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My problem with this argument is that my user data is by far the most valuable thing on my computer. Almost nothing that gets protected by “root” really matters

My problem with this argument is that my user data is by far the most valuable thing on my computer. Almost nothing that gets protected by “root” really matters much. What I really want is a way to protect all my user data from rogue programs, but I have no way to do that on modern computers. Any program I run with my regular user account can steal or delete all of my data already. When my data is so trivially at risk, who cares if a bad program can also wipe my OS or something? I can reinstall Linux. I can’t get my data back if someone steals it.

j0057 1y ago
macOS does ask you if you want to allow a program to access your files in $HOME. Not sure if it's a perfect solution, but still, it's something. As a more additive approach than just giving up and running everything as root, I think in Linux you could do the same with (a fair amount of effort and) SELinux or AppArmor.
anthk 1y ago
Check Fedora Silveblue, or Kinoite (or the Budgie edition) if you don't like neither KDE nor Gnome. Inmutable OS, it can be set to a rolling channel to get daily updates, you can rollback it from GRUB in case of disasters and, even better, everything non-desktop environment based it's installed from Flatpak and containerized.
ndriscoll 1y ago
That's why you run programs as different users. Background services like nginx or jellyfin get their own users. Have a separate `games` user if you play video games. If you're going to mess with untrustworthy code, make another user first. Don't give world permissions to your home directory.
- josephg 1y ago
  That might help if nginx has a security vulnerability. But what about all the programs I run as a user? Nobody runs their IDE or “npm install” under separate user accounts. Nor should we have to in order to prevent a package from interacting with my filesystem outside of the project directory.
fsflover 1y ago
> What I really want is a way to protect all my user data from rogue programs, but I have no way to do that on modern computers This is exactly why Qubes OS was created: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.

j0057 1y ago

macOS does ask you if you want to allow a program to access your files in $HOME. Not sure if it's a perfect solution, but still, it's something. As a more additive approach than just giving up and running everything as root, I think in Linux you could do the same with (a fair amount of effort and) SELinux or AppArmor.

anthk 1y ago

Check Fedora Silveblue, or Kinoite (or the Budgie edition) if you don't like neither KDE nor Gnome. Inmutable OS, it can be set to a rolling channel to get daily updates, you can rollback it from GRUB in case of disasters and, even better, everything non-desktop environment based it's installed from Flatpak and containerized.

ndriscoll 1y ago

That's why you run programs as different users. Background services like nginx or jellyfin get their own users. Have a separate `games` user if you play video games. If you're going to mess with untrustworthy code, make another user first. Don't give world permissions to your home directory.

josephg 1y ago
That might help if nginx has a security vulnerability. But what about all the programs I run as a user? Nobody runs their IDE or “npm install” under separate user accounts. Nor should we have to in order to prevent a package from interacting with my filesystem outside of the project directory.

fsflover 1y ago

> What I really want is a way to protect all my user data from rogue programs, but I have no way to do that on modern computers This is exactly why Qubes OS was created: https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.