John Summerfield wrote:
I tend to ignore marketing hype.
I didn't say anything about marketing hype either. If you have a
project, you want users and you may want people to help you. You have
about one para to get people's attention.
Marketing hype takes longer than that. Remember, "hype" is short for
"hyperbole" and asserts exaggeration.
Yes, but distributions tend to really be general-purpose things except
for the appliance types so emphasizing only one aspect is likely to be
exaggeration.
I'm pretty happy with the security in RHEL's clones, but that still
is not the first amongst its goals. The driver in RHEL is the
Enterprise. Of course, security is important, but Red Hat Secure
Linux would be a very different product, wouldn't you think?
I'm not sure how it could be different and still be useful. Maybe
they would disable your ability to turn off SELinux and firewalling.
And wouldn't the existence of a separate secure product imply that the
stock one has known security flaws? As things are, I assume that
Why? Does the fact that GM sells big cars, small cars, cheap cars &
expensive cars mean there's anrthing wrong with any of them? I see it as
a recognition that different folk have different requirements.
With cars, you are required to select a subset of the available choices
before you make the purchase. With software, especially free software,
there is no reason you can't have all the choices available all the time
and just run what you need. But I don't think anyone needs programs
with known security vulnerabilities so they can all be fixed in the
standard distribution.
I would expect RHSL to have more emphasis on keeping the bastards out
and detecting their efforts to subvert the security measures, and maybe
some self-repair.
But aren't those things all available as standard packages?
Running a secure server as a virtual server implies
you _can_ check it with a trusted Linux - the host. Or another guest.
Installing a service would imply all appropriate support packages -
sendmail+spamassassin+mimedefang, and guidance on getting them up and
running securely.
Yes, I'd like to see mimedefang packaged with a standard configuration,
but it isn't horrible to set up.
A default install would have the minimum required to boot and install
other stuff, a GUI would be optional on a server (if provided). selinux
would be enforcing, and maybe not able to be turned off without a
reboot. Filesystems might be encrypted by default.
I don't think you need a separate distribution for that - and forcing a
user to pick the packages to install is probably the worst mistake
security-wise since most users have no idea about what they need. What
I've always wanted to see is a configuration management scheme where
anyone could 'publish' a complete list of packages and config changes
they used to set up a machine for certain purposes and anyone else could
clone that exact setup (with local adjustment for hostnames and
addresses, of course), and then track the updates of the master machine
automatically. Then you could simply let an expert take care of your
choices with no extra effort on either side.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
