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I'm a fan of Linux and a fan of ChromeOS. but are the user experience and security better on ChromeOS than Linux? It's a bit simpler than linux but I'd say Lin

I'm a fan of Linux and a fan of ChromeOS. but are the user experience and security better on ChromeOS than Linux? It's a bit simpler than linux but I'd say Linux is a close second.

kelnos 4y ago
I expect that the user experience and security are better on ChromeOS. But that depends on who you're trying to secure against. I'm not particularly worried about state-level actors or even garden-variety malware. But I am worried about surveillance capitalism, and that's what Google has built its business around. So I would not trust ChromeOS to be secure against Google. (Having said that, I still haven't been able to completely wean myself off Google services, so Google already has plenty of data on me, and gathers more every day.)
TingPing 4y ago
No they don't compare at all. ChromeOS is highly sandboxed and limited in a way desktop Linux can hardly do with normal apps.
cowmoo728 4y ago
I can't hand my non-technical family member a Linux device and expect it still work a week later without any intervention.
- Self-Perfection 4y ago
  Do you have an example what might go wrong? I cannot imagine how can one mess up desktop Linux system without root privileges. Totally fill up the storage maybe?
  - aembleton 4y ago
    Delete .config
    - pjerem 4y ago
      Why would they delete files they cannot see without opting to see them ?
      - aembleton 4y ago
        Because they hit ctrl+h instead of ctrl+v by accident once.
  - _nalply 4y ago
    They go to a shady website telling them to open a terminal and entering `sudo rm -fr /`, and you got unlucky that they entered the same password they used when logging in. But! It's your fault! They shouldn't be able to sudo! But that's the point. If they couldn't sudo, they could do something else as disastrous. It is difficult to secure a Linux system if the user is allowed to log in. If I needed to give someone access, I just would give him a freshly installed Linux virtual system, and if he deleted something important, it's his problem, not mine.
    - PlqnK 4y ago
      Without sudo privileges the worst they can do is nuke their own home directory, nothing else because that's the only path where they have write access.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I installed Linux to a number of people, mostly over 50, some over 70. All of them but one kept using it, and the one who went back to Windows was forced because of an application he had at work whose copy protection made it impossible to run it under WINE. That was some years ago, with Linux desktop less advanced than it is now, and before the Windows GUI experience reached its lowest with Win 8 and beyond. If you spend some time configuring the OS, Linux is actually much easier and safe to use than Windows for a series of often overlooked reasons: 1- Application installation and removal is centralized: you fire up the distribution package manager and can install almost all software, including lots of 3rd party, using the same interface; no need to wander around the net with the risk of landing on a malicious page disguised as a download site. 2- Drivers are built at kernel level and nearly all of them are already included: if you buy a new device, chances are that besides not having to insert any drivers CD, they are already included in the distribution. 3- Hardware support doesn't come with added bloatware: say, you connect the new printer and can safely ignore the accompanying CD or their manufacturer's site downloads, which usually will attempt to make you download crippled version of commercial products and other junk along the drivers. Under Linux you use the supplied applications with all hardware of that class. etc. Some 20 years ago I was working at a company operating in the sports betting field; we had abut 50 points of sale deployed all over the country and my assignment was to find a way to allow each remote point of sale to work in the safest possible way, no distractions and including remote support on demand. All of this of course in the cheapest possible way. The best thing about working in a small company is that sometimes