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It sucks that they don't allow a survey without logging in first. Had to create an account extra for taking part...
Its not a Signal survey, this is by a random user.
You can register anonymously.
The way you posted this made it seem it was an official signal survey
It is used as such, and Signal wont start one so well...
How do you know it’s used as an official one would be?
It isnt, thats why I spreaded this link into multiple communities
Luckily for me, I'm on an Ubuntu derivative. So apt upgrade just does it. Sorry, OP, works for me in my preferred way, I don't need any flatpacks. Let's hope once they do one they keep building .debs nonetheless.
Flatpaks work just as well. It is an electron app, that causes all the bloat. Signal is modern and everything apart drag&drop and maybe a tray icon (havent tried that) works.
I don’t care about the packaging format so much as about either having a Qt or GTK version or even just being able to open it in my browser.
Well, the .deb only works on Ubuntu and derivates so that doesnt really matter
What do you mean?
I didnt get your scentence. Yes I agree having a native Qt/Slint version would be cool. But the code still needs to be packaged for distros and Electron is horrible but solves like everything for them.
How about putting it on F-droid? That won't happen as they ship to much proprietary software.
Its so strange that you need to use Twinhelix' random project or Molly, as Signal doesnt care
Personally I install it with pacman and generally avoid Flatpaks due to annoying problems I've had with it limiting filesystem access in the past. My biggest problem is that it seems to "forget" that I'm logged in if I don't use it regularly, meaning I have to regularly re-auth it on my desktop since I use it infrequently there.
Flatpaks are generally made way to loosely. Always "not breaking" > "being secure".
So this should not really be the case, drag&drop doesnt work yet, maybe copy-pasting files doesnt if the app cannot access that directory statically (you need to add an attachment from within the app, your file picker will open which is a "portal" which links that file into the apps container and thus allows the app to see it.)
Everything else works normally, screensharing too
Last time I installed slack through flatpack I couldn't send any files. Not through drag-and-drop, neither through the filepicker. The latter was just empty.
Downloading files from slack also had awfully weird side-effects.
Slack doesn't have an apt repo, so I download debs and updat manually. Maybe once half-a-year.
If that's the experience I'd get on my signal through flatpack, I'd also rather be downloading manually. And I'd even compile from source rather than deal with that flatpack stuff.
Slack is proprietary garbage with bad Linux adoption. Apps need to integrate Portals themselves, if they are used to having access to anything they will use a regular file picker which only works if they already have access to your stuff.
Signal integrated all the stuff, Pipewire, Portals.
Please try... before comparing random proprietary apps (that also probably still dont work on Wayland, which also means they are insecure by design) to general Flathub.
Just learned yesterday there are over 800 verified apps on Flathub! Made by official developers! On Distro repos this is nearly 0
That's an understandable goal, but as a user, breaking the user experience when I go to send a file to someone only to find that I can't even see it in some apps is a deal breaker. If the app can't be trusted to do that, I won't use it.
What do you mean by this?
This makes no sense.
You cannot trust any app to do anything. Look at their code, or ask people that know people that heard of people that looked at their code (how it is currently done in FOSS, lol).
Modern apps integrate portals & pipewire permissions. Bad apps dont, and they suck. Please annoy Slack with that, they have to adopt the Flatpak and modernize the code. Its like a few dozen lines to replace a custom own filepicker with the xdg-desktop-portal file picker of the OS.
I wasn't talking about Slack. Actually, my worst Flatpak experience was with PyCharm. The fs limitations mean it couldn't see files like ${HOME}/.config/git/ignore or load up my shell environment inside the IDE. It's basically a neutered version of the app because someone decided to draw the security/usability line too far in the one direction.
It's fine if you think that's a good idea, but as a user, the choice of packaging means it's not useful to me, so I won't use it.
Oh, the user above was mentioning slack, sorry.
Pycham is also proprietary. This is an unofficial repackage of the app done by volunteers.
It probably works fine just not for your workload. But I can imagine why someone would want to sandbox Pycharm...
And to your issues, have you even tried to poke holes in the sandbox? You can use KDEs settings or Flatseal.
Launching a terminal can be done via flatpak-spawn.
I think you dont get this. Flatpak is important. Linux is completely powerless, there are people installing invasive apps which then can do what they can on Windows. Compare that to Android (which is obviously way less complicated because of how apps are used).
Flatpak is a new system to build apps, of course it cant read some ~/.config directory thats the point. If you store stuff there you are used to a different way and will need to adapt. Or you use their official binaries.
Just because apps are not ready this doesnt mean it is not clearly the way we will do GUI apps. 800+ apps officially verified. We are approaching official universal Linux support here!
No, I haven't tried to poke a hole in a sandbox. Generally speaking, if I have a choice between pacman -S <app> or "install with Flatpak and then fiddle with sandbox settings" I opt for the former. I get that you think this is important, and Flatpak is a nifty idea, but in terms of usability, it has failed me repeatedly to the point where I don't want to use it, so I don't.
