this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
29 points (93.9% liked)

Linux

48144 readers
904 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

should i be worried installing these two? what does it mean though?

(these are captured from Pop! OS software manager)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They mean that the app has that permission. It is good that they let the user know the apps capabilities

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Not for the average/casual user, which is why this post exists.

The average person will look at that and see the '!' in a triangle and became scared of what it can do to their system, even though it has no more permissions than a system package. Alternatively, they will become desensitized and learn to ignore it, resulting in installing flatpacks from untrusted and unverified sources.

Overall, I just think the idea around having to sandbox all flatpaks is not a good idea. To give a concrete example, Librewolf is marked as "potentially unsafe" because it has access to the download folder, but if I want to use it to open a file that isn't in "downloads" I have to use flatseal to give it extra permissions - it's the worst of both worlds! Trying so hard to comply with flatpak guidelines that it gets in the way of doing things, and still not being considered safe enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

but if I want to use it to open a file that isn't in "downloads" I have to use flatseal to give it extra permissions

There has been a portal to prevent this issue for years now. The fix isn't to patch around issues in Flatseal, it's for developers or Flatpak packagers to fix their security policies and code.

As an added benefit, KDE users get thumbnails in their file picker because they're no longer stuck with the old GTK one but instead can use their native file picker portal. A win for everyone!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

You shouldn't use Android then. It is way worse