The Case for Sovereign Linux

Today, many were affected by what the media here in Australia have been calling a “tech outage”. A component of Crowdstrike’s Falcon security product contained a bug causing widespread “blue screen of death” on Microsoft Windows. Because so many entities installed this one proprietary product, a flaw in this product caused operations to grind to a halt. From retail businesses to airports to hospitals. We were left reliant on foreign companies before our country could operate again.

This isn’t acceptable. There IS something we can do about it.

But you’re not gonna like it. What is really required is a mass transformation of tech literacy.

Everyone whose operations depend on a computer needs to ask themselves “do I understand how this system works?”. No? Why not?

You cannot look inside Crowdstrike Falcon. You cannot look inside Microsoft Windows. When something goes wrong in these products, we have no choice but to wait for Microsoft and/or Crowdstrike to address the issue. These aren’t Australian companies. Guess what? That means they’re “foreign”. Why do we tolerate dependence on foreign entities for our critical infrastructure? We can’t even look at their source code.

What if, instead, we were all running Gentoo Linux? Okay, now you can look inside. All the source code is right there. In theory, someone can find the flaw, and distribute a fix, without having to wait for the central entity to issue it.

…but who can actually read it? Very few of us are ready to actually dive into investigating a bug, especially on software we didn’t write ourselves and have no familiarity with, because it was hiding away in the internals.

We need to consider having a minimum viable software distribution, with enough components that basic functionality can be maintained, but not so complex that it becomes impossible for a small team to reason about. Then, all information systems should be in a format interoperable with this basic system.

“But do you understand how complicated all the things we do on computers nowadays are?” Yes. Yes, I do. That’s why I’ve got this thousand-yard stare. That’s the problem. We need to simplify. Cut as many lines of code as possible, focus on the essentials.

Why Linux? Because an ecosystem from which to draw from already exists. I’m just trying to be pragmatic. Start with a GNU/Linux system, build minimum functionality, then strip back further.

Oh, and make sure to use cash as much as possible. If you tell me you’re “cashless” in a country without a properly functioning Internet service, I’m just gonna assume that means I can walk out without paying. Look mate, if you won’t accept my cash, that’s fine, but one way or another I’m taking some food.

I’d elaborate more but I don’t expect these type of posts to get much readership, so, mostly getting my points out into the void here. Reach out if you care about this.