Warning about HP Laptops - incompatibility with Win 10 Creators Update

[Non Serviam]

Not if you install them from your own disks that you know are malware-free.

[Azélor]

Any download is a possible risk of infection but somw might be considered safe or less risky. You only know after tough.

I find it very limitative to avoid downloading anything. Just get the antivirus so you can use a computer normally.

Its like having a car with no insurance and refusing to drive it outside your private driveway because it is too risky.

[Redrobes]

The software in the official repos are checksummed in a way that makes it extremely unlikely that there could be malware hidden in them. When you install other stuff like .deb files or other downloads external to the download manager then there is as much risk as for windows. I cant foresee any reason why you might want to do that though. The windows exes like CC3 that you own on windows and are hoping to run via WINE are even more unlikely to have linux based malware in them. The chances of someone putting malware into a windows app that has code specifically to trigger when run under wine on linux are next to zero.

Your main vector for getting malware is via the browser under javascript. Put your effort into making your browser hardened rather than AV (on linux).

BTW, to use wine you do absolutely nothing at all. You just click on the app and linux will kick off wine when it notes that the app is a windows one. Either it works like the windows app normally would or it doesnt in which case (as a linux notice) just give up. Theres no UI or anything to do for WINE its a layer that kicks in by itself.

[Mouse]

Thank you, Non Serviam, Azelor, and Red

The only .bat file I have downloaded and installed is the Discord one, (which works very well btw).

I'll leave the question of AV alone for a while, since I'm not really interested in anything that doesn't already come with Mint, or which I haven't already got installed on the Windows partition.

I'll try opening Genetica directly from the Window's partition in Mint a bit later.

That leaves only one question, which is: how do I switch the javascript off in Firefox?

[Non Serviam]

Ironically, the easiest way to do it is to download a firefox extension from Mozilla's servers. This one:-

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/fir...ddon/noscript/

This is perfectly safe to do. However, it will prevent any websites you haven't whitelisted from running javascript, which is quite a significant change to your browsing experience, and I find it stops me doing things I want to do. Personally I choose not to use noscript.

[Redrobes]

In Firefox you can install an extension called NoScript where you can whitelist a site or have rules about which scripts to run. You can turn off all scripts in the options box but then barely any site will run - like this one for example. But with NoScript you can choose to run the guild and maybe the googleads but when you go onto sites such as newspapers and so on then you can allow the newspaper domain itself but block all the trackers and all the other guff that they put on the site. Newspapers are likely safe but many other sites you cannot trust. The issues lately have been the third party stuff that gets pulled in with a normal legit site.

For example. Go to the guardian newspaper site:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk

It wants to run the guardian javascript and youtube which are both pretty safe. Allow them both and then it wants to load up scorecardsearch which is probably safe from the AV point of view but is a tracker script monitoring your usage of the web. So you can permanently allow the guardian and youtube and permanent block scorecardsearch if you want and then when you go back there then it shows the site without the tracker script running.

Not running any script that hasnt been vetted will drop your chance of getting nasty stuff by a huge amount. The usual dont run email attachments and share USB sticks goes without saying I think.

Also, if your on a limited broadband usage per month then you should get AdBlock and write your own filters to cut out some of the things you dont want. I havent used the linux firewall myself but I would think that you could block certain problematic domains from that too. Like stop certain apps from continuously checking for updates as an example. In linux, the repo apps never update until you ask them to.

[Mouse]

Oh thank you, Non Serviam

I've done it anyway, because I have no AV, and because the number of pages I visit is astonishingly small. Only about 5 on a regular basis, including this one, Profantasy, and my email account.

The only time I go elsewhere is when I'm Googling for research information, and that's when I could probably do with at least a bit of protection in case I click on something a bit dubious in my innocence! LOL!

Thanks again



EDIT: ninja'd by Red

That's a whole load of additional details that are great to know. Thank you very much

EDIT2: I already have AdBlock on my Windows partition

[Non Serviam]

Oh, yeah, trackers are everywhere. That's what the ghostery extension is for. (It's blocking three trackers on this page right here.)

[Mouse]

I guess one of them is the adverts, because I can't see them any more.

Which one is it, since the income that keeps this site going comes partly from them, so I feel I should at least allow them.

[Redrobes]

googleads and googletagservices I think two of them are. The other I dont know.