You seem to be coming from a position of "Flatpak good, so everyone must use it", which is nice, but it's naïve. Flatpak is ok, but it has usability problems, and since you want people to use it, usability is kind of important. It also introduces a frustrating divide from a user perspective. The idea that "desktop apps" should be installed via Flatpak, and everything else with a proper package manager is madness from a user's perspective. I don't understand how you can't see that, but you're going to have to accept it 'cause newsflash: not everyone thinks like you.
Finally, packaging for Flatpack is a Pain In The Ass. I say this as someone who's tried it. The build system is clearly biased toward particular use cases and particular languages, which is great if you're in that camp, but for everyone else it comes across as impractical for the intended purpose.
So yeah, it's great that this is important to you. Go ahead and develop the shit out of Flatpak, and maybe even work on the user experience some more. I'll keep having a look from time to time, but for now, it's not happening, and this attitude of yours, that the rest of us will just "need to adapt" to your preferred way of working... if I wanted that I'd use a Mac. GTFO.
Its easy. If you have a problem, report it. Instead of arguing about it they may have already fixed it.
If you want to run a proprietary app unconfined, do so.
But you also have to admit that reading some git config in a non flatpak directory is actively against the sandboxing principle, and thus requires manually allowing that access.
Sure, flatpaks need more popups that do exactly that.
Dividing "GUI apps" and other packages is easy. Go to a store, if it has an icon, install it via flatpak, if it has no icon, then you may not do that.
Appstream metadata so to speak.
Finally, packaging for Flatpack is a Pain In The Ass
Agreed.
okay maybe stop being so rude? Flatpak is the possibility for a secure system. We see how painfully slow adoption for that is on every Desktop, mac and windows too.
But it is great to have this, and I am sure we could make your Pycharm work by applying that override. The rest has to be done by the developers and it is important to care.
It is the same as with wayland, people need to change their software to ask for permission, follow standards and dont do weird shit. Only then the UX is solved.
And by the way what is stopping you from just using some apps as native system apps, and flatpak for the rest?
Dude, you're the one being rude. I was done with this conversation yesterday and you just keep coming back like it's an argument you can "win" by insisting that I think like you and change my behaviour to be like you.
You started the whole thread looking for input and when you didn't get the response you wanted you just berated the respondents telling then how wrong they were.
I'm done here. You've forced me to go digging around Lemmy to see if there's a block function.
Ok strange. I gave you a good and not one sided response.
Like, totally strange. I dont see how my comment could have been offending in any way. You had a specific problem leading to a generalized conclusion.
The heck are you all talking about? The post says Linux and Flatpack, while everyone somehow is discussing why signal is not on f-driod.
How the heck is this related?
Hahaha, any comment here makes no sense. This is just to help that guy have an actually somewhat useful survey, because Signal devs have very strange priorities
I prefer the deb that works. I get a signal.update almost every other day. I don't remember to update my flatpaks anywhere near that often. I also appreciate that it doesn't force me to include dependencies that are already met.
You can update flatpaks automatically using systemd. Automatic updates are a thing and should be everywhere.
https://discuss.kde.org/t/improving-metered-network-detection-and-usage/9287
Automatic updates are a thing and should be everywhere.
Absolutely not...most especially prior to production deployment. How else would someone see the change logs before hand or see/test if it would hurt their environment?
I have no idea what a production environment is for you. If it is some kind of sealed off stuff yeah maybe, but otherwise I hope you use a Distro that handles updates the way you need it.
Not updating because things will break is a sign of a bad distro.
Production environment is typically in the corporate world, not usually a homelab. Service providers often have a SLA uptime guarantee of 99%. They don't often push patches as soon as available due to the varied nature of corporate environment. They don't have one or two PCs to worry about: they can have tens of thousands. Downtime equates to money lost. So patches get tested before being deployed. Depending on the patch, that can be 48 hours to a week or two. Major OS upgrades can be months-long test, but the company usually does that and follows it while it's still in beta.
Updates are pointed to a server the company controls, not the Internet. Updates get tested on test servers and test machines that replicate those in production. It typically gets monitored for 48 hours to measure glitches and performance. Once satisfied, the company controlled update server pushes into production machines.
Ok this is a specific case, interesting info, thanks.
Obviously this has nothing to do with single user computers, going to software stores, pressing "update" buttons etc.
So it is unrelated to my point.
I quit using signal after they stopped supporting text messaging on Android. I had my whole family using it and that just evaporated overnight 😭
So your family used SMS? Sms is horrible, you should just not use it.
If signal supported encrypted SMS that would be useful. DekuSMS is the only alternative here, as Silence is abandoned.
But it makes sense that they dont want to pretend SMS was a good standard.
