We don’t want more launchers, not even free games from epic, it’s an anti consumer company.
You can also smash your own dick with a hammer but I guess it’s good to have options
eep, poor flathub no-one needs this.
i have had an epic related account in one way or another since things were available, i requested my epic account be deleted the other week because sweeny is unhinged; i feel sorry for folks still working for that dude, couldnt imagine what the dynamic in the company is like.
Woo
Still not using it
Hahahahahahahahaha
Lol Lmao, even
Epic. The same company whose store client / launcher has been caught snooping around hard drives and collecting user data from unrelated software. The same company whose “online services” code is often included in games they distribute, collecting an excessive amount of information from computers that run them. The same company whose CEO has proudly and loudly bashed Linux for years.
No thanks.
Those aren’t free games. They’re surveillance tools.
It’s a flatpak, review permissions and deny as much as needed.
Flatpak’s sandboxing is not sufficient to protect against hostile software.
And even if it were, I would not be inclined to run software from Epic.
Can you detail specifically why it isn’t sufficient? Because I thought you could restrict which directories a Flatpak software could access down to the level of single, specific directories?
You can restrict casual directory access if you’re careful, and well-informed, and diligent about the (often overly generous) permissions chosen by each Flatpak’s maintainers, and those chosen by runtimes and base applications, and about changes over time.
However, files and directories are only a small fraction of what hostile code can exploit. There are also d-bus services, abstract sockets, shared memory areas, display server protocols, and device nodes, for example. In the fingerprinting and tracking department, we have things like hardware peculiarities and installed font lists. If you’re concerned not only about privilege escalation and data exfiltration, but also about collection of your biometrics, then you should consider keystroke timing, mouse movement patterns, voice samples, and the like. These are just examples, not exhaustive lists.
More fundamentally, Flatpak sandboxes are made of Linux namespaces, which have a long history of vulnerabilities and exploits. They’re pretty good at containing buggy software, but software that wants to circumvent them can find a way, and if its developers are sufficiently skilled, will find a way.
So Flatpak’s “security measures” are basically completely useless, is what I am to understand?
The only thing I really use them for is to disable internet for open source applications that I trust aren’t malicious, but might still have telemetry in them.
However don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Flatpak permissions are a step forward, at the very least defining a permission framework. Initially, permissions were defined but every app had all permissions, since app devs were lazy. Now, app devs are being better about defining what permissions are needed. In the future I imagine that Linux and Flatpak will lock down the security, making the permissions more concrete.
It’s a step by step process.
Then I’ll keep installing software I need but don’t necessarily trust using Flatpak 👌
Yes. I’m happy it’s a FlatPak, but I’m still not 100% sure I understand and trust flatpak’s sandbox to put Epic Games Launcher on my PC.
I’m way more likely to trust it as a FlatPak than any other way.
But I think I’m still at no, because it’s Epic.
Yea…no.
No
But is it any less awful?
Nope
I was curious and installed it and a small game. It uses Proton GE. But for the life of me I cannot find where it stores the actual game. Supposedly it should write to ~/Games but it’s not in there. Searching for the executable doesn’t yield anything either. But it still works.
Edit: No idea what witchcraft this is. When the game is running
psshows that Proton is running an executable located in~/Gamesbut nothing is there.Edit 2: The sloppers didn’t give the flatpak permission to write to the Games folder. Interesting that the game still didn’t show up anywhere. Guess flatpak stored the files in memory.
Probably not in memory. Check
~/.var/apps/. This is generally where flatpak apps store their dataWait what? So it ran the game from RAM?
I think. I don’t have any other explanation. It couldn’t launch the game after restarting the app. Must be a Flatpak thing. After I gave it permission to write to the correct folder it stored the game files there.
The game was only 300 MB so it is plausible to store it in RAM. I could test it out with a larger game but I can’t be bothered atm.
See I always liked to play the where did I put that game in lutris. Where I would install the game, use the launch button during install and then 6 weeks later go to play again and it won’t launch because I never mapped the gamestart.exe file, and for some odd reason many of them aren’t in the install location.
I still don’t know why it makes 2 folders, I looked it up awhile back and it said something like “because that’s how it do” and I was like, k.
Does the game exist anywhere in the flatpak folder of the app?
I didn’t find it. I searched my whole drive for the executable and its folder.
What would this offer over Heroic?
Storefront. I don’t believe heroic let’s you buy games (read: get the week’s free game)
It actually does. And they get a commission for GOG games you buy through Heroic.
I stand corrected. Was that a recent addition? It’s been a year since I used heroic and don’t remember it being a thing
I think it’s been there for a while. But it just drowns in all the other icons on the sidebar. And every time I buy a game on GOG I remember a few days later that I should have bought it through Heroic. I don’t think I have ever actually used it to buy anything.
Coincidentally I can’t install Epic games through Heroic at the moment. Total coincidence, I am sure.
Why unverified?
I guess tim sweeney’s new linux gaming expert isn’t a packaging expert
