Slashdot Mirror
Canonical Developer Warns About Banking With Linux Mint
sfcrazy writes "Ubuntu developer Oliver Grawert does not prefer to do online banking with Linux Mint. In the official mailing list of the distribution, Ubuntu developers stated that the popular Ubuntu derivative is a vulnerable system and people shouldn't go for online banking on it. One of the Ubuntu developers, Oliver Grawert, originally pointed out that it is not necessary that security updates from Ubuntu get down to Linux Mint users since changes from X.Org, the kernel, Firefox, the boot-loader, and other core components are blocked from being automatically upgraded." Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint project founder, has since made a statement and confirmed that Oliver Grawert seems "more opinionated than knowledgeable" adding "the press blew what he said out of proportion."
Nice job Oliver - we really needed more ammunition in the Everyone vs Canonical battle.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
if you can't say how good your product is. tell everyone how shitty everyone elses product is.
The guy is obviously lacking in basic social skills. Sadly the Ubuntu developers and forum admins are alienating themselves rather than doing anything useful for Linux.
TFS makes it sounds like it's a long article about how Linux Mint is insecure.
Here's the entirety of his commentary:
The makers of Zeitgeist are concerned about privacy??
... I don't want anything more to do with Canonical, or Ubuntu, or Mint, or any of that lot. I'm sticking with Debian. I'm sure it has its problems and all, but at least the politics seem to remain mostly internal. These public pissing matches between distros just seem so counter-productive. But since I've been using Linux (1998), it seems to be a constant. Ego issues? I don't know. I don't particularly care. It's just so boring and off-putting.
Why would you want to use a different distro where you don't know what could happen to your personal info;Here at Canonical we build the selling of your private info right into the menu!
And nothing of value was lost.
Bye!
It's not surprising he'd try to bash Mint, considering they ate part of Ubuntu's marketshare when Ubuntu made stupid design decisions. That's what happens when you try to cram weird GUI changes down peoples throats in open source.
Don't move my Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons to the left side by default unless you're going provide some spectacular improvements in return. I tried using it that way for a couple days and was still reflexively clicking on the empty right side to close the window. Eventually I found a config mod that fixed it, but then they went to the stupid Ubuntu mobile desktop and I couldn't be assed to work around it any longer so I switched.
It's worth mentioning that if you don't like Ubuntu repos, Mint also has a version based directly on Debian.
I found this interesting Google+ post from the Muktware article comments.
Ubuntu is in a rut. They're not making money, growth is plateauing, it's mindshare is diminishing. It's questionable if they'll ever make a profit. I mean why Ubuntu over Novell, Oracle or RedHat for enterprise stuff? RedHat is a billion dollar publicly listed company..Novell is owned by attachemate group (a billion dollar revenue company) and Oracle poops money.
The Ubuntu Edge was a hail Mary pass that failed. They lack the revenue (and wherewithal) to get into hardware and no hardware maker wants to partner with them.
I have to wonder, when will shuttleworth stop? Would it be extreme to say Canonical is a failed company? At what point is Ubuntu going to transition into a community driven OS? Ubuntu TV is vapourware, their phone OS relies on someone willing flashing their nexus..They've totally fucked their Desktop OS and it's unclear why anyone would select them for enterprise support considering the breadth of their competition.
If you believe you are safe, think again.
Oh, it gets worse than that... much, much worse...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Compare this with the Slashdot article title:
Whether he is technically right, or not, I find it disgusting that such a side note becomes news on Slashdot.
By the way, the subject was another new distribution based on Ubuntu, similar to Mint, therefore the Ubuntu developer actually encouraged an Ubuntu derivative.
Face it, Linux isn't for everyone and may never be. So fucking what? It's good for the people that use it. It's been my desktop since 1999 when I finally retired my Amiga 3000. It's the desktop of choice of a lot of people. I've seen the average windows user and guess what? They mostly don't know what they're doing. The overwhelming majority of windows users happily install malware on their computers on a daily basis. That's the desktop we're shooting for in the Linux community? Average users are going to fuck up their systems regardless of what platform they use.
I warn people away from Ubuntu and towards Debian or another reputable distro that is not selling your info and loading your os with AD's and spyware. Yes if you are sending info for targeted ad's you are bundling SPYWARE.
Ubuntu has tainted the water. It's not a safe OS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Mint has no security. They intentionally run with access control disabled on the X server (xhost +). Keyloggers and screen scrapers are trivial in this case. Bugs have been filed about this, but Mint considers it working as designed.
It might not solve all issues, after all, it's not like Ubuntu itself is never hacked. But my solution is to run the Mate desktop over Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and get the best of both. It works great, and avoids the crap that is unity, gnome3, you name it - it's like having a stable version of gnome2 that actually works right. I agree with the commentors on many of the other issues. Unity is crap on a multi monitor desktop. It has built-in surveilance on you for crying out loud, huge icons if you've got 4 24" monitors, that you can't move. I like to be able to put the tic-tac-toe buttons where I wish, I like menu and task bars I can autohide, and put on the monitor I want. I paid for every single pixel on them - don't tell me what I can have on my screen or where I can put it. It's not like I don't have other options. Cannonical really stuck its head up its butt in a number of ways of late - and when told so, they said it was our fault for not liking their stupid ideas, which were and are genuinely stupid. Too bad, otherwise they were the good stuff. But they are not alone. Somone figured out that most computers hit the dumpster with the same opsys they shipped with. Since PC sales are falling (the ones out there are all good enough by now anyway, why buy a new one is a good question for most users) - they decided on a "one size fits all" for PCs and mobes. Stupid idea - I have both and use them for different stuff and at different levels of security for that different stuff. It seems the current crop of programmers is too stupid to put in a single boolean - true if PC, false if mobe, or vice versa, and do the rest of the install based on that. Even if my quad monitor setup was reachable by anything but my extended legs and was touch enabled, I'd think this current bunch of Ubuntu stuff was crap for it, what I have is far better, and a lot more usable. It might work out on my nexus, only it's better the way it is already, than unity would make it. They really jumped the shark on this - in company, but still....
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
By inferring that Linux in any form or shape might be not worthy of "online banking",
I think this has hurt Linux an immense amount.
He probably just now blocked tens of thousands of people of trying *Canonical*,
because the article reads "*Linux* is not good to do online banking with".
Smooth.
I wonder if he can do anything to repair the damage. :(
Everyone versus Linux. That's the ammunition he gave out for everyone outside the Linux world.