Security by sandboxing: Firejail vs bubblewrap vs other alternatives

Did you ever do "npm install" or "pip install" and having a slightly bad feeling about executing the resulting code? What if there is malware hiding in one of the packages?

Most programs a user starts run with the full permission of the user. While it's good that this is not root, all the important and irreplaceable files you own are accessible. A backup is nice, but what if a library you downloaded copies your ssh keys or your password manager files?

That's where sandboxing comes into play: Deno does it out-of-the-box, but what if you use something else? Node.js or Python?

So I searched for possibilities: something sufficiently secure, but still convenient enough to be used.

This is a short summary about what I found incl. a short test-example of bubblewrap and firejail.

TL;DR: I use firejail to run untrustworthy code. It's reasonably secure, simple to use and allows me to easily limit what programs can access (files and network mainly). bubblewrap works too, but it's less convenient for my taste.

https://redd.it/knjzf2
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This week in matrix brings a new GroupMe bridge, a native KDE client, and more
https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/30/this-week-in-matrix-2020-12-30/

https://redd.it/knd604
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Linux Web browsers

I really want to use a web browser like Gnome web or Falkon instead of using Firefox and I love their simplicity but my only deception is their ad block, I have been using Firefox with the right ad blocks for so long that I didn't remember that ads even existed until I tried to surf with Gnome web and Falkon...how is it possible to surf this way, am I missing something ?

https://redd.it/knlngs
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What do people like Richard stallman do on the internet?

So Richard stallman doesn’t use a lot of stuff because they run proprietary stuff and because of privacy concerns. He has articles detailing why he won’t use Amazon , Google and Microsoft and a lot of other companies.

So how does he use the internet. Sure you can host your own email and that’s probably what he does but the rest of the internet runs off of AWS, GCP and azure. So that’s off limits for him. He doesn’t even run non free JavaScript code. So I doubt he’d use these large cloud platforms. I mean even alternative search engines run off of AWS or GCP or something. So does he not search the web or something? Like what can you do when you restrict yourself this much?

https://redd.it/knnij0
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Linux Foundation Public Health?

I was unaware until now that the Linux Foundation has teamed up with IBM, Cisco and Tencent (among others) to make vaccination verification software under a new banner. Some refer to this as a 'covid passport'

Do developers at large have any apprehension about this? IBM/RedHat just cancelled the most widely used enterprise linux Distro (CentOS) and now they are creating software limitations for physical travel with China's primary telecom.

Thoughts?
Though it may be called open source, it's implementation will most definitely not advocate freedom.


See:
https://www.lfph.io/2020/07/20/tech-leaders-and-health-authorities-from-around-the-globe-collaborate-to-combat-covid-19/

https://redd.it/knnlgg
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First time on Linux— with Arch!

I’ve been on the other two operating system (W10 and macOS) and recently decided to switch to Linux! (in a VM because I still need W10 for school related reasons) I had heard a lot of things about Arch (and that it was a pretty good Distro but “hard” to install). So I wanted to give it a try myself! Installed the base and the basic DE and GUI in about 2 tries each (I messed up the configs in the base install and didn’t know what GUI elements I needed to install) but after that it was a huge success! Didn’t find the installation hard at all (lucky?).
Anyways,
I love the concept of OpenSource and Linux so I am excited to be on this community!
:)

https://redd.it/knouhm
@r_linux

A message from the FSF president for the year-end
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-fights-to-secure-software-freedom-for-future-generations

https://redd.it/kn8bz4
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Volker Krause looks back at the evolution of KDE Itinerary through 2020 and how KDE's travel assistant is growing to cover, not only public transport, but also accessibility info, opening hours of facilities at train and bus stations, and much more
https://www.volkerkrause.eu/2020/12/26/kde-wrapping-up-2020.html

https://redd.it/knpjq8
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The Kate Text Editor in 2020
https://kate-editor.org/post/2020/2020-12-31-kate-in-2020/

https://redd.it/knqajs
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Krita in 2020
https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-2020/

https://redd.it/kns28r
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Live Photos support?

I am planning to sync my apple photos library to my Linux desktop, I am backing up/syncing my photos with Nextcloud and it supports apple’s Live photos format.

My question: is there any photos management/edit software in Linux distros that supports apple’s live photos format?

https://redd.it/knqyji
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FOSS and Linux 2020 accomplishments and major events.

2020 was a crazy year, but I wanted to see what everyone thinks about Linux and FOSS in general in 2020.

Overall I have the perception that not a lot of major stuff happened, which is great news. Everything iteratively improved, but was pretty stable all around.

One call out I'd make is that the AMD launches this year were solid. Normally there is an unstable period between hardware release and when it's running well, but the RX 6000 series gpus and ryzen 5000 series cpus were pretty much without issue from everything I read (it'd be nice to actually get my hands on a new GPU at msrp ..... ).

