what does this mean for Flatpak?

humuhumu@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 102 points –

should i be worried installing these two? what does it mean though?

(these are captured from Pop! OS software manager)

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Not for the average/casual user, which is why this post exists.

The average person will look at that and see the '!' in a triangle and became scared of what it can do to their system, even though it has no more permissions than a system package. Alternatively, they will become desensitized and learn to ignore it, resulting in installing flatpacks from untrusted and unverified sources.

Overall, I just think the idea around having to sandbox all flatpaks is not a good idea. To give a concrete example, Librewolf is marked as "potentially unsafe" because it has access to the download folder, but if I want to use it to open a file that isn't in "downloads" I have to use flatseal to give it extra permissions - it's the worst of both worlds! Trying so hard to comply with flatpak guidelines that it gets in the way of doing things, and still not being considered safe enough.

I get what you mean. When updating Linux mint, the "This needs to get some additional packages too" window, relatively benign, has a big scary ⚠️/ /!\ on it.

Felt the need to explain to the person I was installing it for. "That's totally normal, just look it over first and continue."

...like, it's gonna do that almost every time it updates, it doesn't need to look scary. :|

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