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Comment by AsyncAwait | Hacker News Reader

The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies.

Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.

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This is exactly the problem. You can buy Windows 10 machine and if it becomes vulnerable it's Microsoft's fault and you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. If default Linux desktop is insecure then consumer is supposed to figure out what exactly is insecure, be expert in knowing the alternatives and how to replace everything. The question isn't whether Linux desktop can be made more secure but rather why isn't it secure by default?

> you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life.

Not only do you get security updates for your distro with the vast majority of Linux distros, but you also get it for all your 3rd party software, using the same system mechanism.

They may not push the updates automatically, (you can of course set it that way), but some of us still want to be in control of what gets installed on our machines

That's not to say it can't be improved, but the situation isn't quite as bad as you are painting it, ie there are mainstream distros that come hardened by default and security patches are regularly backported.

I'd argue that macOS is also technologically less secure than modern Windows, yet its users are in no more danger than Windows users are, (despite its theoretically security), because security depends on a lot of factors including the user culture, market share etc. i.e. Linux doesn't have a culture of downloading executables from random websites for one.

I'd guess most distributions feel like they're providing an adequate level of protection for their users as of now, without introducing too much friction. Once that is no longer the case, it's easy to turn on a few more knobs, the software is already there.

The 3rd party software is huge problem, actually. When you do apt-get or install using Ubuntu App Store it gives a false sense of security to novice user that things are safe. This is even more problematic because there are so many things one needs to download on default desktop to be on par with default Windows. The File Manager UI, for example, lacks too many features and user must investigate alternatives and either assume that everything is all right or deeply examine security vulnerabilities for each available option. Same goes for basic things like text editor or calculator and so on.

> it gives a false sense of security

Why is getting the latest security updates giving a false sense of security exactly?

> The File Manager UI, for example, lacks too many features and user must investigate alternatives and either assume that everything is all right or deeply examine security vulnerabilities for each available option. Same goes for basic things like text editor or calculator and so on.

This is where you're being unfair, the notion that the default file manager is not good enough is subjective, it is plenty good for most people.

(Finder for macOS also lacks many features, yet many people never bother with alternatives).

Moreover, if you do need to find a replacement, if it is in the official repos, it probably means it is popular enough to be solid.

As for things like an editor,, are you telling me that Notepad is more featured than gedit?

> Why is getting the latest security updates giving a false sense of security exactly?

Because in quite a few distributions you don't get security updates reliably. For example Debian Stable excludes most WebKit-based libraries from their update policy.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/c...

So users of browsers like Midori and Epiphany or E-Mail-Clients like Evolution on Debian Stable, currently end up using a WebKit library that hasn't been updated in more than a year.

The same issue applies to Ubuntu and most of its derivatives as well. E.g. Ubuntu 14.04 users get a WebKitGTK+ library which hasn't been updated in almost a year.

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/w/webkitgt...

Of course, the user doesn't get a warning dialog when he installs applications which rely on those outdated and insecure libraries.

Ubuntu users also shouldn't rely on packages from the Universe repository (which are by far the most packages), if they care about security. Those packages are community maintained and often don't get a single update in years. In the past they didn't even update Chromium reliably.

This is why I think Rolling Release is the only viable model of Linux distribution in desktops. Instead of overloading a team of security experts expecting them to backport every security change to the stable version of a package, they simply follow upstream releases, build it and make sure that isn't horrible broken (however, they can't be sure that the upgrade path is seamless for every possible configuration).

BTW, it is possible to check in Ubuntu which packages are supported or not: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/check-suppor...

You. Are. Not. Supposed. To. Install. Debian. Stable. On. A. Desktop. Machine.

How many times will this have to be repeated? Stable is for servers. If you're running webkit based libraries on your server you have other issues. For desktops, both Testing and Unstable are the valid options.

that's like ... your opinion. the way you try tu make it look as if it's a widely accepted best practice among Debian users is not cool. Debian stable is a perfectly viable distribution for desktop use.

