this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Do users get the package maintainer's updates for free?
Definitely on Debian, and I think on Ubuntu too.
Package maintainers can be slow to update packages though. Debian have a separate security team that get patches out ASAP, and those packages go into a separate security repo. I imagine Ubuntu does the same. It's that security team that only deals with "official" packages, meaning anything that's not in contrib, non-free, or non-free-firmware.
To me, it looks like Debian and Ubuntu are both secure but you have to pay extra to make Ubuntu at least as secure as Debian.
What you're paying extra for are timely security updates for community-maintained packages that aren't an official part of the OS. Debian doesn't provide that for free either. Debian doesnt provide it at all since they don't have any paid options.
So users just run insecure packages on Debian?
No. All the official packages in the
mainrepo get security updates from the Debian security team.Only the packages in
contrib,non-freeandnon-free-firmwaredon't have official security updates and rely on the package maintainers. These are not considered part of the Debian distro, and I don't even have them enabled on my servers.Out-of-the-box, Debian only enables the
mainrepo, plus thenon-free-firmwareone if any of your devices require it (e.g. Nvidia graphics, Realtek Bluetooth, etc). You have to manually enablecontribandnon-free, and by doing that, it's assumed you know what you're doing.In the case of
non-freeandnon-free-firmware, they can be closed source software (like the Nvidia drivers) or have a non-open-source license that doesn't allow distributing modified versions. In those cases, the Debian team is unable to patch them even if they wanted to.