Not discrediting Open Source Software, but nothing is 100% safe.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I really like the idea of open source software and use it as much as possible.
But another "problem" is that you don't know if the compiled program you use is actually based on the open source code or if the developer merged it with some shady code no one knows about. Sure, you can compile by yourself. But who does that ๐?
Actually, there is a Debian project working on exactly that problem, called reproducible builds
https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
yes and others are working on it, also! i believe some android folks are (f-droid iirc), and i've heard about it elsewhere. this stuff is super nerdy (so therefore cool to nerds such as myself). before the internet existed it would be so hard to even imagine the need for this sort of thing!
You can check it using the checksum. But who does that?
In all seriousness I am running NixOS right now using flakes. The package manager compiles everything unless a trusted source already has it compiled, in which case the package manager checks the checksum to ensure you still get the same result and downloads that instead. It also aims to be fully reproducible and with flakes it automatically pins all dependency versions so next time you build your configurations, you get the same result. It is all really cool, but I still don't understand everything and I'm still learning it.
Based NixOS user
I love NixOS but I really wish it had some form of containerization by default for all packages like flatpak and I didn't have to monkey with the config to install a package/change a setting. Other than that it is literally the perfect distro, every bit of my os config can be duplicated from a single git repo.
Great points. I kinda feel the same with containerization. I have been wanting change my OS on my home server and while NixOS is great for that, I have decided to do things differently and use OpenSUSE Micro OS. My plan was actually Fedora Core OS, but after that Red Hat drama I decided to run with SUSE instead. It is an immutable distro with atomic upgrades that is designed for being a container host. It uses Ignition as the configuration for setting up things like users, services, networking, etc. My plan is then to just use containers like I was doing before on Fedora Server and for the other things to use Nix to build container images. Instead of using DockerFile, you'd use Nix Flakes to create really minimal images. Instead of starting with a full distro like Alpine, Nix starts from scratch and copies all dependencies over as specified in your flake. So the image only contains the absolute minimum to run. I think I'd be a fun side project while learning more about Ignition, Linux containers and Nix Flakes.
As for your point on config, I think it's just part of the trade offs of NixOS. You either have a system that can be modified easily at anytime through the shell or you have a system that you modify centrally and is fully reproducible. You can already install packages with nix-env in the command line without changing your config, but that also won't be reproducible. Maybe a GUI app for managing your config and packages could be helpful, although I'm pretty sure that's low priority for NixOS right now.