They are also adding per-application isolation of settings:
https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/07/12/settings-in-a-san...
Flatpak is one piece of a broader design to secure Linux workstations. It is also intended to work in conjunction with Wayland and the in-development Pipewire. These lock down video and audio respectively, so that shared resources can't be misused by applications.
we wouldn't feel the need for sandboxing now would we.
Applications have vulnerabilities. Sandboxes help as an additional layer of security for trusted applications.
Of course, if applications are trusted and under control, a simpler mechanism like OpenBSD's pledge/unveil may be enough.
Re:What is Silverblue?
by curioussavage on Sunday July 14, 2019 @01:00AM
(#20431721)
I’ve been running many applications as flatpaks for over a year without issue. Troubleshooting is not too bad either imo.
Flatpak should be ok, I think when it's run inside inaccessible containers it won't be. Are the files sandboxed off from the user running in flatpak?
> Flatpak mostly deployed as a convenient library bundling technology early on, with the sandboxing or containerization being phased in over time for most applications.
I don't really know if sandboxing is worth it for me. Running everything inside docker cotnaienrs sounds like an absolute nightmare when it comes to troubleshooting. You might think logs and things would be well defined and put in the right place for the OS to pick up, but if things were so well behaved we wouldn't feel the need for sandboxing now would we.