Do we really need multiple users for desktop unix?I find them valuable. For example, I have a workstation that is used for different projects with different clients, as well as administrative work for my own business. I want 100% separation between assets related to those different contexts.
It’s bad enough that we have package managers allowing package installation scripts to run arbitrary code, or software wanting you to install via:
curl https://example.com/imnotmalwareipromise.sh | sh
I’ve seen people seriously make the argument that if your entire system gets nuked by malware through these installation methods then this is entirely your fault. That’s obviously an absurd victim-blaming stance, but the fact is that the risk still exists with modern software development systems.
At least if I have separate users for each client or each major project then the worst that is going to be compromised by a vulnerability introduced during the work for that client or project is that same work.
It’s not just about security though. It’s also about convenience and manageability. Those different clients and projects frequently require the use of specific security credentials and configurations, often for remote services that other clients/projects also use. In a perfect world, I’d like all of the software I use to be XDG-friendly, and I’d like each client/project to have its own home directory with its own independent XDG-style directories underneath, so each user has the configurations and credentials required for its own work and has no knowledge of or access to those of any other user. Finished a project? Archive/nuke that entire user and home directory as appropriate, and nothing is left lying around to break anything or leak anywhere later.
I’m currently playing with NixOS, which means I can also have a limited set of system-wide software installed and have specific additional packages installed per-user or even activated on demand when I change into a specific directory. Again, this means my system has only the software I actually need available at any given time, at the exact version I need for that specific work, and if something is no longer needed by anything I’m doing then it will automatically get cleaned up next time I do an update/rebuild.
None of this really works without the concept of separate users running different software in their own isolated little worlds, possibly concurrently on the same workstation and even sharing the same input/output devices (in a safe way where again they can’t unreasonably interfere with each other – something else that is not 100% there yet, but certainly a lot better than on de facto single-human-user operating systems). The only real alternative is to spin up something like a different virtual machine for each client/project where everything from the OS down is isolated, but I don’t really gain anything by doing that and it’s potentially more work to set up and more difficult to share input/output devices.