Post by @MsDropbear42@infosec.space
am becoming so despondent at the slopbot invasion in linux, seemingly getting worse weekly [oh linus! 💔], that more & more i ponder a possible #BSD escape route, yet nothing i read anywhere so far gives me any confidence at all that i would be capable of handling all the technical challenges involved. i just want a daily desktop, not a server, & i want it not for a technical challenge at all but simply so i can use my apps to do the stuff i need... which is not at all database or server related in any way. i've just finished perusing a few dozen subreddit threads on the three arguably best known BSDs, & it was nothing but depressing & demoralising
in 2013 when i tired of 20+ years of redmond arseholery & shitfuckery, i discovered linux & was delighted with it, entirely meeting all my needs ever since. now however, with this very same hitherto paradise apparently rushing to sleep with the enemy, it feels like i have no realistic escape option
faaaaaaaaaaaaarque!
#DropbearPooterising #Linux #LinuxWomen #FOSS
#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI #EscapeFromLinux ? 
#KDELinux | 
#ArchLinux #KDEPlasma
#Kalpa | 
#SparkyLinux | 
#Kinoite #FirefoxNightly #FirefoxSecondSidebarProject #NativeTreeTabsProject 
#Floorp
@MsDropbear42 For a desktop-oriented "distribution" of FreeBSD, try GhostBSD, that is offering also a couple of different desktops than the usual Xfce/Mate.
There is also HelloSystem.
FreeBSD actually is much, much less inclined to include LLMs stuff in the code than many says, if you seek their official statements.
NetBSD has became very popular recently, but is a bit more manual than the other two above.
https://www.ghostbsd.org/
https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/
@raster thx, i appreciate your several informative replies. wrt #GhostBSD, until recently i was feeling this might be an ideal initial escape option for me, given atm i am very unskilled & ignorant of almost all #BSD matters, being merely a Linux hobbyist user. however, this post https://mastodon.sdf.org/@argv_minus_one/117390721260080755 had scared me right off it.
it would be interesting & educational for me, if both you & @argv_minus_one might now discuss this, as it would really assist me [& presumably also other current #penguinistas fretting about the slopification but not knowing enough about BSD to make an informed decision] -- tbh i would love it if now 👻 returned to being a viable candidate for me, but i would need to be comfortable it is not insecure. ta
#DropbearPooterising #Linux #LinuxWomen #FOSS
#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI
@MsDropbear42 @raster might this completed issue https://github.com/ghostbsd/networkmgr/issues/122 now infer that the hitherto-mentioned [by @argv_minus_one] security concern is now ameliorated? 🤯🤷♀️🤞
That ameliorates the shell injection vulnerabilities, yes. Good progress.
But the GUI still runs as root. 😳 https://github.com/ghostbsd/networkmgr/blob/master/src/networkmgr.desktop
Fixing that would require the program to be split into client and server parts with a well-defined interface between the two, like Linux NetworkManager and the abandoned nmdaemon project.
It'd be a big project, but they really need to do it. The way it works now may or may not be vulnerable, but it has an alarmingly large attack surface.
@argv_minus_one many thanks! so, ok, #ghostbsd must remain still on my rejects list @raster
Either that or don't use NetworkMgr, and configure your network by hand-editing configuration files, as if you were setting up your computer as a server.
But this would be uncomfortable for a desktop and completely unacceptable for a laptop, so… 😔
This is basically the same problem that Linux in the 1990s had. Configuring the network was a matter of hand-editing a shell script that ran ifconfig and route commands, whereas Windows had a nice point-and-click GUI.
@argv_minus_one yeah nah, that's not for me i'm afraid... i'm old fat & very very very lazy nowadays, so none of that stuff holds any appeal for me... & tbh i hold little confidence in my ability to do it sans-fuckups, due to me overlooking something that experts regard as basic but which i don't even know to exist @raster
Well, you didn't read the code, did you? I read the code because I had a bad feeling, which unfortunately turned out to be justified. But like, most people (including me) don't read the code of most of the software they use; that's normal.
But yeah, configuring networking the bad old way is no fun.