this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024

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Privacy

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Searching for a Linux distro (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I first used Linux about 5 years ago (Ubuntu). Since then, I have tried quite a few distros:

Kali Linux (Use as a secondary)

Linux Mint (Used for a while)

Arch Linux (Could not install)

Tails (Use this often)

Qubes OS (Tried it twice, not ready yet)

Fedora (Current main)

For me, it has been incredibly difficult to find a properly privacy oriented Linux distro that also has ease of use. I really enjoy the GNOME desktop environment, and I am most familiar with Debian. My issue with Fedora is the lack of proper sandboxing, and it seems as though Qubes is the only one that really takes care in sandboxing apps.

Apologies if this is the wrong community for this question, I would be happy to move this post somewhere else. I've been anonymously viewing this community after the Rexodus, but this is my first time actually creating a post. Thank you!

UPDATE:

Thank you all so much for your feedback! The top recommended distro by far was SecureBlue, an atomic distro, so I will be trying that one. If that doesn't work, I may try other atomic distros such as Fedora Atomic or Fedora Silverblue (I may have made an error in my understanding of those two, please correct my if I did!). EndeavourOS was also highly recommended, so if I'm not a fan of atomic distros I will be using that. To @[email protected], your suggestion for Linux Mint Debian Edition with GNOME sounds like a dream, so I may use it as a secondary for my laptop. Thank you all again for your help and support, and I hope this helps someone else too!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Please share what you've learned by suggesting changes to https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/blob/HEAD/docs/desktop.md

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If you would experimentate can try Alpine linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.

At least that says about itself.

However, I have never installed it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

not as much of a security distro as u would assume. but its the closest thing in linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I believe I may have live booted it once (when I needed to perform an action that live booting with Ubuntu couldn't do), and I really enjoyed the look and feel of it for the short time I used it.

Or it was a different one, but let's just assume it was Alpine ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

NixOS

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

If the distro supports apparmor, then firejail + apparmor offer together sandboxing for quite a set of applications (apparmor includes few profiles by itself, but firejal has quite a few, and one can enable apparmor on all, or the ones wnated). Arch has pretty good wikies about firejail + apparmor.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Have you looked into atomic/Immutable distros?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I will keep looking into it, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

You’re welcome!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Guix would check privacy and usablility

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Use Fedora with distrobox and gnome boxes

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Look at this

Fedora is fine, you may want to use secureblue or just plain Fedora Atomic/ ublue as Base.

But generally using as many flatpaks as possible and least system packages, and managing filesystem permissions like the guy on Fedora Discuss, this should totally fit your needs.

QubesOS is cool but it tries to solve the problem of insecure software through extreme compartimentalization which is hard to use and extreme on the hardware.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Oddly enough, at the time only having installed a few Linux distros in my life, Qubes OS was very easy to install and ran just fine on my medium-grade hardware. Lots of people mention having problems with it, but I got really lucky it seems. Thanks for your suggestion!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Did not know fedora silverblue had a hardend fork! Thanks for sharing

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I would call it a variant, as its 99% fedora with some different packages (hardened malloc, pam authramp, etc.) and continuously deployed changes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What features do you specifically want? You mentioned sandboxing. Anything else?

I'd say just keep it simple. If you're comfortable with Debian then stick with that, study up and learn how to harden it. Kali, ParrotOS, Mint, Ubuntu.....they're all just based on Debian with different preinstalled apps and desktop environments. Fedora and Arch are kinda weird and unique, I'm not sure if I'd recommend those for anyone, unless you KNOW that's what you need. Qubes seems interesting, I'm not familiar with that.

But I'll point out that ALL of these distros are miles ahead of Windows in terms of privacy. So just by using Mint for a while, you were already ahead of the curve.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I could make a list of all the things I would want in a distro as far as privacy, but a lot of them aren't as important as sandboxing and (obviously) a system that doesn't actively make your privacy life hell. Other features would be better clipboard management (Tails and Qubes do a great job with that), no obvious gaps in security/privacy, a system that you don't have to build yourself, etc.

I think I've used Fedora more than I have Mint, but I have been completely Windows free for years now!

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