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codedokodetoday at 5:50 AM3 repliesview on HN

This highlights the problem with legacy desktop OSes like Windows, Linux and MacOS: they allow a random program from Internet to get full access to the computer. Windows and Mac display a warning that the program might be malicious, but how is the user supposed to check it? Do Windows and MacOS developers expect every user to disassemble the program? That's just shifting responsibility instead of solving the root issue.

And Linux has no warning and no button to check the program with antivirus before running. How worse could it be?

In comparison, on Android and iOS there are sandboxes, and you can run any program relatively safely as long as you don't grant dangerous permissions and your kernel is not outdated. And even if you grant permissions, the malware still won't be able to read your browser cookies or the messages in your Matrix client.

Linux needs to be better that this. Linux seems to be built on presumption that you either download the code from official repository you trust, or write your own, and doesn't support safe execution of third-party or closed-source programs. For example, if you run proprietary software, it might scan through your data, silently collect your hardware identifiers (like motherboard serial number) to better track and identify you and Linux does not prevent this.


Replies

mittensctoday at 5:52 AM

You can use VMs for sandboxes.

Linux main feature is that you are free to do anything you want.

Linux does verify signatures for packages from official repos.

Linux has features like SELinux and AppArmor.

If you want to install a random package, you are free to do and its your responsibility. Equivalent is side loading in android.

On iOS Apple doesn't even let you have full Firefox... That is wrong. And yet, there have always been exploits.

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istoleabreadtoday at 6:00 AM

I do not want my OS to tell me what i can and cannot do on the computer I bought, its as simple as that

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realusernametoday at 5:56 AM

> as long as you don't grant dangerous permissions and your kernel is not outdated

There's like 2 or maybe 3 phone models in the world without an outdated kernel in Android.

And then sure, Android and iOS sandboxing is better but in the same time, the quality of the apps and the vetting is 100x worse than your average Linux distribution so I'm not sure that makes up the difference.

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