Most distros are somewhat equal when it comes to privacy, anonymity and security; with the likes of Fedora and openSUSE known for taking it more seriously out of the box than the other ‘big bois’, while some smaller distros like Kicksecure are known for their best-in-class^[1] hardening that they offer by default.

As for NixOS, it’s really its own thing (together with Guix), and thus very different from any other distros. If you conquer it, you would be delightfully met by a system that enables you to do things unheard of in other distros. However, the learning curve is very steep. And perhaps even hardening it to the level that Fedora or openSUSE provide by default might not be trivial.

1. Qubes OS is technically not a Linux distro. But it’s worth mentioning as one generally tends to run Linux within a qube (read: VM), and in regards to security and privacy; Qubes OS is simply unmatched, period.

Thank you!

Not much to say regarding their first paragraph.

As for their second paragraph, perhaps they are rightfully sceptical regarding Privacy Guides. The body of topics they try to cover is substantial, though. And if TheAnonymouseJoker or whosoever disagrees with them, then they’re free to challenge their views.

Privacy Guides isn’t any kind of Gospel or whatsoever that you’d have to agree with in its entirety. I do believe, however, that they’ve done a tremendous job at offering a one-stop shop for those that are conscious regarding their security and privacy. Everyone is free to choose and pick whatever they like from there or not.

I would love to hear about other resources that do a similarly great job at providing at least decent information when it comes to security and privacy; FWIW thenewoil.org exists, however I don’t recall any VPN overview/guide/recommendations from them.

It’s the same folk, basically. TheAnonymouseJoker or whosoever is free to have their own opinions. Fact is that Privacy Guides is an open community that allows the discussion of these topics. If anyone doesn’t like their takes, they can either head to their Github page or to their own platform for a dialogue on the matter.

https://consentomatic.au.dk/

Link to r/VPNTorrents’ recommendations.

TL;DR: Only AirVPN and ProtonVPN are recommended. While, IVPN and Mullvad used to be until they discontinued port-forwarding; which makes them unviable for torrenting.

Link that provides Privacy Guides’ opinion on AirVPN. It’s basically rejected because there have been no audits.

Pop!_OS is definitely worth considering as it’s one of the few distros that goes as far as providing a recovery partition and offers one of the best experiences for those with Nvidia GPUs. Furthermore, Pop!_OS’ maintainers (read: System76) are actually financially incentivized to make their distro very polished and newbie-friendly as their distro is used on the hardware they sell.

On the flip side, Pop!_OS is currently in a major overhaul to replace GNOME with COSMIC; their own homebuilt Desktop Environment. As the Desktop Environment is arguably the most important contributor to how one experiences their Linux system, the eventual change might disrupt your workflow and you might even be too accustomed to GNOME to consider COSMIC at that point. The ongoing work on COSMIC has even meant that Pop!_OS has missed three major releases and are still clinging on their release from April 2022; thankfully it’s based on Ubuntu’s LTS (read: Long Term Support) release, so they aren’t particularly in rush to get a new release out and can rely on Ubuntu for security updates.

Regardless, COSMIC’s unsure future does leave a lot to be desired and does pose the question if perhaps other options should be considered more seriously instead.

Therefore, my personal recommendation would be either one of the following:

• If you just really like what you see from Pop!_OS, then just install its 22.04 release and you should be good until April 2027. As time goes on, you might be deprived from new developments and features; but at least updates etc will not be able to (potentially) corrupt/break your system in the meantime.
• Wait until April next year; when they’re supposed to release a new version. If you like what you see and the update and the changes are well-received by the community, then consider installing that one instead. It should be supported for 5 years, which is plenty to not worry about your system in the mean time.
• Go look elsewhere. There are hundreds of actively maintained distros out there. While not all of them are worth considering, there are at least a dozen of them that are worthy contenders. In case you’re interested to get the community’s help in finding a distro, consider answering the following questions:
  • Do you use an Nvidia GPU?
  • How would you rate your tech savviness on other operating systems?
  • How eager are you to learn and/or invest time to use your Linux system?
  • Do you prefer to have up-to-date software at all times even if that means daily/weekly updates that might potentially break some functionality?
  • Security or convenience?
  • Opinionated or blank slate?

A shortlist of distros worth considering for a beginner (from easiest to hardest): Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian/Fedora/openSUSE and Arch.

a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading

Exactly. This is unfortunately common practice, so this breakdown can be dismissed as they’re obviously biased due to monetary motivations.

Consider to read Privacy Guides’ take on the matter instead.

(Perhaps personal) TL;DR would be that Mullvad VPN in combination with Mullvad Browser offers the most private internet browsing experience for people who don’t desire to connect to the Tor Network. Furthermore, Proton offers a suite of privacy-friendly services for mail, drive, password manager etc. Therefore, for the sake of trusting the least amount of parties for these services (at the cost of putting all eggs in one basket), one might consider Proton VPN instead; additionally it includes a free tier and some support to port forwarding (read: allows the use of torrent applications).

I’d definitely like to get some of the classic multiplayer games running on emulators as well.

Bazzite does allow easy install of EmuDeck and RetroDECK during first installation, which should cover most of your emulation needs. For completeness’ sake; Batocera does exist. However, I’m not sure if it runs e.g. Steam games as good as Bazzite runs retro games.

to use as a media centre and multiplayer gaming system in my living room

Based on this, you’re basically looking for the ‘game console experience on your couch’. If that’s the case, honestly you shouldn’t look beyond^[1] Bazzite.

