[kwlug-disc] Linux Mint site hacked

[Bob Jonkman]

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Part of what Linux Mint offered was a superset of Free Software. The
Linux Mint distro had no qualms about including proprietary driver
blobs to make your Broadcom WiFi cards work, or including Flash to
make YouTube work, or to include MP3 libraries to make your podcasts work.

The focus was entirely on ease-of-use. No need to run `apt-get install
ubuntu-restricted-extras` or install a non-default desktop manager.

That means that Linux Mint was never intended for the people who
frequent the KWLUG list, some of whom are quite capable of compiling
the kernel from scratch. But Linux Mint was great for people who were
first venturing away from MS-Windows and needed a similar interface
and the same hands-free it-just-works experience.

Today, I think Ubuntu-MATE comes closest to that approach. Happily,
the people who most benefit from that aren't concerned about the
back-room politicking, nefarious license agreements and Free Software
purity concerns that turn some of us away from the
commercially-supported distros.

- --Bob.


On 2016-02-24 12:49 PM, L.D. Paniak wrote:
> Given these (large, important, worrying...) issues, maybe it is
> best if the Mint team focused their resources on the Cinnamon
> desktop and other useful contributions they have made to the
> community and get out of the distro business. Now that Cinnamon is
> available on Debian and Ubuntu (and others), I am not sure what the
> motivation is for maintaining a full-blown distro.
> 
> 
> On 02/24/2016 12:29 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
>> I am not questioning intentions. Good intentions on their own are
>> not enough. And I am not commenting on skill or expertise.
>> 
>> Specifically, the big issues that the incidents at hand uncovered
>> are:
>> 
>> - Being silent about a hack that copied user data for a month. -
>> Not providing kernel updates - Not publishing CVE information
>> 
>> This could all be oversight, but in the end it puts users in
>> danger.
>> 
>> The prudent action by any user is to find an alternative,
>> regardless of what the details are.
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 12:20 PM, Bob Jonkman
>> <bjonkman at sobac.com <mailto:bjonkman at sobac.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> It's all well and good to say Free Software projects must be 
>> managed to professional SysAdmin standards, but how many people 
>> have contributed towards that goal? As far as I know, Clem is
>> the only person actively working on that project, and he openly 
>> publishes the donations he receives: 
>> http://linuxmint.com/donors.php It looks substantial, but when
>> you subtract the costs of running the site there's not much left
>> over for food and shelter.
>> 
>> --Bob.
>> 
>> On February 24, 2016 12:06:14 PM EST, Khalid Baheyeldin 
>> <kb at 2bits.com <mailto:kb at 2bits.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> And the forum database was hacked and sold a full month before 
>> they announced they were hacked.
>> 
>> Very disappointing to see a popular free software project being
>> mismanaged that way, with no proper updates.
>> 
>> http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-mint-forum-database-compromised-for-at-least-a-month-before-announcement-500901.shtml
>>
>>
>> 
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>> --Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com <mailto:bjonkman at sobac.com>> 
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>> -- Khalid M. Baheyeldin 2bits.com <http://2bits.com>, Inc. Fast
>> Reliable Drupal Drupal optimization, development, customization
>> and consulting. Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --
>> Edsger W.Dijkstra Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --
>> Leonardo da Vinci For every complex problem, there is an answer
>> that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
>> 
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> 
> 
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