this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (6 children)

As someone who has been using Ubuntu for 10 years, I am sad that I don't know more about the intricacies of Linux.

I know more than I did 10 years ago... But probably would really be uncomfortable running arch.

I think I will install Debian 24.04 as my desktop (daily driver) this year and be done with Ubuntu. Hopefully I learn some more and eventually try out Arch on my laptop.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There is no Debian 24.

Just install Linux Mint or maybe even Fedora

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

I like Mint for Ubuntu's simplicity without Canonical's bullshit

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You’d have to wait a while for Debian to reach version 24

I like Debian - it’s foss and stable

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Lol yeah, what is their release schedule like? Any speculation on when 13 is coming out?

I just assumed Ubuntu releases were based off of Debian.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

See you in 48 years

[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just last week I was arguing with a bunch of #ubuntu fan boys here about how that system prevents you from learning, how Debian is a tiny bit better, but with arch/based systems you both have a reliable daily runner and be able to learn as much as you can take.

The more you learn the more aggravating debians (mint-ubuntus) become, forcing their choices on you. Arch respects and rewards people who want to do it their way. They provide the blocks, you build your system.

@youngGoku @mr_MADAFAKA

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Arch is unstable and pacman is prone to breakage. That's not necessarily bad for some people but for people who want everything to be reliable and stable it is problematic

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

You can also play with it in a virtual machine. It won't give you quite the same experience for your specific hardware, but you will get a feel for how it works, especially the package manager etc.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago

I don't think you understand, it's closed-source for your safety! If it were opensource there would be many more malicious apps. Only we can hold those at bay and only we know which improvements to implement as we know better than everybody else. Trust me, you're safer this way /s

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Don't read the community, post all news you see.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I enjoy y'all acting like this couldn't happen with flatpak or AppImages

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (12 children)

Those are just app distribution formats. Since there's just 1 snap store which can deliver snaps, they're not comparable.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It absolutely could. Heck, RPMs and DEBs pulled from random sites can do the exact same thing as well. Even source code can hide something if not checked. There's even a very famous hack presented by Ken Thompson in 1984 that really speaks to the underlying thing, "what is trust?"

And that's really what this gets into. The means of delivery change as the years go by, but the underlying principal of trust is the thing that stays the same. In general, Canonical does review somewhat apps published to snapcraft. However, that review does not mean you are protected and this is very clearly indicated within the TOS.

14.1 Your use of the Snap Store is at your sole risk

So yeah, don't load up software you, yourself, cannot review. But also at the same time, there's a whole thing of trust here that's going to need to be reviewed. Not, "Oh you can never trust Canonical ever again!" But a pretty straightforward systematic review of that trust:

  • How did this happen?
  • Where was this missed in the review?
  • How can we prevent this particular thing that allowed this to happen in the future?
  • How do we indicate this to the users?
  • How do we empower them to verify that such has been done by Canonical?

No one should take this as "this is why you shouldn't trust Ubuntu!" Because as you and others have said, this could happen to anyone. This should be taken as a call for Canonical to review how they put things on snapcraft and what they can do to ensure users have all the tools so that they can ensure "at least for this specific issue" doesn't happen again. We cannot prevent every attack, but we can do our best to prevent repeating the same attack.

It's all about building trust. And yeah, Flathub and AppImageHub can, and should, take a lesson from this to preemptively prevent this kind of thing from happening there. I know there's a propensity to wag the finger in the distro wars, tribalism runs deep, but anything like this should be looked as an opportunity to review that very important aspect of "trust" by all. It's one of the reasons open source is very important, so that we can all openly learn from each other.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Nice try canonical - no matter what you say snaps is just your way to lock people in to your store. You’re no better than apple, only your product is shit. Excluding the shoulders you stand on, which are made by others. You’re the enshitification of Linux.

Why would you pull debs from random sites? Do you know how hard that is to do for the average user? And you want to compare that to a download from the store that’s in the basic install on Ubuntu?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, it totally could.

I don't actually see anyone in here making such an argument.

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

How is this notable or interesting then? I thought we were all just accepting that malicious software is an inherent part of all open platforms.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Open platforms often have individuals running/hosting their own repositories, which means the risk is distributed.

This means that the individual repository can be attacked without affecting the whole network. The risk is still there, but they would have to simultaneously attack all repositories at once and succeed with all of them.

In a corporate-hosted platform like Snaps, you have one centralized location that can be abused and that can affect all repositories in the system.

If someone hacks Canonical, they can make the whole Snap Store an attack vector without nearly as much effort.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)
systemctl disable --now snapd
[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Disabling a systemd service won't prevent it from starting. For example, if another service depends on it then it will start anyway.

You have to mask the service which redirects the service files to /dev/null so that the service effectively has zero directives.

systemctl mask --now snapd

It also means that anything which depends on snapd will likely fail. That is absolutely an improvement since we obviously don't want anything that depends on snaps.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What’s wrong with just removing snap? When ever I am forced to install Ubuntu I will remove snap and the “advantage-tools” (the part trying to sell you support)

First I’ll snap remove —purge all snap packages Then apt purge —auotoremove snapd ubuntu-advantage-tools

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Leaves behind a bunch of stuff. You have to manually remove each Snap individually, plus the snapshots they take and then hide, and then use Snap to remove itself (it doesn't let you), then you can apt purge snapd.
There's several levels of "we know better than you so we'll just keep this here for when you inevitably change your mind" and it is exhausting.
I don't even know if the above would also clean up all the dev/loop cruft. It was an unpleasant surprise to discover that apt remove alone didn't at least disable all the systemd .mount units.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 8 months ago

Proprietary software platform makers should always be held accountable for what happens on said platform.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Snaps were a mistake.

There, I said it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Snaps wasn't and isn't needed from day 1

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Canonical needs it to monetize Ubuntu.

The users? They don't

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