• 17 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • Restricting access to files within a user is why sandboxing is useful. It in theory limits the scope of a vulnerability in an app to only the files it can read (unless there is a sandbox escape). Android instead prevents apps from accessing other apps’ files by having each app run as a separate user.

    One way to keep the encryption keys encrypted at rest is to require the login password (or another password) to open the app, and use it to encrypt the keys. That said, if an adversary can read Signal’s data, they can almost certainly just replace Signal with a password-stealing version.








  • I guess it kind of depends. Not really sure what most people actually use, but for those who use MS’s services, Office web isn’t great, and Skype for Linux is rather temperamental. A lot of games work under Proton, but not all.

    My perception of “average user” is probably skewed towards being not technical enough to troubleshoot on their own, but skilled enough to run through a tutorial of what keys to press. For someone used to Windows, patching things up is simpler than learning all the ins and outs of a new OS.

    I don’t disagree that most people would be fine using Linux, but there needs to be a compelling reason why Linux would be significantly better, or else the switching cost makes it not worthwhile.



  • (Not the person you replied to)

    Windows has issues, but so does Linux. My personal experience with Fedora (Silverblue) has been fairly good with minimal hassle (Gnome Software breaks sometimes with auto updates, but is leaps and bounds ahead of the Synaptic days). However, someone using other hardware, another distro, or using other software might have a lot more problems to contend with.

    There’s a lot of case-by-case nuance that in my opinion makes broad switch from A to B recommendations less meaningful than discussing the pros and cons and letting people decide on their own whether Linux could be useful for them.





  • The main downside is that there is a lot less customization of filters short of using a different DNS. There is also the potential for logging DNS (present with normal DNS servers as well). LibreOps claims they don’t log requests, and personally I don’t think they have much reason to lie, but there is still that element of trust. Many of the more well known DNS servers don’t offer ad blocking DNS, so you’ll most likely be switching to a different provider.






  • That’s specifically referring to when auto updates are enabled; on newer Android versions app stores can now update apps they’ve installed without needing the manual confirmation popup. Previously autoupdates would need a separate shim installed via root, since only system applications could perform unattended installation.

    I’m not sure what would cause the difference, but the old behaviour (at least on my device) was to only do the download when updating all, with each individual app needing to then click the update button and the popup. With F-Droid Basic (which had this change for a while now), any apps it can update do so automatically when the update all button is pressed. Apps that it can’t do unattended updates on, such as those that were installed by another app, still required manual update on the first one.