xdg-app

xdg-app
Developer(s) Alex Larsson
Written in C
Operating system Linux
Type Application virtualization
License LGPL[1]
Website wiki.gnome.org/Projects/SandboxedApps

xdg-app is a system for application virtualization intended for use in Linux desktop environments.

Rationale

The aim is to provide a safe sandbox environment in which users can run applications that they may not fully trust.[2] The applications will need to use specific function calls provided by xdg-app to control hardware devices or access the user's files, and xdg-app will prompt the user for permission before giving access.[3]

It is inspired partly by the 'app store' models found in Android and iOS.

The name comes from the freedesktop.org collaboration effort, which is often abbreviated to 'xdg'.[4] The freedesktop.org server is the canonical home of the xdg-app project.[5]

As of December 2015, the project is being actively developed.[6] A few apps have added initial support for running under xdg-app, such as LibreOffice[7] and Glom.[8]

Technical

The sandboxing is based on the following functionality provided by subsystems of the Linux kernel:

References

  1. ↑ http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xdg-app/xdg-app/tree/COPYING
  2. ↑ Willis, Nathan (2015-01-21). "GNOME and application sandboxing revisted". LWN. Retrieved 2016-01-03.
  3. ↑ Willis, Nathan (2015-08-12). "Working with xdg-app application bundles". LWN. Retrieved 2016-01-03.
  4. ↑ Pennington, Havoc (2003-03-08). "Re: XDG vs freedesktop.org". xdg (Mailing list). Retrieved 2016-01-03.
  5. ↑ Larsson, Alex (2015-12-17). "github or freedesktop?". xdg-app (Mailing list). Retrieved 2016-01-03.
  6. ↑ https://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2015/12/17/xdg-app-christmas-update/
  7. ↑ https://whatofhow.wordpress.com/2015/08/11/libreoffice-in-a-box/
  8. ↑ http://www.murrayc.com/permalink/2015/12/17/playing-with-xdg-app-for-glom/
  9. ↑ "Projects/SandboxedApps - GNOME Wiki!". wiki.gnome.org. Retrieved 2016-04-16.

See also

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