7 ms·

Flatpak gives you a sandbox, and has basically skirted around any shortcoming of Snap (faster, open, extensible, adopted by every other distro, doesn't pollute

Flatpak gives you a sandbox, and has basically skirted around any shortcoming of Snap (faster, open, extensible, adopted by every other distro, doesn't pollute /proc/mounts)

leetrout 6y ago
None of the flat pack apps I’ve used on Pop_OS work correctly / as stable as installing a deb directly. I’ve not been impressed at all.
- 1_player 6y ago
  YMMV. Firefox is the golden standard, at least on Arch Linux. Never have I noticed it was running on a sandbox. I run Discord, Spotify, Thunderbird from Flatpak without any issue either. Visual Studio Code is a regular package, just because its use case it not really suited for a sandbox (access to system binaries, libraries, etc.), but I honestly haven't even tested its Flatpak version.
  - Iolaum 6y ago
    VSCodium flatpak works fine for me. The caveat is that I use the operating system's terminal instead of the one from VSCodium (for things like make test, python environments, etc). VSCodium's terminal operates on a sandboxed environment and I haven't bothered to figure out how it relates to the OS environment that I get from the terminal app.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      You set your shell as some wrapper which allow sandbox escape. It works for shell itself, but then you need to apply it to all external utilities extensions use as well and it gets annoying.
      - Iolaum 6y ago
        Interesting, are there any examples on the internet for that process?
  - dathinab 6y ago
    The problem with flatpack is that many apps don't really run in a sandbox. Or at least not in something with isolation features which you might expect from a sandbox.
    - 1_player 6y ago
      To be honest, to me the selling point is not the sandbox, is the reproducible environment that's common for all distributions, which is a first in the Linux world, the sandbox is just the icing on the cake. The other day I pushed an update to some flatpackaged app, and guess what, it's available to all Linux users. Packaging has become incredibly easier for third parties with these kind of technologies.
      - dathinab 6y ago
        The problem is the combination of how updates are (often not) done (in time) + no sandbox. I also am a strong believer that the future for sane desktop PC's is that every program (except the most fundamental core services) of a desktop OS should be sandbox by default. With basically no permission to access any local files or communicate with any other program/service. It would need some MAJOR changes, slowly step by step. And I had hoped with snap & flatpack we would be slowly transitioning there. But it doesn't really look that way anymore to be honest. (PS: And it can be done with reasonable UX experience without requiring the user to configure some magic access rules or anything, but it's tricky to get right and it not be fully backward compatible but often changes just need to go into the GUI toolkit (QT, GTK) so it should be possible.
- qchris 6y ago
  I guess just to provide a counterpoint, I can't remember having had any issues with flatpak on Pop!, including both open-source apps and proprietary ones like Spotify.
  - leetrout 6y ago
    How about zoom? Was the worst and completely unusable for anything more than viewing a meeting.
    - qchris 6y ago
      No issues for me--I've run Zoom pretty regularly, including participating in some fairly large meetings, plus screensharing, etc. Occasionally I need to replug my headset in at the beginning of the meeting to get my voice audio working, but I'm not sure if that's actually an OS issue or not. Either way, it's never taken more than a couple seconds.
DoctorNick 6y ago
Flatpak's sandboxing is an absolute joke and entirely voluntary.
- 1_player 6y ago
  > is an absolute joke Please elaborate. > entirely voluntary Fedora Silverblue would like to disagree. And in any case all parties know it's still in flux, but the stable parts are stable in my experience. I would not want something like Snap or otherwise immature forced down my throat.
  - genghizkhan 6y ago
    Entirely voluntary in the sense that flatpak enforces sandboxes which the application tells it to enforce. If the app asks for full system access flatpak doesn't deny that. It kind of destroys the purpose of a system built to run third-party code. If I download a malicious app from flathub or some other repo which asks for full system access flatpak doesn't do anything in the name of security. Note: I'm not making a value judgement about flatpak's sandboxing, merely describing it to the best of my knowledge.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Enforcing permissions and auditing third party code are two different things. The point of app permissions is that when you know an app should never do something, you constrain it from ever doing that. Then if it has a security vulnerability, it's limited in the damage from the resulting compromise. The people configuring the sandbox should be packagers that you trust. The upstream developers might provide some recommendations to the packagers, but if it's obvious that an application shouldn't need a permission, it shouldn't have it. But permissions can't save you from an actually malicious app. Constrain it from accessing the camera and it will still be using your device to host pornography. Constrain it from accessing the filesystem and it will still run up your electric bill mining bitcoin. You either need to trust the developer or you need to get the app through someone you trust to have audited it for you.
- 6y ago
involans 6y ago
Flatpak refuses to respect the hosts value for XDG_CONFIG and HOME, making it impossible for some applications to share your configuration.

