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Linux Mint is a free Linux-based operating system designed for use on desktop and laptop computers.

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Torrenting on Linux (leminal.space)

submitted 2 months ago by fueledbyramen@leminal.space to c/linuxmint@lemmy.ml

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I used to torrent a lot many years ago, before the rise of streaming services, and back then relied on what people told me: you don't have to worry about malware when you have a Mac.

I've been thinking about torrenting a few things that are pretty much unobtainable any other way but I worry about the security aspect. I've seen people say that with Linux there's no need to worry but simply trusting this seems careless to me now and I wanted to ask your views on this.

Do you torrent and are there any additional precautions one should take? Thank you :)

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[–] ivn@jlai.lu 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I only torrent video, audio and epub files. For those as long as your player is up to date you should be fine, nobody is going to burn a 0day on you.

Now if you torrent executable files it is a different matter. Mac and Linux malwares exist, they are just a lot less common. You should try to find a trusted source, public trackers are not one. And you could restrict and monitor the program to see if it tries to do suspicious things. By running it in a sandbox like firejail or preventing it to access the internet with your firewall, you could use a tool like opensnitch to see where it tries to connect.

[–] fueledbyramen@leminal.space 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It would only concern video files in my case and maybe audio and epub in the future. Okay, thank you for your input :)

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

You didn't need to worry about those on any platform.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

Wine has enabled some viruses to work on Linux. So, be careful with windows executables. Other than that, there are a few malwares that target Linux, and Debian based distros like Mint being the most popular, they're more likely to be targeted.

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Basically, you want a VPN. I'd recommend AirVPN. You can toggle an OpenVPN config on/off for your whole system's connection from the network menu in the lower right on Mint, it's crazy convenient.

Linux has a lot fewer desktop users than Mac, so it's generally even less if a target for this kinda stuff.

If you want to be extra safe, backup your home folder and/or have it on a separate partition, so if you need to reinstall your whole OS because of a virus you won't lose anything important. You would just reinstall the OS and reinstall your apps and all of your data for those apps would still be preserved, so it'd be like it was never wiped.

But yeah, in general just don't open an executable unless you know it's safe. Video/audio files are basically always fine to open.

[–] fueledbyramen@leminal.space 1 points 1 month ago

Cool, thank you for the advice :)