Let's not pretend regedit is a good thing, it is littered with unreadable keys and has terrible UI and UX. And it requires root privileges to edit anything.
I believe one of the worst disservice Windows has done to secure computing is to make users desensitized about root privileges. Every single action you do need root privileges, install app, changing config, people would just click allow whenever UAC pops up...
This means any program can easily inject rootkit into Windows during install, without the users noticing a thing, like LoL.
You don't need to use sudo command that much on linux. I personally only need to use it to edit two config files when setting up my system, that is it.
One for pre-connection mac randomization, one to enable a kernel module I need, because my distro disable many of them by default. I am very conscious of the changes I am making. However on Windows, I have no idea what the app installers are doing.
Not to mention, most users don't even need to make these changes. Per-network randomization is likely good enough for most user, and they probably not on a security-hardened distro which disables tons of kernel modules.
For a office work and entertainments, flatpak apps are more than enough. And developers can choose to get their sdk via flatpak or podman dev containers. None of them requires sudo.
Is there a good reason for a everyday user (not a tinker nor a system admin) to use sudo in linux?
I believe offline upgrade is also the default on every OS out there, for example gnome software only installs updates offline.
Even if you have to use sudo to upgrade (or journalctl, dmesg, both are sysadmin tasks and not typically done by a normal user), you are still only giving root privileges to these trusted programs distributed by your distro, not some random installers on the internet, unless you are using AUR.
I am genuinely curious what other commands with sudo that you need to run on a daily bases, for tasks that is unrelated to system administration?
Except when you install something on linux package manager of your distro is executed as opposed to installer that was made by developer of package you are installing. And you probably install install packages from your distro's repos, unless you are on Debian of course.
Or you can run package manager as user that usually installs in ~/.local. Or unpack yourself.
Package managers have post install scripts and hooks that would allow you to install a rootkit. Then again they can also just add services on many Linux systems, which can run as root. Just put a systemd unit file in the right place and enable it.
The security advantage of Linux is having trusted repos and using things like FlatPak. System packages being malicious would very much be able to infect a system. Just look at the XZ backdoor for an example.
Sure it does! Throw that festering pile of garbage into a docker container and keep it away from everything important while bind mounting the arbitrarily-placed config directory in the container to something sane on the host.
For Linux applications that respect XDG? Sure. There are plenty that don't because they either predate that specification, or they just don't care. Linux filesystems are generally much faster at executing reads on many small files, meaning fast search tools like ripgrep and fd make it so I don't really have to care. They'll run through my whole $HOME in 5 seconds flat. There's also stuff like locate, although I don't like maintaining an index. SSDs are so damn fast that I can just rg --hidden --glob '*.toml' 'the_setting_i_want_to_change' ~/ whenever I want.
I do feel like setting environment variable on linux is not as intuitive as on windows, but after I setup my workflow, I realized I never have the need to manually set any environmental variable besides in flatseal.
export PATH=$PATH:/mypath1:/mypath2 in ~/.profile. Means "add :/mypath1:/mypath2 to what is already in $PATH." If you need the entire system to be aware, set or update it in /etc/environment with PATH=...
Have you found appdata/local/Application Data? It's a "conjunction point" that you can only find via the command line, and only exists for backwards compatibility. It points to appdata/... Do not EVER try to gain access over all your files in appdata/. It'll break due to that conjunction point.
There are symlinks in Windows all over the place for backwards compatibility. Just look at "Documents and Settings", it's a symlink to ”Users".
Yet, you still have to install the same libraries with every app over and over, even though they can be shared. Why? Because Windows has no sense of default library locations, except for the things it absolutely needs to work.
There once was a time when configs were not in a universal place like .config. I have terrible memories of trying to fix a gnome setting gone wrong and having to search several files in four different places and just having to firebomb everything.
All that depends on developer. Majority of my used Windows software is portable stored in folder that's synced with Dropbox. All settings are then usually stored in the same folder so I can easily copy SW over to another machine without loosing any configuration / history.
Some of those programs still do not store settings in same folder, you can often simply export settings from GUI.
I use an all encompassing indexing app on windows called "Everything" and it let's me find....everything, since it indexes it all, it also finds it instantly. if you have to use windows, I suggest getting it. It's no cost.
Linux is confusing for non IT people looking for program settings. It might be in share, local or config or hidden somewhere. On W 10 I just look under ProgramData. Maybe W11 is different. But Linux application devs need to agree on a single place. As users sometimes need to access it for plugins and resources.
You mean the 2 ProgramData folders? Altho who the hell puts config stuff there? Anyways, the 2 official settings apps, the 3 AppData folders and then the registry for every little thing Microsoft doesn't want you to edit for whatever reason? And then the countless 3rd party config apps for every device aiming to make this process easier? Yea I totally don't Google where to toggle stuff on windows as step #1, noo... And W11 just has a slightly better 2nd official settings app, so sadly not too different.
Also who the hell puts config stuff on Linux into /local or /share? It was always in ~/.config (personal) or /etc (system wide) from my experience.
