Flatpak'ed Epiphany Browser Becomes More Useful

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Flatpak'ed Epiphany Browser Becomes More Useful

Epiphany 3.27.3 was released this morning as the newest release of GNOME's web browser in the road to the GNOME 3.28 stable desktop debut next March...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Epiphany-3.27.3

[uid313]

Pretty cool with a browser using Flatpak.
Maybe would be cool with the Tor Browser as a Flatpak too?

I think Chromium and Firefox have some kind of sandboxing too, but I don't know how it compares to Flatpak.

[Brisse]

Gave it a try on Ubuntu 17.10. Took quite a while to install for some reason, and the first startup was slow as well, but it seems to be working fine now, except it uses Adwaita instead of my system GTK theme Ambiance.

Better than the Chromium snap which doesn't work at all for me. It doesn't even launch

[Vistaus]

except it uses Adwaita instead of my system GTK theme Ambiance.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/flatpak-theme-issue-fix

[Brisse]

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/f...heme-issue-fix

That did the trick, although that Ambiance theme doesn't match up perfectly with the one in Ubuntu 17.10. The close/minimize/maximize buttons were different to name one thing.

Also noticed Flatpak apps don't show up in GNOME's application launcher for me. I have to launch them from Software Center or Terminal.

[ssokolow]

Pretty cool with a browser using Flatpak.
Maybe would be cool with the Tor Browser as a Flatpak too?

I think Chromium and Firefox have some kind of sandboxing too, but I don't know how it compares to Flatpak.

Firefox and Chrome sandbox the content processes (the ones which run web content) but leave the chrome process (the one responsible for the browser UI and so on) unconstrained as far as I know.

Flatpak constrains everything, meaning that it can't be as fine-grained but can provide a single point to audit for security holes across many different applications.

Basically, Flatpak is like Android or iOS restrictions. If applications want to access outside the little filesystem/network/IPC sandbox they've been put into (again, controlled by a manifest like in Android), they can call D-Bus APIs to ask the desktop to inhibit suspend or open a file chooser, URI picker, print dialog, e-mail compose dialog, screenshot dialog, document picker, desktop notification popup, or microphone/speakers/camera permission prompt on their behalf.

This functionality has been retrofitted as a backend for recent versions of Qt and GTK+ and granting permission is accomplished by mounting the requested resource into the application's sandboxed view of the filesystem/network/etc. and returning a traditional path/ip+port/url/etc. so that many applications just support being run under the influence of a Flatpak manifest automatically with little to no patching required. (And, of course, it's always possible to run things in Flatpak without sandboxing so you just get the benefits of finally having every application on your desktop agreeing on the same Open/Save dialogs.)

[TingPing]

That did the trick, although that Ambiance theme doesn't match up perfectly with the one in Ubuntu 17.10. The close/minimize/maximize buttons were different to name one thing.

Also noticed Flatpak apps don't show up in GNOME's application launcher for me. I have to launch them from Software Center or Terminal.

It is literally the same theme as 17.10 has in its repo: https://github.com/flathub/org.gtk.G...iance.json#L22

For the very first Flatpak you have to restart your session, past then new apps show up in the launcher as expected.