question about devel team

[paxmark1]

Security. 
The hierarchy of security in the Debian "universe" is, 1. Stable is the most secure, 2. Sid-Unstable is less secure,  3. Testing, which Sparky 5 tracks is the least secure. 

Stable is always fixed first,  Sid is often patched at the same time, and Testing then waits 5 days for it to come from Sid, minimum.  Of course presently as we are in freeze, it is a minimum 10 day wait. 

Security means work on the source code level, the distribution level and on the user level.  The most stable system I have ever run was FreeBSD back in 200-2001.  I made a mistake in my selection and when I installed it compiled it all, 4 days. Not one error. My updates were packages however.  One solid system.  Microsoft email ran for years on FreeBSD and large chunks of the MacOS  is from FreeBSD. 

If you prioritize security  extremely high, you are comfortable on the command line for simple things and your hardware will work with it; FreeBSD or a variant of that is not a bad idea.  FreeBSD is a unix.  For Linux, Debian stable would have the identified teams  and a decades long commitment to security and decades of being used on major servers. 

But if you want steam, well that is a weak point, I do not know how well steam will work with Buster (Sparky 5) when it goes stable in June/July/whenever for Debian.  Possibly if you had lots of memory (say 16 gb) and a decent cpu with the right hooks for virtualization, you could run Sparky as a vm in FreeBsd or Debian.

I would guess that Ubuntu has more users with steam on.  The Sparky distro is hopefully a distro committed to aiding the use of non-free components that Debian does not support and a gateway to Debian testing to cushion new users and aid in their usage and learning.  I just choose to trust Pavroo for Sparky on some systems, Kovid Goyal for Calibre and I did trust Norbert Preining for Sigil, he is now a Debian developer.  Now his work - packages is vetted by Debian. 

There have been thousands of new trials of Debian that were abandoned when the new users non-free wifi drivers were not readily available. That would include my two times trying and abandoning Debian in the 2000's.   And then many will go to (or back to) Ubuntu or Mint for an easier install. Sparky is one way around that. 

There are numerous ways to migrate in steps to more security. You can start by commenting out non-free sources in your /etc/apt/source.d and then "apt purge blah" of Sparky packages.  And change Testing to Buster for more security in the future. 

Or go with Debian or FreeBSD or whatever you choose. It is your system, it is your choice.   peace out.

[bigspark]

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2nd most viewed post here, some of my best work.  The questions I raise are important so this is justified. 

In case any of you are wondering what rigged dota 2 games looked like, check out these game IDs:

5055314007 check underlord and mk, hard feeder abandoned, everyone else wants to play hopelessly for 50 minutes
5057933343 check sniper, all 4 on my team I had already muted, which is itself odd

Am I sure? no, but about 1/2 of my pub games go this way.  It is one thing to restart after someone abandons after 10 minutes, but another to be trapped in games for 50+  minutes getting griefed and no one acknowledges comms.   Cant report anyone unless you stay until the end and someone who is being attacked like this goes through their reports too fast.  I can find no point to any of the other players continuing, or the way they responded to comms.   If I am right then all of the people on steam who might be protestors being cast as 'extremists', will encounter police or whichever ethnic mafia wants to harass you in their steam games just like they will on facegag etc. 

You can find me on my blog and at soylent news. 

jmichaelhudson.net 

Start with the memes, Expanded Definitions for Important Words is what you will need most though.