Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store...
by matheusmoreira on Monday January 29, 2024 @12:33AM
(#39173020)
No, npm is not a Linux distribution. It's a programming language package manager and package repository.
The distinguishing feature of Linux distributions is the existence of maintainers. Human beings who put in effort into maintaining the quality and integrity of the packages and keeping them up to date. We Linux users generally trust those people, and they stand between us and all the software developers out there. To get to us, you gotta go through them. And they generally aren't in the habit of allowing obvious malware into the software repositories. That's why we trust them in the first place.
Contrast that to repositories like npm, pypi, rubygems, cargo which are all designed so that any random person can make an account and push up any package they want. There's no checking. Accounts might be compromised by or outright bought by malicious actors. Just like popular browser extensions which get bought and converted into malware.
The distinguishing feature of Linux distributions is the existence of maintainers. Human beings who put in effort into maintaining the quality and integrity of the packages and keeping them up to date. We Linux users generally trust those people, and they stand between us and all the software developers out there. To get to us, you gotta go through them. And they generally aren't in the habit of allowing obvious malware into the software repositories. That's why we trust them in the first place.
Contrast that to repositories like npm, pypi, rubygems, cargo which are all designed so that any random person can make an account and push up any package they want. There's no checking. Accounts might be compromised by or outright bought by malicious actors. Just like popular browser extensions which get bought and converted into malware.