Systemd 251 Released With systemd-sysupdate Introduced, Many Other Additions

[er888kh]

MOAR CONSPIRACIES PLEASE.

Lunatics are everywhere.

• Pretty much all the governments in the world use Windows which means they are willingly leaking private info to Microsoft/the US government, right?
• Pretty much all the intelligence agencies of the world use Windows which means they are willingly leaking state secrets to Microsoft/the US government, right?
• Pretty much all the serious businesses of the world use Windows and MacOS (to a much less extent) which means they are willingly leaking trade secrets to Microsoft/the US government, right?
• Windows leaking any info has not been conclusively proven even once during its entire lifetime. I mean you can have all the tools, sniffing, Wireshark, virtual machines, etc. Where are all the proofs??

Ah, never mind.

YES!

I would say that they are not leaking stuff directly to MS (why would they be interested?), but rather making themselves much more vulnerable.
Military and intelligence services sometimes have special contracts that will allow them to audit the source code. Other than that, one can be sure that any day, anytime, some three letter agency has a few totally brand new zero-days laying around just in case, and the cost of developing another one would be pretty much negligible for them. That's the reason why we have heard of Stuxnet, Petya, WannaCry (related to Eternal Blue), etc but not so much on the Linux/BSD side. I am not saying Linux is exploit-proof, but it would be a lot costlier to develop some exploit for it and it might need to be much more specialized.

they are willingly leaking private info to Microsoft/the US government, right?

Some countries are US puppets, while others seriously consider Linux as an option to improve security and reduce cost while decreasing their reliance on US/US companies among other things. Just FYI, it was revealed a few days ago that China is going to change a lot of their government devices to Linux, while Russia did this some time ago, and Turkey has its own distribution. Not to mention all the other countries that are using Linux in their public schools (India and some European countries come to mind) and are using it elsewhere without saying it out loud.

[timofonic]

Conspiracy? Microsoft internally uses a number of Linux distros (they have at least two of their own making), so they probably add features they need themselves.

Should we cry foul that many open source projects are compiled and distributed for Windows? Web browsers, Blender, LibreOffice, etc.? Is this a conspiracy as well?

Hey, I was kidding. Or not?

[You-]

One of the things that many will benefit with this release is out of the box support for the Elgato Stream Deck. Unless that support has been backported (I cant seem to figure out how to check), using software like BoatSwain or others often required to manually place udev rules in the correct location, but this should not be necessary when distributions update to this release (so September releases).

Hopefully by then special rules for game controllers will also not be required, but that is more of a moving target with some kernel work also being done.

(The big one left after these two will be udev rules for OpenRGB. I havent seen much interest to have these moved upstream.)

[birdie]

YES!

I would say that they are not leaking stuff directly to MS (why would they be interested?), but rather making themselves much more vulnerable.
Military and intelligence services sometimes have special contracts that will allow them to audit the source code. Other than that, one can be sure that any day, anytime, some three letter agency has a few totally brand new zero-days laying around just in case, and the cost of developing another one would be pretty much negligible for them. That's the reason why we have heard of Stuxnet, Petya, WannaCry (related to Eternal Blue), etc but not so much on the Linux/BSD side. I am not saying Linux is exploit-proof, but it would be a lot costlier to develop some exploit for it and it might need to be much more specialized.



Some countries are US puppets, while others seriously consider Linux as an option to improve security and reduce cost while decreasing their reliance on US/US companies among other things. Just FYI, it was revealed a few days ago that China is going to change a lot of their government devices to Linux, while Russia did this some time ago, and Turkey has its own distribution. Not to mention all the other countries that are using Linux in their public schools (India and some European countries come to mind) and are using it elsewhere without saying it out loud.

Thank you for making sure I will never see your posts again. It's pure comedy gold only you're serious and sorry, my brain can't handle this. There's enough propaganda, idiocy, lies and exaggerations in the world to read even more than this in the comments section of the bloody technical website meant for the most intelligent people.

Just a sidenote: Stuxnet, Petya, WannaCry all used bespoke exploits for Windows developed by the smartest hackers of the world. Linux has a large number of exploits only no one uses its on the desktop so there's nothing to discuss.

