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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • How does installing packages or configuring software work, if system files can’t be changed?

    On reboot. You install your changes into a separate part of the filesystem that’s not running and then “switch parts” on next boot. Different distros do this differently. Vanilla OS has an AB system which basically works like Android does it, openSUSE uses btrfs snapshots and Fedora also uses btrfs I think but they got a more complex layering system on top.

    I get that there’s a security benefit just in that malware can’t change system files – but that is achieved by proper permission management on traditional systems too.

    Is it though? All it takes is a misconfiguration or exploit to bypass it, so having several layers of protection isn’t a bad thing and how any reasonably secure system works. And having parts of your system predetermined as read only is a comparably tough nut to crack.


  • Yeah, it’s a bit of a conundrum. Lemmygrad is the most egregious part of it and easy to block thankfully.
    But I agree with some of the other posters that lemmy.ml is still pretty bad in terms of what gets allowed and who gets modetated. Luckily, this still is not an unsolvable problem in a federated world. Of course lemmy.ml could also just be blocked, but many instances will probably be reluctant to do that, as it also hosts some of the bigger communities currently. But we can make an effort to prioritize non lemmy.ml communities over their counterpart, a different meme community over memes@lemmy.ml etc, and if consensus is strong enough and enough communities shift, lemmy.ml could theoretically find itself in a position where it will have to clean up their moderation practices or risk wider defederation.





  • Reddit hugely benefits from centralization. It’s hard to vibrant communities for niche topics when these communities are even further split up through some means.
    This is a challenge lemmy/kbin etc have to face that will make mass adoption even more difficult than for mastodon etc where the focal point are people and not groups anyways.

    I think making an effort to have topic specific instances and not generalistic instances that often duplicate topics is possibly one of the best way to mitigate this inbuilt advantage lemmy/kbin etc face.

    Other hugely important things would be integration with groups from mastodon, pixelfed etc once those come along and the ability to merge and move entire communities imo.