Drag and drop issue - Zorin OS 16.2

AlterNezKo · 8 March 2023 16:04

Good morning, afternoon or evening. I hope you are having a good midweek.

I'm new to the Linux world and I'm very happy with the experience it has given me so far. A couple of months ago I migrated to Ubuntu from Windows 10, specifically to version 22.04.2. The animations and the fluidity of the system are something that I had not seen before and that I loved from day one.

However I started to have performance problems which forced me to switch to Zorin OS 16.2. The improvement in stability was considerable, but I started to have a very particular problem.

The file explorer, (Nautilus) does not allow me to drag and drop files in Telegram or Discord, except in very specific situations. From the app's internal explorer it only recognizes the images folder, the videos folder and the documents folder in the user directory. If I try to drag files from those options there is no problem, but if I try from one that is not there, for example the desktop, it does not work. It gives the following error message: "The file is empty and cannot be sent".

I thought it could be some incompatibility with Zorin because in Ubuntu this problem didn't happen; then I tried Linux Mint and surprise, exactly the same.

At this moment I'm trying again the live image of Ubuntu 22.04. to confirm that it doesn't fail. In the meantime, any idea what could be wrong?

Aravisian · 8 March 2023 18:36

What method did you use to install Discord? Is it a flatpak?

flatpak list

I have no troubles with this using the .deb standard package supplied.

AlterNezKo · 8 March 2023 19:27

Yes, it is installed from the Gnome Software via Flatpak, maybe that's the problem?

Aravisian · 8 March 2023 19:38

It may be yes. Flatpak is sandboxed, limiting access.
You might get it to work with Flatseal

github.com/flathub/com.discordapp.Discord

Default Sandbox Permissions are too Restrictive

opened 03:09PM - 22 Jul 20 UTC

closed 06:01AM - 29 Apr 23 UTC

mindinsomnia

Sorry to necro an old issue from 3 years ago, but I think this needs to be discu…ssed again and reviewed. The default permissions of Discord do not allow Discord to access all of your files in your Home folder. This restriction is too tight. Attaching files to send to a conversation is a common functionality of Discord and a basic feature of the software. There's no reason to restrict Discord's access to files, it's a required permission that Discord needs to offer it's complete feature set. This restriction is not present for Discord on Windows, nor if you install Discord from another source on Linux, such as your distro's own repository, or if you grab the Linux version of Discord from the Discord website. Even if you run Discord via a web browser, you can attach files from anywhere on your PC. This restriction leaves the Flatpak version of Discord inferior to all of the alternatives To the average user who doesn't have the technical knowhow to google this issue and find an old closed Github issue from 3 years ago with a magic terminal command to run to fix this, they are faced with either uninstalling Discord (Flatpak) and installing it from somewhere else (hurting Flatpak adoption!), or just concluding that 'something is broken' on their PC, or that 'Flatpak doesn't work', or that 'Discord doesn't work on Linux' or some other very negative assumption as there is no visible explanation for why local files are not showing up. At best they are left googling this issue for 20 minutes to find a solution, reading a Github issue report, and having to run commands they don't understand in the terminal, to enable behaviour that I would argue the majority of users would expect Discord to come with out of the box on Linux, as that behaviour is present for Discord everywhere else. Likewise Discord should be able to show any current running games you are playing in your status, this too is a basic feature of Discord that users would expect to work, and the reason why some people use Discord in the first place. They shouldn't have to go hunting for a terminal command to run to adjust Flatpak's permissions to enable features in Discord, not when those features are likely the reason they installed Discord in the first place. There has to be a better solution here, because this is not providing a great UX for average users on Linux. In my opinion the restrictions should be lifted to give Discord the level of permissions it requires to offer it's full feature set. Anything Discord can do on Linux out of the box when installed from somewhere else, it should be able to do via the Flatpak. But at the very least the description for Discord on Flathub could be updated to include a note that this version of the application has a very restrictive level of sandbox permissions, with a link to instructions on how to override those permissions. Otherwise users are left in the dark wondering why the application 'isn't working' from their perspective. Thoughts?

Or remove the flatpak and install the .deb package. I use the .deb combined with Better Discord package.

Auro · 9 March 2023 06:55

I am having the same problem in discord, telegram and whatsapp. I use all of them from firefox. I am unable to drag and drop images in any of these platforms. I have to open the image from nautilus, copy it and paste it in my browser.

AlterNezKo · 9 March 2023 14:59

If you downloaded the applications from the store you probably have the same problem as me. Downloading the official .deb or installing from the terminal should solve the problem.

AlterNezKo · 9 March 2023 15:04

Thank you! Removing the flatpak version and installing from the official repositories solved the problem.

Now Zorin works perfectly

I tried to remove those restrictive OS permissions but it's too complicated for me and I don't want to break anything.

337harvey · 10 March 2023 08:45

Please open a new thread concerning your restrictive os permissions. Please also include more detail to which permissions you are referring and what you are attempting.

Aravisian · 10 March 2023 14:53

@AlterNezKo is referring to my post in which I made two separate suggestions. One of them was:

To which @AlterNezKo replied:

and opted instead to:

system · 8 June 2023 14:54

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