Comment by inigyou
2 days ago
That isn't true, as there are many things that can bring down the machine. If your X or Wayland server crashes, it brings down your machine.
2 days ago
That isn't true, as there are many things that can bring down the machine. If your X or Wayland server crashes, it brings down your machine.
No, that is true, even if not uniquely. A kernel bug can easily bring down the machine. Maybe Xorg can also manage it... although IMHO that also sounds like a kernel bug (surely it's the kernel's job to ensure no user program can do that?)... but that doesn't make the kernel safe. And I suspect it's easier to take down the machine from ring 0 than a display server even if both can do it.
It doesn't, it just loses your session
A kernel panic doesn't bring down the CPU, nor the hard drive, or the RAM, or the power supply unit. So if we're being pedantic, the machine is still up.
Well, a kernel bug gets write access to everything. A bug in userland is a bit more constrained in what it can do.
That counts especially for accidental bugs and denial of service. To make a userland bug exploited adversarially not impact the rest of the system requires more hardening of the kernel.
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