If You Want More Verifiable (Auditable) Security, Use GNU Linux-Libre
A common theme that we've focused on (and others too explored) recently was real security as opposed to bug doors or back doors sold as "security patches" or secure "secret sauce". Ryan already explained several years ago that IBM's LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service) may have created more problems - or added risk - than it solved for some of the same reasons WordPress was tentatively abandoned by us in 2013. RMS has long referred to those sorts of things as "universal back doors"; they could moreover target particular individuals/users/servers - this made them even harder to anticipate and detect (isolated, insular payloads).
GNU/Linux will never be 100% secure (like any very large program or combination of many large programs). It will always have some holes here and there, but that does not mean we should make it more trivial to perform "complete system takeover" remotely.
As RMS put it in relation to Mono, just because risk is everywhere does not mean you should put your head inside the lion's jaw and hope for the best.
This brings us to GNU Linux-Libre*. In about two months (maybe less, maybe more) GNU Linux-Libre 7.0 will come out. The Rust aspects of it may or may not complicate security (Rust is controlled by Microsoft in GitHub, whose CSO is literally NSA). But at least the firmware or other blobs will be culled. It is a step in the right direction as far as GNU's (of the FSF's) mission goes.
Linux-Libre's developer says that "stricter is less popular", but then again the Rust People say the same about people who try Rust and give up. See, they say we need more difficulties to ensure security, but many of those same people slag off the likes of Linux-Libre.
Maybe they don't value security, they only pretend to (tunnel vision). █
* No need to compile it. "Distributions in which Linux-libre is the default kernel" as per Wikipedia:
- Dragora GNU/Linux-Libre
- dyne:bolic
- GNU Guix System[27]
- Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre
- Parabola GNU/Linux-libre
Image source: Exposition Universelle in Paris, 1900