GNOME's Mutter Adds Support For Launching "Trusted Clients" On Wayland

[ssokolow]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if we see some crap from Canonical like something wrapped in Snap trusted by default.

Doubtful. That would ruin the whole point of this model of trust because "snap = trusted" would take you right back to the X11 days of "arbitrary applications doing arbitrary things they're not supposed to".

I would metaphorically throw my computer out of the window if I'm recording my desktop for some tutorial to show others how to to something and all of a sudden a trusted app opens up and breaks that.

Again, wrong model. This is about "Unless the compositor launches it in a trusted context, it can't do these things". Think of it as more analogous to the "Run as Administrator" context menu entry on Windows, but without the API for an application to request privilege escalation of its own volition.

No program on my computer does the "My way or the highway with me" !

The whole point of this is to force your will on applications more thoroughly, by ensuring that all kinds of applications are implementable under a "no permissions not explicitly granted by the user" model.

Why are there so many things that still can't be implemented on Wayland, like xdotool? Because Wayland compositor developers have taken the stance that, until they've written a new API that keeps the user in control, users who need those programs can stay on X11.

[starshipeleven]

I didn't understand a thing in the article but all this talking about child windows makes me wonder if there's a case for updating the COC regarding the use of the "child" wording

That said, I wouldn't mind if someone changed the OOM killer of Linux kernel to stop saying things like "sacrifice child"

Out of memory: Kill process 7429 (java) score 259 or sacrifice child

[kpedersen]

I think the time for a much better and completely free GUI libs is passed. We all are now slave to the gtk+/- libs.

Not at all. You choose to use Wayland.

Remember, Wayland is just a protocol (so useless on its own). So you in effect have tied yourself down to Gnome3/Wayland. So it is hardly a surprise you are now a "slave to Gtk+". It is like saying that you want to use "Modern" Win32. You will be a slave to Metro.

In short... Don't choose incorrectly and you will be fine

[Alexmitter]

It is surprising how little people here seem to actually read the article.
Wayland is very specific on how windows can controls their size, shape and position(also top or bottom position layers), they can't. They have to talk with the compositor and he will control that for the application. This MR is just the mechanism on how this should be handled in Gnome. A Trusted task is a task that has the ability to request to be on bottom and may act as desktop icons or be on top and may work like a dock.

[tildearrow]

Trusted by whom?

Is this for applications to be trusted by me that they are secure and don't betray me and protect me and my system?
Or this for the system to be trusted by the application developer to keep me away?

Is this to prevent me from taking screenshots or doing video capture?

Trusted by them to keep you away.

No, it is not to prevent screenshots or svreen recording. Ugh uid why do you

[Mani]

I still don’t get in which regard this is a better approach than wlroots‘ layer-shell protocol

[ssokolow]

Why have I to be forced to use a compositor under wayland if I don't want to? Wayland is more that a protocol, it reduces our choises.

For the same reason you're "forced" to use an X server under X11 or "forced" to have an engine in your car. You need something which sits between the video drivers and the applications to share one resource between multiple applications and your car needs something to convert fuel or battery power into motion.

It was called an X "server" because, originally, X was always network transparent. Now that network remoting is optional in Wayland implementations, they're named after the one thing they all have in common, they have to generate a desktop pixmap from one or more window pixmaps... the technical term for that process is "compositing" because you're making a "composite image".

[microcode]

This is a non desirable situation, because an extension runs in the same main loop as the whole desktop itself

This is an entirely unrelated concern, it seems to me.

[Volta]

Wayland is just a protocol that doesn't work. So we are slave to nothing. And compositors are also nothing. Why have I to be forced to use a compositor under wayland if I don't want to? Wayland is more that a protocol, it reduces our choises.

It works much better, so go whining somewhere else. Why are you 'forcing' us to read such crap?

[rastersoft]

Alexmitter True. Now let’s see what the extensions devs can make of this..

Well, I can say you that as soon as Gnome Shell 3.38 is out, a new version of DING will be out using this patch. And probably a new version of Terminus the terminal (but the GTK one, not the electron one), for the "guake drop-down" mode.