Even on desktop machines (Linux or Mac for me), there are processes running that I don't really know what they are doing.
I don't run Linux so I can't comment on that one, but surely there are "simple" Linux distributions that don't start countless unrecognizable processes?
Mac is a hopeless case; a veritable plethora of inexplicable processes.
In contrast, I just logged in to my OpenBSD firewall. I was able to easily recognize everything that was running. The OpenBSD startup procedure is very simple to understand. It's easy to know exactly what processes are started and why.
I don't run Linux so I can't comment on that one, but surely there are "simple" Linux distributions that don't start countless unrecognizable processes?
Mac is a hopeless case; a veritable plethora of inexplicable processes.
In contrast, I just logged in to my OpenBSD firewall. I was able to easily recognize everything that was running. The OpenBSD startup procedure is very simple to understand. It's easy to know exactly what processes are started and why.
tl;dr: horses for courses