If all kernel bugs are security bugs, how do you keep your Linux safe?

Just because it has a CVE number doesn't mean it's exploitable. Of the 800 CVEs, which ones are in the KEV catalogue? What are the attack vectors? What mitigations are available?
- The idea that it is somehow possible to determine that for each and every bug is a crazy fantasy by the people who don't like to update to the latest version.
  
  The fact that you think it's not possible means that you're not familiar with CVSS scores, which every CVE includes and which are widely used in regulated fields.
  And if you think that always updating to the latest version keeps you safe then you've forgotten about the recent xz backdoor.
- If I had a dollar for the number of BS CVE's submitted by security hopefuls trying to pad their resumes...

Great reason to push more code out of the kernel and into user land
- Is it HURD'n' time?
  
  I dunno, Stallman, it's been 30 years, you got something for us?
  
  I think we should just resurrect Plan 9 instead.
  
  Redox-OS?
  
  L4. HURD never panned out, and L4 is where the microkernel research settled: Memory protection, scheduling, IPC in the kernel the rest outside and there's also important insights as to the APIs to do that with. In particular the IPC mechanism is opaque, the kernel doesn't actually read the messages which was the main innovation over Mach.
  Literally billions of devices run OKL4, seL4 systems are also in mass production. Think broadband processors, automotive, that kind of stuff.
  The kernel being watertight doesn't mean that your system is, though, you generally don't need kernel privileges to exfiltrate any data or generally mess around, root suffices.
  If you want to see this happening -- I guess port AMDGPU to an L4?
- eBPF is looking great.
- So what you are saying is “mach was right”?
  
  Everybody knows it was. Even Linus said a microkernel architecture was better. He just wanted something working “now” for his hobby project, and microkernel research was still ongoing then.

Best way I found it running this command
rm -rf /
Then do a reboot just to be sure.
Good luck compromising my system after that.
FYI This is a joke Don't actually run this command :)
- sudo apt-get remove systemd (don't actually run this)
  
  I ran it and followed a documentation to install Void Linux and now it runs so much smoother!
  
  Jokes on you I use a mac
- It won't work without --no-preserve-root
- good thing that command won't do anything anymore

That’s a crazy “if”
- "if" gcc had a Ken Thompson hack how do you secure checks notes anything
  
  I'm genuinely worried sometimes that a Ken hack has been introduced. I don't know by who, but possibly some government agency. Then again, we also have a Minix system built into the CPU doing god knows what and we just accept that.
- That is actually perfectly reasonable assumption to make in the absence of resources to determine the opposite, which would probably be many times the resources needed to actually fix the bug.
  
  There are lots of things the Kernel controls that can have non security related bugs, e.g. controller with the wrong mapping https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9131f8cc2b4eaf7c08d402243429e0bfba9aa0d6
  It's a wild assumption to claim "All bugs in the Linux kernel are security issues", without any backing, whoever is making that claim needs to provide evidence since the default position for any program is that there are bugs that are not security issues.
  
  defend one out there assumption with another, i guess.
  who can tell if sidewinder force feedback (11684) is a security bug or just one that affects people using old joysticks. better treat it with all the seriousness of xv just to be sure!

Article for the sake of having an article.

Step one: stop listening to anything from Ziff-Davis.

I mean, this isn't any different for Windows or macos. The difference is the culture around the kernel.
With Linux there are easily orders of magnitude more eyeballs on it than the others combined. And fixes are something anyone with a desire to do so can apply. You don't have to wait for a fix to be packaged and delivered.

Security is not a binary variable, but managed in terms of risk. Update your stuff, don't expose it to the open Internet if it doesn't need it, and so on. If it's a server, it should probably have unattended upgrades.
- If it's a server, it should probably have unattended upgrades.
  Interesting opinion, I've always heard that unattended upgrades were a terrible option for servers because it might randomly break your system or reboot when an important service is running.
  
  There are two schools of thought here. The "never risk anything that could potentially break something" school and the "make stuff robust enough that it will deal with broken states". Usually the former doesn't work so well once something actually breaks.
  
  Both my Debian 12 servers run with unattended upgrades. I've never had anything break from the changes in packages, I think. I tend to use docker and on one even lxc containers (proxmox), but the lxc containers also have unattended upgrades running.
  Do you just update your stuff manually or do you not update at all? I'm subscribed to the Debian security mailing list, and they frequently find something that means people should upgrade, recently something with the glibc.
  Debian especially is focused on being very stable, so updating should never break anything that wasn't broken before. Sometimes docker containers don't like to restart so they refuse, but then I did something stupid.
  
  That only applies to unstable distros. Stable distros, like debian, maintain their own versions of packages.
  Debian in particular, only includes security patches and changes in their packages - no new features at all.* This means risk of breakage and incompatibilitu is very low, basically nil.
  *exceot for certain packages which aren't viable to maintain, like Firefox or other browsers.
  
  Not having automated updates can quickly lead to not doing updates at all. Same goes for backups.
  Whenever possible, one should automate tedious stuff.

pacman -Syu
Rhetorical question?

Install all the patches immediately.

Crontab dnf update -y and trust that if anything breaks uptime monitoing/ someone will let me know sooner or later.
- Don't use cron for that. Use the package managers auto update utility. Plus if you use the proper tools you can set it to security updates only

Air gap.
- Honestly it is a valid option for critical systems. It is a bad idea to connect water treatment plans to the internet for example
- Some air gaps better than others
  
  My airgap stinks.