Instead of promoting user freedom and choice, ChromeOS and Chromebooks serve as another spy device used to extract information from people, especially your kids without parental consent. They were sued in New Mexico for exactly this reason, and its probably this is happening in every state where Chromebooks are being distributed through schools.

While researching this post, I realized there's hardly any discussion of ChromeOS' telemetry. That's worth an investigation.

If you have a Chromebook laying around, here's a tutorial to install Linux.

Let's take back some of that market share.

The article does make a good point that we need a polished end-user desktop OS, I think we are very close to that with the Above Book.

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