Imagine your friend that does not know anything about linux, don’t you think this would make them not install the firefox flatpak and potentially think that linux is unsafe?

I ask this because I believe we must be careful and make small changes to welcome new users in the future, we have to make them as much comfortable as possible when experimenting with a new O.S

I believe this warning could have a less alarming design, saying something like “This app can use elevated permissions. What does this mean?” with the “What does this mean?” text as a clickable URL that shows the user that this may cause security risks. I mean, is kind of a contradiction to have “verified” on the app and a red warning saying “Potentially unsafe”, the user will think “well, should I trust this or not??”

  • AeonFelis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    What do you mean by “improving”? This alarming warning appears because Firefox requires permissions. Let us look at the permissions listed there:

    1. “User device access”. From the docs, I’d say the browser needs it for rendering?
    2. “Download folder read/write access”. This one is obvious - the files you download with your browser go there.
    3. “Can access some specific files”. This one, I’ll admit, is a bit cryptic - what files does it need to access? But this one is on Flatpak for making the permission so general.

    App permissions should not be about “this app cannot be trusted because it asks for scary scary permissions”. They should be about “take a look at the list of permissions the app requests and determine whether or not it make sense for such an app to need such permissions”.