I thought I’ll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I’ll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

  • @baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
    4•8 months ago

    It is technically doable, but that would require a unified method to call when an app needs camera, and that method will show the prompt.

    This would technically require developers to rewrite their apps on linux, which is not happening anytime soon.

    Fortunately, pipwire and xdg-portal is currently doing this work, like when you screen share on zoom using pipwire, a system prompt will pop up asking you for what app to share. Unlike on Windows, zoom cannot see your active windows when using this method, only the one that you choose to share.

    Most application framework, including GTK and electron, are actively supporting pipwire and portal, so the future is bright.

    There is a lot of work in improving security and usablity of linux sandbox, and it is already much better than Windows (maybe also better than macos?). I am confident, in 5 years, linux sandbox stack (flatpak, protal, pipewire) will be as secure and usable as on android and ios.

      • @baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
        1•8 months ago

        If I understand correctly pipwire is supposed to be the “portal” but for audio and videos.

        But I believe camera portal is already there, using pipwire. All they need to add is a popup to request usage when the app needs it.

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
          2•8 months ago

          XDG portals is the standard interface that applications (should) use to do things on your system. It is most commonly associated with flatpaks and Wayland.

          You could have pipewire as the back end but XDG portal implementation usually is controlled by the desktop.