The 0.18 version of Lemmy was announced. This will solve many issues.
But we can’t upgrade yet because the captcha was removed, and captcha relied on Websockets, which are removed in 0.18 so despite the devs agreeing on my request to add captcha back, this will not be until 0.18.1. Without captcha we will be overrun by bots.
Hopefully this 0.18.1 will be released soon, because another issue is that the newest version of the Jerboa app won’t work with servers older than 0.18. So if you’re on Lemmy.world, please (temporarily) use another app or the web version.
Jerboa also won’t work with Android older than 8.0 though that’s less of a problem for server ops. But it still seems like reliance on unnecessary shiny tech. My 5yo Android 7 phone still works perfectly well and I plan to keep using it a while longer, so I can’t use the official Lemmy app. I wonder how fundamental Jerboa’s dependence on Android 8 is. Anyone know?
The real crime here is that a 5yo android phone is running 7 which was released 8 years ago?
My 5yo phone is running Android 13. Get LineageOS.
I don’t think it’s the responsibility of unpaid app developers to work around that, especially when you can probably install a somewhat recent custom ROM. I have an ancient Nexus 4 with LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11, the last version for 32bit CPUs) and that version of LineageOS is still getting updates every few months.
That’s impressive
Yes but it’s also not that uncommon for Google phones to get many years of updates thanks to community ROMs. Google actually supports old Android versions for a pretty long time, it’s just that suites at Google don’t want them to formally ship on their own phones and that’s how LineageOS and even smaller community ROMs get support those phones with “relatively little” effort (at least compared to phones by random Android OEMs).
That’s good to hear. I would be curious to get a Pixel 4a, put LineageOS on it and see how long it would last
I have a 4a right now, plan to replace the battery sometime and switch to a community ROM when Google’s formal support ends
LineageOS doesn’t pass google’s SafetyNet, so it locks you out of a lot of banking apps, and also some other important apps.
It’s possible to run those by rooting the phone and doing some hackery to trick the app into bypassing the SafetyNet check, but that’s a race against google security features.
Besides, I gave up running LOS on my old phone and just bought a new phone with stock android 13, and Jerboa crashes on startup on it as well.
There are Magisk modules that help with those problems. Yes, it’s additional word but using ancient, unsupported, and insecure Android versions is definitively not the proper solution.
By keeping backwards compatibility that far back you give up on a large set of features. My guess is that Jerboa needed some feature that only exists from Android 8 and above and they didn’t want to reinvent wheels.
Probably it would be best if you try to get a used phone with an more up to date Android version.
I’ve gotten to the point that I think that any new software release of something like Android or Firefox is likely to make it worse than before. Reddit was another example. So I resist. What feature could they possibly want from Android 8 that wasn’t in earlier versions? If it was the dev kit (Jetpack) then I can sort of understand, but Android 7 has plenty of user level features, and apps such as RedReader that work fine. I’d be delighted with a RedReader port for Lemmy.
The idea of buying another phone and making more e-waste just to deal with version churn is distasteful to me. I might get interested if I can find a phone that supports Lineage really well, but otherwise I’d rather keep using what I have until it falls apart (it is getting there).
Thanks though.
I guess it’s time for you to get into app development and find out firsthand.> I might get interested if I can find a phone that supports Lineage really well
Literally every single Google phone. Get a second hand last gen one if you’re actually about reducing e-waste and that’s not just an excuse.