14 DAY TRIAL // The Solus operating system and its team are taking extra security precautions in the light of the Linux Mint hack, and they are making sure that something like that will be much more unlikely to happen with their project.
It's been a while since we heard from the Solus devs, but it looks like they had their hands full with the unstable version of the OS. This particular build gathers all the bleeding-edge stuff of the project, which means that it's inherently unstable and a major pain.
With that in mind, it looks like this latest status update from Solus is more about the protection of users and of the OS itself. Some you already know that Linux Mint website has been the target of a hack a couple of days back, which redirected users to download a modified ISO.
Security above all else
The Linux Mint hack is going to follow the Linux community for a long time, and it will be used as an example that bad stuff can happen to Linux people. It doesn't matter that it wasn't related to the operating system. In any case, it's also a good wake-up call for website admins and project leaders to pay attention to security and not only for the distribution itself.
"In light of the recent issues with the Linux Mint project, we’re adding an additional piece of mind to the distribution of our ISOs and signing of our sha256sums (which we’ve always used) and providing a global Solus GPG key. We have already audited our servers, ensured that every official mirror provided by the core team is synced with the SHA256SUMS.sign file," explained Josh Strobl, developer for Solus.
Another security measure is to separate the community mirrors from the official ones, which are going to be audited daily. In the end, the user also has the responsibility of checking the ISO that he downloads. Those pesky hash checks that we find everywhere are there for a reason, so use them. You can find the global Solus gpg key, the Inclusive SHA256SUMS, and the Inclusive SHA256SUMS detached signature on the official website of the project lead, Ikey Doherty.
What's happening with Solus
With the security part out of the way, let's move to the Solus changes. From the looks of it, the Solus team wants to teach people how to create, build, and submit packages for the operating system. They even have a handy video showing how it's done.
Plus, a couple of new packages have been added, Audacity and galculator. A number of applications and packages have been updated as well, including Firefox, Lollypop, Linux kernel (4.4.2), Thunderbird 38.6.0, and a few others.
You can download the latest version of Solus from Softpedia. Don't forget to update it in order to get all these latest goodies.
