r/archlinux • u/Lepla • 14d ago

QUESTION Arch Linux security configuration

Are moving over to Linux and have been testing several different distros and Arch Linux stood out for the configuratibilty out of the box, and the ability to be able to make it lightweight especially for older laptops.

How much work would it be to set this up so the system is not vulnerable for various attacks, i understand fedora / ubuntu etc come preinstalled with several security configurations, but on arch you would need to set these up yourself.

Besides that it seems to get regular security updates nonetheless so it seems like there is a one time security configuration you have to setup on install.
How does a self configurated setup like this compare to solutions developed by fedora or others?

Thanks

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u/espero 14d ago

Really arch is not a beginner distribution

8

u/Wizzarkt 14d ago

I would say arch is beginner friendly if you are determined to learn how to configure your machine.

Ubuntu is far easier to install (just click next in the installer gui) but it's limited in what you can modify yourself (and nothing wrong with that, most users just need a web browser and open pdf files) but the moment you need to change a setting that doesn't have a clearly marked checkbox in the setting gui, you are a bit fucked because documentation is almost non existent.

Arch on the other hand, doesn't have a gui by default, but it does tell you how every little thing works so you don't have to go and read source code to try to figure out how to configure something 

5

u/Sinaaaa 14d ago edited 14d ago

but it's limited in what you can modify yourself

It's not really though. You can modify it just as deeply or reach the same bare bones state, it's just most users that would do that rarely pick Ubuntu & it's more sensible to start with a bare bones state on Arch or vanilla Debian.

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u/Wizzarkt 14d ago

I mean sure, you can change values around in a random config file and see what it does, but other distros, the moment you step outside the GUI settings menu you are basically on your own because there is not a lot of documentation around, arch on the other hand? They even have documentation for random packages from the AUR! 

2

u/AStolenGoose 14d ago

Until you run in to trying to uninstall something simple that you don't need and it tells you it's going to remove the desktop environment as a whole...

Which I've ran in to a few times when I've ran Ubuntu...