https://www.funtoo.org/Welcome

instead of Gentoo.

A couple of decades ago, iirc, SANS.org ( IF I’m remembering who it was who did it ) put a fresh-install of MS-Windows on a machine, & connected it to the internet.

It took SEVERAL MINUTES for it to be broken-into, & corrupted, botnetted.

The auto-attacks by botnets are continuous: hitting different ports, trying to break-in, automatically.

I’ve had linux desktops pwned from me.

the internet should be considered something like a mix of toxic & corrosive chemicals: “maybe” your hand will be fine, if you dip it in for a moment & immediately rinse it off ( for 3 hours ), but if you leave you limbs dwelling in the virulent slop, Bad Things™ are going to happen, sooner-or-later.

I used to de-infest Windows machines for my neighbours…

haven’t done it in years: they’ll not pay-for good anti-virus, they’ll not resist installing malware: therefore there is no point.

Let 'em rot.

I’ve got a life to work-on uncrippling, & too-little strength/time left.

“but I don’t need antivirus: i never get infected!!”

then how come I needed to de-infest it for you??

“but I don’t need an immune-system: pathogens are a hoax!!”

get AIDS, then, & don’t use anti-AIDS drugs, & see how “healthy” you are, 2 years in.

Same argument, different context-mapping.

Tarpit was a wonderful-looking invention, for Linux’s netfilter/iptables, years ago: don’t help botnets scan quickly & efficiently to help them find a way to break-in…

Anyways, just random thoughts from an old geek…

EDIT: “when do I need to wear a seatbelt?”

is essentially the same category of question.

_ /\ _

IF you want Steam, THEN please consider every variant in the official Ubuntu family.

Steam-support told me in their system, iirc in early 2023, that they ONLY support the Ubuntu family ( directly ).

As Linus Torvalds noted, it isn’t possible to release software that is going to work on all distros.

Even glibc has been broken by one, in that talk of his, and it wasn’t a niche distro, either, iirc.

Pick which subset you CAN afford to support, and do not add to that subset until you’re rolling in money, from your linux-customerbase.

( slight sarcasm on the last line, but business is business: destroying-resources costs, and if there is no benefit, it isn’t sane to continue doing it. )

Decide which capabilities/functions/apps you NEED, and then don’t even consider distros that break your required-set on you.

_ /\ _

If it works for you, stick with it.

Works is a feature, not a bug.

_ /\ _

IF by “security” one means bugs have been prevented from living in it, there is one coded in Haskell, it may be named XMonad or something…

( … digging … )

Yep:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmonad

from there:

“Due to the small number of lines of code of the Xmonad application, the use of the purely functional programming language Haskell, and recorded use of a rigorous testing procedure it is sometimes used as a baseline application in other research projects. This has included re-implementation of xmonad using the Coq proof assistant,[31] a determination xmonad is an imperative program,[32] and studies of package management relating to the NixOS linux distribution.[33]”

Dig: 2000-ish lines of code.

https://xmonad.org/

https://xmonad.org/documentation.html

I’m an old guy, whose been in Linux, off’n’on since 1997 or 1996, and not a professional.

Keep that in mind.

I now always recommend a pair of NVMe’s,

with swap on both,

with root mdadm mirrored RAID1 on both ( I’ve read that BTRFS “RAID1”, when 1 mirror is missing on boot, simply won’t permit you to boot, unless you get jiggy with the damn thing, telling it arbitrary stuff, to get it to allow that )

with /home mdadm mirrored RAID1

and use the extra space for whatever.

Use SATA for your backups.

I recommend using the fastest NVMe’s you can get, but biggest is more-important.

Samsung … what are they, EVO drives? go up to 2TB, iirc, and are reasonably cheap ( for people who can afford such things )…

This gives Linux’s mdadm RAID1 speed ( it does RAID0 for reads, RAID1 for writes ), AND it gives greater reliability.

I’ve been stung by incorrect partition space allocation sooo many times, that now I’d stick everything on as few partitions as is sane, but as OpenBSD recommends, some filesystems on separate partitions breaks some attack-methods ( partly by breaking hardlinks ).

