GNOME 2.22 released [LWN.net]

GNOME 2.22 released

Posted Mar 14, 2008 1:23 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: GNOME 2.22 released by ajross
Parent article: GNOME 2.22 released

Well I would not pass judgement on gvfs until I see how well (or not) it actually works.

Although I find the term 'Legacy Applications' pretty damn insulting considering that means
90% of all applications made for the Linux desktop now and into the future. I mean it's not
like Posix-compatable file systems are going away any time soon or that GVFS will ever come
close to replacing any posix fs.

If their FUSE binding is fast and if it's transparent then it can still be a very good thing.
That is if you drag a file from sftp:// folder in nautilus to the terminal it will put the
proper ~/.gvfs/ path WITH NO EXTRA USER ACTION... Then that would be totally kick-ass. Fonts,
search results, etc etc. It's up to the GVFS stuff to figure out if it should pass the GIO
path or the FUSE path to the application.

GVFS can be a wonderful thing. The concept is so-so, IMO, but if the execution is good then it
will totally make up for it.

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GNOME 2.22 released

Posted Mar 14, 2008 4:27 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh.. And one more thing to keep in mind about FUSE is that current implimentations require
setuid root binaries and permissions granted to /dev/fuse to get it to work. So it's a bit of
a security hole if you want to have locked-down environments.

I don't know how serious it is, but requiring regular users root rights to a kernel interface
in order to use Gnome can't be a great idea when it comes to security.

The ultimate work around for FUSE, I would expect, is to have a daemon in charge of FUSE
mounts and use policykit and dbus to regulate and communicate to the daemon.