Flatpak gives you a sandbox, and has basically skirted around any shortcoming of Snap (faster, open, extensible, adopted by every other distro, doesn't pollute /proc/mounts)

leetrout 6y ago

None of the flat pack apps I’ve used on Pop_OS work correctly / as stable as installing a deb directly. I’ve not been impressed at all.

1_player 6y ago
YMMV. Firefox is the golden standard, at least on Arch Linux. Never have I noticed it was running on a sandbox. I run Discord, Spotify, Thunderbird from Flatpak without any issue either. Visual Studio Code is a regular package, just because its use case it not really suited for a sandbox (access to system binaries, libraries, etc.), but I honestly haven't even tested its Flatpak version.
- Iolaum 6y ago
  VSCodium flatpak works fine for me. The caveat is that I use the operating system's terminal instead of the one from VSCodium (for things like make test, python environments, etc). VSCodium's terminal operates on a sandboxed environment and I haven't bothered to figure out how it relates to the OS environment that I get from the terminal app.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    You set your shell as some wrapper which allow sandbox escape. It works for shell itself, but then you need to apply it to all external utilities extensions use as well and it gets annoying.
    - Iolaum 6y ago
      Interesting, are there any examples on the internet for that process?
- dathinab 6y ago
  The problem with flatpack is that many apps don't really run in a sandbox. Or at least not in something with isolation features which you might expect from a sandbox.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    To be honest, to me the selling point is not the sandbox, is the reproducible environment that's common for all distributions, which is a first in the Linux world, the sandbox is just the icing on the cake. The other day I pushed an update to some flatpackaged app, and guess what, it's available to all Linux users. Packaging has become incredibly easier for third parties with these kind of technologies.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      The problem is the combination of how updates are (often not) done (in time) + no sandbox. I also am a strong believer that the future for sane desktop PC's is that every program (except the most fundamental core services) of a desktop OS should be sandbox by default. With basically no permission to access any local files or communicate with any other program/service. It would need some MAJOR changes, slowly step by step. And I had hoped with snap & flatpack we would be slowly transitioning there. But it doesn't really look that way anymore to be honest. (PS: And it can be done with reasonable UX experience without requiring the user to configure some magic access rules or anything, but it's tricky to get right and it not be fully backward compatible but often changes just need to go into the GUI toolkit (QT, GTK) so it should be possible.
qchris 6y ago
I guess just to provide a counterpoint, I can't remember having had any issues with flatpak on Pop!, including both open-source apps and proprietary ones like Spotify.
- leetrout 6y ago
  How about zoom? Was the worst and completely unusable for anything more than viewing a meeting.
  - qchris 6y ago
    No issues for me--I've run Zoom pretty regularly, including participating in some fairly large meetings, plus screensharing, etc. Occasionally I need to replug my headset in at the beginning of the meeting to get my voice audio working, but I'm not sure if that's actually an OS issue or not. Either way, it's never taken more than a couple seconds.

DoctorNick 6y ago

Flatpak's sandboxing is an absolute joke and entirely voluntary.

1_player 6y ago
> is an absolute joke Please elaborate. > entirely voluntary Fedora Silverblue would like to disagree. And in any case all parties know it's still in flux, but the stable parts are stable in my experience. I would not want something like Snap or otherwise immature forced down my throat.
- genghizkhan 6y ago
  Entirely voluntary in the sense that flatpak enforces sandboxes which the application tells it to enforce. If the app asks for full system access flatpak doesn't deny that. It kind of destroys the purpose of a system built to run third-party code. If I download a malicious app from flathub or some other repo which asks for full system access flatpak doesn't do anything in the name of security. Note: I'm not making a value judgement about flatpak's sandboxing, merely describing it to the best of my knowledge.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Enforcing permissions and auditing third party code are two different things. The point of app permissions is that when you know an app should never do something, you constrain it from ever doing that. Then if it has a security vulnerability, it's limited in the damage from the resulting compromise. The people configuring the sandbox should be packagers that you trust. The upstream developers might provide some recommendations to the packagers, but if it's obvious that an application shouldn't need a permission, it shouldn't have it. But permissions can't save you from an actually malicious app. Constrain it from accessing the camera and it will still be using your device to host pornography. Constrain it from accessing the filesystem and it will still run up your electric bill mining bitcoin. You either need to trust the developer or you need to get the app through someone you trust to have audited it for you.
6y ago

involans 6y ago

Flatpak refuses to respect the hosts value for XDG_CONFIG and HOME, making it impossible for some applications to share your configuration.