Flatpak build misreports drive stats, offers to open Disks, when it can do none of those things
Affected version
- Nightly flatpak: Yes
- Other: None (distro packages not affected)
Steps to reproduce
- Launch Nightly build from Flatpak
- Navigate to "Other Locations"
- Observe incorrect capacity figures on system partition ("Computer")
- Click on "Computer" to visit the filesystem root
- Right-click on the window background and choose "Properties"
- Observe incorrect file totals & pie chart
- Click "Open in Disks", and observe the lack of any response
Current behavior
Because the Flatpak build of Nautilus is sandboxed, it doesn't have access to filesystem details about the host system. It also can't launch non-Flatpak apps like GNOME Disks, on the host system.
Expected behavior
Both of those things are very much expected behavior, and unlikely to change — it's not even clear they should change, in fact.
It seems reasonable to assume that Nautilus' Flatpak incarnation won't ever enjoy quite the same system-level access, that it does when running as an installed, unrestricted host application. Certainly, not any time soon. So, better to just omit those displays entirely, than to call attention to them by prominently displaying wrong information.
Screenshots
"Other Locations" stats
Nautilus install | Screenshot |
---|---|
Flatpak | |
Fedora 34 |
(Ignore the second disk, as it's cheating: That one's NTFS.)
Filesystem root folder "Properties" dialog
Flatpak | Fedora 34 |
---|---|
Both show an enabled "Open in Disks" button, but only one of them does anything.