I first used Linux about 5 years ago (Ubuntu). Since then, I have tried quite a few distros:
Kali Linux (Use as a secondary)
Linux Mint (Used for a while)
Arch Linux (Could not install)
Tails (Use this often)
Qubes OS (Tried it twice, not ready yet)
Fedora (Current main)
For me, it has been incredibly difficult to find a properly privacy oriented Linux distro that also has ease of use. I really enjoy the GNOME desktop environment, and I am most familiar with Debian. My issue with Fedora is the lack of proper sandboxing, and it seems as though Qubes is the only one that really takes care in sandboxing apps.
Apologies if this is the wrong community for this question, I would be happy to move this post somewhere else. I’ve been anonymously viewing this community after the Rexodus, but this is my first time actually creating a post. Thank you!
UPDATE:
Thank you all so much for your feedback! The top recommended distro by far was SecureBlue, an atomic distro, so I will be trying that one. If that doesn’t work, I may try other atomic distros such as Fedora Atomic or Fedora Silverblue (I may have made an error in my understanding of those two, please correct my if I did!). EndeavourOS was also highly recommended, so if I’m not a fan of atomic distros I will be using that. To @leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone, your suggestion for Linux Mint Debian Edition with GNOME sounds like a dream, so I may use it as a secondary for my laptop. Thank you all again for your help and support, and I hope this helps someone else too!
Use Fedora with distrobox and gnome boxes
There’s SecureBlue
(From the repo):
"The following are not in scope for this project:
Anything related to increasing "privacy", especially when at odds with improving security"It’s a bit of a vague claim, since privacy encompasses many things (e.g. encryption could be considered a privacy tool). I may look into it though!
As far as privacy goes, it’s nothing you can’t change up later, they just don’t focus specifically on privacy, that’s why they use chromium instead of a privacy oriented Chromium/FireFox fork or something like Tor. It’s already quiet private as is; more so than most distros; just not so much as privacy specialized tools like TailsOS.
But for security it implements some things that are pretty difficult and time consuming to do yourself.
It’s a really good base to start with, and only take a few small steps to lock down the privacy aspect.
It’s a really good option if you’re not ready for a QubesOS workflow, and still want the most security you can out of a somewhat* traditional workflow.Thank you for some clarification! Will it set me up to better understand Qubes OS later on?
Maybe a bit more compared to other distros, but the whole VM “profiles” workflow is essentially solely unique to QubesOS.
If Tails wasn’t amnesiac and implemented strong sandboxing, it would be perfect for me. Whonix has been (very, VERY) slowly developing their own independent ISO, which I will be quick to try when (after an eternity) it releases to the public.
Arch Linux (Could not install)
That is a very useful tool I overlooked! Thank you!
How does Arch Linux fair as far as privacy and security? It’s private in that it is minimalistic, but that may also mean it lacks in preinstalled security features.
I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re planning to do it yourself. ArchWiki Security
I recommend endeavouros as an intro to arch. It is arch with an installer and sane defaults.
Yet if you are looking for a set it and forget it install arch isn’t for you. Arch is for the tinkerer, for the advanced, for the person who spends a lot of time with the computer and wants to read about everything.
This was Arch a decade ago, it’s just not the case anymore. It’s a stable distro that doesn’t require much tinkering and doesn’t break on its own. It’s right next to Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu and everyone wise who is stable, but not Debian stable.
I haven’t said that it’s unstable.
Fedora enables selinux by default. On arch you have to read about what it is, what the alternative is and most importantly you have to keep up to date because otherwise you don’t know about recent advances in the space.
That is where fedora is excelling at. They implement the newest proven shit with good defaults and you as a user don’t even have to know that it’s there.
I have also not said that you have to tinker, but that if you like to tinker, then the distro is for you. An atomic distro isn’t a good fit for a tinkerer right now. On arch you can read the differences in the packages. It’s designed to be mode difficult in the first place.
