SELinux threads, cynicism, one-upmanship, etc.

[lesmikesell at gmail.com (Les Mikesell)]

On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 22:42, Lamar Owen wrote:

> Maybe I'm wrong, but I think any admin needs to experience having their box 
> cracked.  It will produce the humbleness necessary to the trade, because 
> overconfidence is dangerous.

Yes, but when the box gets cracked _because_ they are using the
latest new thing their distribution added under the guise of
increased security, as happened with ssh a while back, it
also produces the attitude that new stuff should soak a long,
long while in a distribution like fedora before going onto
production boxes.  You want to at least wait until the surprises
stop - and I take the flurry of reports of broken apps at
every update as an indication that they haven't stopped yet.

Your analogy to a weapon was a good one.  When the experts
tuning the distribution still can't keep it from blowing
up in peoples's faces some of the time, normal people should
keep their distance.  When the fedora and Centos lists go
several months without a mysterious app failure caused by
SELinux it will be time to reconsider.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx