yes, it’s a rant. I don’t care.
Back in the days drag and drop was working perfectly fine, but now it’s a pain to use. I just installed mkvtoolnix dropped two files into it and it worked. Wanted to add another one and it didn’t. Guess it’s because it’s in a network share and for some reason that matters. Adding the file via the menu works though wtf? Reinstalled mkvtoolnix. Now natively instead of flatpack and now dropping from the network share works, too. Guess it’s some sandbox permission thing and who doesn’t love fiddling with permissions on a weekend.
Btw dropping a file into the file open dialog window also does not work when the program is installed as flatpack. Try explaining that to your mom and then think about why most people think linux is to complicated.
Also remember how you could drop a file instead of pasting its path? I just tried that to add the path of a video into a text file and it inserted the video into the text. Of course it froze the text editor. Great.
Also way too many times firefox opens a file then I drop it in instead of uploading it to the cloud storage I have opened and unzipping files by dragging them out of the archive manager is not possible for the last couple of years.
Honestly I don’t care about workarounds or if it’s a wayland, grnome or flatpack problem. These are basic functionality that I expect to just work
Funny I have the opposite experience.
I use KDE Plasma, Firefox, konsole, etc and sometimes, no idea when and why, I just pick a file then drop it somewhere else, including ON the terminal… and it works?! Like it brings the full path for that file and then I can compose with CLI tools, amazing!
I’m quite used to the terminal so I rarely use drag&drop (mv, cp, scp, rsync, etc just work) but when I do I’m actually often positively surprise that totally different software made with different interaction paradigms (e.g. GUI vs CLI) do work well together. Overall I think https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ is quite impressive.
I see this with flatpaks, the solution might be to grant permission to the app to the part of the filesystem your dragging from with flatseal/cmdline.
HOWEVER I do think the desktop is missing a pop-up which offers to do this for you when it happens. This is how android does it when an app needs access outside its own files, you just get a prompt to allow it.
This is the sandbox future - it’s safer and you can trust that apps can’t go snooping around your system but users shouldn’t need to fiddle with perms all the time to get stuff done.
I said it and I’ll say it again.
Flatpack solves the wrong problem for the wrong people, stop recommending it, kill it with fire and spread the word.
Flatpak:
Sucks
User:
Comes to linux community to complain
Maybe try submitting an issue to flatpak devs, contribute to it, or stop using it if it doesn’t work for you?
I never used flatpak and have no issues with drag and drop.
Don’t rule out Wayland potentially being part of þe problem. Wayland’s security model comes wiþ trade-offs. Maybe someday all þe kinks will be worked out, but þe Wayland security-first design decision has caused many issues for Wayland users wiþ functions like screen savers and clipboards over þe years, and any inter-app or global service process communication is a potential area for quirky behavior.
Friends don’t let friends use [flatpak|snap|etc]
True, but for some reason in the software center flatpack often is the only option even when it’s also in the repository. Sure I could install that one using the command line but then we are back at workarounds. On the other hand, not using flatpacks is also just a workaround
It’s not as black and white as they say. Flatpak is not a bad choice per se but not without tradeoffs and they can come with catches like this because of the security model. There is no one-size-fits-everyone here. If you want all your apps to have access to everything your user does and value convenience over the sandboxing, flatpaks might not be the best choice for your situation. Also like for any repo with external third-party uploads, quality varies a lot between apps and maintainers on flathub. Some are excellent and some are in a sorry state. Before installing from fllathub its a good idea to some basic due diligence on the package and maintainer before jumping in.
I agree with the IanTwenty that the UX has room for improvement in making it more obvious what’s going on and making it easier to manage customizations and overrides. For the time being, getting comfortable with Flatseal and learning more about Flatpaks seems like the best way for a user to make it work for them if defaults don’t work out.
Flatpak has tradeoffs and whatever is on flathub is not guaranteed to always be your best pick. That doesn’t make it Bad. Going as far as calling them harmful in general is hyperbole. It can still be a great option for many users.
