Hacker News Reader

Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

But it's the other way around. Can you distribute a native application on macOS without Apple's blessing? No, you can't (not when Catalina will be out anyway). And Windows is closing the "gap" really fast too. Try distributing a native installer without the browser or SmartScreen bringing up a scare-dialog-box.

Until OS vendors are willing to provide a safe sandbox to run untrusted code in, and untangled from a non-technical curating mechanism which has all sorts of conflicts-of-interests of what's morally acceptable and what's not, WASM is the next best thing to an open, yet secure, platform.

Desktop Linux aside, the web is currently the only open platform for distributing software outside of the interests of a single "platform owner". Google may close this "loop hole" soon, so I'm not too optimistic for the future, but today, that's what it is.

View on HN

I recently switched to desktop GNU/Linux full time outside of work, and I have to say it's really damn good now.

Mind you, I'm using a Lenovo laptop, so it's among the best supported hardware you can buy for the purpose. But the fact that there aren't more boutique computer makers selling GNU/Linux systems installed by default is an interesting statement on the industry.

I'm sure ultimately it comes down to the availability of software like Microsoft Word, but ironically having so much stuff move to the cloud is a boon in this case. With so many web-based apps available, nontechnical people can switch from Windows to a well-configured GNU/Linux system and not notice much of a difference.

With that problem out of the way, a hypothetical hardware vendor can focus on building sane defaults, a good user experience, and good documentation (good for users, not developers). Then if and when it works out and marketshare ends up in double digits, more non-web software will start to become available anyway, and/or a lot more corporate money could start flowing into established projects like LibreOffice.

Obviously the Chromebook was a thing, and you can buy System76 machines today, but the former was too extreme and the latter is probably too expensive for grandma just checking her email.

I assume the reason it doesn't exist it is because the logistics and economics of the hardware don't work out. But I wonder if it will become feasible some time in the near future.

Beyond that, with flatpak and wasm application sandboxes, it will only get better. Wasm, provided some UI primitives and OS-like primitives get baked in, will give a common runtime for UI apps everywhere without a full browser. WASM+Canvas or WASM+WebGL can/will go a LONG way.

I would say, that enough OS primitives should be present so that as an example SQLite3 can compile and run, and you can get a compatible file out the other end.

> Can you distribute a native application on macOS without Apple's blessing? No, you can't

Yes, you can. You have always been able to.

> (not when Catalina will be out anyway).

Yes, you will be able to.

I just downloaded a music tracker/MOD player from the Mesozoic (well, not quite) and it runs fine on Catalina Developer Preview 4.

I can understand the confusion – I had the same concerns while watching this year's WWDC's Platforms State of the Union – but please do not spread FUD, or accept it as true without credible sources.

Apple does require developers to update their old apps now and then, and that may not be convenient for some devs, but I feel it's overall good for users, and they don't force anyone to distribute via the App Store only or give Apple a % of their sales.

In fact, a few companies have withdrawn their products from the Mac App Store, like Sketch and Coda and others.

Running an unsigned app is a bit of a pain... though, imho probably worth it for the modest improvement in security.

> Can you distribute a native application on macOS without Apple's blessing? No, you can't.

I've been running the Catalina betas, and running non-notarized apps only requires right clicking instead of double clicking. If that's too much of an obstacle for you, you probably shouldn't run the app.

Gatekeeper on macOS is a technology designed to protect careless users. It makes it slightly harder to shoot yourself in the foot. It doesn't prevent you from doing it, though.

But it's the other way around. Can you distribute a native application on macOS without Apple's blessing? No, you can't (not when Catalina will be out anyway).

Yes you can:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unsigned-apps-catalyst-...

WASM is the next best thing to an open, yet secure, platform.

So, instead of walled gardens with signed and checked applications (bad). We have to run untrusted and unchecked code of vendors who run code to track your movements around the web and in their applications? (Even worse)

Desktop Linux aside

Maybe we should make Linux an acceptable platform for more people rather than optimizing for proprietary web applications that you don't even own a copy of anymore.

> Maybe we should make Linux an acceptable platform for more people rather than optimizing for proprietary web applications that you don't even own a copy of anymore.

