I always ask (1) why does an app require installation and (2) why would it require root?
There are valid answers for both, but realistically, all a videoconferencing app should need (apart from audio and video and maybe screen sharing) is to store a config file.
There's no legitimate use for it accessing privileged or private paths.
Out of interest why do you still use the app and not just use it in the browser? I feel much more secure having it in the browser sandbox and everything I care about works in the browser.
> I noticed it because I make heavy use of a "one-shot paste" tool which fulfills a single paste request and then terminates. Handy for filling in lots of fields of a web form – queue up pastes of several different things, then go to each form field in turn and just hit paste, bam bam bam.
This sounds very useful. Is the tool available anywhere? xclip -loops doesn't seem to do the trick, or maybe it just doesn't work that way on Wayland.
I would rather have a nice popup on first attempt "this application is monitoring your clipboard, allow?", ideally with that process completely suspended while that prompt is up.
This should be behind a toggle driven by intent, rather than something allowed by default. Default stance on trust should be "don't". Open source has nothing to do with it, when a typo while installing with a package manager means you might accidentally install something else (a common attack vector).
I dumped it after realizing Xen does its damndest in preventing you from hiding VM attributes from Guest OSes.
Proxmox uses KVM, and is easy to configure a VM to make the guest think it's on bare metal.
In the proprietary software space, a LOT of things run badly or refuse to run, or license stupidity with a guest OS. So for me, spoofing bare metal is an essential part of running ilk like Windows and proprietary apps. And also, school remote testing garbage.
Srsly, all those neck beards who over simplify the problem with a flippant "don't use zoom", as if everyone has the luxury to skip every job interview and employer meeting that absolutely requires Zoom. I wish I could live in their world where every problem is solved by simply avoiding that problem.
Just use a browser instead of some silly client, problem mostly solved. Use X11 or Wayland or whatever else you want, for God's sake. I don't remember any god ever claiming salvation lies in abandoning the most functional display server on the market so I'll just keep on using X11. If and when Wayland or some other alternative ever becomes as useful as X11 I might hop over but for now Wayland is a solution in search of a problem as far as I'm concerned.
It takes experience to learn why people call it the "bleeding edge". GPU acceleration is often broken in a lot of distros, and it is unkind to new users that have a panic attack dropping into a CLI shell.
LightDM at least works 99% of the time, being Cross-desktop one can select a Wayland session just fine (great when it is working), or fall back to a software compositor Cinnamon Desktop when things bork after an update. =3
Fine words, until the GPU driver goes sideways in Wayland. And... I like running multi-seat headless sessions on my local LAN hosts for several reasons. =3
There is no such thing as an "X11 clipboard" that something can be written to. As the poster goes on to allude, X11 has a concept of a "selection" (a primary and a secondary one).
It goes roughly like this: when you select a text in a window, the X client tells the X server "I have the selection now", when you paste in another window, the client behind the other window asks "who has the selection?" and requests the selection contents from the other client, the data is then forwarded through the server. The client that claimed ownership has to properly handle some associated requests/events for the whole thing to work.
The key point is, there is no central "clipboard" style repository like on Windows, the client that does the "copy" is responsible for the data, the client that wants to "paste" has to talk to it. If I try to copy/paste and quit the source program before the paste, the data is gone. That's why modern desktop environments usually come with a dedicated daemon that immediately reacts to selection ownership changes, grabs the data for itself and then claims the selection ownership to emulate the Windows style behavior.
If we play devils advocate, it's possible the Zoom client tries to do just that, not trusting whatever desktop environment. I don't use this software, so I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that the "Zoom Desktop Client" is just another browser in disguise? It might be actually Chromium or whatever underneath that does this?
A few years back, there was something about gaining root on MacOS via Zoom due to shady execution on their end.
They've lost my trust since then, and I'll only run it sandboxed: https://gist.github.com/cielavenir/02f322e322a2a3555dbf2b38f...
I always ask (1) why does an app require installation and (2) why would it require root?
There are valid answers for both, but realistically, all a videoconferencing app should need (apart from audio and video and maybe screen sharing) is to store a config file.
There's no legitimate use for it accessing privileged or private paths.
However, the video quality in the browser is worse, so depending on the use case I might have to use the app (via sandbox).
It's been years since I've had to though.
It wasn't really root as much as an open backdoor on a TCP port as far as I recall.
> I noticed it because I make heavy use of a "one-shot paste" tool which fulfills a single paste request and then terminates. Handy for filling in lots of fields of a web form – queue up pastes of several different things, then go to each form field in turn and just hit paste, bam bam bam.
This sounds very useful. Is the tool available anywhere? xclip -loops doesn't seem to do the trick, or maybe it just doesn't work that way on Wayland.
https://man.archlinux.org/man/wl-copy.1
(i was also interested :)
Hell, our phones have had a better permission system for years.
As people running Linux should know, you cannot trust proprietary applications.
This should be behind a toggle driven by intent, rather than something allowed by default. Default stance on trust should be "don't". Open source has nothing to do with it, when a typo while installing with a package manager means you might accidentally install something else (a common attack vector).
Proxmox uses KVM, and is easy to configure a VM to make the guest think it's on bare metal.
In the proprietary software space, a LOT of things run badly or refuse to run, or license stupidity with a guest OS. So for me, spoofing bare metal is an essential part of running ilk like Windows and proprietary apps. And also, school remote testing garbage.
Just use Firefox, or Chromium if you must.
https://jitsi.org/downloads/
Linux is multi-process, _multi-user_ since forever.
No need to leave a password manager, online banking, andwhatnot accessible in the background during an interview.
And yeah: stop. using. X11. For God's sake!
However software just shouldn't be trash. No need to blame the display layer for this.
LightDM at least works 99% of the time, being Cross-desktop one can select a Wayland session just fine (great when it is working), or fall back to a software compositor Cinnamon Desktop when things bork after an update. =3
Fine words, until the GPU driver goes sideways in Wayland. And... I like running multi-seat headless sessions on my local LAN hosts for several reasons. =3
It goes roughly like this: when you select a text in a window, the X client tells the X server "I have the selection now", when you paste in another window, the client behind the other window asks "who has the selection?" and requests the selection contents from the other client, the data is then forwarded through the server. The client that claimed ownership has to properly handle some associated requests/events for the whole thing to work.
The key point is, there is no central "clipboard" style repository like on Windows, the client that does the "copy" is responsible for the data, the client that wants to "paste" has to talk to it. If I try to copy/paste and quit the source program before the paste, the data is gone. That's why modern desktop environments usually come with a dedicated daemon that immediately reacts to selection ownership changes, grabs the data for itself and then claims the selection ownership to emulate the Windows style behavior.
If we play devils advocate, it's possible the Zoom client tries to do just that, not trusting whatever desktop environment. I don't use this software, so I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that the "Zoom Desktop Client" is just another browser in disguise? It might be actually Chromium or whatever underneath that does this?