Canonical Developer Criticizes Linux Mint's Security


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Here we go ... I've seen them Mint fanbois clashing with Ubuntu's on a forum (forgot wich exactly) , a true breed war . They are both right , the average Joe won't look for Level 4-5 clearance/update points and Ubuntu won't fix their **** very soon. Instead of uniting and solving problems together , they just throw meatballs on each other - thats the problem with Linux : too fragmented.

 

This is partly it. I mean I don't use either Ubuntu or Mint because I don't like the way that Debian works but you'd think it would be in their best interests to work together really. Especially since one depends on the other, Mint obviously uses Ubuntu for their base and obviously being so popular gives the Ubuntu guys an advantage but they just don't seem interested.

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Here we go ... I've seen them Mint fanbois clashing with Ubuntu's on a forum (forgot wich exactly) , a true breed war . They are both right , the average Joe won't look for Level 4-5 clearance/update points and Ubuntu won't fix their **** very soon. Instead of uniting and solving problems together , they just throw meatballs on each other - thats the problem with Linux : too fragmented.

 

i don't see it that negative. fragmentation means also more choice broader ways of development. doing it the microsoft way (only one OS for one device) would be like going to mcdonalds and they offer you just hamburgers. not more, just hamburgers.

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macstar, on 20 Nov 2013 - 11:29, said:

i don't see it that negative. fragmentation means also more choice broader ways of development. doing it the microsoft way (only one OS for one device) would be like going to mcdonalds and they offer you just hamburgers. not more, just hamburgers.

I understand , however they should approach a different kind of fragmentation , a proper one. So many distros with low dev base and slow development. Why not 30 well built distros to choose from instead of 2000 fragmented-half-cooked distros ? Things would evolve differentely and allocated resources would be spent more efficiently.

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I understand that some system administrators prefer to test updates first. Given Microsoft's spotty history of security updates breaking things, sometimes that policy makes sense. The stand-alone security updates Apple releases for OS X very rarely, if ever, cause more problems, but the massive combo updates they are so fond of releasing sometimes do. Therefore I can definitely why even OS X system administrators like to extensively test updates first. However the situation is very different with stable Linux distributions. The whole point of a stable distribution like RHEL, Debian, or to a lesser extent Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and others is to provide that buffer against upstream, and thereby absolute stability. Unlike with Windows or OS X, if you don't trust your Linux distribution to not break things in updates to their stable releases, you are welcome to choose a more suitable distribution. For example, I use the latest Debian stable release on my server. I trust Debian implicitly. I install every update as soon as it is released without hesitation. I have complete confidence that nothing will break, because that is the whole point of Debian doing stable releases.

 

 

 

One thing I have learned NOT to trust, and for that reason will never use again, was Ubuntu's updates.

 

I've had it installed at least 4 times that I can remember where one of their updates, whether it was for xorg, kernel or video, totally broke my install. Not being a Linux guru by any stretch of the imagination, I had no clue how to fix it without totally reinstalling.

 

So far, in the 6 months or so that I've been using Debian, I have installed every update there has been immediately without a single incident.

 

With what is referred to in the original article, how secure can a system be even if the ONLY thing never receiving updates automatically is Firefox, for example? If it's not secure, you may just as well say the ENTIRE system is insecure! I KNOW you'd be saying that if we were talking Windows and IE! ;)

 

Guess maybe it's a good thing I've never been able to even get Mint to install for me upon the couple times I've ever tried it! Seems rather stupid that you have to go in and change settings to get updates to certain "levels" of security.

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One thing I have learned NOT to trust, and for that reason will never use again, was Ubuntu's updates.

 

I had it happened it Windows too. Updates break things sometimes. 

 

And easy fix to this in Linux Mint is just enable level 4 and 5 updates in the update manager preferences. You get all the Ubuntu updates then.

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