I’m the Never Ending Pie Throwing Robot, aka NEPTR.
Linux enthusiast, programmer, and privacy advocate. I’m nearly done with an IT Security degree.
TL;DR I am a nerd.
PCs aren’t secure. Linux default isnt secure. Kali has so many apps/tools installed by default that it isnt comparable to default Linux. It has massive attack surface and no security design, therefore calling it secure isn’t accurate.
If no effort was put into the security design of an OS, why call it secure?
No, it is not a proxy for another search index/engine.
Yes, you can add Brave search to your other browsers.
Operating systems can function very different. When creating software (like video games) the developer has to understand or use software dependencies which interact with the OS in a number of specific (OS dependent) ways. Stuff like where is app/user data stored, how to connect to the internet, how to display stuff on the screen (2D), how to display complex 3D geometry on the screen fast (3D graphics acceleration), where the host OS stores shared libraries (and what kind of libraries can the software expect to always be available), what security restrictions the host OS has, what filesystem the host OS uses, how to access the keyboard and mouse, how to interact with the kernel (very important).
Since Windows and Linux are so very different, built for different purposes by different developers, it is impossible to take a Windows exe and run it on Linux.
These days, the WINE project, with help from Valve’s fork Proton, is able to run basically any Windows game on Linux with similar performance (if not better because Linux is lighter to run than Windows). It does this by creating a environment for the software/game that provides all of the OS stuff Windows software expects and translating it to Linux specific things.
TLDR: Linux is very different from Windows. Software meant for Windows won’t work natively on Linux (since everything is different). For Windows software to work on Linux, the WINE translates all the Linux specific OS stuff and creates an environment for the Windows software that feels like Windows. Most things work with WINE except exceedingly complex stuff, like browsers which have native Linux versions anyways.
Thanks for some updated context.
What do you mean secure by design? What part of it is secure. Compare it to actually security focused Linux operating systems like QubesOS, Kicksecure, or Secureblue. Literally any OS that supports the Brace tool (made by the creator of DivestOS) is much more secure than Kali Linux. Kali is purpose built for red team work, not being secure (aka reducing attack surface or designing around a threat model).
You mention “sane defaults”. That might mislead someone because it is ambiguous. The terminal defaults used to default to a root prompt, exemplifying that it isn’t a distro focused on sane defaults for a desktop distro.
Kali is a tool for a specific job. Its meant mostly for hacking or troubleshooting/analysis, being an OS for executing a collection CLI/TUI and GUI utils.
-Edited everything to make myself more intelligible.
It isn’t a secure operating system. It is a toolkit for pen testing and red team hackers. Definitely not a daily driver kind of OS.
I wouldn’t stress much. It would take a targeted attack to have actually compromised your phone. It is alright.
For good out-of-the-box nvidia support, I recommend Bazzite.
Idk, but I just enable intelligent autohide.
For nvidia hardware, use nvidia images of Aurora/Bluefin (or Bazzite if you want gaming out of the box). All the OSes I mentioned are based on Fedora Atomic and offer image options for nvidia proprietary drivers. They even signing the kernel drivers, so you can use Secure Boot.
Docker is good when combined with gVisor runtime for better isolation.
gVisor is an application kernel, written in memory safe Golang, that emulates most system calls and massively reduces the attack surface of the kernel. This is important since the host and guest share the same kernel, and Docker runs rootful. Root inside a Docker container is the same as root on the host, as long as a sandbox escape is used. This could arise if a container image requires unsafe permissions like Docker socket access. gVisor protects against privilege escalation by only using root at the start and never handing root over to the guest.
Sydbox OCI runtime is also cool and faster than gVisor (both are quick)
Really fun/interesting read.
Linux Mint is built on top of Ubuntu, which itself was a fork of Debian. Ubuntu is not something I would call a “clean base”. It is clunky, slow to adopt new technologies, and very (Canonical) opinionated. Linux Mint actively works against its Ubuntu base by removing Snap and other Canonical weirdness.
Tumbleweed and Leap offer the option to add or remove ANY package from your system before you even install it through their GUI installer, actually 2 GUI package choosers for either simple or advanced users. I don’t think it is accurate to suggest that Linux Mint is minimalist with its packages, especially when comparing to openSUSE distros.
I will not argue against Linux Mint being user friendly, it is pretty good. But “not bloated”, especially when comparing against openSUSE, is inaccurate.
How is Linux Mint less bloated? Linux Mint also suffers from poor Wayland support and isnt a (semi-)rolling release distro like Fedora or Tumbleweed. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone other than people who are tech iliterate. Even then, I would still suggest VanillaOS or Fedora Workstation. I used Mint as my daily driver for a year and it was fine, nothing amazing.
Bazzite is a good distro, I convinced a friend to move to Linux from Windows 10 and Bazzite was the only one that worked well with their nvidia hardware.
In that case it is a ToS violation, not piracy. You aren’t paying anything, nor does google lose any money since they have been already paid. We would have to stretch the definition of piracy to include other ToS violations since it is not a financial lose.
Let’s extend the scenario. If YouTube ToS required you to click every ad to use their service, would it be piracy if someone doesnt follow those instructions? I think it would be a ToS violation, but what damages could Google even seek?
I hear people sometimes mention that “Google needs to pay somehow to keep YouTube running.” I have no sympathy for Google since they conspired to intentionally push out other video hosting platforms to create monopoly on the market. It is their own fault that videos aren’t more spread out among providers.
How would you even pirate YouTube anyways?
I recommend Mull. It is security/privacy hardened Firefox and built by using Fennec as a base. Always use Fennec over Firefox because it removes telemetry, proprietary code, and strongly protects against browser fingerprinting. Comes with support for most (if not all) desktop Firefox extensions. I highly recommend using uBlock Origin, ask anyone and they’ll tell you it is the best content blocker available.
Another good browser is Cromite. It is security hardened Chromium with built-in ad/content blocking, decent fingerprinting protection, and strong site isolation. It doesn’t have support for extensions because upstream Chromium on Android doesn’t either and it is hugely complex to port.
Did you enter into a contract saying you must watch ads to use the service? Is ad blocking against ToS? I don’t think either are true, and a “click to consent” isn’t legally binding. Either way, I will never not block ads as it is important from a privacy and cyber security perspective.
Nyarch honestly looks like a joke distro and most of its features are not worth IMO.
Ubuntu font. Idk why but I like it.