by ludocode on 11/18/21, 3:27 PM with 2 comments
by theamk on 11/18/21, 11:12 PM
Lack of common runtimes? that's pretty bad. Permissions not implemented yet? notgood.
But the whole argument of having explicit permission requests instead of having portals integrated with file picker is not very good. What exactly do you want gimp to do - request a permission to access whole home dir? then we are back to unsecure world. And if your permission request is for the specific path, you need a secure file picker. And that's the portal scheme that Flatpack is proposing.
But the biggest WTF is the desire for installshield-like programs: "You download and run the installer, hit Next->Next->Next and your game is installed." This is the most horrible idea anyone may have - there is no accounting, no way to preview, likely tons of random post-install scripts, and junk all over the system. I know that's what will happen because that is how current .run installers work, and there is no reason this will change.
Remember how windows had to be reinstalled every once in a while because it gets "gunked up"? This is because of the of the executable installers - while ostensibly there were guidlelines on how to make clean uninstall happen, it didn't happen in practice. Linux mostly escapes it because for .deb (and flatpak and snap) the installed files are recorded in the database, and it's not program's responsibility to remove them.