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Re: Debians security features in comparison to Ubuntu



On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Reid Sutherland <reid@vianet.ca> wrote:
> [response shifted to conversational format]
> On May 16, 2014, at 3:38 PM, herzogbrigitte1@t-online.de wrote:
>
>> Hello there,
>> I'm a new user of the great Debian distro for my Desktop. But when I talked to a friend and I told him, that I'm using Debian (Wheezy) for my desktop computer, he told me that I shoudn't use it because it is not secure. He told me to use Ubuntu instead. He explained that with the fact, that Ubuntu has more security features enabled than Debian (also more compiler flags for security) in a fresh install. He gave me a link to the following site:
>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features
>>
>> So, I'm very happy with Debian but because my friend seems to be an expert for Linux, I don't know if I can use Debian. Can you tell me which of the security features promoted by Ubuntu are also enabled in Debian?
>>
>> Thank you very much!
>>
>> Brigitte Herzog
>>
> From my view, Debian is designed to be flexible and does not impose any unnecessary features on the user.  For this reason, I find it is best for new users to operate distributions that are more targeted to their needs.  Distributions such as Ubuntu come with reasonable defaults for the market they are supporting (desktop / office users in this case), while Debian is more of a base system offering “factory” defaults that are usually customized by more experienced users.  The same idea can apply to the various security layers added to the system, Ubuntu may activate these layers by default, while Debian will defer these decisions to the user.
>
>

While there is a point to the idea that distros like Ubuntu and Mint
are set up more oriented towards the beginner or the user who doesn't
want to "waste" time on system administration, it is highly
questionable whether certain of the added "security" features actually
increase security.

-- 
Joel Rees

Be careful where you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart.


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