What do you all think about the last year?

https://redd.it/knulob
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Your Top 100% O/S Editor/IDE Suggestion

Requesting recommendations of 100% (from code repository all the way to distribution) open source editors and/or IDEs for most if not all one's web development needs, and importantly, WHY you use it over any other open source options.

In a nutshell, this stems from me beginning to see just how important open source is now as well as how important it is to preserve and expand it into the future. I'd like to do my work on tools that I could potentially directly contribute to in the future and at least give feedback to now, among many other reasons.

To be clear, I'm not looking for a philosophical, what is or isn't open source, debate, or any debate at all.

But to clarify for the sake of accurate recommendations to this specific topic:

I am personally not satisfied with the "open source" nature of many projects purporting to be open source, and I find myself not being excited for how advanced any of these IDEs may become because of their amazing proprietary telemetry among other things.

So, that is where I'm coming from and what I'm looking for so please school me (and whoever may also find this useful) on any and all completely open source options for editors and/or IDEs as well as any crucial peripheral tools (e.g. there are some extensions that essentially MAKE VSCode useful and even ideal for certain types of development).

I haven't found a thread exactly like this in my search so hoping it could be useful.

Thank you ahead of time to anyone that shares.

https://redd.it/knw8sq
@r_linux

Kill frozen/any programs with dmenu/rofi/fzf with just one command.

https://redd.it/knwouj
@r_linux

Budget software recommendations?

Right now I use Mint on my phone, but I find that it doesn't have the reports I want, so I'm looking for a better solution, and where better to look than FOSS? I've tried Skrooge and Homebank, but they seem to need you to add every transaction/operation manually, whereas Mint automatically syncs the transactions of all linked accounts. Does anyone have a recommendation for software that also can automatically sync transaction history with the accounts you link?

https://redd.it/knxxx6
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"Viewing source code isn’t tied to elevation of risk"

I know this won't change anything. Microsoft will still be Microsoft. Windows will still stay closed source. Embrace, extend, extinguish?

Anyway, it's funny to see Microsoft admitting this after being hacked.

https://redd.it/knxr11
@r_linux

Hey! Just created a new zsh-vi-mode plugin, don't you want to have a try?

It's a totally very fresh release and maybe you'll like it, faster switching speed between normal mode and insert mode, and faster key response, bring you to real life, anyway welcome to be the early adopter, please upvote by commenting this post, many thanks for you (vimers). 😀 Happy new year everyone!

https://github.com/jeffreytse/zsh-vi-mode

## Features

Cursor movement (Navigation).
Insert & Replace (Insert mode).
Text Objects.
Searching text.
Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.
Surrounds (Add, Replace, Delete, and Move Around, Highlight).
Switch keywords (Increase/Decrease Number, Boolean, etc. In progress).
...

https://redd.it/knmahb
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Kali Linux + Mr. Robot ARG Society
https://www.kali.org/news/mr-robot-arg-society/

https://redd.it/knoj4k
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So I installed Arch Linux

Yes, I made it, and I'm fucking proud of it. I always heard that Arch Linux was so hard to install because it was fully manual, but I actually didn't find it that complicated... I mean, with this wonderful invention that is the Wiki, it was really easy and I understood every command I typed in this black and scary terminal. It's certain that if you just copy/paste the commands without giving a fuck, it won't work (and even...).

The hardest thing I had to go through was the partitionning, but I just had to read a mid-long article about it and I could make it in less than 5 minutes (thanks cfdisk btw, you are well better than fdisk...).

I didn't even get errors at all, the only little one was caused by efibootmgr that for any reason wouldn't work (I don't remember the error's message), and the solution was just to add --removable to the grub-install command, solution that I of course found on the Wiki.

I also had a problem with grub, but that's just because I'm dumb: When I booted my computer it just printed the grub shell without doing anything else, and I realized myself that it was because I forgot to config grub with the grub-mkconfig command.

Anyway, if you can read (hand if you have a very little bit of motivation), you can install Arch Linux.

https://redd.it/ko1qy6
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elementary's 2020 in Review
https://blog.elementary.io/our-2020-in-review/

https://redd.it/ko28v0
@r_linux

Microsoft Teams in Google Chrome freezes entire computer

My Pop_OS! machine has been constantly freezing during work when using Microsoft Teams. I have been using it in Google Chrome instead of installing natively. It always freezes during calls, usually with just audio and no video.

I'm a bit surprised about this since I don't think any Linux machine I've used has ever frozen in the past, but it's very common with Teams. I'm also surprised since I wouldn't think running it as a website would be able to do anything so awful as freeze my entire OS.

Has anyone encountered this before? I'm kind of at a loss of what to do.

https://redd.it/ko3c8h
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