Honestly one of my favorite photos

Yea im pretty sure flatpak suports bundles that you can install directly, just like an appimage

If OP is a journalist or refugee at risk of being targeted and killed, my advice is don’t use a VPN, use TOR lol.

Not untrue, and I don’t think that the possibility should be glossed over, but honestly, what do you think is more likely: this specific person getting specifically MitM’ed by a bad actor, or a bad actor taking control of a repo that hundreds of people blindly trust. I have a sneaking suspicion that OP’s threat model isn’t sophisticated enough to need to really, truly, be worrying about that.

What are you on about? If you are using the 3rd party repo, you are just as likely to get malware than if you download the deb directly from the wbsite. Its literally the same thing, just adding the repo means that the malware could get installed automatically and without you knowing where it came from.

I just had to switch my work computer from Arch to Ubuntu becusse they want MDM on all computers now, and flatpaks are litetally the only reason i can tolerate it.

I now prioritise getting stuff from flatpaks, then the repos, and if they dont exist i use Distrobox to export any app thats only on the AUR for example.

Ads like this really arent all that scumny my dude, i mean at least IMO lol.

You gotta pay the creator to use the app. Sync isnt free, You either pay with ads, or you pay with your buckaroos. Thats just how it works. And its pretty transparent. No trying to dupe you, hes not secretly selling your data (at least as far as i know). Either view ads so he gets paid, or pay him directly. I dont see anything wrong with this business model. The issue i have with ads is the intrusiveness of them, or the stealth of them. Reddits ads are scummy because they look like reddit posts, thats not cool.

Implementing ads after getting a user base (like in your lemmy.world example) is different because they are changing the model. If i were to join an instance that started off with ads, id be less miffed because if i like it enough i can stay and view ads / pay, or i would move to a different instance. I wouldnt call it scummy. I would understand that they gotta pay bills to keep that server on, and thats how they decided to do it.

For what its worth, i am a FOSS guy all the way, and take all opportunity to block ads. But im also willing to pay for software that i think deserves it. I donate to my lemmy instance, and have paid for Sync Ultra, because they are both great and the maintainers deserve to get paid :)

I also have a foldable, and forgot how much i missed using Sync because of the foldable support. Got it today and am in love all over again lol