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Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#31

Post by seba_dos1 »

Shellban wrote: post #18
creditscoreprot wrote: post #6

It is possible to get Linux into a state where it becomes a huge headache to update

This usually happens when you do non-standard things like try to change the desktop environment and then update to a new major version. If you pick a distro that is already close to what you need in the first place, this should not be as much of an issue. Source: Personally got it into a state where it became a huge headache to update.

It is possible to get it into such state, but on a good distro like Debian simply changing the desktop environment and updating to a new major version is not going to be one of those troublesome "non-standard" things :)

Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#33

Post by yesnomaybe »

coldsunrays wrote: post #23

I would say yes! I would consider not sandboxing your internet browsers because the integration isn’t fully there yet, but everything else works. A lot of Flatpaks are maintained by their developers so you get releases faster with a layer of separation from an otherwise “slow” distro. In my humble opinion, consider Fedora instead because of Ubuntu and Snaps. You’ll have the flexibility of Flatpaks, RPMs, Snaps if you…

+1 for fedora. I use it for work. I use an exotic browser (LibreWolf) running teams. Slack desktop from https://packagecloud.io/slacktechnologies/slack it does everything well (screensharing, audio, video) all on Gnome Wayland.

the beauty is you can use native packages not flatpaks, so better chance everything works because it's been tested by the maintainer against the fedora release. at least that my theory.

Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#34

Post by sshine »

m132 wrote: post #13

Linux out of all those three is very specific in that it can be configured to be perfectly secure and, at the same time, if you explicitly ask it to shoot you in the foot, it will. Generally the out-of-the-box experience of Ubuntu and Fedora is at least as secure or better than that of Windows. macOS tends to lean towards a more hardened configuration. Matching that is possible (Android being a great example), but wi…

> Some software, such as Visual Studio Code and derivatives, has very lax policies on extensions. Even if you install it from a trusted source, but then install an untrusted extension, the extension will run with full access to your files!

Installing VSCodium on NixOS, you need to specify the extensions as part of your system configuration. This means extensions get pinned. But beyond that, they still have full user access.

Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#35

Post by GeorgeOldfield »

proof_by_vibes wrote: post #3

Perfectly safe. I would argue that it is the safest of the three, the least invasive both in terms of its design and in terms of privacy. The open source model of development has encouraged the correct incentives for people to become active in identifying and fixing possible exploits in a global, communal effort. Every server on the cloud has (by a large margin) chosen Linux as the OS to trust specifically for this r…

for most people linux is the least secure. linux assumes the user knows what they are doing, whereas windows and mac os assume the user needs protection.

Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#37

Post by rsyring »

awkii wrote: post #11

I'll take a contrarian view here. Disclaimer: I'm interpreting "safe" as in "usability". I've been driving Ubuntu for years for gaming purposes, and it's come a long way. Most drivers are installed out-of-the box. The apps I care about run just fine. But.... Relative to MacOS Ubuntu is certainly not as user-friendly. It's worth noting that Linux distros will force you to confront the command line at some point. If yo…

I recently tried to help my mom reset her Apple account password on a modern Mac. Absolutely and utterly shite process at almost every step. I couldn't believe it. Even had a screen show up completely blank that was obviously supposed to have something there but I have no idea what.

Finder is garbage from a power user UX perspective.

And the extra hoops to jump through to manage windows instead of applications is super annoying IMO.

I think Apple is slowly enshitifying it's UX advantages.

Re: Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?

#40

Post by elseleigh »

I've been running Linux Mint exclusively as a daily driver for fourteen years. The software company I started used it for everything from development to marketing to accounts. We had zero issues, and security audits always gave a clean bill of health.

Full disc encryption is now just a checkbox away when installing your distro of choice. Sticking to verified software is best practice.

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