When comparing F-Droid vs Slant, the Slant community recommends F-Droid for most people. In the question“What are the best mobile apps for community product recommendation's?” F-Droid is ranked 1st while Slant is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose F-Droid is:
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Non-profit
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Pro All titles are free and open source
All apps and games on F-Droid are open source (FOSS), making for a complete store resource for users who want to use only open source software on their device.
Pro All apps have no ads nor tracking
This alone can be a great reason to use the apps available on F-Droid, but there is also the fact that this can increase battery life due to tracking and ads never requiring a data connection, since they are not present.
Pro Multiple repository sources
You have more than one source of apps and updates and local repository too
Pro Highlights 'anti features'
Features that are often considered undesirable by users and the open source community are highlighted. This could be advertising or connecting to non-free services
Pro Previous versions of apps remain available after updates
If you don't like to an app after an update, you can download the previous version again. This is not possible on GooglePlay.
Pro File sizes are shown
For those running out of room, the size of the APK is always shown.
Pro F-Droid compiles all packages
F-Droid compiles all the packages themselves ensuring a high level of security. Other stores just allow the developer to upload the app already compiled, meaning anything malicious could be in the app.
Pro Compares options while taking context into consideration
Context such as purpose, limitations, and situations change what options should be recommended and what pros and cons should be surfaced. For example, a comparison of Linux distributions for general use and Linux distributions for development will discuss the topics in different ways.
Pro Content can be easily kept up to date
Since anyone can edit content on the site, the pace at which information changes are reflected on the site is not arbitrarily limited by the number of writers the site has.
Pro Multiple chosen answers
Subjective questions may have more than one answer. Slant allows people to vote for more than one answer as being correct, and to append the pros and cons which influenced their decision to their vote; thus giving a context of in which situations each answer may be considered correct.
Pro Public visibility
You do not need to have an account to view existing content (questions or answers). People can see what they're getting into before deciding if they'd like to sign up for an account and contribute to the site.
Pro Pro/con association
When upvoting existing answers, you can associate the pros and cons which influenced your choice of chosen answer(s).
Pro Community rated answers
Unlike a number of other Q&A sites where the person asking the question picks the winning answer, Slant accepts that they're asking because they don't know the answer, so they allow everyone in the community to pitch in by upvoting the best answer.
Pro Designed for subjective questions
Slant.co's reason for being is to answer subjective questions. It was born with the knowledge that other sites existed to handle objective questions and answers, but they made no attempt to handle the intricacies of subjective answers. Slant.co is the only site focused on solving this specific area.
Pro See all answers clearly
An enumeration of recommendations is easily viewed as a list, making it a good starting point for researching available options. This is the opposite of other sites in which multiple choices may be listed within a single answer, with the need for the user to read through paragraphs of information to pick out the key articles.
Pro Pros and cons vs users' answers
Most Q&A sites give each user the chance to give an answer (sometimes multiple answers). A lot of the content of each user's answers will overlap, resulting in duplication of information (thus more to read), or information being lost in noise (e.g. if someone sees existing answers and adds a missing point without copying existing information, their point will likely languish at the bottom of the list of answers as it did not answer the majority of the question).
Slant approaches this differently; rather than focusing on the users, it focuses on the points; Pros and Cons. Any user may amend the information in a pro/con, may vote based on how much that pro/con influenced their decision, and may add their own pros and cons if certain points are missing from the canon.
Pro Unbiased information you can trust
Slant isn't financially tied to any products listed on it. All the categories (organized into 'questions'), products (organized as 'options'), and pros/cons are added, and edited by real users - there is no way for a company to pay to have a favorable review (and if they try to do it themselves, the community can report (flag) or edit any false claims.
Pro Subjective claims have to be backed up with evidence
Each subjective statement needs to be backed up with objective information. An opinion has to be backed up with facts. An evidence for a claim on Slant can be provided with examples, sources, and facts.
Cons
Con No ratings/comments/number of downloads
All apps are presented equally. It is difficult to judge an app's quality/popularity before trying it. On the upside, descriptions are fair (written by the F-Droid maintainers, not by the app authors).
Con Not all apps have screenshots
It can be difficult to tell what an app is like without installing it.
Con Small selection
F-Droid has a small selection of apps when compared to other major Android markets. This is due to every app being open source and given away for free, something not many people are willing to do with their time and creations.
Con It doesn't have all the open source apps
There are many open source apps that aren't available on F-Droid due to their authors not making it available on that particular app store. One example is Omni Noted, which is on the Play Store but not F-Droid.
Con Descriptions are only available in English
Though the store app is multilingual, the app descriptions are only in English, meaning you must know English to find an app, even if the app is supposed to be multilingual.
Con A lot of apps lack polish
Since every app on F-Droid is FOSS and released for free, many of them aren't as polished compared to other markets and their paid app selections.
Con F-Droid bans Gab for being a “free speech zone” that will “tolerate all opinions”
F-Droid is just another liberal marxist echo chamber. It silences, bans, any opinion that deviates from their "progressive" marxist narrative.
Con It's not a good alternative for Google Play
Most useful softwares are not available on this platform so we can't call it an adequate alternative.
Con Updates are not automatic for non root users
You have to click the updates one-by-one in order to make them happen. If user has rooted their device automatic updates are possible, the app needs to be converted to a system app.
Con Most applications are outdated/deprecated
Most applications (80% of them) haven't been updated for more than 4 years.
Con Unknown in the public and bad SEO
Journalists and the public don't know about it
Con Tech content focused
Con Pros and Cons don't travel from question to question
If you see a new question and choose to add an option already recommended in another question, you need to add all pros and cons from scratch.
Con Doesn't work properly without JavaScript
Con Anyone can modify content
Luckily some of the Slant community members are quick to react and report abuse.