Is Spotify desktop unsafe to install on Ubuntu?
Is Spotify desktop unsafe to install on Ubuntu?
Basically, my entire system is FOSS but I'm tempted to install the Spotify .deb package. Would that give Spotify access to info about my system?
Flatpaks do better sandboxing. So better then .deb's, but not better then using a web browser
If you're overriding the default permissions.. Flatpaks attempt to sandbox applications not built to work in a sandbox so the packages usually come with lots of holes prepunched that you probably can close without issues.
Yeah use something flatseal to mess with further securing flatpaks
Standard Debian packages have access to things like your home folder and other things that can be accessed without superuser level access. If you're not okay with that, don't install it.
If a flatpak package is available, it can have it's permissions controlled by Flatseal, allowing you to restrict Spotify's permissions.
I cant answer your question, but you could just use the webplayer.
buy your music
Why not just use the web app?
The web app is (deliberately) limited in comparison to the desktop app.
You could always user spotify-player! https://terminaltrove.com/spotify-player/
Ordinarily I’d recommend the Flatpak, but the Flatpak for Spotify literally just a wrapper around the snap package. That’s nasty.
On Linux, all unsandboxed apps are allowed to do anything your user account can do (without sudo) - there is no permission model. You could use Flatpaks but they're not perfect, likely would require customizing with Flatseal.
*without SELinux
But it's a pain to set up and I hate it
So that's like, reading all documents, writing stuff, and I assume it can also make outbound connections to servers?
Yep. Anything you could do on the terminal without typing a password.
Either use flatpak or the web app I guess?
Everyone hates snaps but a sandboxed snap also exists in addition to a flatpak.
I am mostly saying this simply to annoy people.
you could use yt-dlp
If you want to make sure your system stays 100% healthy do not try to install proprietary software on your Linux :)
Just use Spotifys web interface.
You can run it in a vm 🤷♀️
Not answering your question directly but have you heard of Nuclear Music Player? It searches the Spotify API for track names and plays them from Youtube.
Exactly the type of answer I came looking for. beCause to Hell with proprietary drek. Happy to see other alternatives.
I'm sure Spotify collects data on the running system, similar to the Steam hardware survey: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
They use that data to make decisions about how to develop their product. Does that make it unsafe to you?