Security and Privacy compared to Canonical Ubuntu

[XMice]

Hello I am new to Linux Mint XFCE Edition!

As far as I understand Linux Mint is a polished Ubuntu..
So besides Graphics, Cinnamon, Mate, Codecs I wonder if there is something changed to the behavior of this distribution

Obviously there is some kind of branding in the webbrowsers. For example the search engines are changed in Firefox and also there is some kind of Chromium profile folder in my home dir but I did not install Chromium yet.
I guess that is only done because the users wanted it like that and not to spy the surf behavior?

Since linux mint has some own repos added I wonder how is the overall privacy and security maintained by these packages..
Is there only one super guy who has all in his hand or is there a team behind it with more eyes on the packages..

It is not that I don't trust linux mint but I don't know how this team is organized.
Since I plan to use it for everyday usage I hope this will be at least as secure and private like ubuntu/xubuntu was..

I switched over because Xubuntu really had some problems after doing regular dist-upgrades.. Linux Mint just works and looks very nice
Oh by the way is it correct that Linux Mint 13 XFCE is also supported for 5 years?
Is there somewhere a page where I can see the lifetime cycle?

Thank you!

[caf4926]

Oh by the way is it correct that Linux Mint 13 XFCE is also supported for 5 years?

Correct
http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_maya_whatsnew.php

http://www.linuxmint.com/teams.php

[XMice]

Thank you I missed the pages.
So the browser customization by Linux Mint is just to get some dollars for the project. This is alright!

I guess there is nothing more changed in the browsers or the OS what could harm the privacy..

Still I wonder about the security guidelines of the mint repos and package maintainers.
E.g. Merlwiz79 seems to be the only one to maintain XFCE according to your team list..

I don't want to say that is a bad thing but I am a litle paranoid if only one person could maybe add some nasty stuff in there, and there would be no other to check that

Don't get me wrong Mint XFCE works much better for me than Xubuntu does, I just want to get a little feeling about how Mint is developed and maintained!

[caf4926]

Perhaps others can clarify it for you.

[XMice]

This would be great but it seems no one can comment on this one

[pickles99]

Security and privacy of Linux users is gone.

Internet communication cards all have permanent "Mac Addresses" assigned to them. Now in Linux when you install it she takes your communication MAC address number and date/time and creates a "UUID" to assign to your hard drives. More big brother stuff to track you/see you.

The new Intel chipsets have "Intel Insider" which is its own operating system running on the chipset where they can do interesting things. Intel cpu's now have "vPro" which is yet another stand alone system where they can get in and do interesting things.

These are the publicly disclosed things running inside, there's more. We've seen people who know how to use those things.....abuse their authoriti and do silly things like put nasty pop up messages in the bios itself to flash once upon startup of other people's computers they got into...and others who've done far worse.

There is no such thing as privacy and security now with computers. There's nobody who's gone through all of the code to make sure 1 of the contributors didn't put something bad in. Look at the new Cinnamon they're working on. Almost 200,000 lines of gnome code removed that wasn't being used. Ouch.

We're using a virtual box desktop on a Xserver virtual manager running on a Linux kernel that's being virtualized by the CPU over the hardware, running on top of a Linux system running inside of the Bios chip.....there's more security holes as more fluff lines of code get added every day.

Linux was a lean operating system. Canonicals Ubuntu's grown to a hefty size. Sometimes you just have to ask yourself what all those lines of code are doing in that big Linux system.....the days of a slim Linux operating system you can trust are...gone.

But that's just my crazy opinion. Canonical's British, she's not taken well to criticism from other countries.

[XMice]

So you say it is not Linuxmint vs Ubuntu in point of security, but Ubuntu at all is not trustful?
What should people use then?

[Brucey99]

Since I plan to use it for everyday usage I hope this will be at least as secure and private like ubuntu/xubuntu was..

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu so the security is the same anyway

I guess there is nothing more changed in the browsers or the OS what could harm the privacy..

You could always remove firefox and install from the Mozilla website, giving you a clean install.. but then again, do you trust firefox?

I don't want to say that is a bad thing but I am a litle paranoid if only one person could maybe add some nasty stuff in there, and there would be no other to check that

You've got to ask yourself the question, why would the developers want to put some 'nasty stuff' in there? In comparison to Ubuntu, Linux Mint has much less code commited to it and the fact it's open-source means anyway can easily review it. All it would take is one person to see some 'nasty' code and the whole Linux Mint project is over, all those years/development/hard work, gone - and what for, so the admins can spy on what p0rn you're looking at?

If you are super paranoid on security and privacy, I'd say use OpenBSD (+Tor Annonymous), where every line of code is scrutinized. But this is probably overkill for what you want to do

To answer your question, in my opinion, Linux Mint is as equally secure/private as Ubuntu