Except... it is? Having spoken with quite a few people on #debian, hell, even a simple google search agrees with that. Don't use stable unless you have a very old machine. Using stable brings you... stability and three years old packages. Using testing brings you stability and six months old packages. Using unstable brings you stability and sometimes fun things and one week old packages. For the Personal Anecdote Bonus Points, even sysadmin friends that swear by stable would tell me to use testing for a desktop distro.

People over #debian or your sysadmin friends are entitled to their own opinions and not representative of Debian users other than themselves, and for every random recommendation for not using stable you can find another random one about dangers of using testing or unstable.

If you check the Debian web site you'll see stable is the only one which is offically supported and recommended by the project and there is no distinction for "server" or "desktop" use cases. Had stable was non-suitable as a desktop OS you can be sure Debian developers wouldn't bother releasing and supporting thousands of desktop/graphical packages with the stable release.

In the end stable, testing and unstable have all their pros and cons, strong and weak areas and some are more suitable for some use cases. That Debian stable is only for servers and it is not a good desktop OS is a myth that needs to die. Stable is a damn fine desktop OS. Everyone is free to use whatever they deemed best for their use but when you post blanket statements like "You. Are. Not. Supposed. To. Install. Debian. Stable. On. A. Desktop. Machine." and "Stable is for servers" on a public forum you are spreading misinformation and you should just stop.

My actual experience of post release vulnerability patching is that Desktop Linux will provide the required update in a timely manner and it will be installed transparently through system update. The user often doesn't even notice there was a vulnerability in the first place. On par with windows update though a bit less intrusive and annoying.

Linux Desktop is not secure by default for the same reason Secure Linux does not offer the best desktop experience: more secure means less convenient. Desktop Linux aims at being convenient.

Also keep in mind, we are comparing a single Microsoft OS to a variety of Linux distros each with its own default. it would make more sense to compare all of those individually to see how they fit to a couple standard threat models. Then put them through a week of everyday use by a not knowing better user and see how much damage the different OS sustain.

Sure, extremely motivated individuals or governments might do that. But I'd still rate a distribution by it's default security settings. Being secure by default is important if you are shipping to thousands of users.

Fedora comes with SELinux enabled by default, and is working towards more interesting sandboxing stuff for the future too.

Ubuntu comes with AppArmor enabled by default [1]. Unfortunately its service will terminate at startup due to missing profiles [2]. This shows how much QA goes into security related stuff in a distro of this size.

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[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor

[2] sudo apt install apparmor-profiles-extra

Unfortunately, while SELinux itself is good, the tooling around it has to be the most atrocious, useless steaming pile of thrash in this niche. From setroubleshootd randomly deciding to eat up 100% of CPU time (and no one being able to explain exactly what it does) to the endless fun of figuring out what policycoreutils-python & friends do and how, actually doing something useful with it is somewhere between "painful" and "frustrating". If Microsoft had published something like this, they'd have been the laughing stock of the whole Linux community.

I don't know anyone in my immediate circle of peers - not even people who use SELinux on servers or in products that they develop - who doesn't disable SELinux on their desktop. They're not idiots, either, nor re-booted Windows programmers that the IoT and DevOps craze has thrown into the Linux world, many of us have been using Linux since back when there was no E in RHEL.

Oh yes, SElinux tooling is an abomination.

I feel like there should be a way to write a new set of simplified tooling on top of the kernel API.

I've been running fedora at home an on my laptop for about a year now, and don't need to turn SElinux off. I only needed to add one custom role myself too, when trying to mount certain host directories as volumes in docker. Which is fair enough.

Where's a good place to get a general guide on every day desktop use of SELinux, PaX, etc?

I'd look into Fedora and Arch Linux documentation/wiki.

Arch wiki is a goldmine: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security

One of the slides also mentioned at what point each distro introduced ASLR (ie. it might be worth upgrading your Ubuntu to 16.10 if you're on an older one)

Windows still has better protection of credentials, it can be better protected against DMA attacks and has quite a few other tricks under its belt.

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