Friend asks: I would like to make an app to ask for authentication before launching. I can do that on MacOS via creating an encrypted disc image and put the app in there, and windows has robust third party tools for it. But how would you go about it on Linux, especially since it’s a .deb (that gets auto-updated all the time via its repo) and not an appimage/flatpak? Others need access to the user account, but I want to restrict that one app. Creating a different user account for it is out of the question btw, since you can still change the password for that user via the primary admin account. Also, I don’t want to be running full VMs that take forever to boot to use that one app. Is there any simple way to lock an app under Linux?

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
    5·
    5 hours ago

    Same as you would on MacOS :

    • ditch the .deb package because it’s the wrong tool for the job here.
    • Squashfs image with encryption
    • Set keyring entries and a wrapper script to manage lock/unlock. If you already know the hardware platform of all users, this can even be improved upon

    I have no idea why someone would be using Debian packages to distribute something like this though, if that’s the question. Absolutely not going to work well.