Review: Trustix Secure Linux lives up to its name

So I am a sucker for anything with the word ‘Trust’ in the title! Yes, this distro known as Trustix might very well be worth looking into. All and all, a pretty decent distro. Check it out below:

Trustix Secure Linux is an interesting distro for servers that is designed to be all about security. While Linux, in general, is fairly secure, a distro that focuses on security and stability from the ground up should be a good choice for Internet servers. In our testing, we found Trustix lives up to its intentions.

I downloaded the stable 2.2 release of Trustix. You can also download the new version, 3.0, which is based on the 2.6 series kernel. However, if your focus is security, Trustix suggests that you use the stable version. The 450MB ISO is easy to download, especially since it’s available via Bittorrent.

Trustix concentrates on keeping it simple. You won’t get a GUI or the latest bells and whistles. What you do get with Trustix is a small and secure distribution that incorporates IBM’s Stack Smash Protection, which protects the system and applications from stack-smashing attacks. This is one of the major forms of attacks, and many secure Linux distros have this turned on by default.

The developers have kept the number of packages to a minimum by including only the basic server-specific packages. Trustix contains no graphical desktop and few userland tools. Source: Linux.com

[tags]kernel,trustix secure linux,ibm’s stack smash protection,secure linux distros[/tags]