Although flying well under the radar of the average Linux user, D-Bus has been an integral part of Linux distributions for nearly two decades and counting. Rather than using faster point-to-point interprocess communication via a Unix socket or such, an IPC bus allows for IP communication in a bus-like manner for convenience reasons. D-Bus replaced a few existing IPC buses in the Gnome and KDE desktop environments and became since that time the de-facto standard. Which isn’t to say that D-Bus is well-designed or devoid of flaws, hence attracting the ire of people like [Vaxry] who recently wrote an article on why D-Bus should die and proposes using hyprwire instead.

The broader context is provided by [Brodie Robertson], whose video adds interesting details, such as that Arch Linux wrote its own D-Bus implementation rather than use the reference one. Then there’s CVE-2018-19358 pertaining to the security risk of using an unlocked keyring on D-Bus, as any application on said bus can read the contents. The response by the Gnome developers responsible for D-Bus was very Wayland-like in that they dismissed the CVE as ‘works as designed’.

One reason why the proposed hyperwire/hyprtavern IPC bus would be better is on account of having actual security permissions, real validation of messages and purportedly also solid documentation. Even after nearly twenty years the documentation for D-Bus consists mostly out of poorly documented code, lots of TODOs in ‘documentation’ files along with unfinished drafts. Although [Vaxry] isn’t expecting this hyprwire alternative to be picked up any time soon, it’s hoped that it’ll at least make some kind of improvement possible, rather than Linux limping on with D-Bus for another few decades.

Continue reading “It’s Time To Make A Major Change To D-Bus On Linux” →