Kicksecure Stable Version User Experience

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This page outlines the primary user experience objectives for the stable release of Kicksecure.

User Experience Goals[edit]

The goal for the stable version of Kicksecure is to provide a reliable and interruption-free user experience. Users should expect to never encounter issues with:

  • System boot process;
  • Network connectivity;
  • Graphical desktop environment;
  • APT package management;
  • Necessity for manual interventions or fixes.

Furthermore, each stable version of Kicksecure should support seamless upgrades to the subsequent stable release, typically within a month after the new version becomes available.

Issues such as 2023 December's Microsoft Windows 11 KB5033375 update breaks Wi-Fi connectivityarchive.org are to be avoided

Usability and Development Practices[edit]

High-Quality Solutions[edit]

Kicksecure's approach to software development and distribution maintenance is characterized by a commitment to high-quality solutions, rather than resorting to workarounds, hacks, temporary fixes, quick and dirty solutions, or finger-pointing.

For example, discussed in MAC randomization breaks root server and VirtualBox DHCP / IPv6PrivacyExtensions might be problematicarchive.org, MAC randomization won't be enabled by default in Kicksecure if it is already known to break networking inside VirtualBox VMs.

Kicksecure isn't just for my personal computer security hardening. It needs to work for the actual users of Kicksecure.

Patrick, Kicksecure lead developer

Streamlined Development Process[edit]

Contributing to other projects such as Debian, Qubes, Tails is comparatively more difficult than contributing to Kicksecure. For example, have a look at the Tails merge policyarchive.org.

Kicksecure has a different approach and streamlined processes.

  • Not insisting that contributors write a clean commit history.
  • Contributors are not asked to git squash and rebase primarily for minor aesthetic adjustments.
  • No perfect documentation is requested either.
  • Patrick, the reviewer, will attempt to take on additional minor, detail-focused commits on top and, if feasible, also make other improvements himself.

As a result, projects such as Kicksecure and Whonix have, in Patrick's opinion, progressed more rapidly than Tails development.

For instance, Tails lacks analogous features to Kicksecure's security-miscarchive.org and similar tools.

An illustrative example is found in the handling of libpam-tmpdir pull requestarchive.org. This would probably have been reverted by Tails and returned to the contributor as per its "Do not break the build... or get reverted" policy.

Differentiating Linux Distributions[edit]

Quote from Arch Linux wikiarchive.org:

Sometimes called "newbie distros", the beginner-friendly distributions share a lot of similarities, though Arch is quite different from them.

Quote from Gentoo Linux wikiarchive.org:

Gentoo will likely require more effort to learn than so-called "beginner-friendly" distributions.

These quotations highlight that not all distributions aim to be, or are, beginner-friendly.

Kicksecure: A User-Friendly Fork of Debian[edit]

In this context, Kicksecure, a fork of Debian, represents an effort to create a more user-friendly experience compared to Debian. Arguably, this has already been accomplished with respect to getting started with Linux inside VirtualBox. The Kicksecure website is significantly more streamlined and easier to use than the Debian website. This is elaborated in chapter usability by default.


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