What would be your distro of choice if you take the security with ease as the top priority
What would be your distro of choice if you take the security with ease as the top priority
With the recent windows 10 EoL news, I was able to move my dad over to Linux mint. But he does a lot of finance stuff. Long ago, Linux had a belief that desktop Linux are not the primary target for crackers but I don’t believe that true anymore since it’s getting significantly popular lately like Europe government migration over to Linux and Libreoffice.
My question would be , given my dad is just as careful on Linux as he has been on windows, would it be fine to do finance like banking and trading (not the fastest kind )?
If not, what would be your distro of choice for that? Even browsers (I installed Firefox and Edge from Microsoft website deb file)
I think most Linux distros will be fine. As of today desktop marketshare is still small, the governments mostly work within custom business applications. And to this date Linux malware and viruses for the desktop are practically unheard of. The common attacks are against the browsers, not the underlying operating system (so do timely updates and install an adblocker) or we'd expect phishing or phone scams and that's against the human in front of the computer, again not the operating system. That makes me say they're about all alright. Of course they're not all equal. Immutable distros and sandboxing will help here. But the real deal is other countermeasures, like be aware how phishing works and try not to mix online banking and pirating games from shady websites. That belongs on separate user accounts or even installed operating systems. And use password managers, 2 factor authentication and these things. (And don't use Edge, or some browser from some random third-party repository.)
This is dangerously false.
edit: I'm sorry to see I have disturbed a few people here, downvoting the truth without a comment. Explains a lot of contemporary politics, I think.
Can I get some list or a reference to educate myself? As far as I know it still holds true. There's rootkits, a lot of old stuff and exploits of webservers or embedded devices, supply chain attacks towards developers and the one day the Mint ISO file got compromised. But I'm completely unaware of desktop computer malware with high risk or actually spreading?! And the list on Wikipedia seems to confirm what i said...
I guess the problem is not “the truth” but a claim without sources combined with a short communication style for a really complex matter.
Even the link you posted just reporte of one malware instead of the current state or perception of the problem. Like a general threat assessment instead of one incident.
This is dangerously unspecific.
Regarding your edit:
\ Having read through the comment chains here, your source is a relatively new malware called RingReaper.
\ This article from cybersecurity news seemed nice and they linked to the actual PICUS security report which first identified the malware, I think.
\ I'm not sure whether this malware is actually used to infect Linux desktops or if it's mostly used for infecting servers, or whether it is used at all. I agree that people shouldn't let their guard down with malware on Linux. Anti-malware programs on Linux are a good idea and it seems there are already projects tracking and combating malware on Linux. I do agree that Linux malware is not unheard of.
\ Nonetheless you seem to over exaggerate a bit. There is malware attacking servers running Linux but I doubt that many of those would work on desktop Linux. Furthermore, desktop share of Linux is still low, so there won't be a big incentive for malicious actors to target Linux desktops specifically. The comments you posted here seem more like paranoia to me and do not seem useful, and your single example of a Linux kernel virus seems more like a derailment of the conversation. With that I can understand the downvotes. Don't take it too harsh either, no need for your witty comment:
lol