If, instead, you actually wanted to play retro games primarily, then please let us know.

1. While ChimeraOS and HoloISO also offer the ‘game console experience’, they don’t support Nvidia GPUs. So you would be on your own at best; which would be a horrible experience for a new user. If you feel particularly adventurous, then Jovian-NixOS is actually another option. But arguably less newbie-friendly compared to Bazzite.

Ow wow, that’s a lot! Unsure to what degree you’ve used them; but if you feel confident talking about (at least some of) them, would you be so kind to offer us a rundown of what you liked and didn’t like? Thanks in advance!

I don’t know by heart if it’s able to do your bidding, but perhaps it’s worth checking out penguins-eggs. I guess the following would be its elevator pitch:

"penguins-eggs is a console tool, under continuous development, that allows you to remaster your system and redistribute it as live images on usb sticks or via PXE.

The default behavior is total removal of the system’s data and users, but it is also possible to remaster the system including the data and accounts of present users, using flag --clone. It is also possible to keep the users and files present under an encrypted LUKS file within the same resulting iso file, flag --cryptedclone.

You can easily install the resulting live system with the calamares installer or the internal TUI krill installer."

Well I guess I’m a Linux user now.

One of us! Welcome!

Gnome apparently doesn’t let you create desktop shortcuts unless you resort to command line.

GNOME is indeed very opinionated. Consider taking a look at any of the “Desktop Icons”-extensions on extensions.gnome.org. This enables one to engage with desktop shortcuts without opening a terminal.

Linux is NOT dumbed down enough for the average user yet.

Depends. I can’t imagine how something like Endless OS could cause troubles to someone that only requires simple functionality (like e.g. their favorite web browser working etc) from their OS.

As a final note some Linux users push harder than crack dealers I’ve met.

Yes. We can be very enthusiastic at times 😅.

I do think that engaging with different desktop environments at this stage of your Linux journey might be very beneficial in the long run, but I can totally understand it if you’d like to settle down for (at least) a moment.

Not OP.

getting downvotes etc

That was mostly on the first day. OP was probably very frustrated and disappointed after their initial impression. The way the rant that followed afterwards was written didn’t do them any favors 😅 and the downvotes that followed afterwards were therefore not very surprising…

I allredy forgot which distro worked for you

Pop!_OS

I hope to read more about OP’s experiences with Linux and if they decide to stick with it. Let’s hope we get updates on those soon 😉.

Distrobox is directly inspired from Toolbx and was created because of limitations of Toolbx and how Toolbx’ maintainers didn’t want to implement some features at that moment in time.

Currently, Distrobox is almost a superset of Toolbx. Though, I’ve come to the understanding that Toolbx does better at some tasks.

If you would like to stick to just one of them, then Distrobox is probably still the better one and should be preferred. However, if its added functionality doesn’t do it for you, then please feel free to continue using Toolbx.

Why is toolbox preinstalled and not distrobox?

Because Toolbx predates Distrobox and is developed by developers that are associated with Fedora and even specifically designed in hopes of solving some issues pertaining to Fedora’s Atomic distros.

Thanks for the answer! I got some pointers 😉.

the best os-design there is: the unix-like system.

Couple of questions:

1. Is there even any scientific basis to this statement?
   • If yes, would you be so kind to cite sources as I got trouble finding peer-reviewed articles on the matter.
   • If not, would you be able to make a logically sound argument on why that is the case?
2. Why Unix-like and not Unix? Wouldn’t Unix be the actual “original vision”?

Wayland released in 2008, so it makes sense for them to stop putting any effort soon after.

Software support seems lacking.

Compared to the AUR, the offering of any other distro will feel lacking (besides this one). Consider an Arch-distrobox for access to the AUR or install the Nix package manager on Fedora through Determinate Systems’ installer.

Xorg wiki page.

Fedora’s Wiki leaves a lot to desire in general, especially if you’ve come from the ArchWiki. On that note, I would argue only ArchWiki and Gentoo’s Wiki are excellent showcases of how the Wiki of a distro should look like.

Furthermore, Fedora has been the first to enable Wayland by default (since 2016 in fact). Therefore, I don’t find it that surprising that Fedora didn’t think it’s worth putting man-hours to the documentation of a project for which its sunset was in sight.

is there any reason why I should even care about the freedom of init system?

Freedom of choice! It’s troublesome if distros and/or DEs rely so heavily on systemd to do their bidding. So much so, that some combinations of distro + DE don’t allow any differentiation in init or make it very cumbersome and unwieldy at best. I’m not interested in making systemd a necessary part of Linux. Therefore other inits not only have to exist, but should be ‘competitive’ as well. Which, to be frank, is currently not the case.

Another concern is that systemd is by no means a minimalist approach. Which beyond bloat, also has security implications. More information can be found in this (infamous) guide by Madaidan; security researcher on multiple distros known for taking security and privacy very seriously like e.g. Kicksecure and Whonix. Interestingly, while Madaidan discourages the use of systemd in that guide, it’s still heavily relied on in Kicksecure; one of the distros he works on. I think this is a perfect illustration of how systemd has become so good that even opponents can’t deny its merits and continue to make use of it for the time being out of necessity.