Won't ever happen for two reasons: 1) The Linux Desktop community would have to admit that there are better ways to do things, and 2) They'd have to agree on what those things are. 20 years of Linux Desktop history show these things to be impossible.

Theoretically, a new community could spring up and put a new userland on top of the Linux kernel, like Android did, but it would seem like the people who have the interest in doing such a thing (like myself) lack enough time, talent, and/or ability to organize sufficiently to pull it off. Not to mention that we'd all have to agree too.

I lack the talent, but I'm definitely interested.

Have you taken a look around Casey Muratori's handmade.network? Or interacted much with the guys who watch Jonathan Blow's livestreams? They make much the same point you do about taking the linux kernel and creating a new userland around it.

Anyone who's interested in working on something like this, email walkinginalinuxuserland@lj3.me. The least we could all do is keep in touch, right?

Yes, I've hung out on Johns and Casey's streams. I don't bother much with handmade.network because very little there interests me. Essence is kinda neat, but it is a long way from practicality and I'm not sure how much my ideals and Nakst's align.

I also think a forum or IRC channel would be more appropriate, but email is a start and I appreciate you taking the initiative.

See also Probono's Hello[0], but I'm not sure he hasn't decided that Haiku already fits for him.

[0] https://github.com/probonopd/hello

This is it. Let's be honest - the things that make linux difficult are wireless and graphics drivers because the kernel api's keep changing (to prevent vendors from making non-open-source drivers). Why can't we write a unix compatible desktop os whose only difference is running the drivers in userspace?

Something like Redox(1). It's even MIT licensed, so you could include it in a commercial distribution with your own changes if you so chose when you made your gui.

1. https://www.redox-os.org

> So, instead of walled gardens with signed and checked applications (bad). We have to run untrusted and unchecked code

and sandboxed. yes, this is way forward.

"yes, this is way forward." - I don't think so

Well the alternative is exchanging data, not code. Actually this was the initial idea on the web, hyperlinked data. Look where that brought us. Maybe we could devise a better model with a client (code) that is simple enough and universal enough, and the server providing/receiving only data and not code? That is, instead of me running the publisher's code on my terminal, i run my code on the publisher's data, exchanging data with them. I am not aware of anything to that effect that is universal enough to replace the web. Thus, sandoxing untrusted code as being the way forward.

I think the way forward is to stop worry too much. Like you really gonna be worrying running "flight simulator". I think it is a FUD designed mostly to support big and cloudy providers. Those are the real entities one should worry about. They spy 24x7 .

> We have to run untrusted and unchecked code of vendors who run code to track your movements around the web and in their applications? (Even worse)

I don't think that is the case. Simply because a WASM application will have to request the permissions it needs up front (assuming a sane runtime) and you don't have to give anything run in background permissions... also, it won't have access to other apps, so it can't really track you.

The bigger issue with Desktop linux is very few people run it, and targeting a specific subset for linux as separate from other platforms is difficult and costly, to say the least.

I am partially an ISV and we provide pure native application for Windows at the moment. No UWP/.NET/APP_STORE/WHATEVER . It is digitally signed and distributed by downloading from our web site. So far no problem. Since we've been in business a number of years there are no any browser/OS/Antivirus level warning boxed during downloading and installation.

> Until OS vendors are willing to provide a safe sandbox to run untrusted code in

Thing is, "safe" OS-sandboxes are not safe; "local" privilege escalation vulnerabilities are still pervasive. Until OS's are safe enough that I can run `sudo -u nobody untrusted_binary` and not even think about the possibility of it taking over my system, something like the WASM sandbox (perhaps extended with WASI and other optional mechanisms) will always be needed.

The the browser sandbox is just another sandbox, as we have seen with targeted attacks on Firefox two weeks back.

Why is everybody so insistent on running untrusted code?

Because the Web won't work without running untrusted code.

The Web of hyperlinked documents would still work. But webapps would not be able to run arbitrary code the moment they were navigated to. Perhaps there should be a clear user-visible distinction between an HTML document with some styling and a full-blown application (that happens to use DOM for layout).

Who gets to decide which code is trusted?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com