this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Yourself and the code you read and understand. So as long as you don't use a system where this is possible (say 9Front and the like) you trust nothing and nobody, do careful backups and don't go on a installation spree.
I fear there is no such system where this applies. The tech stack on any old netbook is so advanced and complex that there is nobody on this planet who fully understands it.
Being theoretically able to read the code is certainly better than not being able to, but it's not the same as having actually read and understood all the relevant code to the point where you can be somewhat confident that there's no backdoor in it.
(And even if someone had the time and mental capacity to do that, at some point when going through the stack you always hit a proprietary layer. Be that drivers, the bootloader, component firmware or the hardware itself.)