Comment by Chance-Device

Comment by Chance-Device 7 hours ago

Everyone is talking about moving to Linux lately, it’s a bit of a trend. I wish they’d stop, for one simple reason: I’ve been using Linux exclusively (when I’m not forced to use macOS by work) for several years now, and I rather enjoy the lack of malware, spyware and other bullshit on the platform.

If the general public comes over this situation might end. Desktop linux isn’t a target right now because its niche, I’d prefer that didn’t stop.

Oh well. Maybe nothing lasts forever.

raincole 6 minutes ago

You overestimate how influential HN is. Everyone on HN is talking about moving to Linux. Which means, uh, nothing really changed for the general public.

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vladvasiliu 7 hours ago

While I sympathize with this angle, there's another side to this coin: if more people do the switch, maybe some applications will finally get linux versions.

I'm a Sunday photographer and quite like Lightroom and Photoshop (I know about the drama, but to me, I get enough value from them compared to Darktable and the GIMP to not switch just yet). It's the only reason I still have a windows pc hanging around the house.

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glitchcrab 7 hours ago

I am in a similar boat; my media editing machine ruined windows 10 so that I can use Lightroom. But I would dearly love to ditch windows so I'm currently looking to try out running Lightroom under Winapps to see if it is usable. There's no way of passing the GPU through without something like SR-IOV so I'll have to see how it goes.
https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

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- vladvasiliu 7 hours ago
  
  I was thinking of doing that, but since that would require me to switch the monitor and whatnot, it would be just like using two PCs. And since I only use my desktop for LR and not much else, jumping through the hoops with emulation doesn't make much sense.
  
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  glitchcrab 6 hours ago
  
  How so? Winapps lets you run windows applications as if they were native to Linux, you interact with them the same way you would anything installed by apt/pacman/dnf etc. Unless I'm very much misunderstanding things (which I don't believe I am)
  
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  vladvasiliu 3 hours ago
  
  In the general case, I think you're right. WinApps seems to use RemoteApp functionality on windows to export just the window you're interested in from the virtualized guest vm to the host, which should behave mostly as a "native" app.
  But you were talking about sr-iov, which is a whole different matter. Presumably, the goal is to have LR use that GPU for some of its functions. But LR doesn't support multiple GPUs: it does its computation on the same GPU that handles the output. For that, you need to connect the display to the passed-through GPU. Now, aside from intel, I don't think any mainstream GPU actually supports sr-iov, so you need to pass through the entire gpu to the guest VM (the host wouldn't see it anymore at all). This isn't how RemoteApp works, and I doubt WinApps handles this case.
  I remember a project (Looking Glass?) that tried to somehow "bring back" the output to the host machine, but it didn't seem too robust at the time. I haven't followed it, so I have no idea if it's any better now, if it's still alive. If it does, this could possibly work if you had two GPUs (which I happen to have, since my CPU has an integrated GPU). But you'd still get the whole Windows desktop of the VM, not an RDP connection.
  
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dlcarrier 7 hours ago

There's a lot of servers running Linux that are regularly targeted by malware.

There is a big difference in what software a desktop user runs versus what runs on a server, but the great thing about Linux is that you can keep just as much variation between your install and the average desktop user.

Your best bet for security is probably running OpenBSD, but within Linux, if you avoid common optional applications and services like Gnome, KDE, pulseaudio, systemd, etc., you'll have a significantly different attack vector. Avoiding Python and Node package managers and sticking to your distribution's package manager would be great, too.

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Chance-Device 7 hours ago

Thanks, and that probably is a good security posture, but having to stop using everything good and switch to OpenBSD is exactly what I want to avoid!

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- dlcarrier 5 hours ago
  
  Not that OpenBSD isn't good, it's just different priorities.
  
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tsoukase 5 hours ago

Better spread the Linux word because with enough users more developers will be attracted and the race good vs bad hackers in OSS will be won be the former. "Nothing is hidden under the sun". Closed source is made to push malware secretly.

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bigstrat2003 5 hours ago

> Closed source is made to push malware secretly.
That is factually incorrect flamebait. Closed source is made primarily due to a desire to retain control. While one can use control for malicious reasons, the predominant use is to make money.

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minusSeven 5 hours ago

Folks on reddit and hackernews aren't normal people. Outside of this bubble few people have heard of linux. Hell so few people I know use firefox which makes me mad. You are safe from that fear.

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