The difference that access-speed & bandwidth do, for your OS, and especially swap, is stunning, so if you’ve got the funds, consider the Samsung PRO NVMe’s, instead of their EVO’s, but definitely get quality & quick NVMe’s, RAID1 'em up, and enjoy.

PS: I always do a prototype-install, now:

whole-device ( except swap, EFI, boot ), 1 partition, install everything I’m likely to want, of that OS, take a look at the filesystem use, for different parts of the root fs-tree, and then begin deciding what partition-sizes to be considering, using a 1.5x or 2x factor for expansion-space… ( different distros with /usr and /opt, especially ).

Then I repartition into the intended structure, & install in…

And, of course, I now expect to have to re-partition 1/2y later, as the things I’ve later found, & added, alter the ratios…

Obviously, if this weren’t just some random guy at home, LLVM would make much more sense, because then partitions could be resized/redistributed on-the-fly.

But for now, for a machine I only-sometimes use, it’s good enough.

Maybe this seems useful information?

I hope so…

( :

When I complained to them about Steam being broken on my ( either openSUSE Tumbleweed or LEAP, or Void Linux ) system,

they told me they only support Ubuntu, period.

I’m not talking about rumors, or feelings, or heresay, they put it in text/“writing”, through their Steam support system, in a message to me, that they only support Ubuntu.

People downvoting me for stating fact is stupid ( I’ve no idea if you were one of the people who downvoted my comment, I’m presuming that statistically, 1 of the others who commented against my factual-reporting did. ).

If people have a problem with Steam not being the way they want-to-believe, then ought tell Steam to make a statement contradicting what they told me, and making explicit that they support Arch.

I’ve seen enough comments on various Lemmy communities, to know that I do not want to try running Steam on Arch: I’ve had enough obstacle-induced migraines in my life.

IF they tell you something contradictory to what they told me, fine: you get more-recent information that what I got some months ago!

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?

( :

Decide, 1st, on the point of your installing Linux on it:

IF you want the most-fundamental-understanding,

THEN you want the book “How Linux Works”, the most-recent edition of that, and maybe you want a Debian/Ubuntu in order to guarantee that any problem you encounter will already have been encountered by somebody else, while you are getting competent in the fundamentals… There are 2 Linux System Administration books to consider, after you work through that one, 1 is from OReilly, the other … I can’t remember who published it, but it has several authors, & a cartoon on the front cover, and it is huge, and it is the one you want.

Neither of those books are cheap, but try comparing them with a university-year of a course, and the competence you can earn through those 2 books is at least that level.

You also are going to need, around the time you get partway through the 2nd book, a book on Linux Security.

IF you are just a crazy hack-at-things person who likes technical toys, then maybe Void is more likely to be fun for you…

Linux From Scratch is how you get the every-last-step-of-the-way understanding, but I haven’t done that one yet, because I want to keep using my computer for things like writing, and LFS might make me avoid my machine ( I spent years burnt-out from geekery, several times, and am leery of getting myself that way, again, but LFS really is the way to get truly-competent as a sysadmin. ).

You will need the same books listed above, though.

Do well!

( :

They told me, when I complained about it not working properly in the distro I was using at the time, either openSUSE Tumbleweed, or openSUSE LEAP, or Void Linux, that they only support Ubuntu.

That was their statement to me, on the Steam support system.

I’m presuming they know what their policies are.

Sorry if this doesn’t fit what people believe.

IF you want Steam, THEN you want one of the Ubuntu family: Steam doesn’t support any other kind of Linux distro.

openSUSE gave me compatibility-issues after I had it running properly, both Tumbleweed AND OpenLEAP versions, when they broke my wifi-driver, early in 2023, so I’m kinda leery of recommending them.

If you want the most Unix-like system, Slackware used to be that, haven’t used it in years, though…

Funtoo should probably be the go-to distro for compute-oriented machines, like Blender renderers, or such… optimize to use ALL the hardware-advantage you can…

Many enjoy Void Linux.

just some opinions & experiences…

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