Comment by realusername
8 days ago
I also disagree with that, I trust my Linux distribution to behave well much more than I trust any Android platform and it doesn't even have much app sandboxing at all.
You can't fix a lack of trust like you have in Android with technical solutions. The flaw in Android is fundamentally a social problem.
There's a massive open source app ecosystem for Android which is far larger than the subset available in F-Droid. Open source does not imply private or trustworthy. Completely trusting applications with access to all your data with no insight in to what they're accessing or sending to services means you wouldn't know if your privacy is being violating anyway.
The (desktop) Linux security model is different. You trust the distro maintainers in the same way you trust the GOS devs, and instead of "app sandboxing" you use user accounts, containers or VMs to protect personal information. The Android security model makes sense in the context of laypeople using mostly commercial malware on the stock OS however.
> The (desktop) Linux security model is different.
Desktop Linux distributions lack a viable privacy and security model for applications and far more. They don't have comparable protections against exploitation or comparable privacy protection as a systemic part of the OS either. The approaches are very incomplete and apps generally aren't contained unless they're run in another OS in a virtual machine such as the approach in QubesOS which is not really a Linux distribution but rather a Xen distribution acting as a meta-Linux-distribution. It can use Windows too.
> user accounts
This isn't an application sandbox and doesn't provide similar isolation for desktops.
> containers
Containers do not directly work for sandboxing desktop applications. It still requires that the UI and application layer of the OS provides sandboxing. Containers can be used to isolate things at the filesystem level, etc. as part of a sandbox but are not a sandbox for desktop applications on their own.
> VMs to protect personal information
GrapheneOS has hardware accelerated virtualization on all supported devices. Running a separate OS in a VM is a much different thing from providing a working privacy and security model within the OS. Using virtualization as part of an app sandbox that's integrated into the OS itself with a separate VM for each app is a far different thing than just running another OS in a VM.
> The Android security model makes sense in the context of laypeople using mostly commercial malware on the stock OS however.
Android has a far larger open source app ecosystem for mobile than those operating systems. Open source applications still need to be sandboxed to provide reasonable privacy and security. Otherwise, you're not only trusting those applications and their supply chains to not do anything privacy invasive which does happen extremely frequently but also to avoid having vulnerabilities. The vast majority of applications do not take privacy and security very seriously so an OS not containing them and protecting them against exploits with modern exploit protections won't provide good privacy and security itself. Application vulnerabilities are the main attack vector for remote attacks. Open source software as an overall ecosystem is also not nearly as privacy respecting as you make it out to be. Most is not focused on privacy or security, which means they regularly do things which are privacy invasive to provide functionality and also aren't providing strong privacy or security protections at all.
> The (desktop) Linux security model is different
In that it doesn't really exist. Sure, linux has all the capabilities to do it properly, but defaults matter in security so the way it currently works, basically every program has access to everything actually important (personal files, photos, ssh keys, etc). It just can't upgrade your GPU driver.
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That reads more as sports team flag wavey thoughts and feelings trust than anything actually backed by objective data.
That's the difference between trusted computing (Linux distribution) and untrusted computing (Android).
If you want something backed by objective data, my phone has an advertising ID built in the OS and my laptop doesn't. My phone had 100s of privacy scandals and my laptop doesn't have one.
I do applaud GrapheneOS don't get me wrong but I have a feeling that they are fighting a losing battle.
There's a huge open source app ecosystem available for Android. The distinction you're trying to draw is inaccurate. Open source apps also very open do privacy invasive things. On Android, people can see that many open source privacy even including Signal include dark patterns such as repeatedly asking for access to contacts when it works without it. On a desktop OS, the apps and services will simply have access to nearly everything by default so you aren't aware of it happening for the most part.
GrapheneOS provides far better privacy and security than a desktop OS. There's no such thing as an advertising ID built into GrapheneOS so it's a strange thing to bring up. There are plenty of privacy invasive things built into desktop operating systems and applications, including open source ones. They nearly entirely lack the ability to protect against apps and services being privacy invasive in the first place. They also have far weaker protection against exploitation.
What advertising ID is built into the OS?
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