This may refer to xdg-desktop-portal[1], which is usable without Flatpak, but Flatpak forces you to go through it to access anything outside the app’s private s

This may refer to xdg-desktop-portal[1], which is usable without Flatpak, but Flatpak forces you to go through it to access anything outside the app’s private sandbox. In particular, access to user files is mediated through a powerbox (trusted file dialog) [2] provided by the desktop environment. In a sense, Flatpak apps are normal Linux apps to about the same extent that WinRT/UWP apps are normal Windows apps—close, but more limited, and you’re going to need significant porting in either direction. (This has also made an otherwise nice music player[3] unusable to me other than by dragging and dropping individual files from the file manager, as all of my music lives in git-annex, and accesses through git-annex symlinks are indistinguishable from sandbox escape attempts. On one hand, understandable; on the other, again, the software is effectively useless because of this.) [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal [2] https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox [3] https://apps.gnome.org/Amberol https://apps.gnome.org/Amberol