Depends on what level of privacy you want. I’m using Linux Mint Debian Edition with GNOME installed on it and it hits the sweet spot between privacy respecting and Mint’s ease of use.
Have you encountered any issues with your setup? I appreciate your suggestion!
Nope, no issues :) Debian is (as you know) pretty rock solid and Mint is too. It’s pretty much like having a system as reliable as Ubuntu but with none of the Canonical bullshit.
Yay for the first post!
I cannot comment on the topic but I’m wondering if you would get more insights from the folks in the !linux@lemmy.ml community. Maybe wanna crosspost?
Done, thank you! :)
Fedora Silverblue uses flatpaks for most apps by default. The exception is Firefox because the codes haven’t been sandboxed yet, but they are working on it. If you don’t need to play videos in Firefox, there is a flatpak available.
I realize Firefox is probably the biggest thing that really should be sandboxed, its why I haven’t switched to Silverblue yet.
I recently switched to Mullvad Browser from Librewolf (both are Firefox based), do those still fall under the same conditions?
None of these fall under those conditions, idk where he got that info from. I’ve been using the LibreWolf Flatpak for months now and everything works just fine, including playing videos.
It’s in the Silverblue FAQ: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/faq/#_how_can_i_play_more_videos_in_firefox_like_youtube
Admittedly, it does say you can use the flathub version.
You can use BubbleJail or FireJail for sandboxing FireFox.
The Firefox official flatpak on flathub plays videos fine. It can even use vaapi if you install that.
Interesting, I wonder why Silverblue hasn’t switched yet. Or maybe the documentation is out of date.
Bundling it means Firefox is guaranteed to be there on a default install, so you can look up documentation and get online or pass through a captive portal. Fedora also tends to prefer their own flatpak repository over flathub although that might be changing.
Can’t you containerise Firefox with something like AppArmor instead?
Removed by mod
No telemetry and good sandboxing by default are the main two things I am looking for in terms of privacy. As GravitySpoiled has mentioned, Arch isn’t an “install and forget about it” distro, which is another thing I would look for if it were to be my main OS. If you have any suggestions based on that, please let me know!
From what I understand, wayland is better than x11 for privacy bc of the use of portals (the way apps communicate with the system), and flatpak over distro packages for sandboxing (you can also change the permissions yourself with flatseal).
Wayland is more secure/private because it isolates windows/applications from each other preventing things like keyloggers.
Portals is a permission based way to allow those applications to interact with each other.
As an alternative to Kali Linux, there’s ParrotOS.
It’s been on my to-do list for a while to try. Thank you!
Edit: I think it may be applicable to mention that I have reinstalled Kali 3 times. The first time it broke after an update. The second time is when I learned what a desktop environment was. The third time was when I discovered why seperating /home, /etc, and so on into different partitions is bad if you don’t know what you’re doing. The installer for the third time was repeatedly broken (apps wouldn’t open!), but the netinstaller resolved the issue.
I discovered why seperating /home, /etc, and so on into different partitions is bad if you don’t know what you’re doing.
You should really only be separating
/homefrom/, there’s not much benefit to separating anything else onto a separate partition.
You separate/homeonto a separate partition to protect your user data in cases of the system crapping out on you, or if you’re to migrate to a different distro.Noted, thank you!
Fwiw, put /tmp on its own partition and mount it with noexec
Imo, tmpfs is perfectly fine as is.
I recently tried a bunch of distros. I’ve been using Linux since 2001 and I’ve been using Ubuntu mostly (or KDE, xfce, mate flavors). I, too, am concerned with privacy and am looking for something simple which allows me to pay PC games with steam.
I tried Endeavour OS, which is a slightly more user friendly, game oriented Arch distro with tools for installing gaming software and drivers, POP! OS which is an Ubuntu based gaming oriented distro as well with a Gnome desktop by default, and Elementary OS, based on Ubuntu, which has a kind of Gnome, MacOS looking interface, but not specifically for gaming.
All of them address the privacy issue by not including the telemetry packages.
