this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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I am not a fan because they install all that WINE stuff on the system level which is a huge security degradation.
Running WINE through Bottles with the latest protonGE through PupGUI works on all distros.
If they removed that I would consider it.
Also they remove Firefox and Flatpak Firefox can only use seccomp filters, not sandboxes, which less secure. And due to an rpm-ostree issue those removed packages are never reinstallable.
I disagree with this. Sure, it could be made more secure, but Wine, on it's own isn't, any greater security risk compared to any other scripting runtime such as say Python, which is also installed at the system level. Ultimately it's up to the user to get their executables from trustworthy sources - and whether it's a random bash script or an exe, doesn't really make a difference.
As for Firefox, if you're truly concerned about security then you wouldn't be using it in the first place, you'd be using Librewolf, which you can install without any issues.
Haven't you heard? Anything that isn't flatpak is completely insecure and will end in your computer being hacked. It will also break the next time you update your computer.
/s
Dont know where you get your games from 😉🐧☠️
Firefox + Arkenfox.js is arguably better for security than any FF fork, such as Librewolf.
Yes, but Arkenfox is also a bit of a mess. Their tooling is very overcomplex with the updater and all. I went through the entire thing and created this helper project which is also pretty hacky but nearly complete.
There's also Mercury, which is Librewolf + Arkenfox + more.
Interesting project and very curious how they even get it to build. They use Firefox ESR and compile it with lots of optimizations and maaaany redundant configs. I chatted with developers in the FF Matrix about that, they build firefox with 2 arguments or so, build browser, use official branding.
Many things are duplicate and mercury may be unstable because of that.
The biggest problem is that it doesnt use a CI/CD workflow, so that dude does the builds manually and you can hope to get them in time. And them they are distributed as Appimages, which is a different set of problems
I guess random Windows programs are even safer as they may not really work on the host OS.
But still, Bottles is top tier, it works great and is perfectly packaged as a flatpak (no permissions, portal use etc) and pupgui allows to use the latest protonge.
To Librewolf, that is hosted on their own repo, using their own build system. So it could be considered as less trusted than upstream firefox managed by fedora, especially in terms of timely updates. You could also use the Firefox binary, which is very quick (did a benchmark) but you need to do the desktop entry yourself.
Also Librewolf is not security hardened afaik, maybe a few checks are also for security but it should be the same as Firefox. It is privacy optimized. Disadvantage here again is, that if you need a vanilla profile for shitty websites etc, that doesnt exist.
I opted for Lutris because Bottles has issues that make it unrecommendable and unsupportable by us.
Because it's only shipped as a flatpak (They bullied the Fedora packager until they quit) it doesn't support the frame limiter built into gamescope on the deck images (Requires a patch in Mesa).
As a contributor to the Northstar mod for Titanfall 2, we originally wanted to recommend it as the default Linux install path due to it's friendly UI, but found because it avoids using winetricks it's missing required dependencies. Despite us trying to work with them and contributing code, to this day it still doesn't work, and recent discussions about this problem were extremely abrasive from their side, much like the above linked issue.
Ultimately Lutris provides a more consistent experience for gamers that are already used to Steam - with the same tools working for both. That's my reasoning anyway.
As far as wine, we only install wine-core and not the entire stack, that's purely for Lutris dependency reasons and isn't intended to be used by the end user. Wine-ZGUI for instance is a Flatpak, and Lutris will install its own copy of wine - most likely Wine-GE or a derivative.
If you need RPM Firefox, my recommendation is that you install it with Distrobox. This also solves the security issue that we remove upstream Firefox over - update frequency.
You don't want Firefox to only update when your operating system image does. As far as I'm concerned the bug preventing Firefox from being re-added is a feature.
No that is definetly a bug, as it spits out strange error messages.
I dont think Firefox running through Podman in rootless mode can create user namespaces? But not sure, will check that.
I have auto updates enabled and I reboot daily. This is not an issue especially on ublue where they are on by default.
We build twice a week, that's not frequent enough for a web browser.
Ultimately it's saving you from yourself, if this bug gets fixed and there's a way I can unfix it, I will do so.
Oh okay, didnt know Bazzite builds slower than the other images.
Instead of blocking users, education is the way better option. Flatpak Firefox does not have user namespace sandbox support, which is a pretty big deal.
No thats the point. They remove it using
rpm-ostree override removeduring the Github build process, and is not detected as removed on the device (rpm-ostree resetwill not bring it back) but can also not be installed due toalready fulfilled. Its a reported bug but that could need more attention.Couldn't find the bug, is it on Bazzite, u blue or some other upstream? Do you have the link?
Here
Should you post those concerns into their github? Maybe they don't know?
I think they know both, and the rpm-ostree issue is reported.