AlexanderESmith

You know, it only now occurs to me that - in 20 years of setting up fairly complicated spreadsheets (for everything from finance to asset management) - I've never used a macro.

I honestly don't know why you would, since per-cell functions update automatically. I certainly can't imagine why it would need to make system calls. Whole thing seems like a massive security issue with no benefit.

Didn't say it was the only way, just the best way. Most effective attacks are still against humans, not computers.

In no particular order;

• Detecting "installed" software is iffy. Linux can have all kinds of things running on it that aren't "installed" as-such (same as Windows with portable EXEs, Linux has AppImage/etc). Excepting things like that, you can detect installed apps through the package managers (apt/pkg/yum/snap/etc).
• OS updates in Debian-likes and Redhat-likes are controllable out of the box, but I'm not familiar with a way to prevent a user from doing them (other than denying them root access, which might make it hard for them to use the system, depending on what they need to do).
• I've had a lot of good results with OpenVPN.
• lol antivirus. Not saying Linux doesn't get viruses, or that there arent antiviruses for Linux, but the best way to avoid getting them is still to just avoiding stupid shit. Best thing I can offer is that if you have some kind of centralized storage, check that for compromised files frequently, and keep excellent backups. And make sure your firewalls and ACLs don't suck.

Good, fuck 'em. Stop ressurecting dead people with shitty inaccurate software hacks.