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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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It's not just protection against security, but also human error.
https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/issues/123
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/20/how-a-steam-bug-once-deleted-all-of-someones-user-data/
Just because I trust someone to write a program in a modern language they are familier in, doesn't mean I trust them to write an install script in bash, especially given how many footguns bash has.
Hilarious, but not a security issue. Just shitty Bash coding.
And I agree it's easier to make these mistakes in Bash, but I don't think anyone here is really making the argument that curl | bash is bad because Bash is a shitty error-prone language (it is).
Definitely the most valid point I've read in this thread though. I wish we had a viable alternative. Maybe the Linux community could work on that instead of moaning about it.
It absolutely is a security issue. I had a little brain fart, but what I meant to say was "Security isn't just protection from malice, but also protection from mistakes".
Let's put it differently:
This is a common sentiment people say about C, and I have a the same opinion about it. I would rather we use systems in place that don't give people the opportunity to make mistakes.
Viable alternative for what? Packaging.
I personally quite like the systems we have. The "install anything from the internet" is exactly how Windows ends up with so much malware. The best way to package software for users is via a package manager, that not only puts more eyes on the software, but many package managers also have built in functionality that makes the process more reliable and secure. For example signatures create a chain of trust. I really like Nix as a distro-agnostic package manager, because due to the unique way they do things, it's impossible for one package's build process to interfere with another.
If you want to do "install anything from the internet" it's best to do it with containers and sandboxing. Docker/podman for services, and Flatpak for desktop apps, where it's pretty easy to publish to flathub. Both also seem to be pretty easy, and pretty popular — I commonly find niche things I look at ship a docker image.
The issue with C is it lets you make mistakes that commonly lead to security vulnerabilities - allowing a malicious third party to do bad stuff.
The Bash examples you linked are not security vulnerabilities. They don't let malicious third parties do anything. They done have CVEs, they're just straight up data loss bugs. Bad ones, sure. (And I fully support not using Bash where feasible.)
A viable way to install something that works on all Linux distros (and Mac!), and doesn't require root.
The reason people use curl | bash is precisely so they don't have to faff around making a gazillion packages. That's not a good answer.
Nix portable installations, Soar.
Developers shouldn't be making packages. They do things like vendor and pin dependencies, which lead to security and stability issues later down the line. See my other comment where I do a quick look at some of these issues.
Soar does look cool, but it requires you to install it first so that adds an extra installation step. Extra installation friction is very bad. And guess how they tell you to install Soar? 😄
Ok so how do these packages magically get made? Am I just supposed to not distribute my software? And don't say "distros will do it" because that's clearly a shit non-solution. No distro has made a package for any of the software I've written.
I hate this, but I've mentioned before in the other threads related to this that I make an exception for package managers due to their ability to install packages themselves.
Systems that protect people mean bureaucracy. And bureaucracy means slowness. It means many niche libraries or programs won't get packaged. It means that it won't get updated to the latest version immediately either, even if they receive security updates.
But as a consequence of these systems, Debian 12 remained entirely untouched by the XZ backdoor, when almost every other distribution was hit. That's a pretty big deal.
As a consequence of a lack of these systems, many Windows programs are still floating around with vulnerable versions of curl, having included the software into their "package" but never bothering to update it.
I care more about the security of the users than the feelings of the developers. It's that simple. Developers are a tiny fraction of total computer users. The needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few.