Debian security advisories

[Pierre Lambion]

Hi,

I really like both Debian and Slackware. Apt-get makes a difference to install complex programs, requiting many libraries, but I tend to avoid those so I could live with tgz.

Slackware has been my first distro (some 3yrs ago I think and again 1yr ago when I went back to Linux) and it just feels right. Debian is clean too.

Now to the point:
I noticed that on http://www.linuxtoday/ there were more security advisories for Debian than for other distros.

I guess it doesn't mean that Debian is less secure but rather that it is more closely monitored?

What's your opinion?

Would you think that Slackware is more or less secure? Beside the recent Windriver stuff, my concern about slackware future is that there are fewer contributors (for packages) and maybe less review?


P.

[Aikidoka]

Not really, if you really want to see who's putting out security advisories you can just check out linuxsecurity.com. Here's a link to the advisories page:
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/index.html

[Pierre Lambion]

Wow ...

2001 count: 49 advisories or Debian ; 4 for Slackware

How to interpret this?

[X_console]

I'm a Slackware user. Slackware and Debian both release security advisories. The reason Slackware has less is because the Slackware team doesn't include bleeding-edge software or even current software unless it's been thoroughly tested. Now that doesn't mean that Slackware is totally secure. For instance, let's say Slackware includes foobar-2.3 because they feel it's stable. But a month later you upgrade to foobar-3.0 which was not included in the Slackware package. Now let's say an exploit is created for foobar-3.0. Slackware will not probably not release a security advisory on foobar-3.0 because it's not in their distribution. It's your job to keep updated on what you've got in your system. Debian's apt-get makes it easy to get the latest software, but of course there's a chance that the software has yet to be thoroughly tested. All in all, I wouldn't worry about which one you use. There are many on LNO who use Debian and who'll vouch for it's stability and security. Stability falls on the shoulders of the distributions' developers. Security falls on the sysadmin's shoulders.