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?
Don’t worry about swap, you’ll be fine unless you’re usually working with huge chunks of data like big 4k video files or something.
The firewall built into mint is the kernels included nftables the same one built into Debian and Ubuntu (I think, I don’t fw Ubuntu). It’s fine. Don’t touch it. When you need to mess with it you can figure out how to open ports or split routes or whatever really easy because there’s lots of documentation out there.
Putting everything in your home folder is fine. Programs will install automatically to /bin or /usr/bin or something like that and if you want them in your home directory you could make a ~/.bin/ directory and add it to your path and have your private programs there, but:
Stop using flatpaks or snaps unless it’s your only choice! You have a built in package manager with decades of testing and development behind it and a very capable team of maintainers who watch over the packages, use that instead! That’s why they say not to use the snap store, it’s a vector for using Joes Weird Program that no one has tried before and requires Joes Special Version of a normal system library.
Use your package manager.
You’re not at the point where you understand enough to do the stuff in the linux hardening guide without making decisions that unexpectedly cause you pain somehow. That’s not an insult, sometimes you just don’t recognize the “universal” symbols for engine oil as opposed to coolant and ruin your car by the side of the road because you just don’t know. You can learn that stuff later, but it’s best not to mess with it yet. Speaking of:
If you don’t have a backup solution setup and you haven’t recovered using it and aren’t periodically checking to make sure it’s still running right, turn off disk encryption. It’s much harder, sometimes impossible, to recover data off an encrypted disk. If you don’t have a backup and you don’t know how you’d access the files on the disk without booting the computer then turn disk encryption off.