Canonical Developer Criticizes Linux Mint's Security

[nomadewolf]

I can smell the desperation coming from Canonical...

[nomadewolf]

When an Arch developer said about the same about Manjaro I saw nobody on Phoronix flip their shit. Actually, I don't even remember Phoronix covering it, but if someone at Canonical even farts, oh boy, oh boy, they (Phoronix and other outlets) will be all over that along with the hate bandwagon of trolls and zealots

Here. Have at boys!
http://allanmcrae.com/2013/01/manjar...for-stability/

I remember that, and it's true.
But it's also true that Canonical/Ubuntu are much bigger than Arch and Manjaro, and with more power comes more responsibility.

Supposedly, all the linux distros are about openness and giving you a choice while cooperating with everyone else in the FOSS world without.

Linux Mint is one of the very few that actually acts that way.

[fossy]

I can smell the desperation coming from Canonical...

actually no - security is no joke - we all need to be aware and more importantly push for stuff to happen.

So if Mint guys are disabling stuff - we all need to worry about that. What are the mint devs doing? Why? Are they actually pushing security stuff through a different route? If yes - what is it?

[prodigy_]

an Arch developer said

First, Arch is a non-profit community-based distro. Second, a random blog article doesn't mean they have an agenda. On the other hand Canonical obviously does (Mark & Co. rabidly attack everyone and everything they see as a threat starting with Wayland).

[Tinitus]

Respect for being scientific and producing data that should actually mean something - there really isn't enough of that around here.

That said, those Wikipedia numbers just look...wrong. No way does Ubuntu have 50x more users than other major distros like Fedora, Mint and SUSE; the 'Linux Other' column contains almost twice as much traffic as all other entries combined despite all major and some minor distros being shown individually.

Linux Other includes Chrome OS, which I guess makes up the majority in this category.

[who_me]

First, Arch is a non-profit community-based distro. Second, a random blog article doesn't mean they have an agenda. On the other hand Canonical obviously does (Mark & Co. rabidly attack everyone and everything they see as a threat starting with Wayland).

So you dismiss one blog article not on the technical merits of what *is written* in it but on *who wrote* it. Good going you "freedom" champs you!

Like I said, rabid zealots and trolls. The phoronix forums are a cesspool.

[squirrl]

CACA

Any operating system that presents me with a guest account to log into without a password is a comprimised system.

[busukxuan]

Saying DistroWatch is a bad source is just like when my teachers would say Wikipedia is a bad source. It always felt like a discrediting statement especially when I would write papers sourcing the material, but say it came from an encyclopedia. In other words it may not be as good as getting a piece of software on every single Linux system reporting which distro they are using, but it is as good as it gets.

DistroWatch uses statistic for this info, and statistics isn't always a good source. With larger data samples, one may obtain a more precise general representation of the data(probabilistically). Also, you have to make sure the data are not biased (not intentionally, many data collection methods generate biased data; the most probable bias of that website is, is the ubuntu-visitor to ubuntu-user ratio the same as those of other distros, esp. mint). You can see how biased a data sample can be on this page. There are data from several different statistics services on the Internet, and the most likely variable that effects their data is the range of the websites each service collects data from. Most of these statistics services have quite large data samples, so that is unlikely to be a problem, therefore this basically demonstrates how data collection methods generate biased data. See the Wikimedia data, it shows extra low Windows 7 usage share, and increased iOS and Android usage share, and I believe that is because people are starting to use Wikipedia a lot from their mobile devices, since it's a convenient source of information, esp. after the release of the official Wikipedia mobile app(but the reason doesn't matter, this is just to demonstrate how different methods generate biased data).

However when one says Wikipedia is a bad source, I'd say no(mostly). Again statistics isn't always a good source, but Wikipedia isn't only a source of these data, but also many other things. When it comes to numbers, Wikipedia has a strict rule that avoids assumption of the relevance of those data, unless it is provably true, or the data was obtained from extra-high accuracy scientific measurements and has near-zero chance of a major error.

The conclusion: Wikipedia is not a bad source, but since it's not the same concept as DistroWatch, the (specifically) popularity ranking of DistroWatch is highly probably(I personally think it actually is, but I don't have proof) a bad source.

[Mike Frett]

The truth is, if you are using anything other than a main distro and are focused on security; you're using the wrong distro. Things like Mint are for experimentation and hobby purposes.

[k1l_]

First, Arch is a non-profit community-based distro. Second, a random blog article doesn't mean they have an agenda. On the other hand Canonical obviously does (Mark & Co. rabidly attack everyone and everything they see as a threat starting with Wayland).

So you attacking canonical, ubuntu and its supporters and developers is the right way?

The developer adressed a valid point which should raise concerns about Mints handling of that issue and what other distributions could learn from that. Not start another shitstorm about canonical.

So what is your agenda here?