this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
37 points (95.1% liked)
Linux
63511 readers
484 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I highly doubt that OpenBSD is more secure than Qubes OS or secureblue.
Openbsd is definitely more secure than secureblue. There is only so much you can do to handle the massive monolithic architecture of the Linux kernel. Further down the stack, many parts of Linux, like sudo, dbus, or systemd are regularly hit by zero days. The SELinux domain architecture that Secureblue is interesting, but SELinux is extremely complex and difficult to get right, compared to the much more simpler pledge and unveil sandboxing that openbsd offers.
In addition to that, there are further issues like the problematic way that user namespaces interact with browsers. (And user namespaces are frustrating in general, secureblue actually has a short article on their problems). For maximum security, you want to sandbox tabs from eachother using user namespaces (only works on chromium btw, firefox can't do this so it doesn't matter) — BUT, if you run your browser in a sanbox created by user namespaces, then you can't nest them, disallowing you from using that powerful tool to isolate tabs. So you are forced to make a choice: You can either sandbox the browser itself, in exchange for weakening the isolation between tabs, or you can strengthen the isolation between tabs, in exchange for weaking the sandbox around the browser itself. Giving the browser access to user namespaces is questionable though, because see above, user namespaces have led to a lot of vulnerabilities.
OpenBSD's pledge + unveil (but only on chromium again), does not really make such tradeoffs. It can sandbox tabs from eachother, while also sandboxing the browser itself. In addition to that, pledge + unveil do not present a massive kernel attack surface that people have had to restrict for having too many 0days. And this is just one of the many, many examples, where OpenBSD presents a better security posture than Linux.
Qubes is technically Xen, a different kernel than Linux. The Xen kernel virtualizes Linux distros, from which you can manage Xen, or do normal Linux app stuff. But nothing stops you from using a BSD virtualized by Xen for management or usage. Qubes talks about why they use Xen here — but the short version is that they did not consider the Linux kernel's kvm secure enough for their usecase.