you can earn the freedom of choosing the rope to hang yourself with: I'm not interested in the betting world, but that problem was intriguing, and I had carte blanche. The solution I came up with after some fiddling was a RedHat distro plus WindowMaker "desktop" with a restricted launcher whose dockapps allowed the operator to check/write emails, file for a remote support connection, open StarOffice and a couple other things I don't recall. The system was essentially in kiosk mode, with the browser set so that it would open fullscreen to operate only on the company webpage. I had to write the scripts to file for remote support since all the points of sale had dynamic IPs which could change by the time we could reach them, therefore the connection had to be the other way around. I solved this by using a remote "pinger" written in Ruby that would periodically send some data about the remote station, so we immediately had the who+where data pair, and a receiving Ruby application on our side would populate a GTK list (I used Glade and Anjuta iirc) with the stations that asked for intervention. As soon as a local operator clicked on one element, a reverse ssh tunnel was opened and we had the remote shell ready. To my memory that contraption never failed; with very slow connections (~2002, so 1 Mbit down/ 128Kbit up when we were lucky) luxuries such as VNC were out of question. 50 points of sales could be easily managed by a single operator. Of course I'm not suggesting to turn every Linux PC in a tight closed terminal that does 3 things only. My point is that you can effectively turn a Linux desktop into something that non tech people can work without troubles, but that doesn't come out of the box, as it doesn't with Windows: you can have everything from a dumbed down terminal that couldn't be crashed by a colony of cats walking on the keyboard for a week, to something so advanced and full of knobs that you can literally do everything, including shooting yourself in the foot. Some work is needed though.
kweingar 4y ago
(Disclaimer: I work on ChromeOS at Google) I would let anyone, even a total stranger, use my Chromebook in guest mode without a second thought (as long as I am reasonably sure they won’t steal it, break it, or disassemble it).
- wyldfire 4y ago
  I guess in practice this doesn't come up often. but it's a powerful testament to your confidence in ChromeOS' security. You are implying that you don't feel the same way about a Linux user guest login. But why? What additional security measures are present in ChromeOS that are missing from popular Linux distros? I don't doubt the features are there, I'm genuinely curious what they are.
  - kweingar 4y ago
    You can harden and configure a Linux system to have many of the ChromeOS security features, but ChromeOS has all of these enabled by default: - All user data is encrypted at the login level. A guest user cannot access any other users’ data. Whereas in Ubuntu, for example, home directories have 755 permissions. - The Linux userspace in ChromeOS is actually running on KVM, so ChromeOS itself is insulated from user-installed malware. - Verified boot is huge. It is theoretically impossible for a modification to system-level software to survive a reboot. An attacker would have to modify the hardware too. And even if someone stole your Chromebook and modified the hardware to run malware, your data is still encrypted. If you are interested, a more thorough explanation can be found here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/security/chromeos_security_whitepaper.md#going-beyond-the-browser https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/sec...
    - cmatthias 4y ago
      What if the attacker is the one who built and shipped the OS to begin with? Everything you say is true, but it doesn't matter as long as user data (history, location, etc) is being shipped off to Google. Or, put another way: your threat model is a nefarious hacker or three-letter-agency who might secretly modify your hardware/software to get your data. Mine is surveillance capitalism. ChromeOS is secure under your threat model, but is _built by the attacker_ under mine. Both of these threat models are important to consider, but one is much more relevant to a larger portion of the population than the other.

