If you don’t mind I am curious to hear your reasons.

For the same reasons KeePassXC encrypt their databases and Signal got backlash for storing encryption keys in plaintext. Encryption doesn’t protect against everything, but it is a big deterrent against many attacks.

Fedora isn’t that secure without some effort either.

Fedora’s philosophy is being a modern and security oriented (not security focused) distro. An easy example is that Fedora uses Linux kernel 6.14.2, whereas Debian uses Linux kernel 6.1 (I know they backport fixes, but the point remains).

Unfortunately, I have no way to confirm which one out of them is “more secure”.

Do you have any sort of automated test framework in mind which one can use to test distros against attacks?

Generally trust what security experts say about it, but if you really want an automated test, you can look at Lynis

Why do you rank secureblue over Whonix?

Whonix on its own isn’t very secure. It’s more privacy focused than security focused. It’s based on Debian, which has a host of issues I won’t get into. dom0 in Qubes OS is based on Fedora for its security, and it’s no coincidence that secureblue is also based on Fedora.

Hey, I recognise you now!

Look mom, I’m famous! :P

That was a great post, I had a lot of fun reading it.

Thank you!

If I could follow people on Lemmy I’d follow you.

The best you can do in regards to that is adding my profile to your preferred RSS reader, so you get notified each time I post. A few good ones for android are Feeder, Read You, or (my favorite) Capy Reader.

What do you think about Kicksecure (and Kicksecure inside of Qubes)?

I’m not sure if you mean actual Kicksecure or if you mean Whonix. Either way, if I were to use Qubes OS, I would do Whonix inside of Qubes (until a secureblue template is made).

SecureBlue too but I hear SecureBlue isn’t a big team, not sure how much time they have to address the broad range of desktop Linux security issues

secureblue backports a lot of fixes from other projects (e.g. their browser, Trivalent, backports fixes from GrapheneOS’s Vanadium). Their team is small but mighty.

I personally think that if you were to put GrapheneOS and Qubes OS side-by-side on uncompromised hardware, I’d take Qubes.

GrapheneOS compartmentalizes as well, but in a different fashion. All apps on GrapheneOS are sandboxed, Once GrapheneOS implements App Communication Scopes, apps will be able to be completely* isolated. Without App Communication Scopes, the best way to isolate apps is by setting up separate profiles.

*While APC prevents communication between apps, they are still installed on the same profile, and thus have access to unique profile identifiers. Apps with network access can technically communicate with each other via a third party. Furthermore, apps may be able to directly communicate with each other through a telephone effect (e.g. Pixel Camera tells Google Play Services to tell Google Calendar about the photo you just took). I am massively oversimplifying this, but you get the gist.

I mentioned in my post that security is going to become very interesting with the introduction of the Linux terminal into Android. If GrapheneOS chooses to expand on this, that means, like Qubes OS, GrapheneOS could emulate multiple Linux distros.

Anyways, this is how I would rank them in terms of security (again, oversimplified):

GrapheneOS > Qubes-secureblue > Qubes-Whonix > secureblue

Each project fundamentally has different goals, so there is no one “security” to rank them by.

Though, for desktop, I prefer secureblue, as I don’t have a secondary GrapheneOS device, and secureblue is far more usable than Qubes OS.

That’s simply due to the repository VSCodium uses to pull extensions from (in the name of using open source extensions). Other (proprietary) extensions can be installed by downloading the .vsx file and installing manually. In most cases, though, open source alternatives to proprietary extensions exist.

I edit notes using vim or vscodium.

You should probably try moving away from this practice. First, this leaves your notes vulnerable as they are not encrypted at rest. Second, those programs are not designed for private notes, meaning there is the potential for various leaks to happen that you may not even be able to catch (temporary system files, etc.). Using a dedicated notes editor (like Joplin) means you are using something designed to keep your notes confidential.

Disclaimer: In the case of Joplin specifically, the developers take issue with implementing encryption at rest. Their philosophy is “If your computer’s disk is encrypted, then all your notes are already encrypted at rest.” This is flawed thinking for many reasons that I won’t get into here.

Check out VSCodium, which is open source telemetryless binaries of VSCode

Edit: Nevermind, it seems you already use it

I would recommend Joplin, for these reasons:

1. It’s digital (of course)
2. It’s cross platform: iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android
3. It’s fully open source
4. It supports syncing with different providers: Joplin Cloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, File system (for things like Syncthing), Nextcloud, WebDAV, S3 (Beta), and Joplin Server (Beta)
5. It supports markdown

When looking for software in general, write down what you are looking for and what your requirements are. Then, consider if there are any conflicting requirements (e.g. “I want my handwritten notes to be transcribed, but I don’t want any kind of handwriting recognition”). From there, you can make tough decisions or find a compromise. Then, think about any problems that may arise in the future. Do you plan to switch operating systems to something like GrapheneOS? Do you want to move away from cloud storage altogether? From there, you can get a good idea of what to look for. Good luck!

Lemmy is open source, maybe someone could make a JavaScript-free frontend?

Some things simply cannot be done without JavaScript, as unfortunate as that is.

https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/linux-insecurities/

That’s a more up-to-date article about security issues with Linux.

