this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
70 points (93.8% liked)

Linux

48310 readers
985 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago (8 children)

WARNING: Global themes and widgets created by 3rd party developers for Plasma can and will run arbitrary code. You are encouraged to exercise extreme caution when using these products.

On the one hand, if any commercial store put out a statement like this and did no vetting of submitted applications people would (rightly) be up in arms. But on the other, this is pretty much the standard with FOSS, right? Unless you’re paying for a supported commercial license from someone like Red Hat, everything is as-is, without warranty, caveat emptor. The power of open source is that anyone can review the code and look for problems or malicious behavior, but also (especially with smaller projects) there’s no guarantee that anyone else has looked at the code. So is it a best practice with Linux and FOSS to run a system backup before installing any software or update? I mean I guess that’s technically true for any OS, but especially for open source?

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Users are probably aware of that with most software. But for something called a "theme", we're used to expecting it to be a bunch of non-executable resources. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who gave it no thought and made this assumption, since it applies almost everywhere else we see themes.

[–] oo1@kbin.social 10 points 8 months ago

Yeah 100%.
They should be given a more threatening name.

Maybe the word "global" is supposed to invoke fear (maybe it does for people who review shonky c++ code a lot).
But I don't think that is so for most people.
Better to call them "High risk unofficial theme" or something to prompt people to read the small print.

load more comments (6 replies)