This. Mint is one of my favourite distros and what I started with. I had tried Ubuntu, but this was the distro that made using Linux as a daily driver possible. Now I’ve moved on to Debian Stable. But Mint allowed me to get into Linux and get a good understanding of the basics.

Ultimately, it depends on if it is an issue in terms of your threat model. I have noproblems with people using some proprietary tools. Sometimes you do need things to just work, unfortunately.

I don’t know if Google Camera would share the information with Sandboxed Google Play. However, something to be careful of, is if you have two apps by the same developer (Google in this case), and you have network permissions for only one of them. The developer could share those permissions with their other app. TheHatedOne did a podcast episode on this. He checked with a GrapheneOS developer beforehand, and found, that this is possible.

Looks like enshittification of the internet is really kicking in. Decentralized platforms, and piracy needs to be the new normal

Thanks for the additional info. I installed Arch, it was far less daunting then I anticipated. In fact, it was prettt straightforward. I’ll look into your suggestion.

Sounds interesting, I’ll give this project idea a go

Thank you

I really like these suggestions, I’ve always wanted to contribute to FOSS software, but always felt underskilled. I will add this to my list of things to do to challenge my Linux and basic programming skills.

Thanks for this, I think I will give Arch Linux a go, and avoid GUI file management. My plan is to daily drive my X220 for more lightweight tasks as it’s a nice laptop to use. So using Arch on it may just force me to have to use Arch as a daily driver if I want to use a nice laptop keyboard.

Do pinebooks use Arm CPUs?

Only potential security issues, would be related to a lack of maintenance on a particular project. If an open source tool has not been updated for over a year or more, then it may have security vulnerabilities. I usually won’t use something if it has not been updated for a year or more.

However, people who make that claim, seem to subscribe to security by obscurity. They may think that the source code being public makes it more likely to be exploited for vulnerabilities. But I would say that is a strength, since many people can verify the security of a project and can have patches applied. In standard proprietary software, a security vulnerability could exist for years, without being patched because no one knows it’s there. It may or may not be exploited within this time.

It is our responsibility to choose the digital tools we use wisely, and to be mindful of a lack or drop of maintenance on a particularly project.

I’ll give it another go with your suggestion