d3Xt3r

No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.

I didn’t realize that. Never actually tried to buy anything. You can’t even make purchases in the Samsung store? Or Huawei?

OP is mistaken - you can make purchases in side-loaded apps, only thing is that app can't use the Google Play APIs for that (obviously) - but they're free to use PayPal or stripe or w/e payment method. Google has no way of preventing sideloaded apps from doing that, and it's not like they can ban them either.

You are put through a series of warnings just like you are when downloading an executable in the browser, or installing it on Windows.

Actually, there isn't even any actual "warning" - at least not on my Fold 4 - there was just one dialog to enable installation from unknown sources, with a "Settings" button that takes you directly to the page where you need to tick the box next to your browser, and as soon as you tick the box, you can click on the "Install" button to install it. That's it. None of the dialogs you interact with has any actual warnings.

No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.

That's not true - they wouldn't be able to use the Google Play APIs for payments of course, but if the app is sideloaded they can definitely use any payment processor / method. If the app isn't on the Play Store then Google has no say over it.

Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings

It's really not as difficult as you make it seem.

1. Send a link to the user somehow (SMS, email etc); or user goes to the website
2. Click on the Download button
3. Open the APK
4. In the dialog box that pops up, click on the Settings button > then allow Samsung Internet
5. Click on the Install button

That's it. There were no "series of warnings" to go thru, no need to flip between multiple screens or anything. I literally just went thru this process to install the Epic store my Galaxy Fold 4 - which took only a few seconds in total - and it was in no way complicated or "scary" at all. And bear in mind that the audience in this case are gamers - people who are already familiar with the concept of downloading and installing programs on a PC, so it's not like you're targeting some tech-illiterate people here.

The only one that lasted is F-Droid

Not true again. Aurora Droid and Droid-ify are both reasonably popular, at least in the OSS/enthusiast communities. Yes they use the F-Droid repos but they also subscribe to other repos (Guardian Project, Izzy etc), so you're getting your apps from multiple sources.

There are also proprietary stores such as Aptoide which are quite popular in the Asian markets. Finally, you're completely ignoring other stores which are bundled out-of-the-box on many non-Google phones such as the Galaxy Store on Samsungs, Mi Store on Xiaomis, AppGallery on Huawei etc. Of course, in the western market the Play Store is the most dominant, but the Samsung store is reasonably popular among Samsung users (as they have regular deals on games and various other apps + some exclusives like Good Lock and other Samsung-specific apps), and of course, the OEM stores are also quite popular in Asian markets.

Exactly. And this (community reverse engineering / interoperability / bridging etc), isn't something new, it's existed ever since a messaging protocol became popular - remember Trillian, Miranda, etc? Whether proprietary or not, it didn't matter - people were going to find a way to bridge the gap sooner or later. So for Apple to think that this was somehow exclusive to just iPhone users - and that it will stay that way - is a bit shortsighted.

If profit is what they were after, they could've just as easily made an official, secure API and charged for it. I'm sure there's plenty of folks out there willing to pay for iMessage, given how many of them are buying used Mac Minis and iPhones to use as a relay. Apple's shortsightedness is making them miss out on a business opportunity.

I recall reading somewhere that you could register your number by putting your SIM card in some old iPhone and activating iMessage and your number gets linked to your Apple ID, once that's done, you could power off the iPhone and put it back in your Android. Although there was some caveat like needing to repeat this process a few months(?) or something otherwise your number would drop off. Not sure if all of this is still valid though.

Similar experiences here. I remember waiting for the free CDs bundles with monthly magzines, and add then I'd the CD as a mirror in my repos to update my packages lol

And here's a customary video of metalhead nerds celebrating.

And blacklisted by Ubuntu Christian Edition.

If you see the word "LILO" during your windows startup (just after you turn the machine on), your son has installed lunix.

Wow, that's a blast from the past! Completely forgot that LILO used to be a thing.

I would like to create my first ublue spin as there only is Fedora Sericea currently

Have you looked at Hyprgreen? It should be exactly what you're after.

https://github.com/hyprgreen/

inhabiting a boston dynamics robot would probably be the best option

Already been done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzOBZUFzTw

It's just a static image. At the end of every month, a guy logs into all the donation sites, punches the numbers into a calculator, calculates how many more pixels needs to be added, then fires up MS Paint and paints the progress bar and uploads it to the website. ^(/s)

You can see the results for this here: https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/x265&eval=3361398242e51c9735e344947066888a1fb27436