5 ms·

Yes, this is exactly why I don't run any of this crap on my distro. No dbus, no polkit, no systemd, nothing. Computer security is already enough of a nightmare

Yes, this is exactly why I don't run any of this crap on my distro. No dbus, no polkit, no systemd, nothing. Computer security is already enough of a nightmare without all this crap added on and linked in to everything.

400thecat 5y ago
I also have my system without polkit and without systemd. But how do you get rid of dbus? It seems to be needed for many GUI applications
- skeptical1 5y ago
  Some programs can be configured to run without it. Others require patching to remove it. Some patches are trivial, others not so much. I've done a lot of patching, with still more required to get other applications running that I want to use. At some point I'm planning to build a "dummy" dbus library that can be linked against but actually does nothing at all, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
crazy_hombre 5y ago
Oh no, an application has bugs. Must get rid of it!
- skeptical1 5y ago
  Has bugs, is way too complex for the given functionality, and is completely unneeded in the first place--yes, get rid of the damn thing. Unless of course you enjoy getting "your" system OWNED and dominated by bad actors. My custom distro beats the brakes off junkware like Ubuntu and (lol) Windows in startup time and responsiveness, and has all of the functionality I need, with half the code and as a result much fewer gaping security holes. Computer security is an absolute nightmare these days. Intelligent people should be simplifying things and stripping everything down to the bare minimum, instead of stacking more crud on top of endless crud. Those who fail to SECURE their systems and workflows will one day in the near future be surprised as shit to find that the entire "cloud" has been hacked and destroyed by worms and their system trashed right along with it. At that time, the world will be divided into two camps: computer owners (me and my kind) and non computer owners (everyone else.)
  - palmetieri2000 5y ago
    Regardless of how genius your distro is this reeks of self importance and arrogance to an almost satirical level.
    - skeptical1 5y ago
      Who cares? If you don't take computer security seriously, you won't be computing much longer. Before it's over with, mine will be the only opinion still in existence. It's called "natural selection."
  - chaxor 5y ago
    You don't have Firefox or any browser? How are you posting? W3m? I would imagine that these have an enormous amount of bugs and security issues if parts of basic Linux programs are riddled enough with them by your standards.
    - skeptical1 5y ago
      You seem to have expertly missed the point.
  - throwawaysysd 5y ago
    >is way too complex for the given functionality, and is completely unneeded in the first place--yes, get rid of the damn thing. Unless of course you enjoy getting "your" system OWNED and dominated by bad actors. This is a rather nonsense statement. Polkit (or something like it) is needed if you want to have those macOS-style "program A wants to have permission to access privileged resource B" security prompts in the GUI. It's about as complicated as any similar solution needs to be for that use case. Perhaps you find these to be annoying and you disable them so they always succeed, but with that you've effectively given every program permanent suid root access. Definitely simpler, but can you say it's less of a security nightmare? I wouldn't. Yes there are risks of vulnerabilities in any security layer, but without them you've got no security layer at all.
    - 5y ago
- foxfluff 5y ago
  That's worked pretty well e.g. for OpenBSD. Their code isn't perfect, but they've evaded lots of bullets simply by removing things they don't deem necessary. I think I've evaded many bullets exactly the same way. More code and more complexity -> more bugs, more holes. It's pretty simple.
emptybottle 5y ago
Me too, the only process I run is init. I don’t even mount a root filesystem. Can’t root without a root is what I always say! /s

400thecat 5y ago

I also have my system without polkit and without systemd. But how do you get rid of dbus? It seems to be needed for many GUI applications

skeptical1 5y ago
Some programs can be configured to run without it. Others require patching to remove it. Some patches are trivial, others not so much. I've done a lot of patching, with still more required to get other applications running that I want to use. At some point I'm planning to build a "dummy" dbus library that can be linked against but actually does nothing at all, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

crazy_hombre 5y ago

Oh no, an application has bugs. Must get rid of it!

skeptical1 5y ago
Has bugs, is way too complex for the given functionality, and is completely unneeded in the first place--yes, get rid of the damn thing. Unless of course you enjoy getting "your" system OWNED and dominated by bad actors. My custom distro beats the brakes off junkware like Ubuntu and (lol) Windows in startup time and responsiveness, and has all of the functionality I need, with half the code and as a result much fewer gaping security holes. Computer security is an absolute nightmare these days. Intelligent people should be simplifying things and stripping everything down to the bare minimum, instead of stacking more crud on top of endless crud. Those who fail to SECURE their systems and workflows will one day in the near future be surprised as shit to find that the entire "cloud" has been hacked and destroyed by worms and their system trashed right along with it. At that time, the world will be divided into two camps: computer owners (me and my kind) and non computer owners (everyone else.)
- palmetieri2000 5y ago
  Regardless of how genius your distro is this reeks of self importance and arrogance to an almost satirical level.
  - skeptical1 5y ago
    Who cares? If you don't take computer security seriously, you won't be computing much longer. Before it's over with, mine will be the only opinion still in existence. It's called "natural selection."
- chaxor 5y ago
  You don't have Firefox or any browser? How are you posting? W3m? I would imagine that these have an enormous amount of bugs and security issues if parts of basic Linux programs are riddled enough with them by your standards.
  - skeptical1 5y ago
    You seem to have expertly missed the point.
- throwawaysysd 5y ago
  >is way too complex for the given functionality, and is completely unneeded in the first place--yes, get rid of the damn thing. Unless of course you enjoy getting "your" system OWNED and dominated by bad actors. This is a rather nonsense statement. Polkit (or something like it) is needed if you want to have those macOS-style "program A wants to have permission to access privileged resource B" security prompts in the GUI. It's about as complicated as any similar solution needs to be for that use case. Perhaps you find these to be annoying and you disable them so they always succeed, but with that you've effectively given every program permanent suid root access. Definitely simpler, but can you say it's less of a security nightmare? I wouldn't. Yes there are risks of vulnerabilities in any security layer, but without them you've got no security layer at all.
  - 5y ago
foxfluff 5y ago
That's worked pretty well e.g. for OpenBSD. Their code isn't perfect, but they've evaded lots of bullets simply by removing things they don't deem necessary. I think I've evaded many bullets exactly the same way. More code and more complexity -> more bugs, more holes. It's pretty simple.

emptybottle 5y ago

Me too, the only process I run is init. I don’t even mount a root filesystem. Can’t root without a root is what I always say! /s