4 ms·

Is it multi-user?

orionblastar 5y ago
Not yet, like the Amiga there is no login. It is still in beta and needs hard drive encryption as well.
rvense 5y ago
I don't know the details about Haiku, but at the end of its life, BeOS had some kind of multiuser support, in that the OS was aware of UNIX-like permissions in the filesystem (and for processes I think). But there was no GUI for logging in, so you were always root. It was meant for single-user workstations. Not having multiple users was not really a problem, except that it made (makes) some people look down their noses. In this day and age, the main security issue on my workstation is that I all applications - including the browser that downloads a bunch of untrusted code and runs it willy-nilly - run as the same user that owns all my important files. I'm a lot more concerned about what's in my home directory than anything under /usr! So if and when Haiku adds security measures to isolate applications from each other, I would prefer they looked at some kind of sandboxing to isolate every app from each other, rather than just copying the basic UNIX model, which does basically nothing for the problems people actually have. (OK, if you need to share a computer which another person you can't have separate settings and browser histories etc., but.. I don't know if that's really such a big deal that it needs to be tackled before the other one)
- rzzzt 5y ago
  > you were always root baron :)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
What is the virtue of a multi-user desktop? There are vanishingly few use cases for such a beast.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  I think most people with SOs or families see the benefit of having each user of a shared computer having their own user account.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    1) We used to share desktops with family before multi-user was a thing desktops did. 2) With smartphones and tablets and the like providing most of the functionality that people once shared a desktop for (web browsing really), there seems little reason to share one anymore. 3) I think having multiple user profiles one could switch between would cover almost any remaining use cases without the complication of multi-user in the kernel itself.
    - em-bee 5y ago
      for a usable multi-user system it is necessary to be able to protect files from other users. a simple profile is not enough. fortunately haiku does have multi-user support in the kernel, it's just not implemented in the GUI yet.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > for a usable multi-user system it is necessary to be able to protect files from other users. a simple profile is not enough. That is what encryption is for. The big difference of course being that encryption is not one privilege escalation or boot disk away from being completely useless.
        em-bee 5y ago
        ok, so if we don't have multi-user support in the kernel, but instead implement it only as a layer in the GUI, each user gets a partition or disk image that is encrypted as their home directory that is mounted on login. the file/partition is protected against deletion. i suppose that could work, but i see a few downsides to this approach: all processes run in the same space. if i want to run a process in the background my home directory has to be remain mounted, and thus potentially be exposed to the next user. or i'd have to create a second partition for this special process which only an experienced power user would do. so while i think this approach is possible, it doesn't look like it would make anything easier. on the contrary. the emergence of hostile apps on android demonstrates that privilege separation of processes is becoming more and more important. the current multi-user approach is not good enough even for that. but instead of simplifying multi-user support to a single user, we actually need to make it more complex to properly handle multi-user-per-process separation.

Is it multi-user?

Not yet, like the Amiga there is no login. It is still in beta and needs hard drive encryption as well.

I don't know the details about Haiku, but at the end of its life, BeOS had some kind of multiuser support, in that the OS was aware of UNIX-like permissions in the filesystem (and for processes I think). But there was no GUI for logging in, so you were always root. It was meant for single-user workstations. Not having multiple users was not really a problem, except that it made (makes) some people look down their noses. In this day and age, the main security issue on my workstation is that I all applications - including the browser that downloads a bunch of untrusted code and runs it willy-nilly - run as the same user that owns all my important files. I'm a lot more concerned about what's in my home directory than anything under /usr! So if and when Haiku adds security measures to isolate applications from each other, I would prefer they looked at some kind of sandboxing to isolate every app from each other, rather than just copying the basic UNIX model, which does basically nothing for the problems people actually have. (OK, if you need to share a computer which another person you can't have separate settings and browser histories etc., but.. I don't know if that's really such a big deal that it needs to be tackled before the other one)

rzzzt 5y ago
> you were always root baron :)

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

What is the virtue of a multi-user desktop? There are vanishingly few use cases for such a beast.

jhbadger 5y ago
I think most people with SOs or families see the benefit of having each user of a shared computer having their own user account.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  1) We used to share desktops with family before multi-user was a thing desktops did. 2) With smartphones and tablets and the like providing most of the functionality that people once shared a desktop for (web browsing really), there seems little reason to share one anymore. 3) I think having multiple user profiles one could switch between would cover almost any remaining use cases without the complication of multi-user in the kernel itself.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    for a usable multi-user system it is necessary to be able to protect files from other users. a simple profile is not enough. fortunately haiku does have multi-user support in the kernel, it's just not implemented in the GUI yet.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > for a usable multi-user system it is necessary to be able to protect files from other users. a simple profile is not enough. That is what encryption is for. The big difference of course being that encryption is not one privilege escalation or boot disk away from being completely useless.
      - em-bee 5y ago
        ok, so if we don't have multi-user support in the kernel, but instead implement it only as a layer in the GUI, each user gets a partition or disk image that is encrypted as their home directory that is mounted on login. the file/partition is protected against deletion. i suppose that could work, but i see a few downsides to this approach: all processes run in the same space. if i want to run a process in the background my home directory has to be remain mounted, and thus potentially be exposed to the next user. or i'd have to create a second partition for this special process which only an experienced power user would do. so while i think this approach is possible, it doesn't look like it would make anything easier. on the contrary. the emergence of hostile apps on android demonstrates that privilege separation of processes is becoming more and more important. the current multi-user approach is not good enough even for that. but instead of simplifying multi-user support to a single user, we actually need to make it more complex to properly handle multi-user-per-process separation.