The new computer experience

[Lysholm]

skip Windows 11 as I have.

I wish I had the confidence to. I've watched tons of content about it, but no one I've found commented on the security and ease of online banking, shopping, or submitting random forms, etc. I have an older all-in-one running Mint and it works great for youtube and browsing, but I haven't waded farther than that.

But noooooooooooooo. It was just on here outright.

I hate it when they do that. How's the bloatware?

 

[Judge]

I wish I had the confidence to. I've watched tons of content about it, but no one I've found commented on the security and ease of online banking, shopping, or submitting random forms, etc. I have an older all-in-one running Mint and it works great for youtube and browsing, but I haven't waded farther than that.


I hate it when they do that. How's the bloatware?

I don't do online banking ever with any OS. And I confine the use of an ATM card exclusively to my bank. Otherwise online shopping is no different that I see. To be mindful of the same precautions and considerations as with other operating systems and whatever vendor you deal with online.

Linux Mint allows you to engage the firewall that comes with it as the last step in the installation process. It's up to individual users whether or not to install a Linux anti-virus program, which most Linux users seem to eschew. With such concerns having run Windows for decades, I do choose to run such a program, though it doesn't run in resident memory and has little impact to system resources in comparison. I do AV scans most every day.

Bloatware? Hmmm. That's a very subjective term outside the realm of Microsoft. Regardless of the OS, when I find such programs, if they are not intrinsic to the OS itself, I'll likely delete them. But it seems nothing compared to Windows. Still, it's an adventure occasionally having multiple choices of what programs I like over others. But with Windows, it's the OS itself that unnecessarily steals so much memory. The more you have, the more it takes.

Being new to Linux, I had no real preference for much of anything but Firefox and certain extensions, along with a 20+ year old version of Photoshop 5.5. Which runs normally in Mint through the addition of Wine 7. (The same version of Photoshop has run precariously from Windows 7, 8,10 and I assume Windows 11). Though for security purposes I only run Photoshop internally, never connected to the Internet.

It's quite a different experience, but Microsoft just pushed me over the edge. I'm starting to get comfortable with Linux, though I still keep my Windows 10 removable SSD updated, even though I'm not on Windows much every day.

 

[Outdated]

I wish I had the confidence to. I've watched tons of content about it, but no one I've found commented on the security and ease of online banking, shopping, or submitting random forms, etc.

I hate it when they do that. How's the bloatware?

The whole point of a Linux system is security.

Depending on which distribution and how it's set up, a virus or spyware is simply not a consideration. It's not because no one's really targeting Linux systems and Windows is more popular, it's because it simply can not happen.

The only anti virus program that gets shipped with Linux is called Clam. Clam doesn't remove any viruses, they are no threat to Linux, all it does is point them out to you so you don't accidentally send them to some poor sucker running Windows.

There is also no such thing as File Bloat in Linux.

 

[Judge]

Here's are some more concise explanations of security concerns regarding Linux.

Keep in mind that security is a completely different issue with Linux compared to Windows, so you don't want to approach the issue exclusively with a Windows mentality, which frankly most of us considering migrating to Linux inevitably do at first. And to understand that the few attacks on Linux operating systems occur primarily against servers- not individual clients.

https://www.linux.com/topic/desktop/security-tools-check-viruses-and-malware-linux/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/666393/can-clamav-detect-linux-malware-as-well-as-windows-malware
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Linuxvirus