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Security Roadmap Advanced Documentation apparmor.d Previous page: Security Roadmap Index page: Advanced Documentation Next page: apparmor.d Other Desktop Environments

• Other Operating Systems
• Other Desktop Environments

How to use Other Desktop Environments other than Xfce with Kicksecure. Current situation. Risks. Future. (Gnome, KDE, LXQt, MATE, ...)

Current Situation

As of version 17, the Downloadable Kicksecure versions are available with either:

• A) graphical user interface (GUI): desktop environment (Xfce); OR
• B) command line interface (CLI): text terminal only (no desktop environment).

(Version 18 might be released with a different desktop environment other than Xfce.)

However, other desktop environments like Gnome, KDE, LXQt, LXDE and so on can be manually installed.

Risks

• Unsupported configuration: When installing your own desktop environment such as GNOME, you're on your own. This is unsupported.
• Recommendation for advanced users: Start with Kicksecure CLI, the text terminal-only version of Kicksecure, which comes without a desktop environment installed by default, and install a desktop environment of your choice there. This is much better than starting with Kicksecure Xfce and then uninstalling Xfce to install another desktop environment.
• Additional background services: Other desktop environments install additional background services. The Kicksecure project hasn't researched the security/privacy implications of having these installed. For example:
  • GNOME automatically installs GeoClue. (systemcheck warns if that very package is installed, but still...)
  • See also Dev/GNOME wiki page, chapter Security.
• Unvetted default applications: Other desktop environments also ship a different selection of default applications that have not necessarily been checked for security/privacy. Installing your own desktop environment may result in software packages being installed that are not well hardened or chosen with security in mind.
• Live Mode limitation: This is only applicable to users of live mode. There is no live mode indicator systray for other desktop environments. Live vs Persistent Mode as well as issue notifications would be missed. This will change in the next version. No such issue in Kicksecure 18 and above.
• user-sysmaint-split integration issues: This is only applicable to users of user-sysmaint-split. See also user-sysmaint-split, Default Installation Status. It does not apply to users of unrestricted admin mode. Only the default desktop environment (or rather login managers) is tested with user-sysmaint-split by developers. Other desktop environments might have glitches.

Future

Since Kicksecure is an Open Source / Freedom Software project, Kicksecure developers are hoping that other developers join the project and maintain other desktop environments. That someone could be you?

See Also

• Kicksecure Debian Packages, which ones are safe to remove?

Security Roadmap Advanced Documentation apparmor.d Previous page: Security Roadmap Index page: Advanced Documentation Next page: apparmor.d

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