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The article's main opposition is to containerization and not portals - the author would like having an API for portals (a stable libportal?), but likes that app
by yyyk 5y ago
The article's main opposition is to containerization and not portals - the author would like having an API for portals (a stable libportal?), but likes that approach overall.
The problem is that we still need a solution to stop hacked apps from calling fopen() on unrelated files. The article ignores how bad the native runtime security solutions are - SELinux is nigh unusable, no distro has many apparmor profiles, etc.
Flatpak and snap use containerization because Linux's security modules aren't common across distros and aren't very usable.
- Iolaum 5y agoIt took android years and billions of dollars to get to the state it is at. Flatpaks and portals are moving towards that direction (according to my non expert opinion). All this friction and complaints, is just normal for such a big transition in how desktop apps should be written. I remember android devs going up in arms when there were significant API changes in past android versions. The situation for linux looks similar to me (aside from the fact the ecosystem doesn't have money to throw at the problem).
- zdragnar 5y agoThe annoying thing with android is that- even in the J2ME days, blackberry had a more sophisticated, fine grained per-app permission system that was easy to find and adjust at any time. Android and iOS have been playing catchup ever since... Linux I at least will cut some slack, given its age and origins, though it would really have been nice had they addressed security by now. The situation can only get worse, but sooner or later something will happen that will encourage breaking backwards compatibility, I hope. All that said, I praise the sun every day that I'm not writing BB apps or j2me anymore, so there's that at least.