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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

> If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security

This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems with security and privacy in their App Store.

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> This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms.

eyebrows raise to the ceiling

> Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories.

head tilts nearly horizontal with the floor

"Flawlessly" is here being stretched beyond the breaking point, and anyone who is OK with only installing software from the official repos for any major Linux distro is not a "typical user", very obviously.

I've been using Linux exclusively since the mid 90s. I've run so many different variants. I was a attended the church of Slackware for a long time. There has never been a time in my many years of using Linux that anything has been "flawless" and I _definitely_ have to install things "outside the repositories" pretty regularly. Even if that's a broad statement meaning "any type of repository anywhere, including but not limited to git."

Right, I'm struggling to think of a user profile that would be OK with just software from major distro repos.

"Normal" users? They're going to want several proprietary programs, some of which will surely not be in even the non-free repos, unless they're an only-uses-the-browser type who'd be fine with a Chromebook (or, more realistically for that user profile, just their phone).

Power users? I have to assume my experience of often wanting or needing something outside official repos, or a newer version of something in official repos, is far from unusual. I'm not even that demanding a power user, and that's still a very common situation for me. What's worse is the more one chases system stability, the worse this problem becomes, since Linux distros mix the base system and user-facing applications all together (and the structure of x-window-system/wayland/drivers/GTK/QT makes it hard not to do this)

That is because Linux is not used by general public.

Unfortunately you can't even find a Linux computer in shops anywhere, which could be the reason few people use it. It's actually harder to find malware there.

See also: Android is Linux used by the general public.

Funnily, you can find various somewhat-Linux devices in stores mostly, except they're called 'Chromebooks'. This is the same device series that uses Coreboot as a boot loader and usually had an internal screw to remove to disable firmware write protections and fully unlock the device, as well as other visually and auditory (they make a large beep on boot) tamper-evident 'developer unlock' modes. Nowadays instead of the 'unlock screw', there's a mandatory security chip that can be unlocked into a less visibly tamper-evident mode in which it is disabled via a special USB-C cable for sale on the open market with a reference schematic available as well, which is a much more fun solution to assert physical access. [1]

Many older models also would run mainline Linux fine, and the default Chrome OS install usually has a container and a Wayland to Chrome adapter behind a toggle.

[1]: https://unrelenting.technology/articles/FreeBSD-and-custom-f...

I don’t think it’s relevant for the general public.

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