[buug] Gentoo, Bluecurve and Linux too!

Jeremy Brand, B.S. jeremy at nirvani.net
Fri Oct 18 12:00:21 PDT 2002


Thus spake Patrick Soltani:

> With binary you don't have the option! with source you do. that's all.
> Oh one more thing, when something does not work, or works as you don't
> expect it, you can fiddle with the source, but you have NO OPTIONS with
> binaries.

What binaries are you talking about?  On linux systems binaries can be
re-built with source anyway.  Having a binary-based-packeged system does
not prevent you from (re-)compiling whatever you want.

> I don't blindly trust the source code either.  After the compile, built
> and TESTING, I then roll it out.  Remember that catching backdoor,
> trojans, worms, etc, is possible with good firewall filtering, IDS,
> coupled with good tcpdumping.

This is a good point.  So, why is a source-based-packeged distro better?

My point is still being that source based distros (sourcemage, gentoo) are
no more secure than binary based distros (redhat, debian, suse) based on
the fact that you get to re-compile!

Jeremy




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