Linux OS Security Question

IMHopeful

IMHopeful

Wicked Fire Elite Member
Mar 8, 2010
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I switched from a pathetic "Microsoft slave" a couple of months ago (to Linux). I've used Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint -- with Mint being my favorite on my desktop.

I've kind of turned into a distro junky and I'm looking for a tough one that can run quickly on my laptop, which currently only has 512 GB of RAM and a Pentium M.

I have just downloaded OpenSUS and was looking at Jollycloud. I want to stick with a Gnome environment for now if I can, but don't want to somehow sacrifice security and would just like some reassurance...

Are most distros out there safe? I have Googled and read many articles talking about how safe and secure the Linux kernel is -- I just hate to mess around with a distro that isn't popular and somehow compromise my personal info or something important.

Thanks for the replies. :D
 


Stick to distros that are not too obscure and you'll be fine. The nature of the Linux community makes serious flaws/exploits rare, in part because news of them is so quickly spread. If a given distro has issues, it's not going to be able to hide them for long.


Frank
 
I installed opensuse on my eeepc and it runs ok nothing too spectacular really, for someone new to linux an easier distro like fedora might be better for a laptop as you can easily find rpm's and such to install any programs.

As for security you can make it as secure as you want really just install/tweak what you need and in comparision to your other option windows i dont think you will be losing out.
 
I ran Puppy on an old Thinkpad recently, after it being recommended, and it was laugh-out-loud, "grin like a little girl" fast. It was the probably the fastest computer I've seen, although it does have 1GB ram and a 1.6 Pentium m, which is slightly more than yours.

It ran straight out the box as well, no problems, sweet as a nut. And strangley gave me Mac like mousepad abilities - 2 finder scrolling and right click - that I was most impressed with.
 
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-God- said:
I ran Puppy on an old Thinkpad recently, after it being recommended, and it was laugh-out-loud, "grin like a little girl" fast. It was the probably the fastest computer I've seen, although it does have 1GB ram and a 1.6 Pentium m, which is slightly more than yours.

It ran straight out the box as well, no problems, sweet as a nut. And strangley gave me Mac like mousepad abilities - 2 finder scrolling and right click - that I was most impressed with.
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hmm i have been meaning to install puppy on my laptops hardrive and see if it is useable for day to day tasks that i use it for, i can imagine it was a beast.
Gotta love the bootable cd linux versions, i still use GeeXbox for a multimedia pc :)
 
PuppyLinux is very good for older machines.

(Also, only 512 gigabytes of ram? Impressive!)
 
IMHopeful said:
I switched from a pathetic "Microsoft slave" a couple of months ago (to Linux). I've used Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint -- with Mint being my favorite on my desktop.

I've kind of turned into a distro junky and I'm looking for a tough one that can run quickly on my laptop, which currently only has 512 GB of RAM and a Pentium M.

I have just downloaded OpenSUS and was looking at Jollycloud. I want to stick with a Gnome environment for now if I can, but don't want to somehow sacrifice security and would just like some reassurance...

Are most distros out there safe? I have Googled and read many articles talking about how safe and secure the Linux kernel is -- I just hate to mess around with a distro that isn't popular and somehow compromise my personal info or something important.

Thanks for the replies. :D
Click to expand...

I have a laptop from the 90s that can still run Slackware. With the amount of ram you have and probably the CPU that's in there run Slackware with Blackbox as the window manager. It'll run just fine.

EDIT:

Forgot it's "fluxbox" now. Also, Slackware isn't for the faint of heart, but you'll really learn how to use linux.
 
Centos is probably the most secure general-purpose distribution. The default desktop certainly doesn't feel flashy and new, but it's very usable with less-capable hardware.

Ubuntu isn't as rigorously audited and isn't packaged as conservatively. Lubuntu might be of interest.

Light distros are notorious for being insecure, nimblex for example is or was supposedly easily rootable.
 
A few yrs ago I had an ink pen that also had a 100MB usb drive; I thought I was the shit cause when I needed to write something down, I could use the pen to write it, but if I needed an OS I could run puppy from it.

It sucked though, the first time I ran puppy from the pen drive and realized there were some things I needed to write down.
 
if you are new, don't fuck with these no name distros. use something common and learning will be substantially easier. there is a lot more documentation and questions answered that will make learning painless

memorize all of these commands: http://i.imgur.com/CJkR9.png

I would have suggested download VMWare and try out different distros but you only have 512mb of ram :-/
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone. I have a desktop with 4GB RAM and an Athlon processor for trying out different distros also, so I'll do some more research on all the recommendations in this thread.

Thanks for the commands sftryan. :D I have yet to find a "complete list", so that list just got some use from me.
 
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