Most distros are somewhat equal when it comes to privacy, anonymity and security; with the likes of Fedora and openSUSE known for taking it more seriously out of the box than the other ‘big bois’, while some smaller distros like Kicksecure are known for their best-in-class^[1] hardening that they offer by default.

As for NixOS, it’s really its own thing (together with Guix), and thus very different from any other distros. If you conquer it, you would be delightfully met by a system that enables you to do things unheard of in other distros. However, the learning curve is very steep. And perhaps even hardening it to the level that Fedora or openSUSE provide by default might not be trivial.

1. Qubes OS is technically not a Linux distro. But it’s worth mentioning as one generally tends to run Linux within a qube (read: VM), and in regards to security and privacy; Qubes OS is simply unmatched, period.

Not much to say regarding their first paragraph.

As for their second paragraph, perhaps they are rightfully sceptical regarding Privacy Guides. The body of topics they try to cover is substantial, though. And if TheAnonymouseJoker or whosoever disagrees with them, then they’re free to challenge their views.

Privacy Guides isn’t any kind of Gospel or whatsoever that you’d have to agree with in its entirety. I do believe, however, that they’ve done a tremendous job at offering a one-stop shop for those that are conscious regarding their security and privacy. Everyone is free to choose and pick whatever they like from there or not.

I would love to hear about other resources that do a similarly great job at providing at least decent information when it comes to security and privacy; FWIW thenewoil.org exists, however I don’t recall any VPN overview/guide/recommendations from them.

It’s the same folk, basically. TheAnonymouseJoker or whosoever is free to have their own opinions. Fact is that Privacy Guides is an open community that allows the discussion of these topics. If anyone doesn’t like their takes, they can either head to their Github page or to their own platform for a dialogue on the matter.

https://consentomatic.au.dk/

Link to r/VPNTorrents’ recommendations.

TL;DR: Only AirVPN and ProtonVPN are recommended. While, IVPN and Mullvad used to be until they discontinued port-forwarding; which makes them unviable for torrenting.

Link that provides Privacy Guides’ opinion on AirVPN. It’s basically rejected because there have been no audits.

a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading

Exactly. This is unfortunately common practice, so this breakdown can be dismissed as they’re obviously biased due to monetary motivations.

Consider to read Privacy Guides’ take on the matter instead.

(Perhaps personal) TL;DR would be that Mullvad VPN in combination with Mullvad Browser offers the most private internet browsing experience for people who don’t desire to connect to the Tor Network. Furthermore, Proton offers a suite of privacy-friendly services for mail, drive, password manager etc. Therefore, for the sake of trusting the least amount of parties for these services (at the cost of putting all eggs in one basket), one might consider Proton VPN instead; additionally it includes a free tier and some support to port forwarding (read: allows the use of torrent applications).

Again an association is made between butt plugs and Arch users. I wonder if moving forward showing a collection of butt plugs will become the next “I use Arch, btw”.

I don’t know if it even works, but have you considered relying on their Stealth protocol? While its absence on Linux _{(and Windows)} means that you might not even be able to make use of it in the first place, I’m still interested to know if it makes any difference.

Yup, it’s absolutely lovely. Did you experiment with a custom home directory for your distrobox yet?

Thank you for reporting back! Much appreciated!

So it turns out, I cannot use my NVIDIA card using distrobox. I guess it only works with AMD?

Interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t own an Nvidia device. Therefore, I can’t tackle it myself. Distrobox should allow the use of Nvidia, but I’m unaware if this applies to the bazzite-arch container as well. The picture you shared and the link to its FAQ-page (found below) do suggest otherwise, unfortunately…

I was wondering if distrobox would somehow allow better performance

FWIW, I’ve always experienced better performance inside the bazzite-arch distrobox container, at least compared to Flatpak*.

I see that this image is used a lot on Steam Deck, which I also don’t understand why (as opposed to having everything native).

Because the distro image it’s used in conjunction with, Bazzite, is Fedora-based, while Steam OS is based on Arch. Bazzite is Fedora-based in the first place, because Arch doesn’t officially have any plans for ‘immutable’ distros yet. As for the remaining distros, only Fedora and NixOS (see Jovian-NixOS) have a sufficiently mature and suitable platform at this point in time.

maybe I am missing some graphical dependencies

This happens way more often than you might expect. Even the so-called ‘toolbox’ containers from Distrobox miss a lot of packages required to support software graphically. Consider running it inside a terminal and pay attention to error codes etc; those might/should help you resolve the issue. Sometimes it helps to explicitly use the -v or --verbose option to ensure that the program actually communicates what’s happening.

In terms of privacy, I believe Windows collects a ton of data even if all telemetry is disabled; granted this is an older article, so it might have changed since*.

Your best option is probably running Windows inside a qube in Qubes OS and ensuring that the qube doesn’t have direct access to internet. But, at that point, why not consider switching to Linux instead? Because, you’d have to run at least another qube (with either Linux or *BSD on it) to grab the files off the internet from in the first place.

EDIT: lol, I just noticed it said “window” in the post and not “Windows”. I thought the mentions of “blackout curtains” and “storm shutters” was OP either making a joke or some reference I didn’t get. LMFAO, I didn’t even notice the “Thank me in advance”. Guess I should probably go to sleep after this. Good shit-post OP!

Am I wrong to assume that this doesn’t add anything beyond what uBlock on medium mode does already? Except (perhaps) ease-of-use and the blocking of first-party trackers; if those even exist*.

Don’t get me wrong; I love EFF’s work and their commitment to digital privacy. I just want to understand if I, personally, would need it.

I cannot wait to get home and try it out!

Please consider reporting back after you’ve tried it; I’d love to read your experiences.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have “a ready-to-game Arch Linux based OCI designed for use exclusively in distrobox”?

Besides the already mentioned Star Labs and System76, there’s also Insurgo, Nitropad and NovaCustom.

As for an exhaustive list on the matter, unfortunately, I don’t think something like that is out there. Though both Canoeboot (formerly known as Libreboot) and Dasharo do have their own respective lists.

The simple virtue of being able to genuinely express these words; “I don’t know”, “Sorry” and “Thank you” (or any derivative of these*).