I finally bit the bullet and I’m giving Linux a second try, installed with dual boot a few days ago and making Linux Mint my default from now on.
There are a lot of guides and tips about the before and during the transition but not for after, so I was hoping to find some here.
Some example questions but I would like to hear any other things that come to mind:
I read that with Mint if you have a decent computer you don’t need to do a swap partition? So I skipped that, but I’m not sure if I’d want to modify that swap file to make it bigger, is that just for giving extra ram if my hardware one is full? Because I have 48GB of ram and if I look into my System Monitor it says Swap is not available.
Was looking at this other post, and the article shared (about Linux security) seems so daunting, it’s a lot. How much of it do I have to learn as a casual user that’s not interested in meddling with the system much? Is the default firewall good enough to protect me from my own self to at least some degree? I was fine with just Windows Defender and not being too stupid about what I download and what links I click.
I was also reading about how where you install your programs or save your data matters, like in particular partitions or folders, is that just like hardcore min-maxing that’s unnecessary for the average user that doesn’t care to wait half a second extra or is it actually relevant? I’m just putting stuff in my Home folder.
Connected to the last two points: in that Linux Hardening Guide lemmy post I shared the TL;DR includes “Move as much activity outside the core maximum privilege OS as possible”… how do I do that? is that why people have separate partitions?
Downloaded the App Center (Snap Store) and I was surprised there was even a file saying to not allow it… why is that? Is it not recommended? Is it better to download stuff directly from their websites instead?
A firewall would not save you from that.
A firewall stops random incoming connections. But if you download and run something bad, that’d be an outgoing connection, since the malicious program is then already on your system.
Windows Defender warns you if a file seems malicious and then you have to accept a window to use it anyway or to keep it, isn’t that also part of what a firewall does? I know it’s silly and one should just do that mentally for every file but it’s nice to have a reminder sometimes for sketchy files. Anyway, I was not asking specifically for that, just asking generally about virus protection and whatnot
Defender is antimalware/antivirus. There at least used to be a separate firewall in windows, but not sure if it’s a part of defender or not.
Either way, “firewall” is traffic control, antimalware/virus is the execution guardian.
potato potato, I just meant some software thing to warn me when I have downloaded something sketchy and I should re-think my choices
Well, not really po-tay-toh/po-tah-toh. They’re 2 different utilities that do 2 different things. If you ask the wrong question, you’re not going to get the answer you’re looking for.
What you’re asking about is an antivirus. It’s been awhile since I messed with this on my Linux systems, but last I looked, ClamAV was most commonly recommended. You can probably search for “Linux antivirus” and find some recommendations.
Generally speaking, the earlier recommendations to stick with official repos is excellent. When you venture outside of that, you increase your administrative overhead because those manually installed apps won’t stay patched with a simple “apt upgrade.” That said, a well written cron job could keep them up to date for you.
As for where to install things, it’s personal preference. I prefer using my home directory. If that doesn’t work, my fallback in /usr/local, which is either its own partition or symlinked to the /home partition). I mention the partitions because having separate /home and possibly /usr/local makes it easy for these customizations you install to survive a reinstall. Backups will also help with this.
You have to ask yourself what this system will be used for. If it’s a daily driver that you want to “just work” I would stick to official repos, and minimize customizations. Windows makes a lot of choices for you. Linux expects you to know what you want to do.
And I’m telling you a firewall won’t do that.
It won’t have anything to say at all about something you download and run.
It’s a completely different security feature. It handles potentially malicious network activity. Not software on your computer.
You should try to avoid executing files that you downloaded from somewhere online, it’s best if you canget it either from the system package manager( i.e apt ) or get it from flatpak/snap. If you have to get it from a website it depends on what the website is and the usual suspicious features. If you are unsure if something from github or similar is safe you can always google it first to see reviews from other users. Antivirus software like on windows is not that common for linux and most of the time it is enough not to run software you don’t trust as sudo or admin as they don’t have permission to change files without those.