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Sorry for the delay in responding, I was figuring out what device I was actually going to try setting Linux up on. I was originally going to just put it on the laptop that I use but I thought it might be better to test it out and learn on something else first. I got a Microsoft Surface that a family member was getting rid of to try it on. It's an older one, they think it's a 2017 model. It's got a 100Gb hard drive and a Pentium processor. Since it's a new to me device I'm not worried about saving anything on it so I can just overwrite everything and won't have to worry about partitioning or anything like that.
I have not messed with the windows registry for anything. I think one AV would be fine, the redundancy was probably no longer necessary on windows, so I won't worry about replacing malwarebytes. I do prefer free software but I only hate giving corporations more money than I have to. I don't mind paying extra to shop local, I donate to the fedi instances I use, gog's preservation fund, Wikipedia, and a few other similar things. If the money is primarily going to the people who are actually doing the work or to the cost of equipment and maintenance then I feel a lot better about paying for something so I'm willing to consider paid software if it's better and will probably make some kind of donation to any FOSS projects I get software from if it's free.
I'm not worried about keeping up with feature updates or always having the absolute newest version. I want it to be stable and functional so once I have it set up security updates will be the thing I'm most concerned about. I'm fine just setting an alarm and checking for updates every Friday or something like that. Background updates are nice but it's not a big deal to keep up with it manually if it's centralized into a repository. I use the desktop sites for discord and fedi so there shouldn't be any issues with those. I use open office because it's what I found when Microsoft started charging to use Office and it's always worked fine for me but switching to LibreOffice or something similar isn't a problem if it will work better.
Thanks for taking the time to respond and give me all of these links. It makes the idea of switching less daunting. I've read everything you've sent me and will happily continue to do so.
Necessary pre-empt: I'm literally u/pheusie. But I got no clue how I can convince you of that beyond "Trust me bro." as I've changed the password of u/pheusie in hopes of never returning to it; kind of my way of dealing with this unhealthy habit of mine 😅.
Anyhow, without further ado...
Hehe 😅, I hope you'll not be met with any problems. But, if you're concerned, consider checking this link out. Perhaps some distros take this into account and install the kernel for you (or at least provide a streamlined way of doing so), but I'm simply unaware of any.
That's great to hear. Unfortunately, I can't vouch on the effectiveness and reliability of any commercial product used for securing desktop Linux devices.
I suppose this should have sealed the deal; i.e. we should have been able to logically arrive at a (set of) distro(s). But..., I'm clearly hesitant because the options aren't as great as I'd wish. To give you some insight:
So..., you might ask: "What about downstream?" The response would be that I'm unaware of any that are both popular AND known to have a dedicated security team.