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That's changing what's accessible via paths, not sandboxing filesystem access. The program isn't restricted from accessing files passed to it from outside the sandbox in any way. If the user opens a file with an application via system UI, something is being passed to the app, etc

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I'm aware of how mount namespaces work. Changing what can be accessed via paths is a much different thing than restricting which files can actually be accessed. Mount namespaces are doing the former rather than the latter. Same applies to other non-user namespaces.

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I'm assuming if you pass a file descriptor into the sandbox from outside it, you're okay with it being accessed. If you don't want that, don't do it.

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Look at this small fraction of what they're building: flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-po This doesn't include a whole lot of the baseline IPC. It's going to get 100x larger and far more complicated as they fill out the capabilities to actually be able to sandbox more complex real apps.

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This is all stuff that simply should not exist.

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So how does an application do something like using OpenGL, opening a file with user consent, taking a picture with user consent, obtaining access to take multiple pictures within the current session (or persistently, for a camera app), and so on and so on?

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I have never once wanted a desktop app to "take a picture". If I want to take a picture with my webcam I'll do it with a native utility I trust then open the file. This is a general principle: vetted native apps for privileged things, 3p junk in a HARD sandbox.

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But of course this is a replay of the FDO folks trying to recreate all the mistakes of Windows on the Linux Desktop, only this time it's recreating all the mistakes of Android... 🤦🤦🤦

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They're trying to copy the way it works on Android although often based on how things worked in Android 4.4.x to 6.x rather than how they work now. That's just what they're trying to do and isn't really how things work. The way it usually works is apps opt-out of the sandboxing.

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"Opt out of the sandboxing" is accepting the narrative that "self-contained applications" and "sandboxing" are the same problem domain. If you reject that, it's not a problem except in a ux sense (you need to manually bind-mount the files you want to access into the ns).

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AppImage sticks to just providing self-contained applications and has existed for a long time. Most of the point and the work on Flatpak seems to be bringing application sandboxing. Packaging up applications is part of it but more of an afterthought and secondary thing for them.

3:49 AM · Oct 19, 2021Twitter Web App

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Another *nasty* problem facing Flatpak is that it has to support systems with SELinux not in use. It can’t rely on SELinux because not every distro supports SELinux. And Flatpak apps are usually native apps, unlike Android where everything uses abstracted APIs.

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SELinux is an implementation detail on Android from app perspective and could be something else. There's a lot of value in declarative, static security policies. Linux kernel has decided LSMs and eBPF obsolete doing things other ways so that's another major reason for it.

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