this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Not my video. Just felt it fits here for more discussion. Personally I do like the idea of more/better sandboxing for apps.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I don't understand this guy's argument at all. First of all, he isn't using any shell that I know about, he seems to have invented his own, and the command line arguments he uses are specific to his own shell. He doesn't explain how these command line arguments work in terms of POSIX system calls, so I can't follow along with what he is actually doing. As far as I can tell, these are security issues with his own software, not with Unix or Linux.

If you are worried about file mutability, you can use ZFS or BTrFS or BCacheFS. All of these filesystems have a snapshot function, so if any changes (e.g. file encryption by ransomware attackers) are made you can reboot and roll back the changes, unless the attackers figure out a way to get root access and delete your snapshots. But if an attacker has gained root access to your computer, that is a much more serious issue and not really in the scope of filesystem security or file mutability.

The snapshot and rollback feature also exists in NixOS and GuixOS, where your operating system kernel and all software installed is part of a snapshot that can be rolled back, if the system becomes unbootable, you can rollback from within the GRUB boot loader. Again, all software installation is managed by a service that runs for you at root level so you never need sudo to install software, and the software you install never effects any other user or the operating system. So the only way to hack this is to gain root access and alter the content of the Guix or Nix "store" database with malicious code, but again, root access is a much bigger issue than what we are talking about.

So yeah, the argument stated in this video makes no sense to me.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, watched a few vids with this guy...not interested. He doesn't believe in FOSS, he talks about Linux, MacOS, and Windows all being dumpster fires, but his solution is to build his own OS from scratch, using Latin...and run it on a Chinese RISC-V board that he is charging people $200 and doesn't open source the hardware or software.

Has hardcore TempleOS vibes, the difference is that this guy seems to take himself and his idea way too seriously. And his defense of why he thinks all modern mainstream OSes are doomed is...nothing. He doesn't give any. He literally says in his interview that, "it should be obvious, if you can't see it, you're just blind I guess." Slight paraphrase, but you get the gist. He backs that statement up by talking about how Discord screen share crashes a bunch on his Linux distro.

Joined his Discord, saw a several people talking about how great Latin is and had a bunch of weird Roman empire theming, idk, just not great vibes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Searched more and yeah its weird.

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

You don't even need to reboot to restore a snapshot on zfs, even on root

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

So yeah, the argument stated in this video makes no sense to me.

I kind of took it that in traditional way of installing things apps can read/write pretty much anywhere in the users home. I also did not follow his shell example.