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Why not trust Linux? No activation, full control over all the processes. Seems like a good solution for people who "care".
by nixpulvis 9y ago
Why not trust Linux? No activation, full control over all the processes. Seems like a good solution for people who "care".
- Rjevski 9y agoUser experience and usability.
- nixpulvis 9y agoSure, but that has nothing to do with the notion of trust we're talking about here.
- irq 9y agoPerhaps, but if poor UX prevents a user from using an ostensibly more secure platform, then security of said platform doesn’t enter into the consideration at all.
- nixpulvis 9y agoYes, we're all well aware. That's NOT what I'm talking about though. I'm responding to "Use Linux? How do you trust that?". Please think about things before aimlessly countering someone's question.
- boudin 9y agoThat has nothing to do with trust and is highly subjective.
- andromeduck 9y agoIt's good in theory but in practice you'd need to spend a lot of time and money doing deep audits yourself, both hardware and software. That just really isn't a worthwhile investment for the vast, vast, majority of people. At the end of the day it all still boils down to trust based on reputation, incentives and oversight. Openness is important but no panacea.
- nixpulvis 9y agoWell at least the surface area of the audit is a LOT smaller than on macOS, Windows, etc.
- andromeduck 9y agoI really doubt that's the case if you use more than a few small apps which is the case for the vast majority of users.
- nixpulvis 9y agoMust I link a running process list of my Linux laptop vs my macOS laptop?
- davewritescode 9y agoHow do you know the process list is accurate for certain? The point is, there’s potentially back doors in everything, including the C compiler that built your Linux kernel.
- nixpulvis 9y agoWe've all read reflections on trusting trust... still my point stands, it's hard to argue that Linux is not lighter than the mainstream OSes.
- userbinator 9y agoSomething like a default Ubuntu install (which might be somewhat "mainstream") actually has a surprising amount of stuff running in the background. Of course it's all open-source or otherwise completely documented, so it's still easier to figure out what's what than with Windows or macOS.
- andromeduck 9y agoIt can be lighter but what does that mean in practical terms if the cost of maintenance is monumental? I think with even just the barest bones practical computer with wifi + with email + browser + compiler and their dependencies is well beyond the scope of what one person is able to audit. You'd need a team of at least 20-30 individuals before that starts making sense.
- r00fus 9y agoIt's not that you shouldn't trust it, it's that you could from security perspective easily shoot yourself in the foot. Does anyone know of a distro that focuses on usability and privacy"? Subgraph is still in alpha...
- nixpulvis 9y agoEither trust yourself, or trust someone else. (of course it's generally impossible to avoid some amount of trust in others.)
- gsnedders 9y agoHow many distros are shipping with ASLR now? Last I knew there were still major distros that weren't. Heck, do the common DEs sandbox their search indexing processes yet, given there's been various vulnerabilities there previously? Yes, okay, you have control, but when nobody implements relatively basic defence-in-depth mitigations that have been available on Windows (especially) and macOS for over a decade it's just sad and undermines the argument that its security is better.