Posted on 03/09/2021 3:51:00 AM PST by ShadowAce
Tech Ping
Nothing is secure if a user decides to open a malicious email or email attachment. This goes for Linux.
Did you read the article?
Sorry.
This is also true for most operating systems, whether they be Linux, Apple, Microsoft or Android.
Agreed. You can set up a very secure system, but then with one momentarily lapse in judgment and a single action it can be compromised.
Secure, yes, by a mile.
Useful for things other than the most simple of desktop tasks, no.
Not the fault of Linux, per se. but without decent apps, it’s not really useful for anyone actually doing work on a PC.
Commercial app developers need to get on board.
You never see a commercial-grade office suite, many AAA or indie Games, a content-creation suite (graphics, music or publishing) or a professional development suite on Linux. Just a bunch of hideously difficult to use broken open-source alternatives.
I fault the developers, but with 1.8% of the market, why bother?
I manage a multi-site datacenter with thousands of servers from my linux desktop.
So I think I'll have to disagree with you on this.
You obviously have not been looking very hard then.
I think the article did a pretty good job explaining a bit of the “what”, but I think it buried the lede toward the end by mentioning that the system is only as secure as the admins make it.
*nix has historically been more secure as a baseline OS family because of the amount of consciousness that an administrator has had to explicitly pay to security, and the general skill levels needed to work as a unix or linux sysadmin compared to a windows sysadmin. I’m not totally sure that remains the case today, not because linux has gotten weaker, but because windows has tightened up and gotten more complicated to administer. (Does anyone remember the NT license cards that you’d buy to add new users to a network? It was just a piece of cardstock wrapped in plastic that cost something like $99 and when you opened it up it said “you have a license, now go into this setting and click the number of users to add one”.)
I suspect things are trending in the opposite direction though as more and more data is hosted by third parties like AWS and Azure. The concept of “yours” isn’t the same anymore. Ownership and boundaries are blurred (in a way, on purpose. Makes it easier for big tech to keep someone paying for their own stuff if they think they don’t actually own it). Even if the big cloud providers have dedicated teams to monitor security and develop countermeasures to threats, it only takes one slip up to blow the whole thing apart for everyone.
Yes, we can all agree that the user/admin/person at the keyboard is integral to security of any system, and that any bad decision will compromise any system.
However, this article is about the baseline being set--what that user/admin has to work with, and the design decisions made for the OS.
IOW, given the same user/admin, Linux is more secure than most, and has the ability to *be* more secure than most.
That is not counting the billions of devices running Android, which is in fact Linux.
This was the discussion at a company I worked for in the 1990s. Our products were on OS/2. Our offices were a mix of unix, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Mac. To get a document that from one person to the next in a usable format was difficult. The engineers loved OS/2. Greatest OS ever for the time but they couldn’t use it for actual work unless they were in emulation mode. The lack of usable business applications made it wither and die. Developers for Linux and other OSs will have to figure out how to overcome that. You are right about why bother with such a small base.
I work exclusively on a Linux desktop. No emulation involved for any task.
I can communicate with all of my co-workers, management, users, and customers without any issues whatsoever. This includes documents, spreadsheets, video meetings, e-mail, shared storage space, etc.
I am much more productive than those employees who insist on using a Windows desktop to do the same job I do.
I love Linux for a majority of workloads, but it is consistently the first OS hacked at every annual Black Hat conference. It may be ubiquitous, but most admins don’t understand how to configure it securely, esp. Apache.
If you’re using it in your home environment, make sure you know what you’re doing. So many folks on FR claim how superior their home user experience is over Windows, but are you really sure you’ve configured your Linux distro for security?
Two words: Patch Tuesday.
In order of Least Secure to Most Secure:
1. Android
2. Windows
3. Apple (iOS)
4. Linux (Desktop/Server
5. Apple OS
In the case of Android and Windows, it certainly doesn't help when the core OS has numerous security holes that require constant patching. "Patch Tuesday" has been the drill for years with Microsoft's Operating Systems. Win95, Win98, Win2k, WinXP, Win7, Win8 may have had nice GUI's however the underlying security of these OS' frankly speaking: SUCKED. The amount of security infrastructure required to protect them which included Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware, Firewalls, Network Segmentation, etc.. remains a huge cost component of providing a desktop to users in companies/enterprises globally.
I'm not even going to "go there" with Android as I have one and refuse to do any sensitive transactions on it. I don't use it for online banking, checking balances, sending any sort of financial information or doing sensitive work with it, period. It's convenient for non-sensitive email, web browsing, SMS Messaging, a camera and music streaming. That's all I'll use mine for.
iOS isn't much better than Android, IMO. I stopped using my iPad two+ years ago now so I may be wrong and am willing to change my opinion.
That leaves us with Linux and Apple's OS. Both of which one has to be a complete dunderhead to mis-configure and leave open for hacking because of the amount of information that's widely available via video tutorials, online manuals, help forums, etc.. that are in easily comprehensible language.
After having used Windows Server and Desktop OS' for my entire career and Linux for the past 20, I dumped Windows for Linux exclusively at home. I was at the point I wouldn't even do my online banking on a Windows VM that I'd only start-up and shut down for that specific purpose because of all the security issues with it. I'm much more comfortable doing so with Linux.
Yes, now days you can. Back in the 90s it was not so easy, at least the way the company had things setup.
Linux is great in concept but the egghead’s putting together the distributions make some huge rookie mistakes and this is one of them.
No one should have to go hunt down and close a bunch of doors that got left open during an install.
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