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Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work

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On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 10:45:39AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > As a general rule I am willing to accept RPMs, pacman ?? packages, and
> > .debs, when they are from the Distribution's own package libraries, or
> > hardware vendor supported, as otherwise I don't know the people providing
> > the package. I have this strange belief that when a developer supplies
> > a package to the Distribution owner for inclusion in their libraries, the
> > Distribution owner does some level of verification/validation that the
> > package plays nicely with the distribution and other applications. Maybe
> > even some security checking?
> 
> I'm with you, here.  AFAIK Debian packaging does not in and of itself
> come with any sort of "security checking", tho.  So, if there are
> security benefits (personally, I do believe there are) they are mostly
> indirect result of the packaging process, e.g. in the presence of extra
> eyes, or in the need to investigate the details of the licensing, or the
> need to follow the rules about where files are placed, or in the
> avoidance of vendoring, or in the "slow" pace of stable releases, ...

I think there is a bit more to it. Imagine now you have 30 flatpaks,
everyone bringing in its own snowflake version of... uh... libxz [1],
say, and suddenly there is a backdoor. Sixteen of the startups providing
the flatpaks have gone bust or were bought up by $BIGCORP.

Now, what.

> For that same reason, I try to stay away from things like Snap/Flatpak
> which seem to be a way to skip all that "process" and run effectively
> black-boxes, thereby preventing you access to the usual transparency
> benefits of Free Software.

That would be my approach too. Of course, $VENDOR offering the thing as
a .deb is no guarantee either. I know of one which comes with two complete
copies of PostgreSQL server, because... why not. So I try to stick to
distro-native packages as far as possible.

But hey. Everyone's entitled to ruin their health howewer they like :)

Cheers

[1] Just a random example, of course. And the person who discovered
   that backdoor happens to be Debian maintainer, but hey.
-- 
t

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How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-06-30 02:20 +0200
  Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Richard <rrosner5@gmail.com> - 2024-06-30 09:20 +0200
    Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com> - 2024-06-30 14:50 +0200
    Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-07-01 01:30 +0200
      Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2024-07-01 07:50 +0200
        Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-07-01 08:40 +0200
          Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2024-07-01 09:50 +0200
        Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-07-01 21:00 +0200
          Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> - 2024-07-02 02:20 +0200
            Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-07-02 03:00 +0200
              Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Richard <rrosner5@gmail.com> - 2024-07-02 10:20 +0200
      Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Richard <rrosner5@gmail.com> - 2024-07-01 10:50 +0200
        Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info> - 2024-07-01 11:20 +0200
          Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Richard <rrosner5@gmail.com> - 2024-07-01 14:20 +0200
          Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-07-01 16:50 +0200
            Re: How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-07-01 18:40 +0200

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