This trend of using illustration to explain complex topics is really wonderful. I know that people may criticize it as childish, but I find it helpful and enlightening.<p>The illustrations that I've found most amazing and well done are created by people like:<p>Lin Clark (<a href="https://code-cartoons.com/" rel="nofollow">https://code-cartoons.com/</a>)<p>Julia Evans (<a href="http://jvns.ca/zines/" rel="nofollow">http://jvns.ca/zines/</a>)<p>Linda Liukas (<a href="http://www.helloruby.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.helloruby.com/</a>)<p>Amy Wibowo (<a href="https://shop.bubblesort.io/" rel="nofollow">https://shop.bubblesort.io/</a>)<p>You may notice a trend with the gender of the authors above. I personally believe that women have a better sense for simplifying complex ideas, and greater empathy and patience for teaching those ideas once they've been made simple.
The thing that made SELinux click for me was this talk - it's really a great talk for SELinux: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxjenQ31b70" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxjenQ31b70</a><p>(I also have a video explaining some specific/common things: <a href="https://serversforhackers.com/video/battling-selinux-cast" rel="nofollow">https://serversforhackers.com/video/battling-selinux-cast</a>)
SELinux always makes me feel like I'm a complete idiot (the worst thing about that is that I could be an idiot and not know it or refuse to acknowledge it).<p>So, maybe this introduction will make it a little more accessible.
At the point you have to make a "cute" coloring book (for adults) to make your OS seem more friendly, maybe it's time to reflect on the reality that there's something fundamentally wrong with the reasoning used to justify the logic required to use it.
I love this idea. It's not meant to teach people everything, but it shows the basic SELinux concepts in a fun manner, that is different from the typical dry written documentation.<p>The best utility that this has is that it gets people asking questions. I could put this on my wall at work, and then when my colleagues ask about it, I could use it to segue into actually teaching them about SELinux. Putting the SELinux text documentation on my wall would not have the same effect.
From @lattera on Twitter:<p>here's a couple lost pages found by the grsecurity folks:<p><a href="https://grsecurity.net/~spender/pics/lost_selinux_coloring_book_page1.gif" rel="nofollow">https://grsecurity.net/~spender/pics/lost_selinux_coloring_b...</a><p><a href="https://grsecurity.net/~spender/pics/lost_selinux_coloring_book_page2.gif" rel="nofollow">https://grsecurity.net/~spender/pics/lost_selinux_coloring_b...</a><p>:)
For those who liked this, the authors have another one on containers:
<a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/coloringbook-containers/master/Print-Ready/Web.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/coloringbook-...</a>
The problem with SELinux is not really in the beginner documentation, but in the documentation of the policy macro packages eg. in Fedora -- which are what you in the end should/need to use for actually writing or modifying policies.<p>Answers to questions on eg. finding the difference between "userdom_user_application_domain" and "application_domain", or learning that "~/.local/share" has the symbolic name "data_home_t" are very difficult to find. Everything in SElinux has a symbolic name, so there's also at least one more layer of indirection as compared to apparmor.
I don't necessarily think that the illustrations are what makes this great. They're cute, but the simple and explicit examples with uncontrived situations are what really makes this worthwhile.<p>It may be that getting into "writing for a coloring book" mode makes people think simpler and "cuter," which lends itself well to quick illustration of complex ideas.<p>I'd like to see more of this kind of explanation in guides and manuals in general, with the "normal" manuals being for reference when people need to drill down into something specific.
I think the version in this link may be an old one. In the version on Github (<a href="https://github.com/mairin/selinux-coloring-book/blob/4ac589bb80af52159b39abb1f9520267551df5df/Print-Ready/Web.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mairin/selinux-coloring-book/blob/4ac589b...</a>), I see at least one typo that's fixed and I believe there are other differences as well.