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What is Silverblue?

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31–40 of 140 posts

Re: What is Silverblue?

#31
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>system dynamic linking made sense I too look forwards to having to manually updated all security patches for each binary in the system.

Would you rather each update of said binary be dependent on the author or some volunteer? That's how you get Debian stable.. No thanks.

On the author of the single vulnerable library instead of the hundreds of authors of projects making use of it, yes please.

The fact that things like flatpak, snap, nix all explicitly try to address this problem with platforms/base layers/grafting etc. is very telling. They are all a trade off of your security vs. the dev's convenience, which might be necessary to succeed.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#32
post #21

Basically : the OS is itself a layered read-only "container", on top of which flatpak is the recommended way to install applications. I wish someone built an OS based on k8s as a service and application orchestrator. We wouldn't have to reinvent all the config files, the command line tools and we could reuse knowledge between cluster and single-machine administration. Plus k8s already voluntary abstracted the underly…

RancherOS is a bit like your wish.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#33
post #5
post #2

Flatpaking all the things? I'm not sure why there is this push for Linux to have the "download and double click" install experience of windows / Mac. Convenient to install sure, but as a user its a nightmare to maintain/update. All people on Linux really need is an xdg-open standard for opening a package manager / running an install command.

They are updated and maintained automatically, even if your distro isn't.

What do you mean by 'maintained' automatically? Many flatpaks use their own custom compiled dependencies that are outdated. I took a frequently-used dependency used to decode untrusted data (ffmpeg). Many Flatpaks on Flathub use outdated ffmpeg versions. Some examples:

- VLC ships with a slightly older version of ffmpeg (4.1.3) with two known CVEs:

https://github.com/flathub/org.videolan.VLC/blob/f1b27c13b13...

- MakeMKV uses an outdated ffmpeg (4.1.0), which has several known CVEs:

https://github.com/flathub/com.makemkv.MakeMKV/blob/3c44c8bc...

- Openshot uses an outdated ffmpeg (4.0.3) which has several known CVEs:

https://github.com/flathub/org.openshot.OpenShot/blob/ec2077...

This is what you get when every application ships custom dependencies, rather than having a consistent package set.

(I like the idea of Flatpak, but I think it hasn't found its optimum yet in terms of dependency management.)

Re: What is Silverblue?

#34
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a desktop any more, we might as well be trying to make Linux for the mini computer if you're chasing the desktop market.

That's a meme propagated by the news, but I'm pretty sure the desktop is still a thing.

...where?

No joke. I seriously don't see desktops running rich applications around anywhere, except the mini-computer / workstation use case.

Generally people are running a glorified thin terminal with a browser or putty connection to a dosbox app. People who actually do things on their own computers generally run laptops now. The exceptions are people who do demanding work loads, and they run workstations that can handle it--more like the mini-computer than the traditional office desktop.

There are public computer terminals in libraries and such, but the only reasons these are not laptops are theft prevention and the need for a large screen, keyboard and mouse.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#35
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>system dynamic linking made sense I too look forwards to having to manually updated all security patches for each binary in the system.

The brave new OSTree/Flatpak world needs build systems that know how to do security updates. There's a lot of work in this area in the Dockerverse; maybe it will cross over.

What happens is that half of your security updates never happen because it depends on individual app providers who have no skin in the game to do so this is unfixable unless apps that are insecure aren't installable.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#36
>“Team Silverblue” or “Silverblue” in short doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

Don't "Bill Revues", "Evil Rubles", "Rebels I Luv", "Urb Level I", "I'll Sue Verb", "I Blur Elves", "Be Evil Slur", and "I Serve Bull" qualify as hidden meanings?

(Not to mention "I Beaver's Mullet", "Brutalism Levee", "Album Televiser", "Ever Liable Smut", "Evil Slum Beater", "Melt Bra, Sue Evil", "Be Real Evil Smut", "Evilest Bar Mule", "Leave Stumblier", or "Blames True Evil"...)

Re: What is Silverblue?

#37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a meme propagated by the news, but I'm pretty sure the desktop is still a thing.

...where? No joke. I seriously don't see desktops running rich applications around anywhere, except the mini-computer / workstation use case. Generally people are running a glorified thin terminal with a browser or putty connection to a dosbox app. People who actually do things on their own computers generally run laptops now. The exceptions are people who do demanding work loads, and they run workstations that can h…

Walk into any random company, there will be many desktops. Sure, some applications are web applications, but they will typically also use Microsoft Office and a smattering of more niche applications. We happen to live across an office tower. People sit and work behind desktops.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#38
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see stats on how many libraries are really shared, I'd imagine it might be less than you hope (other than the big graphical ones)

On my laptop: How many libraries are loaded: $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | wc -l 15429 How many unique library names: $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | sort | uniq | wc -l 872 Top 10 most shared libraries: sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | awk '{count[$…

When you're running a GUI those libraries also get shared. For example Qt might not be used by as many processes as libc, but it saves hundreds of megabytes of memory having that shared across my email/calendar/terminals/torrent client/windowManager/guiShell/pdfReader/webBrowser.

The GP did mention the 'big graphical ones,' but the amount of memory that gets saved was a bit stunning the first time I saw it.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#39
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see stats on how many libraries are really shared, I'd imagine it might be less than you hope (other than the big graphical ones)

On my laptop: How many libraries are loaded: $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | wc -l 15429 How many unique library names: $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | sort | uniq | wc -l 872 Top 10 most shared libraries: sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | awk '{count[$…

That's a good idea to measure the sharing! Fortunately even if every app gets containerised, not all of those libraries will be duplicated. Specifically each app which forks on its own will still preserve sharing. For example 11 firefox processes I'm running now would share the libraries, whether it's running directly or from docker.

Re: What is Silverblue?

#40

>“Team Silverblue” or “Silverblue” in short doesn’t have any hidden meaning. Don't "Bill Revues", "Evil Rubles", "Rebels I Luv", "Urb Level I", "I'll Sue Verb", "I Blur Elves", "Be Evil Slur", and "I Serve Bull" qualify as hidden meanings? (Not to mention "I Beaver's Mullet", "Brutalism Levee", "Album Televiser", "Ever Liable Smut", "Evil Slum Beater", "Melt Bra, Sue Evil", "Be Real Evil Smut", "Evilest Bar Mule", "L…

Well, they're not hidden anymore.
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