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Thunderbird 115 - odd lack of packaged options beginning to raise eyebrows? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Thunderbird 115 has been out over a week now and the lack of packaged versions, especially Flatpak, is beginning to raise eyebrows. Gotta admit, I've been curious at the lack of a Flatpak version since the day they announced it's "availability".

An article:

https://www.webpronews.com/thunderbird-leaves-linux-users-waiting-for-much-hyped-version-115/

Linux Cast episode:

https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=G-OvQw2JRWI

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Eh, I don’t at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice

I thought the same until I discovered that Flatpak gives me the power to restrict apps in their permissions, similar to firejail, but less cumbersome. Since then I actually prefer Flatpak over traditional packages (I even switched to Fedora Silverblue), as I have a global override that, for example, revokes permission to access the root of my home directory or to use the X11 display server.

This allows me to keep a clean home directory, as applications are prevented from writing into my home directory (configuration files then automatically get stored in the Flatpak directory ~/.var instead) or, even worse, into executable files, such as ~/.bashrc. I can also be confident that applications use Wayland, if they support it, and not a less secure display server (X11). Applications that don't support Wayland yet can either be made to run under Wayland (Chromium / Electron) or I have to grant those applications permission to actually use an X11 server (Bottles / WINE, Steam).

On the other hand you can also opt into punching as many holes as possible into the sandbox, for example by granting applications the permission to access a local shell. That might be necessary for development tools, such as VSCodium. The thing I like about Flatpak is that it offers this kind of flexibility and you can decide on a per-application basis which system resources the application can or can not access.

Sure, the permission model isn't perfect (e. g. D-Bus access), but for my use-case it is a huge improvement and it gives me more flexibility with selecting my distribution, as I can get the very same up-to-date applications anywhere via Flatpak.