Comment by atq2119
2 hours ago
Fully agree with the first half of your comment. The second half goes off the rails, though.
I rarely see people complain about sandboxing.
What people complain about is when devices are locked down in a way where you are only allowed to install software that is approved by a central gatekeeper, even though sandboxing is in place that should make it far safer to run arbitrary safer than on traditional desktop systems.
Agreed. What's frustrating is that we have models for how sandboxing can work and instead of investing efforts into nailing that experience, the OS providers are prone to turning it into a monetization/lock in layer instead. My VLC and VS Code should have an OS native way of being limited to particular functionality. But when the OS providers implement the sandbox, they center it around an App Store and restrictions on only apps that have been notarized where said notorization costs money or a requires a subscription. And then they remove the ability to do things which their own native apps can do and set tighter controlling rules on what APIs apps can ever have access to.
When all I wanted was for VLC or similar to run in a sandbox by default where a plug-in I install can't do anything to my system or access the internet by default because the software itself is restricted to just the files I'm using and that's it.
That exists on linux under flatpak, but it requires Wayland and Pipewire. Also many packages just request full system permissions rather than update to work in a sandbox.
It's in the works and one day we will have it but progress is slow.