xdg-desktop-portal was created to allow applications running in a sandbox to access system resources. Nowadays, more and more, regular applications have to pass through this piece of crap to do their usual work, one which by design was never intended for them, but for flatpakked applications.
Oh the joy of going through the bluetooth pairing process for my controller, or physically getting up and connecting a physical wire to it, only for the system to wait until I'm in the game and touch the controller and immediately the game hangs because a pop up appears asking me if i want to give permission to my damn controller to control stuff. Or having to manually reposition my windows every single time, because a window knowing where it is is somehow "insecure"
I'm the one putting the software on there and deciding what to run. If I run it, then it's because I wanted the application to do what it does. If someone else is in the position of running software on my machine, they're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway. They can already give themselves the permissions they need. They can just click yes on any pop up that appears. Yes, the applications should be considered safe. Because the OS cannot possibly make any informed assumptions about what's legitimate and what's malicious.
To me it feels like I can't do certain stuff on my PC because someone else might misuse something on theirs. How is that my problem?
> xdg-desktop-portal was created to allow applications running in a sandbox to access system resources.
There are many problems with it; I do not use it on my computer. A better sandbox system would be possible, but xdg-desktop-portal is not designed very well.
> Oh the joy of going through the bluetooth pairing process for my controller, or physically getting up and connecting a physical wire to it, only for the system to wait until I'm in the game and touch the controller and immediately the game hangs
That is also a problem of a bad design. If a permission is required, it should be possible to set up the permissions ahead of time (and to configure it to automatically grant permission if you do not want to restrict it; possibly could even be the default setting), instead of waiting for that to ask you and to hang like that.
> Or having to manually reposition my windows every single time, because a window knowing where it is is somehow "insecure"
I would think that the window manager should know where the windows are and automatically position them if you have configured it to remember where they are. (The windows themself should not usually need to know where they are, since the window manager would handle it instead, and the applications should not need to know what window manager is in use, since different window managers will work in different ways and if the application program assumes it knows how it works then that can be a problem.)
> I'm the one putting the software on there and deciding what to run. If I run it, then it's because I wanted the application to do what it does.
Yes, although sometimes you do not want it to do what it does, which is why it should be possible to configure the security, preferably with proxy capabilities.
> Because the OS cannot possibly make any informed assumptions about what's legitimate and what's malicious.
I agree, although that is why it must be possible for the operator to specify such things. I think that proxy capabilities would be the way to be done (which, in addition to improving security, also allows more control over the interaction between the programs and other parts of the system).
> To me it feels like I can't do certain stuff on my PC because someone else might misuse something on theirs.
Yes, it seem like that, because it is the badly design of some programs, protocols, etc.
Oh the joy of going through the bluetooth pairing process for my controller, or physically getting up and connecting a physical wire to it, only for the system to wait until I'm in the game and touch the controller and immediately the game hangs because a pop up appears asking me if i want to give permission to my damn controller to control stuff. Or having to manually reposition my windows every single time, because a window knowing where it is is somehow "insecure"
I'm the one putting the software on there and deciding what to run. If I run it, then it's because I wanted the application to do what it does. If someone else is in the position of running software on my machine, they're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway. They can already give themselves the permissions they need. They can just click yes on any pop up that appears. Yes, the applications should be considered safe. Because the OS cannot possibly make any informed assumptions about what's legitimate and what's malicious.
To me it feels like I can't do certain stuff on my PC because someone else might misuse something on theirs. How is that my problem?