As @BCsven mentioned, the talk about stable distributions is not right at all.
Also, the commands you gave in “secure directories and dotfiles” are not doing anything. sudo chmod 755 ~/.bashrc doesn’t change the ownership of the file: it’s still owned by you. So setting the permissions 755 just makes it writeable by…you. You will still be able to modify it without sudo.
If you want to make your dotfile require root access to change, you would need to augment the chmod with a sudo chown root ~/.bashrc
I would say you are already secure enough if you are using software from official/trusted repositories and updating them on a regular basis.
That said, if you want extra security. Drop all software that cannot run on Wayland and go even further by isolating all desktop applications with the Flatpak sandbox. This is made extremely easy with Flatseal. Maximum points if you setup secure boot.
What is it with Microsoft Word that makes you prefer it to others?
LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are pretty much the only free software office suites that really hold a candle to Microsoft Office’s functionality. LibreOffice defaults to the Toolbar interface but changing it to Tabbed will make it look like Microsoft Office. It takes some getting used to and isn’t as smooth but once you start using it for a few weeks you will get used to it.
WPS Office is a Microsoft Office clone that works fine on Linux. It’s a pretty common Microsoft Office substitute and is nearly identical in most aspects of its interface. It’s made by Kingsoft, a Chinese company. The software is closed-source and there is a free version that contains advertisements.
Microsoft Office Online is available through your browser free of charge at portal.office.com. It contains Word, PowerPoint, and Excel but only has basic functionalities. Collaborative editing is still supported on it which you might care about.
Microsoft Office can be installed using WINE but in my experience, it is usually not stable enough for daily use. I would not bother with it. You should not install things manually using WINE. It’s highly recommended that you use some wrapper software like Bottles, PlayOnLinux, or Lutris (common for games).
For me, I use the office suite at work, and one of the simplest things that makes me wish i could use it at home is that damn search bar in the top.
After that, I appreciate that libreoffice introduced the ribbon UI. I grew up with word 2003, so i know what it was like, but after they introduced the ribbon ui, it immediately felt more easy to use. Especially the style picker.
@JustEnoughDucks@NateNate60 I'm sure about the first two features: Yes. I don't know about a picture of your manual signature, unless you talk about simply embedding it in a document: That's for sure possible.
Where doed WPS office source it’s ads? I mean, if you run it in a (more or less) sandbox (well, you might want to have access to the files you’re editing), and without access to internet, how does the ad interface behave?
I actually don’t remember seeing adverts on the Linux version when I tried it out a few years ago. Maybe that’s changed, or maybe they just don’t run adverts on the Linux version.
Have you tried languagetool? There is an integration for Libre Office, Obsidian, MS Word and others. It offers spell checking, rephrasing and is superior to the build in checker in my experience. You could compare it to DeepL versus Azure Translate.
As someone with dyslexia, the superior spell and grammar check is what I miss most in libreOffice. I usually have to use an external tool for spell check like grammarly.
Dear God, anyone who doesn’t already use LaTeX should not be told to use LaTeX. It’s really a great departure from traditional word processors and I firmly believe that people really need to discover it on their own, or else they will just be confused and think it’s an arcane, dated, and useless piece of software.
OnlyOffice is the only one that I’ve used that has a good looking UI, works out of the box and very good compatibility (across Microsoft and other document standards). Install is just one flatpak away. Highly recommend.
Stable not being secure is not correct. if you take a Stable LTS OS it has a guaranteed support cycle for patching security issues. Stable does not mean no updates, you will still get daily/weekly package updates for bug fixes and enhancements, as well as kernel fixes. In the case of a kernel up revision on rolling release fixing a major flaw, you also have to realize new software means new bugs and new vulnerabilities ( that are yet unknown ) Also if you worry about CVE stuff try SUSE or OpenSUSE’s zypper it has various command parameters to search and list patches, suggested security patches and will show a full list of what patches are available for your system, which ones are critical, recommended, not needed, etc with CVE numbers.
Good point about “no new security issues”. But new issues mostly also mean zero days so this is very less likely that old bugs that didnt get a CVE. But I dont know the details, what bugs Debian backports always, I just assume its not all.
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