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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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139

Niche Distro Users: Why? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by BaumGeist@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I occasionally see love for niche small distros, instead of the major ones...

And it just seems to me like there's more hurdles than help when it comes to adopting an OS whose users number in the hundreds or dozens. I can understand trying one for fun in a VM, but I prefer sticking to the bigger distros for my daily drivers since the they'll support more software and not be reliant on upstream sources, and any bugs or other issues are more likely to be documented abd have workarounds/fixes.

So: What distro do you daily drive and why? What drove you to choose it?

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[–] bsergay@discuss.online 12 points 3 months ago (11 children)

I daily drive secureblue; or, to be more precise, its bluefin-main-userns-hardened image.

"Why?", you ask. Because security is my number one priority.

I dismiss other often mentioned hardened systems for the following reasons:

Qubes OS; my laptop doesn't satisfy its hardware requirements. Otherwise, this would have been my daily driver.
Kicksecure; primary reason would be how it's dependent on backports for security updates.
Tails; while excellent for protection against forensics, its security model is far from impressive otherwise. It's not really meant as a daily driver for general use anyways.
Spectrum OS; heavily inspired by Qubes OS and NixOS, which is a big W. Unfortunately, it's not ready yet.

[–] Sunny 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Very interesting had not heard of this one yet. What are the main advantages of using this, that make it more secure?

[–] bsergay@discuss.online 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What are the main advantages of using this, that make it more secure?

More secure compared to your average distro? Or more secure compared to a specific set of distros? Unless, this is properly specified, this comment could become very unwieldy 😅.

Thanks in advance for specifying!

[–] Sunny 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry, it was a badly formatted question I wrote whilst commuting earlier.. I ended up looking the project up to look into the details, seems very promising! I'll soon be booting Linux on a work laptop and think secureblue might be a very strong contender for this 💪

[–] bsergay@discuss.online 2 points 3 months ago

Aight. I'm glad to hear that that has been resolved. I'd love to hear about your experiences on secureblue, so consider to report back. Finally, note that as a hardened distro, some things might work differently from what you'd expect. So be prepared to relearn a thing or two 😉.

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