on windows it would be to scan your stuff,make sure its the real site etc

It’s the same on Linux (*), with two big differences:

1. you’ll install most (all?) of your software from the repos of your distro of choice, so most of the times you don’t have to worry
2. linux is inherently more secure than Windows (and AFAIK there are less viruses targeting it, either because they are harder to write or because it’s a smaller target), so you are not as likely to catch viruses.

If you install niche software from app stores (even reputable ones), you’ll have to make sure to check it’s the real deal (I think both the snap store and flathub had fake cryptowallets?), but if you stick to relatively mainstream software you’ll be fine (I mean, it’s not like you’ll find fake versions of steam or blender on flathub).

That said, the risk is there just as with Windows (or your phone, or anything else): a good operative system helps, but ultimately you are the real line of defense.

(*) well, IDK about scanning… generally speaking, if you feel like you have to scan something before opening it, just don’t open it :) (yeah I know it’s not possible if - eg - you receive files from customers)

i use an hp printer,and need to be able to use it on linux.

Then research if your specific model has compatibility issues (AFAIK HP stuff generally works well, but… it’s up to you to check before buying)

i expect to be able to use the laptop and not think about the os too much

That will happen, if you are lucky or if you buy hardware that specifically supports linux.

Would you expect macos to run on a dell computer? would you expect windows to run on a mac? linux has much broad compatibility but is no different: if it doesn’t work on your PC it’s not linux’s fault.

my goal of using linux is being far from malware

Just follow basic hygiene and you’ll be fine. Most importantly, don’t install malware yourself (chrome is available on linux too and, sadly, it’s also widely used).

Thanks for checking and reporting back! (I was too lazy to do that)

Doesn’t the AGPL just say that you can’t keep your changes/improvements private? (honest question: I seem to recall so, but I’m not really sure)

I just meant that anything can happen eventually - debian wasn’t the happiest example

could Red Hat eventually take control of the project?

Yes, and they could eventually take control of debian too.

Why bother mitigating such far-fetched risks though?

The mitigation cost is similar to the remediation one (ie. you’ll just have to switch distro either way), and it’s also likely to go down as the risk increases (ie. people will fork off fedora far sooner than the risk of it actually doing whatever bad things you fear Red Hat is gonna do to it becomes a practical concern).

BTW: are you aware the Linux Foundation is an US entity and funded by (among others) most US IT megacorps? (interestingly, amazon/aws is only a silver member - Bezos must really be a cheapskate)

…or we could just stop paying attention to him (which we will do when it’s no longrr funny). He can do as he wants :)

…and to think I used to actually be excited about bcachefs (back in the day)

┐(´-｀)┌

OP, you can also use named icons from your theme

[Desktop Entry]
Icon=folder-videos

I think you can use any name from stuff inside /usr/share/icons, but I’m not 100% sure

I actually like Debian’s slow update cycle, as I don’t want to be bothered often with setting up my system again.

I’ve been there too!

Updating to a new version is such a chore: you have to follow the news, then wonder how long to wait before updating, then you have to set aside at least a few hours for the actual update (well, for fixing what may go wrong - not that stuff actually goes wrong, but you still set aside some time just in case).

The solution to this is in the exact opposite direction you’d imagine.

For a few years (since last time I got a new PC), I’ve been running a rolling distro (tumbleweed *) and… it’s been great: no big updates, just incremental ones.

If anything breaks (and it never happened to me: there has been times where errors prevented the system to update, but never has it broken on me), you just boot the snapshot before the last update and try again in a few hours/days.

I want something as close as “set it and forget it” as possible.

That’s nixos :) It takes a long time to “set” (and you never really finish doing it) but you can switch to a new PC at any time and have your exact system on it (bar what the few things you have to change to account for the different hardware, of course).

* I hear that with arch&co you actually have to follow the release notes as sometimes there are manual tasks to do - it’s not so in tumbleweed (at least, as much as i know and as far as me experience goes) - IDK about other rolling distros (or debian testing/sid)

Why did people upvote this ad?

why on earth?

I really don’t get your reasoning, but I recommend helix (because I recommend it to everybody).

It’s a pleasure to use, and it’s… also not widespread or old enough to have any reported CVE ;)

Oh, it’s written rust IIRC, so it probably doesn’t suckless.

I’d say it’s because:

1. the people who ask for recommendations won’t like (or understand) debian? (it’s just “old packages this” and “outdated that” for most people)
2. the people who do use and appreciate debian don’t read “I hate windows pls recommend me a distro” posts (or at least don’t reply as often as the <insert popular distro> fanboys)

And, no, I don’t use debian myself.

but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked!

That’s most probably because you learned how to use your system without breaking it in the meantime :)

So I’ve been using it for a while! :)

What is the big deal about 4.4.0?

Is this the stable release of the rust rewrite?

Should I just learn how to use Docker?

Since you are not tied to docker yet, I’d recommend going with podman instead.

They are practically the same and most (all?) docker commands work on podman too, but podman is more modern (second generation advantage) and has a better reputation.

As for passing a network interface to a container, it’s doable and IIRC it boils down to changing the namespace on the interface.

Unless you have specific reasons to do that, I’d say it’s much easier to just forward ports from the host to containers the “normal” way.

There’s no limit to how many different IPs you can assign to a host (you don’t need a separate interface for each one) and you can use a given port on different IPs for different things .

For example, I run soft-serve (a git server) as a container. The host has one “management” IP (92.168.10.243) where openssh listens on port 22 and another IP (192.168.10.98) whose port 22 is forwarded to the soft-serve container via podman run [...] -p 192.168.10.98:22:22).

You don’t need to change distro in order to change desktop environment: just install gnome/kde/whatever if you want to give different ones a spin (you don’t need to uninstall your current desktop environment either - you can have multiple ones and choose which one to use when you login)

Is MacOs “absolutely no cli”? It wasn’t when I was using it (admittedly, some 10yrs ago), except maybe for the basic things which any mainstream linux distro also provides.

What about Windows? Back in the day I would have paid to have a semi-decent CLI instead of being forced to use regedit (I hear regedit is still going strong, but I’ve not touched windows for an even longer period than MacOs)

I fear it was nothing that entertaining: it was just my “normal” dark panel at the top of the screen and a second “default” white one at the bottom (this last one partially covered the windows I had open). I didn’t try triggering notifications or otherwise causing some kind of mayhem.