Explain 'Permissions' better or people will freak out

snap
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After installing a snap with gnome-software a “Permissions” button appears near the “Remove” button and you can set permissions for that snap(this reminds me of smartphone apps).

But it should have more informations, at least a link to a page(like Click to understand how Permissions work) explaining how it works or maybe a (?) link on each line with a short description explaining what it does, that show up when you hover the mouse cursor or click on it.

For example the Firefox, the window shows this:

firefox

I think that more transparency on how this new feature works will prevent people freaking out about it all over the web. The way this is designed right now will probably concern people that values privacy and will prevent them from using snaps and Ubuntu, more information about how it works would be good for everyone.

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Niice! I hadn’t seen that dialog!

Is that your work, @robert.ancell?

I mean, @ssspacez has a point (although I disagree that prevent people that value privacy from using snaps), but this is very nice as a start.

Is it a 18.04 thing?

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Ubuntu 18.04(bionic):

Host: Kernel: 4.15.0-10-generic x86_64 bits: 64 gcc: 7.3.0
Desktop: Gnome 3.27.92 (Gtk 3.22.28-1ubuntu3) dm: gdm3
Distro: Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (development branch)
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I implemented it for 18.04 (though we have been discussing this feature for some time). The wording comes from @mpt and @jdstrand who worked through the interfaces provided by snapd to come up with user understandable terms.

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That’s illogical but understandable. It’s illogical, because .deb packages have the ability to do almost all those things right now, and it’s much harder to prevent them than with snaps. But it’s understandable, because merely mentioning these permissions makes software that asks for them look more invasive than .debs.

That’s one of the reasons that I specified that the permissions UI should list all detectable installed apps, not just snaps. (The other reason is that someone may not even know whether an installed app is a snap or not.)

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This is just our first iteration of the UI to provide access to these features of the snap. Hopefully it’ll become clearer what these controls do as the design evolves.

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Because of design consistency it could be similar to the windows of the Privacy section(Settings):

link

A simple link like the Privacy Policy, with or without a short description.

Thank you for all the answers.