I'm a fan of Linux and a fan of ChromeOS. but are the user experience and security better on ChromeOS than Linux? It's a bit simpler than linux but I'd say Linux is a close second.

kelnos 4y ago

I expect that the user experience and security are better on ChromeOS. But that depends on who you're trying to secure against. I'm not particularly worried about state-level actors or even garden-variety malware. But I am worried about surveillance capitalism, and that's what Google has built its business around. So I would not trust ChromeOS to be secure against Google. (Having said that, I still haven't been able to completely wean myself off Google services, so Google already has plenty of data on me, and gathers more every day.)

TingPing 4y ago

No they don't compare at all. ChromeOS is highly sandboxed and limited in a way desktop Linux can hardly do with normal apps.

cowmoo728 4y ago

I can't hand my non-technical family member a Linux device and expect it still work a week later without any intervention.

Self-Perfection 4y ago
Do you have an example what might go wrong? I cannot imagine how can one mess up desktop Linux system without root privileges. Totally fill up the storage maybe?
- aembleton 4y ago
  Delete .config
  - pjerem 4y ago
    Why would they delete files they cannot see without opting to see them ?
    - aembleton 4y ago
      Because they hit ctrl+h instead of ctrl+v by accident once.
- _nalply 4y ago
  They go to a shady website telling them to open a terminal and entering `sudo rm -fr /`, and you got unlucky that they entered the same password they used when logging in. But! It's your fault! They shouldn't be able to sudo! But that's the point. If they couldn't sudo, they could do something else as disastrous. It is difficult to secure a Linux system if the user is allowed to log in. If I needed to give someone access, I just would give him a freshly installed Linux virtual system, and if he deleted something important, it's his problem, not mine.
  - PlqnK 4y ago
    Without sudo privileges the worst they can do is nuke their own home directory, nothing else because that's the only path where they have write access.
squarefoot 4y ago
I installed Linux to a number of people, mostly over 50, some over 70. All of them but one kept using it, and the one who went back to Windows was forced because of an application he had at work whose copy protection made it impossible to run it under WINE. That was some years ago, with Linux desktop less advanced than it is now, and before the Windows GUI experience reached its lowest with Win 8 and beyond. If you spend some time configuring the OS, Linux is actually much easier and safe to use than Windows for a series of often overlooked reasons: 1- Application installation and removal is centralized: you fire up the distribution package manager and can install almost all software, including lots of 3rd party, using the same interface; no need to wander around the net with the risk of landing on a malicious page disguised as a download site. 2- Drivers are built at kernel level and nearly all of them are already included: if you buy a new device, chances are that besides not having to insert any drivers CD, they are already included in the distribution. 3- Hardware support doesn't come with added bloatware: say, you connect the new printer and can safely ignore the accompanying CD or their manufacturer's site downloads, which usually will attempt to make you download crippled version of commercial products and other junk along the drivers. Under Linux you use the supplied applications with all hardware of that class. etc. Some 20 years ago I was working at a company operating in the sports betting field; we had abut 50 points of sale deployed all over the country and my assignment was to find a way to allow each remote point of sale to work in the safest possible way, no distractions and including remote support on demand. All of this of course in the cheapest possible way. The best thing about working in a small company is that sometimes you can earn the freedom of choosing the rope to hang yourself with: I'm not interested in the betting world, but that problem was intriguing, and I had carte blanche. The solution I came up with after some fiddling was a RedHat distro plus WindowMaker "desktop" with a restricted launcher whose dockapps allowed the operator to check/write emails, file for a remote support connection, open StarOffice and a couple other things I don't recall. The system was essentially in kiosk mode, with the browser set so that it would open fullscreen to operate only on the company webpage. I had to write the scripts to file for remote support since all the points of sale had dynamic IPs which could change by the time we could reach them, therefore the connection had to be the other way around. I solved this by using a remote "pinger" written in Ruby that would periodically send some data about the remote station, so we immediately had the who+where data pair, and a receiving Ruby application on our side would populate a GTK list (I used Glade and Anjuta iirc) with the stations that asked for intervention. As soon as a local operator clicked on one element, a reverse ssh tunnel was opened and we had the remote shell ready. To my memory that contraption never failed; with very slow connections (~2002, so 1 Mbit down/ 128Kbit up when we were lucky) luxuries such as VNC were out of question. 50 points of sales could be easily managed by a single operator. Of course I'm not suggesting to turn every Linux PC in a tight closed terminal that does 3 things only. My point is that you can effectively turn a Linux desktop into something that non tech people can work without troubles, but that doesn't come out of the box, as it doesn't with Windows: you can have everything from a dumbed down terminal that couldn't be crashed by a colony of cats walking on the keyboard for a week, to something so advanced and full of knobs that you can literally do everything, including shooting yourself in the foot. Some work is needed though.

kweingar 4y ago

(Disclaimer: I work on ChromeOS at Google) I would let anyone, even a total stranger, use my Chromebook in guest mode without a second thought (as long as I am reasonably sure they won’t steal it, break it, or disassemble it).

wyldfire 4y ago
I guess in practice this doesn't come up often. but it's a powerful testament to your confidence in ChromeOS' security. You are implying that you don't feel the same way about a Linux user guest login. But why? What additional security measures are present in ChromeOS that are missing from popular Linux distros? I don't doubt the features are there, I'm genuinely curious what they are.
- kweingar 4y ago
  You can harden and configure a Linux system to have many of the ChromeOS security features, but ChromeOS has all of these enabled by default: - All user data is encrypted at the login level. A guest user cannot access any other users’ data. Whereas in Ubuntu, for example, home directories have 755 permissions. - The Linux userspace in ChromeOS is actually running on KVM, so ChromeOS itself is insulated from user-installed malware. - Verified boot is huge. It is theoretically impossible for a modification to system-level software to survive a reboot. An attacker would have to modify the hardware too. And even if someone stole your Chromebook and modified the hardware to run malware, your data is still encrypted. If you are interested, a more thorough explanation can be found here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/security/chromeos_security_whitepaper.md#going-beyond-the-browser https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/sec...
  - cmatthias 4y ago
    What if the attacker is the one who built and shipped the OS to begin with? Everything you say is true, but it doesn't matter as long as user data (history, location, etc) is being shipped off to Google. Or, put another way: your threat model is a nefarious hacker or three-letter-agency who might secretly modify your hardware/software to get your data. Mine is surveillance capitalism. ChromeOS is secure under your threat model, but is _built by the attacker_ under mine. Both of these threat models are important to consider, but one is much more relevant to a larger portion of the population than the other.