35

I run Debian 13 with MATE. I recently switched from the distro release to the flatpak version of FreeCAD, as the distro release is of course a few versions behind. Bear with me, as I am very new to using Flatpak or anything other than normal apt packages.

I just noticed that FreeCAD announces it is running as super user in the window title bar.

The interesting part is it doesn't ask for privilege escalation with password entry when I launch it.

Seeing as FreeCAD never ran as SU with the distro release installed via apt, and I don't think the program does anything that really needs SU... As much as I trust FreeCAD, this seems like a security hole I'd rather not have.

Is the Flatpak version running inside it's own "box" and it isn't getting SU permissions across my whole system? Or what am I missing here.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

Well, but Flatpak also has the rule to not break anything by default.

And they call things like changing filesystem=host to the specific directories (home, run, mnt) "security theatre" and prefer waiting forever for legacy apps to magically fix it

this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
35 points (97.3% liked)

Linux

12991 readers
301 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)

Also, check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS