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.
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
There has been a portal to prevent this issue for years now. The fix isn’t to patch around issues in Flatseal, it’s for developers or Flatpak packagers to fix their security policies and code.
As an added benefit, KDE users get thumbnails in their file picker because they’re no longer stuck with the old GTK one but instead can use their native file picker portal. A win for everyone!
They mean that the app has that permission. It is good that they let the user know the apps capabilities
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.
There has been a portal to prevent this issue for years now. The fix isn’t to patch around issues in Flatseal, it’s for developers or Flatpak packagers to fix their security policies and code.
As an added benefit, KDE users get thumbnails in their file picker because they’re no longer stuck with the old GTK one but instead can use their native file picker portal. A win for everyone!
You shouldn’t use Android then. It is way worse