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?
Running curl piped to bash with sudo has become pretty common. Just run this one line to install software or repos+keys that are later used to install software. That along with most older articles starting with turning off SELinux make me sad.
I think the most important part is to take your time and understand what you’re doing before you do it. Tech savvy admins can also be caught if they’re in a rush or just blindly trust AI without confirming the command is safe.
SELinux is also just a pain in the tail. We’re on Debian which has got AppArmor instead and while it has caused problems, it’s caused problems a heck of a lot less often than SELinux did when we tried Fedora.
– Frost