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> You do realize that OpenBSD is, by far, the most secure general purpose operating system specifically due to decades of thankless work by people like Theo de

> You do realize that OpenBSD is, by far, the most secure general purpose operating system specifically due to decades of thankless work by people like Theo de Raadt, right? Yes, I think it is fair to say that I am very familiar with all of this information. I work in information security, and was quite into Linux kernel security for a while. I disagree with your assertion about it being the most secure general purpose OS but I'm not gonna go there :) > I don’t think healthy skepticism of Rust is strong enough evidence to conclude that they don’t care about security. Cool, that was not my conclusion either. I'm saying that Rust's value proposition in general includes memory safety and I think that it's not compelling for most developers, especially with regards to rewrites of low-value attack surface.

cosmojg 6y ago
> I disagree with your assertion about it being the most secure general purpose OS but I'm not gonna go there :) Could you please go there? I'm very curious what the contenders for "most secure general purpose OS" might be.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  I think geofft's points go a long way. I think having this conversation would require a lot though - what is "Secure" what is "general purpose". Is OpenBSD even general purpose? Is the base install general purpose? What makes an OS secure? I think maybe as a "with 0 configuration to the OS/ services" OpenBSD could be a top contender. With "I have practical security challenges to solve and I'm willing to change things in this system" I might choose Linux. If I'm handing a laptop out to an employee or friend, maybe a Chromebook, or even Windows! It's a pretty nuanced discussion that I couldn't do justice to without really caring and feeling that everyone involved in the conversation is equally invested/ coming in with the right attitude, which is impossible on an internet forum.
- pnako 6y ago
  Well, there is only one real "general purpose" OS that runs on supercomputers, mainframes, servers, laptops, tablets, mobile and embedded, and that's Linux. So it's also the most secure.

cosmojg 6y ago

> I disagree with your assertion about it being the most secure general purpose OS but I'm not gonna go there :) Could you please go there? I'm very curious what the contenders for "most secure general purpose OS" might be.

staticassertion 6y ago
I think geofft's points go a long way. I think having this conversation would require a lot though - what is "Secure" what is "general purpose". Is OpenBSD even general purpose? Is the base install general purpose? What makes an OS secure? I think maybe as a "with 0 configuration to the OS/ services" OpenBSD could be a top contender. With "I have practical security challenges to solve and I'm willing to change things in this system" I might choose Linux. If I'm handing a laptop out to an employee or friend, maybe a Chromebook, or even Windows! It's a pretty nuanced discussion that I couldn't do justice to without really caring and feeling that everyone involved in the conversation is equally invested/ coming in with the right attitude, which is impossible on an internet forum.
pnako 6y ago
Well, there is only one real "general purpose" OS that runs on supercomputers, mainframes, servers, laptops, tablets, mobile and embedded, and that's Linux. So it's also the most secure.