So, first, Windows was a spyware OS, ok, no proofs, now according to you Microsoft specifially leaves security holes in it to be exploited. Oh, boy. Let's talk about the Linux kernel vulnerabilities for a second. Or maybe you like Fedora more? How about 308 vulnerabilities for 2022? Wait, maybe Android is also spyware? And what about iOS? How does that rhyme with intentional security holes in Microsoft products?

Never mind, I will not discuss this topic any further. It's plain idiocy. I deal with facts, not conspiracies.

[waxhead]

People... It's all about profit. Microsoft's interest in Linux is only about making profit. Linux is also all about making profit. The difference is that company X gets a lot of development for free from company Y and that's what Linux is such a success. So that is what Microsoft is understanding too and want to be a part of.

Microsoft earned money on a brilliant scheme. Do the job once (which cost a lot) and make a gazillion cheap copies (which cost nearly nothing).

The subscription model is even better and they can now earn money many times on the same software, and therefore lock-in is essential so that's why they try to shape things to make that possible.

It's it a bad thing? Maybe not. The Linux development model have proven that no company can fully control everything... Systemd is another question as this is soon a operatingsystem within a operativsystem and thanks to the licensing it can be a nice "vector" for lock-in stuff. If this is the route Microsoft wants to take is another question, but they for sure want to contribute if that helps their goal to minimize cost and secure future profits one way or another.

[jacob]

Microsoft engineers working on systemd. This seems like a perfect plot for a conspiracy theory story.

The last thing we need is more systemd conspiracy theories.

[er888kh]

Just a sidenote: Stuxnet, Petya, WannaCry all used bespoke exploits for Windows developed by the smartest hackers of the world. Linux has a large number of exploits only no one uses its on the desktop so there's nothing to discuss.

It's plain idiocy. I deal with facts, not conspiracies.

Let's deal with facts. What about finding an instance of some Linux malware causing economic losses of more than $1 billion? (WannaCry did 4 according to wikipedia). How about some malware destroying nuclear grade hardware? Nothing? Stuxnet destroyed centrifuges.

now according to you Microsoft specifially leaves security holes in it to be exploited

No, I didn't say such a thing. I even went as far as saying they probably have no interest in collecting data from high level organizations and targets. I merely implied that it is easier and more cost effective to develop expoits for Windows than other platforms. I didn't try to reason about why Windows might be inherently less secure.

Now, I see there are quite a few vulnerabilities around the kernel. They mean pretty much nothing. Someone exploiting a floppy driver in the kernel can get a CVE for it. Some companies (like RedHat) even get out of their way to get CVEs for everything. Look at the total value of all the hardware that is running Linux and the value of the data that is on that hardware, and the total amount of economic losses caused by OS/kernel bugs.

And you mention Android. The security of a consumer device made 5 years ago by a chinese manufacturer (or even a company with a good apetite for user data such as google) and never got a security update should not be compared to computers in charge of patient data in hospitals, bussiness critical data in small companies and devices in charge of enriching Uranium. This comparison is simply laughable.

[MadeUpName]

systemctl disable systemd-sysupdate

[jacob]

It's it a bad thing? Maybe not. The Linux development model have proven that no company can fully control everything... Systemd is another question as this is soon a operatingsystem within a operativsystem and thanks to the licensing it can be a nice "vector" for lock-in stuff. If this is the route Microsoft wants to take is another question, but they for sure want to contribute if that helps their goal to minimize cost and secure future profits one way or another.

Systemd is not "an operating system within an operating system". What does that even mean? Systemd is part (or more precisely a collection of parts) of an operating system. It's not an "OS within an OS" any more that the BSD userland is. As to the licencing being a vector for lock-in, seriously? It's LGPL. Let me say this again because it apparently still evades lots of people: It's LGPL. So unless the (L)GPL is now a lock-in licence, it has exactly the same lock-in effect as the Linux kernel itself, or glibc or GCC. That is to say, none whatsoever.

[caligula]

Microsoft secretly wants Linux to become more bloated, so that it will stop having the edge over Windows in performance benchmarks and people will stop switching to Linux for performance reasons

The parallel execution model of systemd helps a lot there. Distributing services between cores, now that multi-core has become common, is a great recipe for slowing down boot.