01.24.14

Debian Receives Prize from Valve But Becomes More Dependent on Red Hat

Posted in Debian, Red Hat, Security at 7:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Debian is leaning towards systemd, which is developed by Red Hat (an NSA partner)

DEBIAN has got somewhat of a trophy now that Valve uses Debian GNU/Linux by default. It receives gratis proprietary games in return [1,2,3].

Debian recently made a lot of headlines because of the init debate [4-12]; Debian, being a dominant distribution (competing only with RHEL/CentOS for the #1 spot), is seemingly leaning in Red Hat’s direction and it is winning support from those whom Fedora let down [13]. As Sam Varghese put it, this “means that the future direction of Linux development will be determined by Red Hat, the company that is behind systemd, and the biggest commercial entity in the Linux game.”

It might actually be more beneficial to have Debian as the flag bearer, not Red Hat, which is working with the NSA. Debian has reported its share of flaws recently [14,18], but the problem is that by inheriting more code from Red Hat it is becoming more dependent on a company which admits (to me personally) that it sends to Linux patches that the NSA writes (not just SELinux) because the NSA is a major customer. We already know that the NSA wanted back doors in Linux [1, 2, 3, 4], e.g. through weak random number generators. Given what happened in RSA, NIST, etc. we found it rather hard to blindly trust RHEL, especially the binary build (Red Hat staff has admitted to me that they don’t do a thorough audit of the build process). If Debian gets compromised, the same problem gets inherited by Ubuntu and its derivatives. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Valve Wants To Give You All Of Its Games On Steam (If You’re A Debian Linux Developer)
  2. Valve games for Debian Developers

    At $dayjob for Collabora, we’ve been working with Valve on SteamOS, which is based on Debian. Valve are keen to contribute back to the community, and I’m discussing a couple of ways that they may be able to do that [0].

  3. Valve Is Making All Their Games Free To Debian Developers

    Valve will be making all of their games — past, present, and future — available for free to Debian Linux developers.

  4. The Six Stages of systemd [linux.conf.au 2014]
  5. To Systemd Or Not To Systemd. That Is The Question
  6. Init wars: Shuttleworth’s copyright licensing hangs over debate

    As the debate on the default init system for the next Debian release winds down, one fact emerges: the copyright licensing model adopted by Canonical has been a decisive factor in the choice made by the technical committee.

  7. Which init system for Debian?

    The Debian project is no stranger to long, vehemently argued email threads, though, like the rest of us, Debian developers appear to be getting older and calmer as time goes by. If there were to be an intense thread now, one might think that the recent shift to XFCE as the default window system might be the cause. Indeed, there was some discussion of that topic, but that thread was easily buried by the hot-button issue that almost all distributions appear to need to debate at length: which init system to use. This is not the first time Debian has argued over init systems (see this 2011 article, for example), but, just maybe, it might be the last.

  8. Debian May Be Leaning Towards Systemd Over Upstart

    For months now the Debian Technical Committee has been tasked with deciding between systemd and Upstart for the future init system of the Linux distribution that also has a FreeBSD kernel port, etc. The debate has been long and ongoing. Among other opinions, Ian Jackson of the committee came out last month in favor of using Upstart while Russ Allberry came out in favor of systemd.

  9. A Major Music Company Now Backs Systemd In Debian
  10. Init wars: Debian tech panel may end up deadlocked

    The Debian technical committee may end up in a stalemate when it votes on which init system should be the default for the next release of its community GNU/Linux distribution.

  11. Red Hat must be rejoicing as Debian tilts towards systemd

    The Debian GNU/Linux Project’s technical committee appears to be split down the middle on the question of the default init system for the next release.

  12. Spotify uses Debian, endorses systemd instead of Upstart as default

    Debian is considering between Upstart and systemd – two competing daemons. While Upstart was developed solely by Canonical, systemd was developed by contributors from different distributions (edited, thanks to Jos Poortvliet).

  13. When life hands you lemons, go back to Debian

    To keep a short story short, the mantainer of the proprietary AMD Catalyst (aka fglrx) driver for the Fedora-focused RPM Fusion repository doesn’t want to do it anymore.

    And he made this decision not before the release of Fedora 20 with lots of notice — and not after with lots of notice BUT PRETTY MUCH DURING THE RELEASE with no notice.

  14. Debian: 2840-1: srtp: buffer overflow
  15. Debian: 2835-1: asterisk: buffer overflow
  16. Debian: 2832-1: memcached: Multiple vulnerabilities
  17. Debian: 2830-1: ruby-i18n: cross-site scripting
  18. Debian: 2828-1: drupal6: Multiple vulnerabilities
Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

This post is also available in Gemini over at:

gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2014/01/24/dependent-on-red-hat/

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Links 2/8/2021: Linux 5.14 RC4 and 20% Growth in Steam

    Links for the day

  2. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 01, 2021

    IRC logs for Sunday, August 01, 2021

  3. Links 1/8/2021: LibreOffice 7.2 RC2 and Lakka 3.3

    Links for the day

  4. Was Microsoft Ever First in the Market?

    Confronting the false belief that Microsoft ever innovates anything of significance or is "first" in some market/s

  5. Links 1/8/2021: 4MLinux 37.0, IBM Fluff, and USMCA Update

    Links for the day

  6. Microsoft Knows That When Shareholders Realise Azure Has Failed the Whole Boat Will Sink

    The paranoia at Microsoft is well justified; they've been lying to shareholders to inflate share prices and they don't really deliver the goods, just false hopes and unfulfilled promises

