Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Linux (In)security - Article arguing that Linux isn't as secure as people claim. Thoughts? (madaidans-insecurities.github.io)

submitted 3 years ago by MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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[–] brombek@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Yeah, would be nice to have some of the mitigations in Linux but in practice these are not needed when you don't run malware on your system by default and keep the attack surface small. And if you do run malware or have the system full of crazy bloat (just look at the MSHTML exploit) then no amount of sandboxing or hardening is going to help you.

[–] MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I think this has worked till now because:

Linux's user base is small, so it isn't a very attractive to malware developers.
Linux's userbase is mostly tech savvy people, who don't do stupid stuff.

But the question is, does it scale up if Linux became mainstream and popular among the tech illiterate?

[–] Helix@feddit.de 0 points 3 years ago

Linux’s user base is small, so it isn’t a very attractive to malware developers.

Linux' user base is huge and there were lots of malware for all kinds of devices, e.g. Linux routers. I think what you meant was that the market share for GNU/Linux on desktop devices is pretty small.

Linux’s userbase is mostly tech savvy people, who don’t do stupid stuff.

Both of these assumptions are false:

There's a difference on being an active administrator of a Linux system and not even knowing you run Linux.
Tech savvy people do stupid stuff all the time, just nobody catches them doing it because most of the time they don't go around telling people (they can usually fix it themselves).