TL;DR is that Linux (the desktop, not the kernel) is fundamentally insecure, and so the more secure options for desktop are Qubes OS (Qubes OS is not a Linux distro) or (even better) GrapheneOS used in Desktop Mode. secureblue is about as secure as Linux can get, but the most secure option for desktop itself.

Things also get weird when you consider running secureblue inside of Qubes OS. See my post for more thoughts about that.

Most Lemmy instances already work without JavaScript, but if you want a more friendly experience without JavaScript, you can browse using https://old.lemmy.world/

Madaidan’s Insecurities hasn’t been updated in a few years, so some of the information is a bit out of date. It is still decent information, but don’t follow it granularly. What you may be looking for instead is secureblue, which essentially does what you are describing but for Fedora Atomic desktops.

I think so, but I can’t be certain. Is there an easy way to check?

A brief internet search shows that surprisingly, hosting Jellyfin on OpenWRT should work…

I still find it hilarious that since dd-wrt and OpenWrt are just… Linux, you could install Super Mario Bros on there. I checked, nobody seems to have tried.

I’ve never used tailscale, I’m afraid. Normally I would say: just use whatever seems easier to set up on your device/network; however, note that tailscale needs a “coordinate server”. No actual traffic ever goes through it, it just facilitates key exchanges and the like (from what I understand), but regardless, it’s a server outside your control which is involved in some way. You can selfhost this server, but that is additional work, of course…

Ah, that make sense. Is Wireguard P2P?

Glad I could help, after being so unhelpful yesterday :)

Don’t beat yourself up, you were fine. Because I’m big on privacy, when I ask for help I have a bad habit of leaving out the “why” behind my choices, so it’s understandable that people weren’t happy with what I needed.

Eh… Marriage is not really common in either of our families. We agreed to go sign the papers if there ever is a tax reason, lol. Sorry if that’s a bit unromantic :D Nice rings though ^^

I need to go make a petition to raise taxes then! /s

You both are perfect for each other, so don’t screw it up!

Once I finally ditch iOS for good

I had that feeling for all too long. It’s so refreshing to break free. Word of advice: make sure to switch over your Signal account to make your new phone as an owner

You planning on GrapheneOS?

I’ve been able to use Proton for torrenting, although at abysmal speeds. I don’t acquire many new videos, so this isn’t an issue quite yet. When I have more money I will absolutely be switching to Mullvad VPN.

THIS

While I would make the modification to use Android’s Private Space instead of a work profile (or Shelter instead of Insular), this was such an obvious solution, and I feel stupid for not seeing it. I might use Wireguard instead of Tailscale, I don’t know yet, but thank you! Consider yourself an outside the box thinker!

We all got hung up on trying to fix Proton, when Android was the issue here!

Hi again.

Hi there!

Set up ProtonVPN on the raspberry pi.

I’m actually surprised nobody suggested simply using the Pi with OpenWrt as my own router. Though, that would make it hard to host Jellyfin.

Nots that this requires you trusting the pi to the same degree that you trust your phone.

For the most part, I trust the security of my Pi. I can hold it in my hand and see every line of code, after all!

Devices which you take with you, like your phone, unfortunately will loose internet connectivity when you leave your home until you switch off Wireguard, and switch on Proton, and not be able to connect to Jellyfin when you return home, until you switch them back.

I plan to post a tutorial about how to securely host Jellyfin. Another user gave a solution to this problem that I absolutely love, and I’ll showcase it there. I don’t want to spoil it :)

Could you explain Wireguard vs. Tailscale in this scenario?

Thank you all so much for your help! This is likely the solution I will go with, combined with another one, so again thank you so much!

P.S. I don’t care if you wrap an ethernet cord around her finger, get going!

OP, I have been facing the same situation as you in this community recently. This was not the case when I first joined Lemmy but the behaviour around these parts has started to resemble Reddit more and more. But we’ll leave it at that.

I’ve noticed that behavior is split between communities. Lemmy gets a bit weird because communities are usually hyper-specialized, and sometimes instances themselves cultivate different cultures (e.g. lemmy.ml is usually for privacy enthusiasts, since that’s where c/privacy is hosted). That, with the addition of specific idols for each community (e.g. Louis Rossmann for the selfhosted community) affects how each community behaves. That’s my theory, anyways.

I am interested in the attack vector you mentioned; could you elaborate on the MITM attack?

Basically the “this website is not secure” popup you see in your browser is sometimes due to the website using a self-signed cert. There’s no way to verify that that cert is from the website itself or from an attacker trying to inject their own cert, since there’s no CA attached to the cert. If an attacker injects their own self-signed cert, they can use that to decrypt your HTTPS traffic (since your browser will be encrypting using their cert) and then forward your traffic along to the real website so that from your perspective (minus the warning screen) nothing is wrong. I’m oversimplifying this, but that’s basically how it works.

Unfortunately, if you don’t have control over your network, you cannot force a DNS server for your devices unless you can set it yourself for every individual client.

I forgot to mention in this post, but because of browser fingerprinting reasons I don’t want to use a custom DNS. Thanks for the suggestion though!