I’m still in the research phase of switching to Linux and don’t know if this concern is reasonable. I’m not tech savvy. I’m comfortable in the windows ecosystem and could use the dos prompt fine when they used it. I played with QBasic and C++ when I was younger and have built a few computers but that was a couple decades+ ago.

My concern is dealing with malware. I know that Linux has less issues with malware than Windows but, as I understand it, that’s primarily because it has a comparatively small market share. I feel like I’m getting into Linux just as it’s getting more popular and that it will get worse if the EU moves away from Microsoft because they will most likely adopt some form of Linux as their new standard. More less tech savvy people like me moving to Linux makes it a juicier target for people who create and use malicious software. It’s not a reason to stay with Windows but is it a reasonable concern? Are there sufficient tools for people who don’t really know what they’re doing to be reasonably secure on Linux and will they keep up if the threat profile expands as Linux picks up more users?

  • can_you_change_your_username@fedia.ioOP
    1·
    1 day ago

    Sorry for the delay in responding, I was figuring out what device I was actually going to try setting Linux up on. I was originally going to just put it on the laptop that I use but I thought it might be better to test it out and learn on something else first. I got a Microsoft Surface that a family member was getting rid of to try it on. It’s an older one, they think it’s a 2017 model. It’s got a 100Gb hard drive and a Pentium processor. Since it’s a new to me device I’m not worried about saving anything on it so I can just overwrite everything and won’t have to worry about partitioning or anything like that.

    I have not messed with the windows registry for anything. I think one AV would be fine, the redundancy was probably no longer necessary on windows, so I won’t worry about replacing malwarebytes. I do prefer free software but I only hate giving corporations more money than I have to. I don’t mind paying extra to shop local, I donate to the fedi instances I use, gog’s preservation fund, Wikipedia, and a few other similar things. If the money is primarily going to the people who are actually doing the work or to the cost of equipment and maintenance then I feel a lot better about paying for something so I’m willing to consider paid software if it’s better and will probably make some kind of donation to any FOSS projects I get software from if it’s free.

    I’m not worried about keeping up with feature updates or always having the absolute newest version. I want it to be stable and functional so once I have it set up security updates will be the thing I’m most concerned about. I’m fine just setting an alarm and checking for updates every Friday or something like that. Background updates are nice but it’s not a big deal to keep up with it manually if it’s centralized into a repository. I use the desktop sites for discord and fedi so there shouldn’t be any issues with those. I use open office because it’s what I found when Microsoft started charging to use Office and it’s always worked fine for me but switching to LibreOffice or something similar isn’t a problem if it will work better.

    Thanks for taking the time to respond and give me all of these links. It makes the idea of switching less daunting. I’ve read everything you’ve sent me and will happily continue to do so.