5 ms·

I also haven't used Debian since. No, we are not naive as to the presence of security related bugs elsewhere (e.g. Heartbleed). Just a lot of reputation was los

I also haven't used Debian since. No, we are not naive as to the presence of security related bugs elsewhere (e.g. Heartbleed). Just a lot of reputation was lost. It was interesting because the cause was a patch crafted to satisfy a static analysis tool they insisted on applying to every package, which demonstrated their want to go above and beyond with respect to quality. Kudos to Debian in that regard. But a blindly applied policy, and bad judgement in disabling some cryptographic initialization code, caused a terrible bug. I wonder if this is less of an issue today because of well defined kernel interfaces for getting "good" random numbers (i.e. cryptographically suitable). I'm sure the devil is in the details, and OpenSSH's support for unpopular systems means intentional use of uninitialized variables is still in the code base. It's all very impressive to an outsider who knows enough not to tell cryptographers how to do their job.

unixhero 6y ago
Which Linux distrib do you prefer?
- mrslave 6y ago
  Good question without an easy answer. I was a long-term Gentoo user but recently dumped it for NixOS. Colleagues were pushing it and so far I'm happy. Much less compiling and manual configuration which is what was driving me crazy about Gentoo. It took rather little effort to get the system in a state that feels very comfortable. But my needs have changed over time too, so this isn't strictly my opinion on what is best. More than a decade ago a programmer friend got Ubuntu running on a second hand desktop for a rather computer illiterate arts & letters student. He was able to navigate the GUI like any other system, and it had Firefox, OpenOffice, and mplayer. I knew then that Linux is a perfectly fine desktop OS. And now we're back to using Debian of a sort. ;-)
lloydatkinson 6y ago
> I also haven't used Debian since. I stopped using Debian when its ridiculous "free" purely ideological approach to software actually caused me issues. I needed to install Debian on a relatively old laptop a few years ago. It had all "mainstream" hardware. It's WiFi adapter was an Intel one (and a very common/popular one at the time), but it was one that wasn't open source. How did Debian approach this? It's installer gave me a not very subtle passive aggressive message telling me that although they have the drivers for the device, it was not going to install them... because the ISO did not include them. With no working WiFi, it of course could not connect to the internet to download them! Worse still, turns out that even if it had connected to the internet it wouldn't have downloaded and installed them anyway. I found this out because I managed to use an Ethernet connection. Completely stupid and frustrating and it felt like I was being blamed as if it was my fault. Installed Ubuntu, included the drivers, connected to WiFi during the installation. I have not used Debian on anything since.
- DJHenk 6y ago
  You might already know this, but there are Debian versions that address this situation: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images... I like it that that try to focus on a completely free version, as that is what they stand for and why a lot of people respect them, while at the same time being realistic about the real world problems that people face.
  - mrslave 6y ago
    It is funny though. Debian builds a great product with an unpopular/impractical ideology (not a judgement). Ubuntu comes along, adds a little on top, throws out the ideological constraint, and achieves great market success! And Debian is great. We might take it for granted now, but 2 decades ago while everyone else was fiddling with their own package dependencies with RPM (pre-Yum) Debian had amazing package management with builds for all sorts of amazing architectures. They were leaders both in thought and execution. I tried (but failed) to influence an employer to invest more in Debian; instead they went with SuSe which eventually caused a few small problems. Now Debian & Ubuntu are booming.
- smcl 6y ago
  The problem is that they aren't very clear about what you might be missing with the standard Debian image you get when you click the big "Getting Debian" link at the top of their homepage. I imagine that many people such as yourself were put off by the fact that they downloaded Debian and thought it was crippled out of the box. They do provide "nonfree" install media which include firmware blobs that many people need to get their wifi up - https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in.... But it's not easy to get there (I google "Debian nonfree") and it has "unofficial" in the URL which I imagine doesn't help things either. I understand that Ubuntu is meant to be the user-friendly Debian-based distro and that Debian is meant to be Free Software first and foremost. I just wish that this nonfree install image was a bit more official and easier for users to discover. edit: oops, I should refresh before hitting "reply" I didn't see the other answer

unixhero 6y ago

Which Linux distrib do you prefer?

mrslave 6y ago
Good question without an easy answer. I was a long-term Gentoo user but recently dumped it for NixOS. Colleagues were pushing it and so far I'm happy. Much less compiling and manual configuration which is what was driving me crazy about Gentoo. It took rather little effort to get the system in a state that feels very comfortable. But my needs have changed over time too, so this isn't strictly my opinion on what is best. More than a decade ago a programmer friend got Ubuntu running on a second hand desktop for a rather computer illiterate arts & letters student. He was able to navigate the GUI like any other system, and it had Firefox, OpenOffice, and mplayer. I knew then that Linux is a perfectly fine desktop OS. And now we're back to using Debian of a sort. ;-)

lloydatkinson 6y ago

> I also haven't used Debian since. I stopped using Debian when its ridiculous "free" purely ideological approach to software actually caused me issues. I needed to install Debian on a relatively old laptop a few years ago. It had all "mainstream" hardware. It's WiFi adapter was an Intel one (and a very common/popular one at the time), but it was one that wasn't open source. How did Debian approach this? It's installer gave me a not very subtle passive aggressive message telling me that although they have the drivers for the device, it was not going to install them... because the ISO did not include them. With no working WiFi, it of course could not connect to the internet to download them! Worse still, turns out that even if it had connected to the internet it wouldn't have downloaded and installed them anyway. I found this out because I managed to use an Ethernet connection. Completely stupid and frustrating and it felt like I was being blamed as if it was my fault. Installed Ubuntu, included the drivers, connected to WiFi during the installation. I have not used Debian on anything since.

DJHenk 6y ago
You might already know this, but there are Debian versions that address this situation: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images... I like it that that try to focus on a completely free version, as that is what they stand for and why a lot of people respect them, while at the same time being realistic about the real world problems that people face.
- mrslave 6y ago
  It is funny though. Debian builds a great product with an unpopular/impractical ideology (not a judgement). Ubuntu comes along, adds a little on top, throws out the ideological constraint, and achieves great market success! And Debian is great. We might take it for granted now, but 2 decades ago while everyone else was fiddling with their own package dependencies with RPM (pre-Yum) Debian had amazing package management with builds for all sorts of amazing architectures. They were leaders both in thought and execution. I tried (but failed) to influence an employer to invest more in Debian; instead they went with SuSe which eventually caused a few small problems. Now Debian & Ubuntu are booming.
smcl 6y ago
The problem is that they aren't very clear about what you might be missing with the standard Debian image you get when you click the big "Getting Debian" link at the top of their homepage. I imagine that many people such as yourself were put off by the fact that they downloaded Debian and thought it was crippled out of the box. They do provide "nonfree" install media which include firmware blobs that many people need to get their wifi up - https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in.... But it's not easy to get there (I google "Debian nonfree") and it has "unofficial" in the URL which I imagine doesn't help things either. I understand that Ubuntu is meant to be the user-friendly Debian-based distro and that Debian is meant to be Free Software first and foremost. I just wish that this nonfree install image was a bit more official and easier for users to discover. edit: oops, I should refresh before hitting "reply" I didn't see the other answer