Hi, there!
Newbie question here: basically, the title. Perhaps what I’m asking is pretty obvious, but I’d like to double-check with the community on this.
I use Discover on my Debian KDE Plasma set-up, with Flatpaks enabled (but not Snaps). Sometimes, I come across apps (I did just yesterday, searching for translation apps to replace DeepL), that have according to its page, an unknown author and, sometimes, even an unkown licence, but which do require access permission to the whole system (this latter requirement applying specifically to Deb packages, from what I’ve seen).
Under these circumstances, is it safe to assume that such apps will still be safe because of the fact that they appear listed on Discover (in other words, is Discover a guarantee of safety for the apps it shows, as in, some type of checked or proved content), or should I still be wary of potentially malicious software included on it?
Thank you very much in advance :)
With Deb packages you’re safe. With Flatpak I would be a little careful because with Debian apps that have been abandoned get some maintainer love or will be removed, while with Flatpak you can install apps that have not been updated for years, not very often but I’ve seen a few of them. Because of that I prefer to check the Flathub page of a Flatpak app before installing.
flatpak marks packages as unmaintained, and at least gnome software will show it to users with a banner.