[HN Gopher] Ubuntu Security Updates Are a Confusing Mess
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       Ubuntu Security Updates Are a Confusing Mess
        
       Author : popey
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2024-07-11 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gld.mcphail.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gld.mcphail.uk)
        
       | bravetraveler wrote:
       | I'd argue we wouldn't have Snap _[for the better]_ if their LTS
       | releases weren 't _visually_ bound to years... saving overhead
       | they regularly create for cosmetic reasons.
       | 
       | Wouldn't have to create it to consolidate platforms if they
       | stopped making them so often!
       | 
       | They have three concurrent LTS releases when they need one.
       | _Maybe_ two. 18.04 is the python2 of distributions. Let it go.
       | 
       | Having worked in several places that relied on it... ESM is being
       | the bad kind of enabler.
       | 
       | Fedora handles _" The Snap Problem"_ -- many target distributions
       | -- with 'fedpkg' and 'mock'. Software and machines _on the build
       | side_. Not by degrading the end user experience. They do
       | participate with Flatpak... but that 's peer pressure more than
       | anything.
       | 
       | Flatpak is more well-rounded IMO. Probably from being the broader
       | answer. Maybe this all doesn't make an argument. Just a bunch of
       | statements. I don't know.
       | 
       | Back on topic: I wonder what all of this Canonical stuff in
       | particular is for/leads to. New software isn't scary; 'just'
       | plan/test. It becomes scary when you get lazy here... so accept
       | your involvement.
        
       | Suppafly wrote:
       | Is it not possible to fix the one package from the debian sources
       | vs waiting for ubuntu to allow him to get it from them?
        
         | lmz wrote:
         | It's possible to fix anything from the sources but I guess the
         | Tomcat version in 22.04 didn't have a corresponding stable
         | Debian version? (vs. the 20.04 version)
        
         | juujian wrote:
         | Ubuntu is merely reusing apt to connect to its own
         | repositories. You could manually install packages from Debian's
         | repositories, but it's probably inadvisable.
        
       | jiripospisil wrote:
       | I don't care they're gating this behind a subscription but the
       | fact that they won't even tell you that you're missing an
       | important security update? That's bad. I wonder how many people
       | think they are fully up to date while being vulnerable to known
       | bugs.
        
         | ElectricSpoon wrote:
         | They do tell you that you are missing now. On ubuntu 24.04, apt
         | now reports/nags me about security updates behind esm-apps.
         | 
         | They also publish an oval xml for use with openscap tools to
         | get a list of unpatched CVEs. The issue is not enough people
         | know about those tools. https://security-
         | metadata.canonical.com/oval/
        
           | jiripospisil wrote:
           | Aha, thanks. I'm trying to look up the CVE on
           | https://ubuntu.com/security/notices and the site's search
           | responds with "504 Gateway Time-out" or "500: Server error".
           | Come on Ubuntu.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | > I don't care they're gating this behind a subscription
         | 
         | I rather not have them push an ad to my face when I open the
         | settings.
         | 
         | I had to install Ubuntu on an embedded board last week and the
         | "Ubuntu Pro" ad is like a greyed out tab in the settings widget
         | if I remember correctly. Worse than the Amazon ad they had some
         | decade ago.
        
       | arjvik wrote:
       | If I was looking for a distro with paid support (a la
       | RHEL/Ubuntu) that's also not incredibly behind bleeding edge
       | (maybe not as bleeding edge as Arch, but also not running
       | patched-to-hell-and-back software like Ubuntu), what are my
       | options?
       | 
       | Thankfully I'm not personally looking for this at the moment, I'm
       | more than happy being my own sysadmin and running anything from
       | Arch to Fedora CoreOS to OpenSUSE on my machines.
        
         | brylie wrote:
         | I don't know if it meets all of your criteria but SUSE might be
         | an option:
         | 
         | https://www.suse.com/products/server/
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | On desktop/laptop? Only Arch. On servers I'd say RHEL/Rocky
         | (don't disable selinux!) or SuSE; and the deployed services in
         | podman or incus.
        
           | ZhongXina wrote:
           | I wish people would stop recommending Rocky. It's a ticking
           | time bomb IMHO caused by their decision to not play nicely
           | with Red Hat and go for questionable tactics like renting
           | temporary RHEL instances to download premade source packages,
           | instead of working together as RH asked them to do. Anybody
           | reading this, do yourself a favor and use Alma, or skip the
           | RHEL ecosystem altogether if you don't absolutely need it.
           | 
           | Otherwise you're building on an operating system which
           | rebuilds a commercial upstream while explicitly refusing to
           | follow that upstream's rules. IBM has lots of experienced
           | lawyers, as I've heard.
           | 
           | It's also slower at releasing updates, including security
           | updates.
           | 
           | ------
           | 
           | Sorry SSLy, I can't reply to you directly because I'm rate
           | limited, it's very late here, and I'm not waiting for the
           | rate limit to expire. So here's my reply:
           | 
           | I think previous decisions made by IBM have shown that
           | they're fine at burning some community goodwill for short-
           | term profit. People were called paranoid for worrying about
           | the future of CentOS when it was taken up by Red Hat for
           | "improved maintenance", and look where we are now.
           | 
           | Maybe you're right, but I personally wouldn't want to build
           | anything serious on top of that "maybe". If something
           | happens, lateral migration should theoretically work, of
           | course..
           | 
           | https://almalinux.org/elevate
        
             | SSLy wrote:
             | IBM suing Rocky for what they're doing means industry wide
             | crisis about what the FOSS provisions really mean. Their
             | competition would welcome such self sabotage with arms wide
             | open.
             | 
             | Of course they could release the code just for the *GPL
             | packages, but it's an option only slightly less bad
             | socially.
             | 
             | Now, I wonder why there's no one rebuilding Ubuntu Pro like
             | folks are rebuilding RHEL.
        
         | jiripospisil wrote:
         | I've heard good things about AlmaLinux but I haven't used it
         | personally.
         | 
         | https://almalinux.org
        
           | ZhongXina wrote:
           | RHEL ecosystem is no less patched than Debian and its
           | derivatives. Especially the kernel has only some resemblance
           | to its stated version.
        
         | ZhongXina wrote:
         | afaik, your want of relatively fresh software with few patches
         | excludes pretty much everything there is, except for really
         | niche stuff. All other major options with good commercial
         | support have been mentioned by siblings; I'll add Debian +
         | Freexian to the list.
         | 
         | https://www.freexian.com
        
       | n3storm wrote:
       | Ubuntu is reselling Debian, once they made it well, now I don't
       | know
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-11 23:02 UTC)