• Pantherina@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      Verification doesnt help at all if the source is not trusted. All this says is “upstream developers maintain this package”. Unofficial packages can be safe too, like VLC.

      • dsemy@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        It does help prevent actual malware from being downloaded, though, since upstream developers probably won’t publish malware on Flathub.

        But this is still a half-measure. I don’t understand why Red Hat and Canonical don’t treat this issue seriously; people on Linux are used to assuming software installed from the repos are safe, and yet Snap and Flatpak are being pushed more and more despite their main repositories being potentially unsafe.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          Flathub is doing more and more, but stuff like hiding --subset=verified is very bad.

          They simply need to gain critical mass until they can force changes like portals etc.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          If you create malware and publish it on flathub, you are the upstream dev. But for sure it helps against duplicate scams.

          • dsemy@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            I can’t find it now, but I read that the verification process also includes human review (for the initial verification, not every update), so it should actually prevent “verified” malware (though it does nothing against unverified malware).

            Edit: Here’s an article with this and more info: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966187/3ef48792e5e8c71d/

            • Pantherina@feddit.de
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              7 months ago

              Nice!

              Add flathub with --subset=verified and get apps you really need from their .flatpakref files

        • Billegh@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Because both Red Hat and Canonical are of the “pay us to care” mindset. If you aren’t paying for support, you’re a freeloader and need to do your own research.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I mean, that’s pretty much all open source software and isn’t specific at all to RH/Canonical.

            What’s provided to you is provided without warranty and you’re not automatically entitled to support, etc.

            • Billegh@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              That’s not entirely true with Red Hat. There’s a lot of work that they’ve done in the open source community that they haven’t shared back. And canonical seems to think this is a good idea.

              • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                I’m not really sure what you mean by that. What do you mean they’ve done a lot of work for the open source community that they haven’t shared back?

                And what does it have to do with providing software support free of charge?

        • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
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          7 months ago

          Fedora has their own flatpak repo built from their own rpms and their own runtime. Flathub has more flatpaks though.

  • million@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This is a good step but I still feel like it’s pretty obscure where a package is actually coming from. “by Google” or for the Steam package “by Valve” is really confusing and makes it sounds like it’s coming directly from the company. Unverified tells the user to pay attention but there is no hover over to say what it actually means.

    • conorab@lemmy.conorab.com
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      7 months ago

      Wait… so the author displayed in “by <author>” is the supposed author of the software, not the one that put it on the store? That’s insane! Also sounds like you’d be open to massive liability since the reputation of the software author will be damaged if somebody publishes malware under their name.

      It should be:

      • Developed by: <author of software>
      • Uploaded by: <entity who uploaded to store>
    • Pantherina@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      Also maaany packages direct to issuetrackers of projects not supporting that flatpak.

      If someone knows where that flathub metadata is stored I would love to know, as the manifest is not it. I would like to fix those to link to their own bugtrackers

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
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    7 months ago

    Traditional GNU/Linux distributions (as well as F-Droid) are not “app stores” even though they are superficially similar. Traditional distributions are maintained and curated by the community, and serve the interests of users first and software developers second, whereas an “app store” has minimal curation and serves the needs of software developers first and users second.

    I point this out because there’s an annoying meme that traditional distributions are obsoleted by the “app store” model. I don’t think that’s the case. “Verification” is essential for an app store but pointless for a distribution.

            • AProfessional@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              There is no such thing as a “package”. It is a repository of binary data with references to data in it (ala git). The whole repo and all data is gpg signed.

                • AProfessional@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago
                  > ostree show flathub:runtime/org.kde.Platform/x86_64/6.6
                  commit a7443e846cf67d007fcecda5c9dc27844001cfb8929064395cfc25c6d71d9474
                  Parent:  23107550082daf3b2892a4a0db2543838578ca882340a756b988bc5c1614540c
                  ContentChecksum:  607ba9475d32a24c51509bc7919f5a93d401f8f7198c30ad93ad74051d966c41
                  Date:  2024-01-30 13:55:08 +0000
                  
                      build of org.kde.Sdk, Tue Jan 30 11:23:00 UTC 2024 (5998d2f3ef21414d14f066ab91fa44e5aef65b90)
                  
                      Name: org.kde.Platform
                      Arch: x86_64
                      Branch: 6.6
                      Built with: Flatpak 1.14.4
                  
                  Found 1 signature:
                  
                    Signature made Tue 30 Jan 2024 12:21:18 PM CST using RSA key ID 562702E9E3ED7EE8
                    Good signature from "Flathub Repo Signing Key <flathub@flathub.org>"
                    Primary key ID 4184DD4D907A7CAE
                    Key expires Mon 14 Jun 2027 08:19:40 AM CDT
                    Primary key expires Mon 14 Jun 2027 08:18:56 AM CDT
                  
      • simple@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        The only good GUI for Flatpaks…

        Ain’t that the truth. I don’t know why KDE Discover is so sluggish when it comes to Flatpak, it takes me like 10+ seconds to load the landing page and see the popular apps.