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Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

amutable.com

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Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daan here, founding engineer and systemd maintainer. So we try to make every new feature that might be disruptive optional in systemd and opt-in. Of course we don't always succeed and there will always be differences in opinion. Also, we're a team of people that started in open source and have done open source for most of our careers. We definitely don't intend to change that at all. Keeping systemd a healthy project…

Hi Daan, Thanks for the answer. Let me ask you something close with a more blunt angle: Considering most of the tech is already present and shipping in the current systemd, what prevents our systems to become a immutable monolith like macOS or current Android with the flick of a switch? Or a more grave scenario: What prevents Microsoft from mandating removal of enrollment permissions for user keychains and Secure Boo…

Nothing, but openbsd is amazing and just works. Anyone still using Linux on the desktop in 2026 should switch.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Daan, Thanks for the answer. Let me ask you something close with a more blunt angle: Considering most of the tech is already present and shipping in the current systemd, what prevents our systems to become a immutable monolith like macOS or current Android with the flick of a switch? Or a more grave scenario: What prevents Microsoft from mandating removal of enrollment permissions for user keychains and Secure Boo…

Nothing, but openbsd is amazing and just works. Anyone still using Linux on the desktop in 2026 should switch.

"Just don't use X" doesn't solve any problems in any space, unfortunately.

Plus, it's an avoidant and reductionist take.

Note: I have nothing against BSDs, but again, this is not the answer.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#73
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's lost many hours troubleshooting systemd failures, I would like an answer to this question, too.

You won't believe how many hours we have lost troubleshooting SysV init and Upstart issues. systemd is so much better in every way, reliable parallel init with dependencies, proper handling of double forking, much easier to secure services ( systemd-analyze security ), proper timer handling (yay, no more cron), proper temporary file/directory handling, centralized logs, etc. It improves on about every level compared…

> systemd is so much better in every way,

How can I cancel a systemd startup task that blocks the login prompt? / how is forcing me to wait for dhcp on a network interface that isn't even plugged in a better experience?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#74
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's lost many hours troubleshooting systemd failures, I would like an answer to this question, too.

You won't believe how many hours we have lost troubleshooting SysV init and Upstart issues. systemd is so much better in every way, reliable parallel init with dependencies, proper handling of double forking, much easier to secure services ( systemd-analyze security ), proper timer handling (yay, no more cron), proper temporary file/directory handling, centralized logs, etc. It improves on about every level compared…

There’s a reason why Devuan (a non systemd Debian) exists. Don’t want to get into a massive argument, but there are legitimate reasons for some to go in a different direction.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#76
post #38

Really excited to a company investing into immutable and cryptographically verifiable systems. Two questions really: 1. How will the company make money? (You have probably been asked that a million times :).) 2. Similar to the sibling: what are the first bits that you are going to work on. At any rate, super cool and very nice that you are based in EU/Germany/Berlin!

1. We are confident we have a very robust path to revenue. 2. Given the team, it should be quite obvious there will be a Linux-based OS involved. Our aims are global but we certainly look forward to playing an important role in the European tech landscape.

[deleted]

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#77

Remote attestation is another technology that is not inherently restrictive of software freedom. But here are some examples of technologies that have already restricted freedom due to oligopoly combined with network effects: * smartphone device integrity checks (SafetyNet / Play Integrity / Apple DeviceCheck) * HDMI/HDCP * streaming DRM (Widevine / FairPlay) * Secure Boot (vendor-keyed deployments) * printers w/ sign…

The authors clearly don’t intend this to happen but that doesn’t matter. Someone else will do it. Maybe this can be stopped with licensing as we tried to stop the SaaS loophole with GPLv3?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#78
My only experience with Linux secure boot so far.... I wasn't even aware that it was secure booted. And I needed to run something (I think it was the Displaylink driver) that needs to jam itself into the kernel. And the convoluted process to do it failed (it's packaged for Ubuntu but I was installing it on a slightly outdated Fedora system).

What, this part is only needed for secure boot? I'm not sec... oh. So go back to the UEFI settings, turn secure boot off, problem solved. I usually also turn off SELinux right after install.

So I'm an old greybeard who likes to have full control. Less secure. But at least I get the choice. Hopefully I continue to do so. The notion of not being able to access online banking services or other things that require account login, without running on a "fully attested" system does worry me.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#79
post #65

Exciting! It sounds like you want to achieve system transparency, but I don't see any clear mention of reproducible builds or transparency logs anywhere. I have followed systemd's efforts into Secure Boot and TPM use with great interest. It has become increasingly clear that you are heading in a very similar direction to these projects: - Hal Finney's transparent server - Keylime - System Transparency - Project Oak -…

Hi, I'm David, founding product lead.

Our entire team will be at FOSDEM, and we'd be thrilled to meet more of the Mullvad team. Protecting systems like yours is core to us. We want to understand how we put the right roots of trust and observability into your hands.

Edit: I've reached out privately by email for next steps, as you requested.

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