> Reading it makes it obvious what it does, and only a fool would disable security mitigations in a situation where it mattered.
I disagree. Most users do not understand how speculative side channels work or how they might be affected; many people's experience with Meltdown and Spectre is "my games got slower because of some magical speculative stuff that I don't really understand". Making an informed decision on this is hard.
The average Linux user will not understand the implications. Heck most don't even know the security trade-offs of X11 (which are relatively simple to discover and understand).
Leave the HN bubble and go to an average Linux forum. You would be surprised what kind of advise people give or what people are willing to copy and paste into their terminal ;).
This is not meant as a criticism. Most people, including many Linux users, just use their computer as a tool and will just do anything to get it running as they want.
I disagree. Most users do not understand how speculative side channels work or how they might be affected; many people's experience with Meltdown and Spectre is "my games got slower because of some magical speculative stuff that I don't really understand". Making an informed decision on this is hard.