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Linux Hardening Guide / Linux is Insecure (madaidans-insecurities.github.io)
submitted 1 week ago by BigHeadMode@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Writeup from 2022 that I assume is mostly still valid. TLDR:

  1. Mainstream Linux is less secure than macOS, Windows, and ChromeOS. (Elsewhere: "[iOS/Android] were designed with security as a foundational component. They were built with sandboxing, verified boot, modern exploit mitigations and more from the start. As such, they are far more locked down than other platforms and significantly more resistant to attacks.")
  2. Move as much activity outside the core maximum privilege OS as possible.
  3. OP doesn't mention immutable OS, but I assume they help a lot.
  4. Create a threat model and use it to guide your time and money investments in secure computing.

Once you have hardened the system as much as you can, you should follow good privacy and security practices:

  1. Disable or remove things you don't need to minimise attack surface.
  2. Stay updated. Configure a cron job or init script to update your system daily.
  3. Don't leak any information about you or your system, no matter how minor it may seem.
  4. Follow general security and privacy advice.
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[-] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 week ago

security you don't understand is security you don't have. windows' exploit mitigations don't work because the average user doesn't understand them and can easily be guided into disabling them.

the weakest attack surface is the stupidity of the user and that's not gonna change however much you try to make your os secure

[-] verdare@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

A secure OS should account for dumb/malicious users and mitigate the damage they can do. If a user can be convinced to disable protections on Windows or Android, that same user could easily be convinced to download a script and run it with sudo.

[-] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago

that might be true, but no one learns calculus in a ball pit

[-] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

Youre not going to improve security beyond the already plucked low hanging fruit except by developing usees into users.

this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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