this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder the performance compared to regular sudo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

rust compiles to native code, so barring some horrific implementation issues, i'd bet my money on it being roughly equivalent.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This comment seems interesting, it was first question that popped into my head:

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That is... A big claim. Yeah, rust minimizes or removes some categories of vulnerabilities. This is true. BUT sudo has been well tested over decades.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'll be the first to admit to not paying much attention to Linux vulnerabilities, but I agree, I feel like a vulnerability in a package like sudo would have been huge news.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago

cve-2021-3156 heap overflow in sudo. roughly 10 years long in sudo. Allowed privilege escalation. It was huge.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Is it GPL though? If this is a case of MIT-licensed stuff weaseling its way into Linux core utils, I'm not interested.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

sudo is MIT also (or something that looks like MIT at least). https://www.sudo.ws/about/license/

The more critical part wrt license is real coreutils which they also want to replace.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

This is what I get for posting at 1am. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah I just assumed it was the same situation as coreutils.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Looks like it's dual licenced, MIT and Apache https://github.com/trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Where is the problem when something mit-licensed is in core utils?

Edit: sudo isn't even a core util.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Granted, sudo isn't in coreutils, but it's sufficiently standard that I'd argue that the licence is very relevant to the wider Linux community.

Anyway, I answered this at length the last time this subject came up here, but the TL;DR is that private companies (like Canonical, who owns Ubuntu) love the MIT license because it allows them to take the code and make proprietary versions of it without having to release the source code. Consider the implications of a sudo binary that's Built For Ubuntu™ with closed-source proprietary hooks into Canonical's cloud auth provider. It's death by a thousand MIT-licensed cuts to our once Free operating system.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Very useful concrete example of how these changes might be a problem. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago

What's the problem with it? These MIT programs already exists. Anyone can make proprietary version. Including in Ubuntu doesn't change that.

Also your example is pointless. Canonical would rather make a proprietary pam module instead of a custom internal fork of sudo-rs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I don't know how often exploits that this would prevent are found, but sometimes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Can’t wait to test it out!