this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2022
20 points (76.3% liked)

Technology

34442 readers
377 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] federico3@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

there could be a Flatpak API for requesting the user for a file to open with their explicit consent

That would not be Flatkpak then. It would be an OS component, much like Android has a file opener implemented as an independent process IIRC.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Using that to define whether something is an "OS Component" would be a very loose definition that wouldn't make much of a difference then.

Is RetroArch an "OS Component" just because it exposes a filesystem API to its libretro cores? Are browsers that use independent processes for encapsulation "OS components"?

Even if we accepted that term, so what? as I said, I think the real reason they won't do it is because they keep wanting to be transparent to the app devs (ie. they don't want them to have to support Flatpak-specific APIs). Which is why I think there needs to be a change of philosophy for this to be possible.

[–] federico3@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You are missing the point. A process-independent file opener that is used by all applications to access files provides user-friendly security. This would be a core component of an OS so the description is correct.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You are missing the point. A process-independent file opener that is used by all applications to access files provides user-friendly security.

But that was essentially what I said.. I'm the one who proposed something like that 2 comments ago.

This would be a core component of an OS so the description is correct.

Again, I disagree that "this would be a core component of an OS". You did not address any of my points, so I don't see how it follows that "the description is correct". The term "core OS component" is subjective to begin with.

But even if you wanted to label it that way, it wouldn't make any difference. That's just a label you are putting on it, it would not make Flatpak any less of an app distribution / management system with focus on cross-distro compatibility and containerization. Flatpak would still be Flatpak. Whether or not you want to consider it a core part of the OS is not important.

And Flatpak already uses independent processes to manage the whole container & runtime that the app uses for access to the system resources, which already closely matches what you defined as "a core component of an OS".