So, a while back I installed Xfce with Chicago95, but was disappointed. Xfce just doesn’t vibe with me, and a strict emulation of Windows95 is not really what I wanted, I just wanted something that “felt” that classic.
So I was gonna give up and just use KDE, until I saw TDE. I think TDE is probably what I’m looking for but I’m concerned about using anything so minor because security.
It TDE secure (for personal use)?
Can a DE even be insecure, or are they all generally as secure as each-other as long as you follow the rules (trustworthy software, closed firewall, install patches fast, and disaster recovery plans)?
What vulnerabilities can a desktop environment even have (edit)?
Depends on your threat modeling. Though, unfortunately, none of the DEs/WMs on Linux offer perfect security; this even applies to a hardened distro like secureblue.
So, practically-speaking, it probably ain’t great. But we aren’t used to great anyways 😅.
Oh damn, so just viewing a file in your file manager is enough to get infected in an insecure desktop environment, as thumbnails can be generated programmatically? If I clicked a bad link that would 100% infect my system.
I’m not worried too much about screen-capture. I’m worried first and foremost about triggering any arbitrary code execution and thumbnail generation on a file would definitely do it.
It depends on what file manager you use. In many, you can turn off thumbnail generation if you believe this might happen to you.