The best out of the three in my opinion was Elementary OS. It’s absolutely gorgeous, easy to use and allows you to focus on what you need to do without any hassle. You can install most of your apps through flatpaks if that’s what you’re looking for. And there are no snaps, but you have the option of installing it if you want.
Those are all great suggestions, thank you! Have you encountered any obvious issues or pitfalls that I should avoid?
Unless you’ve used Arch before or that you’re a Linux power user (meaning you’re not afraid of using a terminal and messing around with config files using a text editor), I would probably stay away from Endeavour OS. But if you don’t mind messing around a bit and having to configure your stuff through the terminal, then I think it’s a great option, especially for gaming. Endeavour isn’t as bleeding edge in its software packages as the OG Arch so it’s going to be more stable and less prone to bugs and hickups. Plus I found having the tools to set up stuff like NVidia graphics drivers and Steam and other game launcher alternatives pretty damn awesome. Plus, during the installation, if you select to get the online repos to install, you can pick which desktop environment to use, including Gnome.
POP! is so god damn simple. And upon first boot you get a bunch of dialogues to help you with setting up your gaming stuff including drivers. The app store has all the gaming stuff like Steam and other launchers right at the top. The default desktop is Gnome with a custom panel at the bottom. And it’s all based on Ubuntu LTS, so it’s stable, but it might lag behind in software versions. Everything just worked out of the box. I don’t think you’d face any pitfalls here. And the Debian packaging system, as you probably know, is very similar to Fedora’s.
Elementary OS had some hiccups on first boot. The default web browser is Gnome Web (AKA Epiphany) installed as a flatpak. For some reason on my VM, page renders were all blank white pages. I had to install the Flatseal flatpak to fix some graphical option with the Gnome Web flatpak permissions. But you can also get Firefox from the app store instead. There was another benign issue, but I can’t remember what it was. The web browser problem was the main one. Then for installing graphical drivers, if you have an ATI card I think you’re already pretty golden. With NVidia, you’ll need to download and install the driver using NVidia’s provided installer or add some PPA package repository. You can probably follow a tutorial like this one. As for steam, you can probably download and install it like any other package. I’d install Synaptic package manager to easily manage package installation, removal, etc. Yeah, this one is a bit more of a hassle, but the desktop experience LARGELY makes up for it. I really fell in love with this one.
NixOS
If the distro supports apparmor, then firejail + apparmor offer together sandboxing for quite a set of applications (apparmor includes few profiles by itself, but firejal has quite a few, and one can enable apparmor on all, or the ones wnated). Arch has pretty good wikies about firejail + apparmor.
What features do you specifically want? You mentioned sandboxing. Anything else?
I’d say just keep it simple. If you’re comfortable with Debian then stick with that, study up and learn how to harden it. Kali, ParrotOS, Mint, Ubuntu…they’re all just based on Debian with different preinstalled apps and desktop environments. Fedora and Arch are kinda weird and unique, I’m not sure if I’d recommend those for anyone, unless you KNOW that’s what you need. Qubes seems interesting, I’m not familiar with that.
But I’ll point out that ALL of these distros are miles ahead of Windows in terms of privacy. So just by using Mint for a while, you were already ahead of the curve.
I could make a list of all the things I would want in a distro as far as privacy, but a lot of them aren’t as important as sandboxing and (obviously) a system that doesn’t actively make your privacy life hell. Other features would be better clipboard management (Tails and Qubes do a great job with that), no obvious gaps in security/privacy, a system that you don’t have to build yourself, etc.
I think I’ve used Fedora more than I have Mint, but I have been completely Windows free for years now!
Found one you have, I would say, mmmm?
If you would experimentate can try Alpine linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.
At least that says about itself.
However, I have never installed it
I believe I may have live booted it once (when I needed to perform an action that live booting with Ubuntu couldn’t do), and I really enjoyed the look and feel of it for the short time I used it.
Or it was a different one, but let’s just assume it was Alpine ;)
