Comment by extraisland
1 month ago
Everything in life is about trade-offs. Certain trade-offs people aren't going to make.
- If you want to run an alternative operating system, you got to learn how it works. That is a trade off not even many tech savvy people want to make.
- There is a trade-off with a desktop OS. I actually like the fact that it isn't super sand-boxed and locked down. I am willing to trade security & safety for control.
> Personally I think we need to start making computers that provide the best of both worlds. I want much more control over what code can do on my computer. I also want programs to be able to run in a safe, sandboxed way. But I should be the one in charge of that sandbox. Not Google. Definitely not Apple. But there's currently no desktop environment that provides that ability.
The market and demand for that is low.
BTW. This does exist with Qubes OS already. However there are a bunch of trade-offs that most people are unlikely to want to make.
No, not everything is a trade-off. Some things are just good and some are just bad.
A working permission system would be objectively good. By that I mean one where a program called "image-editor" can only access "~/.config/image-editor", and files that you "File > Open". And if you want to bypass that and give it full permissions, it can be as simple as `$ yolo image-editor` or `# echo /usr/bin/image-editor >> /etc/yololist`.
A permission system that protects /usr/bin and /root, while /home/alex, where all my stuff is is a free-for-all, is bad. I know about chroot and Linux namespaces, and SELinux, and QEMU. None of these are an acceptable way to to day-to-day computing, if you actually want to get work done.
No everything is a trade off. That is a reality of life in general.
Anything that is proposed has a cost associated with it (time, money). That always has to be weighed up against any potential benefit.
That claim is too generic to add anything to this discussion. Ok, everything has a trade off. Thanks for that fortune cookie wisdom. But we’re not discussing CS theory 101. In this case in particular, what is the cost exactly? Is it a cost worth paying?
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This is getting a lot better with Flatpaks and Wayland (and its "portal" system to access resources).
> If you want to run an alternative operating system, you got to learn how it works.
The typical user doesn't know how Windows works, and they can run that. These days, users can run a friendly GNU/Linux distribution not knowing how it works. So, disagree with you here.
> The typical user doesn't know how Windows works, and they can run that.
That is because Windows for the most part manages itself and there are enough IT professionals, repairs shops and other third support options (including someone that is good with computers that lives down the road) where people can problems sorted.
This is not the case with Linux.
> These days, users can run a friendly GNU/Linux distribution not knowing how it works. So, disagree with you here.
Sooner or later there will be an issue that will need to be solved with opening up a terminal and entering a set of esoteric commands. I've been using Linux on and off since 2002. I have done a Linux from Scratch build. I have tried most of the distros over the years, everything from Ubuntu to Gentoo.
When people claim that you will never have to know how it works. That is simply incorrect and gives a false impression to new users.
I would rather that other Linux users tell potential users the truth. There is trade off. You get a lot more control over your own computer, but you will need to peek under the hood sooner or later and you maybe be on your own solving problems yourself a lot of the time.
> That is because Windows for the most part manages itself
Windows is the least "manage itself" OS out of all OS available today. It needs pretty constant maintenance and esoteric enchantments to keep trucking.
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Anybody who is good with computers should be able to install linux, it's easier than to install windows, because you don't need to jump through capitalist dark patterns.
>Sooner or later there will be an issue that will need to be solved with opening up a terminal and entering a set of esoteric commands.
That's what I did to export drivers from previous windows installation in suspicion of regression.
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AFAICT the only trade off is there's no support and few apps for Qubes OS. If it was as popular as MacOS or Windows what would the trade off be?
Apps for QubesOS??
exactly, people want all the benefit without the consequences
like if there are OS utopia exist that has all the advantage without the downside then everybody would use that
but people complaining don't live in reality
A lot of it already exists in one form or another and the trade-off for sand-boxing is usability a lot of the time.
It isn't even a freedom vs security. It is usability vs security.
> It is usability vs security.
I think a lot of it is "nobody has bothered building it yet" vs security.
Eg Qubes runs everything in Xen isolates - which is a wildly complex, performance limiting way to do sandboxing on modern computers. There are much better ways to implement sandboxing that don't limit performance or communication between applications. For example SeL4's OS level capability model. SeL4 still allows arbitrary IPC / shared memory between processes. Or Solaris / Illumos's Zones. But that route would unfortunately require rewriting / changing most modern software.
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>If you want to run an alternative operating system, you got to learn how it works.
You only need to learn how to start a browser. You're a little behind the times, today browser is the OS.
What happens when the OS that is running the browser fails to update because /boot has run out of room for a new Linux kernel (this happened to me the other week)?
What happens when the browser update fails because the package database got corrupted?
What happens when a lock file stop the whole system updating because of a previous iffy update?
You are going to need to drop to a terminal and fix that issue or reinstall the whole OS.
Either way you are going to need to know something about how the machine works.
Does flatpak update automatically? As for /boot, format the whole drive and make it /boot