What are your thoughts on Flatpak/Flathub?
What are your thoughts on Flatpak/Flathub?
Flathub aims to be the place to get and distribute apps for Linux. It is powered by Flatpak which allows Flathub apps to run on almost any Linux distribution.
How does it stack up against traditional package management and others like AUR and Nix?
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I personally think it is trash..
Just putting "personally" in front of an unfounded statement doesnt make it better
Why it is unfounded?? The sandbox is still a lie (flatseal is impractical security since it makes you become a security researcher overnight), apps are not properly filesystem-unveiled. But a new level of complexity.
Could you explain "filesystem-unveiled"?
Apps are not updated to support portals for "compatibility" or just lack of maintenance. Flatpak needs to follow their approach if they want to have many apps being supported.
Desktop Linux doesnt have the marketshare to dictate that all apps need to adopt portals. In the meantime, flathub.org has a rating system and verified checks, this is simply not well shown in KDE Discover and not sure about GNOME software.
Could you explain “filesystem-unveiled”?
Means its filesystem access is restricted.
For example, chromium on OpenBSD use the unveil(2) system call to restrict itself to /tmp and $HOME/Downloads .
Many popular flatpak applications have filesystem=host. This is equal to restrict all filesystem access and then unveil the whole filesystem.
Apps are not updated to support portals for “compatibility” or just lack of maintenance. Flatpak needs to follow their approach if they want to have many apps being supported.
Desktop Linux doesnt have the marketshare to dictate that all apps need to adopt portals. In the meantime, flathub.org has a rating system and verified checks, this is simply not well shown in KDE Discover and not sure about GNOME software.
If they can't even enforce portals, flatpak is a new level of complexity.
So I said it is trash.
Good that Chromium does that, but this means if it doesnt use portals many things will be broken.
The host access is not actually everything
These directories are blacklisted: /lib, /lib32, /lib64, /bin, /sbin, /usr, /boot, /root, /tmp, /etc, /app, /run, /proc, /sys, /dev, /var
Exceptions from the blacklist: /run/media These directories are mounted under /var/run/host: /etc, /usr
Portals need a change in the app code that is not huge but differs from other packaging formats on any distro and OS. So it sucks that its so slow but that has a reason.
The host access is not actually everything
Not as restrictive as chromium's unveil.
For home it even restrict to the downloads folder, not accessing the whole home directory.
Yes that only works for browsers and would completely break image viewers, document editors etc