Meanwhile, they use a phone number for anything, ironic
They went from doing some communication secure with signal, to doing no secure communication, because of a rug pull of a genuinely convenient feature. The problem with communication apps is that it is almost impossible to convince anyone to use anything they haven't heard about, if it is not very convenient. They're not going to use a separate app just for communicating with a single person/a few people.
Looks like RCS might be viable in the future when it works on both iphones and androids though. I just hope that it doesn't all go through googles servers.
RCS is controlled by a few companies and also requires a specific app. Nearly all messengers work on iOS too (apart based Briar)
My parents are approaching 60. I told them that the signal text message app would work a lot like iMessage if we both used it. And it did. It was great. For the other people that used signal, the experience was generally better. For other people that didn't, SMS was fine because that's how I was going to talk to them anyway.
The thing is, My parents are not going to go to more than one app to communicate with other people. Since it no longer sends and receives text messages, it doesn't work with 99% of the other people in their lives.
They own and run a pretty large business. There's no way that they're staying on more than one messaging platform. You can talk all day about what they "should" do, but at the end of the day just getting them to switch to another app was a huge lift for me. Not only did they switch back to regular SMS, I burned a lot of credibility with them on tech related stuff through no fault of my own.
Repeat this story for the 90 or so people I had converted. There was no critical mass, so adoption evaporated overnight because my social graph is not enough to provide any sort of critical mass and adoption.
That sucks I am very sorry to hear that.
The thing is just that nobody should use SMS really. If they have a business they may have experience with it and whatever but really, dont use SMS at all...
Then it is just a single messaging app.
It makes no sense to include unencrypted SMS in an encrypted messaging app over secure protocols. Like, SMS are all scanned, surveilled and can easily be manipulated.
SMS is also the common standard for talking to people.
For the vast, vast majority of people, the technical security of, ‘hey, you want to catch a movie next saturday’, is far less important then the message actually getting through.
Qute simply, it is far more important for a communication method to be easy and universal then to be secure against attacks the vast majority of people do not think they will ever encounter. When most people want to tell their neighbor two houses down that the dog has gotten out again being able use the app they already use to communicate is far more important to them then then a bunch of technical jargon about end to end encryption.
Thats email too, which is less bad
Why is email less bad than SMS? It’s about as (in)secure.
Email also fulfills a different role, as it is for longer, more formal, and less time sensitive messages. Nevertheless, more modern and technical encrypted email clients go out of their way to still work with unencrypted messages insteand of being deliberately incompatible as Signal is.
Email uses modern TLS, SMS uses some ancient encryption from the 90s or so, that just doesnt work.
If you trust the servers email is fine.
You can use Deltachat to chat over email. The protocol is universal its just how you use it.
Trust me a signal/xmpp/matrix message could look like an email too.
Email + Encryption is poorly optional yes. But you are asking for an internet chat service to support a different, ancient, insecure and unprivate protocol that has nothing to do with it.
Deku SMS supports encrypted and unencrypted SMS, this makes sense.
Yes, you could technically use email like SMS, while the standard allows for up to five days for the message to go through that’s pretty rare, in practice it’s primarily used to send long messages from one computer to another, not a single sentence or two between phones.
In practice, it is about as secure as SMS, as both require similar levels of dedicated effort to interpret. Most of the actors with the hardware used to intercept and decrypt SMS are the same actors who can compromise a server, or outright have acess to the backdoor they paid 10 million to put in RSA. Not that they need it, as the largest email providers by far do often work with law enforcement anyway. Both SMS and email attacks are seen at about the same rate and scales, which is to say rarely outside of government agencies where both are unfortunately routine.
Signal is primarily designed and marketed to fufill the same basic role as SMS, as evident from just how much of an afterthought anything but the mobile app is, how said app copies the same format as SMS for messages, how it required an phone number to use and sync phone contacts, and how it did support SMS for quite some time. It is emently reasonable for Signal to have continued to have featured the messaging format most of the people it could talk with used.
Agree that in practice SMS are intercepted just as much as Emails. But its entirely different and SMS does not use RSA afaik.
The last paragraph stressed for me how confusing this would be for noobs. A messenger that seems to do exactly the same but differently. People would not get it and think if they use Signal for SMS this would be secure somehow.
Whatsapp never integrated SMS and its used everywhere. Okay, there are video conference platforms that allow to log in via the phone network, but yeah, dont do that.
The post here is a link to an online survey being done by the Signal Community. Users need to follow the link to answer the survey if they wish (but it means creating yet another new account which I'm getting pretty tired of as I'm now passing over 900 different logins all with unique passwords etc ;-)
Understandable, if you dont care just use a temporary email like altadress
I'm thinking about abandoning Signal given the fact that they use AWS servers, still insist on requiring a phone number to use the APP and haven't yet implemented nicknames like Telegram
If you want absolute control over your communications, the only way is to self-host an XMPP server
Yeah Signal sucks a lot. It is poorly very convenient to use.
XMPP had too little funding. But it could totally replace Signal, no question.
SimpleX is also cool and truly privacy first