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unicornBro @sh.itjust.works

5d ago

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?

32 comments

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
- than*

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.

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.

If you want to make sure your system stays 100% healthy do not try to install proprietary software on your Linux :)

You could always user spotify-player! https://terminaltrove.com/spotify-player/

Why not just use the web app?
- The web app is (deliberately) limited in comparison to the desktop app.
  
  The only limitation I've seen is the inability to download for offline listening. Other than that, especially on Brave, I get fully ad-free listening without any issues aside from a couple seconds of pause in between where the ad breaks used to be.

Ordinarily I’d recommend the Flatpak, but the Flatpak for Spotify literally just a wrapper around the snap package. That’s nasty.

some alternatives I use:
FOSS GUI - psst FOSS TUI - ncspot
- Thank you!
- Thanks, I think psst will be it

Either use flatpak or the web app I guess?

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.
https://nuclearplayer.com/
- Exactly the type of answer I came looking for. beCause to Hell with proprietary drek. Happy to see other alternatives.

Just use Spotifys web interface.

Just use it as a PWA from a Chromium browser. I run Spotify as a PWA in Brave and get free, ad-free music. It's the ideal way, IMO. Then again, I only use Spotify for discovery. I buy my CDs and Bandcamp albums, I will always prefer ownership over streaming.

you could use yt-dlp

buy your music

Everyone hates snaps but a sandboxed snap also exists in addition to a flatpak.
I am mostly saying this simply to annoy people.

You can run it in a vm 🤷‍♀️

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?

32 comments