  7. [Meme] Nobody and Nothing Harms Europe's Reputation Like the EPO Does

    Europe’s second-largest institution, the EPO, has caused severe harm/damage to Europe’s economy and reputation; its attacks on the courts and on justice itself (even on constitutions in the case of UPC — another attempt to override the law and introduce European software patents) won’t be easily forgotten; SUEPO has meanwhile (on Saturday, link at the bottom in German) reminded people that Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos have driven away the EPO’s most valuable workers or moral compass

  8. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 31, 2021

    IRC logs for Saturday, July 31, 2021

  9. [Meme] When it Comes to Server Share, Microsoft Azure is Minuscule (But Faking It)

    Don't believe the lies told by Microsoft's charlatans and frauds; Azure has been a total failure and that's why there are layoffs as well

  10. [Meme] Mozilla Has Turned From Technical to Marketing

    Way back, long before Mozilla and Firefox got hijacked by politics (turning Mozilla into a VPN reseller that lies about its stance on privacy), geeks were driving the company, not corporate lawyers and spying/marketing people

  11. Over 1,500 (Known/Unorphaned) Gemini Capsules and Over 160,000 Page Requests in gemini.techrights.org During July

    Techrights is expanding at gemini:// (Gemini space) and over 1,500 capsules are reported to have been found (less than 4 months ago it was about 1,000)

  12. Links 31/7/2021: Kernel Additions and Linux Mint 20.3 Release Date

    Links for the day

  13. Microsoft Azure Stagnating

    Reprinted with permission from Mitchel Lewis, former Microsoft employee

  14. For 17 Days (and Counting) António Campinos Has Failed to Respond to Call for Compliance With the Law

    Team Campinos has been so arrogant and so evasive that there’s no indication (yet) that it will follow court orders (Willy ‘Guillaume’ Minnoye openly bragged about ignoring court orders and he's still cheering for the EPO's abuses); therefore, staff of the EPO takes collective action

  15. Raw: Elodie Bergot Breaking the Law by Threatening Against the Exercise of Fundamental Rights

    Over the years we saw a number of rude letters from Elodie Bergot, the grossly under-qualified spouse of a friend of Vichyite Benoît Battistelli; most of these we never published (we already have these and can always publish if the need arises), but those paranoid and insecure “Mafia”-like ‘cabal’ need to be exposed for the mobsters they are; for nearly a decade they’ve illegally bullied EPO staff in clear violation of the law (and for over 3 years António Campinos has kept those bullies on board); why does Europe do nothing and why is it never holding high-profile abusers accountable (only low-level facilitators)? Is it because the EU too is being infiltrated by them?

  16. Linspire Should Be Avoided in 2021 Just Like It Was Avoided 14 Years Ago

    The brand "Linspire" was brought back, but the agenda seems to be more or less the same, namely pushing proprietary software and serving Microsoft's commercial agenda (in 'Linux' clothing)

  17. The Death of Freenode Would Be Freenode's Own Fault

    Freenode is going dark and now it’s asking people to create accounts at IRC.com (just to get back into the network that they may have already occupied for decades) as if Freenode owns “IRC” as a whole

  18. Links 31/7/2021: KDE Progress and Activision Catastrophe

    Links for the day

  19. IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 30, 2021

    IRC logs for Friday, July 30, 2021

  20. The Smartest Meter of All

    Yesterday a lady came over to take our power readings (electric/gas meter); secure these people's jobs as they help protect people's privacy (dignity) at home

  21. [Meme] A Web of False Dichotomies

    A reminder that Techrights is fully available (all blog posts and wiki pages) in gemini://

  22. Freenode Shrinks by Another Quarter and Gemini Continues to Grow (For Techrights at Least)

    Freenode continues to perish faster than we've imagined; it's a good thing that we've had contingencies set up; regarding the monopolised and increasingly centralised Web, we're still making baby steps towards weaning ourselves off it

  23. Links 31/7/2021: Wine 6.14 and Chrome 93 Beta

    Links for the day

  24. European Media Does Not Care About Europe's Second-Largest Institution Crushing Basic Laws and Fundamental Rights

    New video about the latest publication from SUEPO (the EPO’s staff union); it was published yesterday, seeing that the “Mafia” (what EPO staff actually calls the management!) hasn’t done anything to comply with a wide-ranging set of court rulings from ILO-AT; why has the media said nothing about this and what does that say about today’s media? The material is all in the public domain, in widely understood languages, and SUEPO spoke about it more than 3 weeks ago.

  25. Links 30/7/2021: Distro Comparisons and Tootle Introduced

    Links for the day

  26. [Meme] Enforcing ILO-AT Rulings...

    We’re still waiting for a statement — any statement (direct or indirect) — from EPO management, seeing that almost a month has passed

  27. 'Open Source' as a Failed Initiative

    A closer look at the dire state of the Open Source Initiative, or OSI, which no longer protects Open Source (let alone software freedom) but instead helps openwashing, Microsoft entrapment, and a coup against the FSF

  28. [Meme] Rowan and António Sittin' on a Tree...

    How much longer can Team Campinos keep issuing tons of noisy and self-congratulatory puff pieces to (perhaps) distract from the elephant in the 10th floor of the Isar building (EPO HQ)? Staff won't wait for eternity.

  29. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 29, 2021

    IRC logs for Thursday, July 29, 2021

  30. Half the People in This Letter Are IBM Employees

    IBM seems to be continuing its war on the FSF because IBM wants to own everything (CentOS being ‘canned’ was just part of the plan)

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts