Comment by bjackman
2 hours ago
I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements.
I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad.
I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of crazy workarounds to make their MacBook fleets workable).
So yeah overall no good options here. I would love to see the EU fund development of a better distro for this usecase, but doubt it's the highest ROI thing you can do in this space.
I don’t get your comment. They can make a distro secure enough for government use. It’s not like it’s alien technology only the US have, that you need to buy Apple or Microsoft.
It would certainly be the highest ROI to have a local, open system built (by funding) local enterprises. Who knows, maybe a slice of the private sector might adopt it instead of sending money overseas.
It's not alien tech but it's a basic fact that only the US has it right now.
Yes we could build a serious distro with a massive investment to get Flatpak, systemd, bootc, up to scratch, set up OSS endpoint management software, set up a safe package supply chain, etc. And yes I would love to see it. But I think in the short term the money would be better spent replacing crap like Outlook and OneDrive than Windows. Note this doesn't require building much software it's about figuring out how to run infrastructure in a way that's friendly to the bizarre world of public sector organisations.
Maybe Dunning-Kruger but the latter just seem like much easier problems to solve.
Also totally pointless until we have an OSS web browser that the whole sector can adopt (maybe we already do, but any funding gaps for Firefox should still be addressed before we build our own EuroOS). No point in having a wonderful sovereign OS that just serves as a bootloader for Chrome.
In what aspect does GNU/Linux not meet EU sovereignty security requirement, but two American companies do?
Other than the elephant in the room that most FOSS projects are anyway sponsored by US companies, that is.
Sovereignty yes it's obviously better.
I am just talking about the pure tech fact that GNU/Linux desktops do not have any meaningful intra-host security boundaries.
Is this a worthwhile tradeoff against being tied to US tech? Yeah maybe, like I said there are no good options here, and Linux might be the least bad.
Genuinely interested: does it bring something to say "everything is crap anyway, but given that we must choose between one of them, we may as well choose the least bad" instead of "the best solution we currently have is X"?
Secondly, are you sure that it is impossible to secure a system for a whole department? I have seen relatively big companies having an IT team managing their own Linux flavour. That is, whitelisting the packages that can be installed by the users. Given that most computer users in the administration use a handful of programs, it doesn't seem super hard to audit them?
You know what happened at Google after Operation Aurora and they went full bore on security (BeyondCorp and all that)? They started phasing out Windows laptops for employees immediately.
I'm honestly having trouble taking you seriously, Windows has always been at the butt of security jokes, I guess you maybe didn't grow up with winnuke etc? But maybe you could elaborate a bit more concretely about what kind of intra-host security boundaries are missing, and why they would be required on single-user computers in this scenario?
Sounds like the Linux is still the least worst? There is at least possibility of having secure and quite independent machine. The question is not about distro, it's who does the support and how it's all put together. There are big vendors who sell linux to enterprises that for sure have to be highly secure.
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I think that SUSE and RH can definitely work well in a fairly secure setting as needed. I certainly don't think it's any less secure than your typical corporate windows setup.
> I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements.
Windows being a buggy spyware wouldn't
If actors in the EU are serious (I have my doubts, as so far I see nothing more than riding recent anti-Trump sentiment in a hope to win popularity contest) they cannot rely on volunteer effort and gluing bunch of unrelated FOSS projects.
It is not enough to fund a new distro. EU needs its own OS (may be based on Linux, sure) and it needs to fully control it. Otherwise it will end up like most other FOSS projects, full of personal drama and technical bike-shedding.