I use nix package manager on fedora silverblue. It's awesome.
GravitySpoiled
Have you met nix?
I don't own one but I agree, it ist very good. But it's too expensive for what it is nowadays. A second hand one or maybe the next generation might be worth it again
I use an amazon fire tv 4k, I only use it to start jellyfin. It's perfect.
If you don't want it to phone home, put it behind a firewall, and block all but your domains
Even worse. Many apps have google signature instead of the developers. They upload their key and give it to google. Horrible practice. Nowadays, fdroid gravitates towards reproducible builds with the dev's own signature and google is going the other way round. Gravitating towards an unsafe "best practice" ...
If that's of your concern, you can't download the play store version either. It is the same app, has the same signature.
Thats not a random apk
Another intepretation: one uses data to distinguish between popular and crappy stores.
I always neglected it because of its name. I thought it's something for rust...
Important tool
Why is it painful for you?