Ask HN: How secure is desktop Linux? Is it stuck in the nineties?

When I switched from Windows XP to Linux, it was considered the more secure OS. On Windows, users were still running with admin rights by default.

I've used CrunchBang Linux, Lubuntu and Linux Mint since then, and while the security of dominant consumer OSes—now Android and iOS—has improved significantly in the past 15 years, not much seems to have changed on desktop Linux.

Where on my smartphone I can grant an app access to only the one photo I need it to have access to, on Linux, for all I know every program that is running under my user account may have uploaded all of my personal files to a malicious actor a thousand times over.

Where on my smartphone I can deny an app access to my location, on my laptop any application can easily get my external IP address and a list of wifi access points and bluetooth devices.

I read Windows and MacOS have adapted to the age of always online computers as well. Why are Linux distros not keeping up and applying the principle of least privilege?

if you install firejail then it behaves as bad as the newer things you describe (that is, most programs are started by a symlink to firejail which then starts that program in a restricted env... namespace, cap drop, apparmor, etc... but it's finicky and easy to bypass by user even by mistake, again, just like the alternatives you list)

Linux still requires you to read. arch have the best non condescending docs.

I always thought part of the point of open source is that the code is auditable so you can see if anyone does anything nasty. That obviously doesn't mean you can grok the code of all that you use but at least the community may in theory be able to. If you're installing software you don't trust, then in my opinion you've already lost most of the battle.

That said, I would think mandatory access control via SELinux could do a lot of what you're suggesting, though I've only ever really tangled with it on servers, not consumer/desktop type computing. I think in that sense, Linux actually got a lot of security features before Apple/Microsoft.

Flatpak and the containering programs(docker, podman, ...) use the apis of the kernel to prevent access to your files, this is already used by firefox to prevent that javascript accessing data it shouldn't. Additionally SELinux or Apparmor can limit access from services to your files, Android uses SELinux, unprivileged users and binder to isolate apps.

> I always thought part of the point of open source is that the code is auditable

Yes, it's theoretically true but doesn't actually occur in practice - largely because open source rarely sits still long enough for people to actually have the capacity to audit. From my vantage point, that capacity is consumed by addressing known bugs and issues, and the never ending feature adding and adaptation to changing whims of the developer community.

For example, the most recent high profile event w/ xz wasn't due to an audit but a lucky event of someone noticing something weird that caused an audit AFTER the weirdness was noticed. Had nobody noticed the weirdness, it's not likely any auditing would have occurred to notice it.

There is certainly a benefit to open source from transparency that allows such scrutiny when something weird happens. Had that code been closed source, it's very likely nobody would have been able to figure out what was going on nearly as fast.