> If you want to share stuff between applications like data, […]. You will need to give it access at least to your file-system. The more of this you do, you will either have to give more access or having to faff moving stuff around.
Why are those the only answers?
If we had free rein to redesign our computers from the ground up, there’s lots of other ways that problem could be solved.
One obvious example is to make copy+paste be an OS level shortcut so apps can’t access the clipboard without the user invoking that chord. Then just copy paste stuff between applications.
Another idea: right now when I invoke a shell script, I say “foo blah.txt”. The argument is passed as a string and I have to trust that the program will open the file I asked - and not look instead at my ssh private keys. Instead of that, my shell program could have access to the filesystem and open the file on behalf of the script. Then the script can be invoked and passed the file descriptor as input. That way, the script doesn’t need access to the rest of my filesystem.
If we’re a little bit creative, there’s probably all sorts of ways to solve these problems. The biggest problem in my mind is that Unix has ossified. It seems that nobody can be bothered making desktop Linux more secure. A pity.
Why are those the only answers?
If we had free rein to redesign our computers from the ground up, there’s lots of other ways that problem could be solved.
One obvious example is to make copy+paste be an OS level shortcut so apps can’t access the clipboard without the user invoking that chord. Then just copy paste stuff between applications.
Another idea: right now when I invoke a shell script, I say “foo blah.txt”. The argument is passed as a string and I have to trust that the program will open the file I asked - and not look instead at my ssh private keys. Instead of that, my shell program could have access to the filesystem and open the file on behalf of the script. Then the script can be invoked and passed the file descriptor as input. That way, the script doesn’t need access to the rest of my filesystem.
If we’re a little bit creative, there’s probably all sorts of ways to solve these problems. The biggest problem in my mind is that Unix has ossified. It seems that nobody can be bothered making desktop Linux more secure. A pity.
Maybe it’s time to give qubes a try.