Linux

48074 readers

734 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Ubuntu 24.10 to Introduce User-Controlled Permissions Prompts (9to5linux.com)

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

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1104312

The upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 operating system promises a new feature called “permissions prompting” for an extra layer of privacy and security.

The new permissions prompting feature in Ubuntu will let users control, manage, and understand the behavior of apps running on their machines. It leverages Ubuntu’s AppArmor implementation and enables fine-grained access control over unmodified binaries without having to change the app’s source code.

From Ubuntu Discourse: Ubuntu Desktop’s 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 5: Introducing Permissions Prompting

This solution consists of two new seeded components in Ubuntu 24.10, prompting-client and desktop-security-center alongside deeper changes to snapd and AppArmor available in the upcoming snapd 2.65. The first is a new prompting client (built in Flutter) that surfaces the prompt requests from the application via snapd. The second is our new Security Center:

In this release the Security Center is the home for managing your prompt rules, over time we will expand its functionality to cover additional security-related settings for your desktop such as encryption management and firewall control.

...

With prompting enabled, an application that has access to the home interface in its AppArmor profile will trigger a request to snapd to ask the user for more granular permissions at the moment of access:

As a result, users now have direct control over the specific directories and file paths an application has access to, as well its duration. The results of prompts are then stored in snapd so they can be queried and managed by the user via the Security Center.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm not exactly sure whether or not this is good, but my gut feeling is that this sounds like it will very quickly become very annoying permission hell.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

macOS can be a bit of a permission hell at times, but I'll take it over having less control over the privacy and security of my system

[–] turbowafflz 4 points 1 month ago

It seems like it would be useful for things like camera permissions and stuff, but it seems a little unnecessarily complicated for file access compared to just using a filechooser portal like flatpak does, then the user can just select specifically what they want when they want to without having to think about permissions.