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There quite a few things I don't agree with in regard of this article. First, the suggestion that permission should be prompted when running the app, the app u
by boudin 5y ago
There quite a few things I don't agree with in regard of this article.
First, the suggestion that permission should be prompted when running the app, the app using some sort of API. This would mean that Linux app should become tightly coupled to Flatpak. I have no idea how it would be possible to convince all developers, distributions, vendor to adopt Flatpak.
I think it would be largely ignored so an ineffective way to bring those change to the Linux ecosystem in the end.
Then, I don't have the real answer, but prompting users with questions when they use the app is the worst approach to security. Being tech literate helps understanding what's happening, but people with less understanding answer those out of annoyance because they're trying to do something and, all of a sudden, the operating system gets in the way. The choice is not driven by security concerns but by frustration or urgency.
I can't think of any operating system that found the right solution yet, but I do think that the Flatpak approach is by far the smartest. Just naturally give access to things by following user choices (just give access to the select file once the file is selected, just give access to the screen the user choose to share once the user choose to share it). No more stupid prompt that gets in the way of things.
Speaking of runtimes, it's exactly the same problem. For Flatpak to be adopted, it would require all distribution to invest a lot in it. How would it work for Gentoo and its use flags for example?
How to deal with different versions of dependencies?
What would happen would likely be for distribution to build the equivalent of runtimes, but on their side, allowing to have several versions in parallel. So in the end, it would be a similar situation, but much more messy as each distribution would have to do the job.
Is having those runtimes an actual problem or the solution that Flatpak came up with to the problem of fragmentation in distributions? In my opinion it's the second.