Which OS for farming?

Most of us on this planet wouldnt be able to install Linux.I have tried:smiley:. And other than system76 in the US theres little in the UK with anything preinstalled. Unfortunate.

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I saw @happybeing made a post about it on the forum this week :)!

You could use it but thereā€™s no real advantage related to farming. Iā€™ve not used QubesOS, but understand that it allowes you to improve security by keeping your activities partitioned, so if one area has a security breach (malware etc), then the rest of your data and activity will not be compromised.

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Itā€™s fairly useless. Unless you know you need it, you donā€™t need it.

And just for the lulz, hereā€™s a list of recent (Q4/15) security issues with the hypervisor this ā€œreasonably secureā€ solution uses for its base. What a joke.

From Xen Security Advisories

Most of your post is useful, but the spin you put on information you provide is so often dismissive that for me it undermines the value of your opinion.

I am concerned that those who donā€™t know you might be mislead by your authoritive and dismissive tone though, so please make it clear this is opinion.

I know it is, so will many others, but plenty of people just trust people who speak like this and so it would be helpful if youā€™d say ā€œI think itā€™s fairly uselessā€ rather than ā€œitā€™s fairly uselessā€, and also be clearer about what you think itā€™s useless for and why. The OP is about farming, whereas your comments appear to be about security, so while your post contains opinion and useful information, itā€™s not clear what specific points you are making, or why.

I want to say that since before Christmas your posts have been much clearer, more helpful and valuable IMO - so thanks for that - and Iā€™ve liked them as a result. :smile:

I hope you can take this comment as well meant feedback in how to continue to make posts that are more helpful to more people, and not as me being too picky, jumping on you etc. Iā€™m aware that you often respond to feedback for a short time, but then start to revert, and it creates a lot of work if your post gradually get less and less helpful, so Iā€™m hoping gentle reminders of smaller points like this can be useful to you, and reduce the work for mods overall.

I did ask you for your response to my talking about this before Christmas, but although I nudged you a few times you didnā€™t tell me what you thought about what I said, so Iā€™m proceeding without knowing what you think and feel about this, but in good faith. If you wish to discuss it, I remain available, either in a public thread or by PM.

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That was true maybe 10 years ago, today installing Linux is easier than installing windows.

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ā€¦ And then you have to actually use the thing. Iā€™m still using command line to do basic stuff like installing apps that arenā€™t in the barren app store, Ubuntu still thinks not having an undo button is acceptable, and so on. Hell, when I installed debian from the official site, I was met with a black screen CLI. You could hear my NOPE from space when I deleted that nonsense off my computer.

My experience was similar. Installed ubuntu I think it was and the mousepad didnt work wifi didnt work. When your not very computer savvy its easy to give up an settle for windows. What is it with the HP Dell etc that install windows to all their stuff. Knowing that Linux is open source and corp this and windows corp that of course we all would like to use it but I think its just a little bit out of reach for most.

Your list is impressive but if you had read some papers brought by the people behind cube os you would know they are really deep into system level programming and pretty 31337 on their knowledge so u would be more impressed than throwing some laugh on their system.

I just wanna say all I hope is that some kind person will upload videos or tutorials of how to set everything upā€¦ :slight_smile:

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As always in a s/w stack, having something in it that doesnā€™t benefit the app, such as hypervisor, invariably lowers the security and makes it more difficult to manage the system.
Used for something else it may be useful, but for SAFE I donā€™t see a point.

I am going to use Ubuntu with BTRFSā€¦ :wink:

The cubes hypervisor is a low level module control system that effectively grants each only the essential necessary to accomplish their task. A complete system sand-boxing implementation has the ability to isolate threats to the affected module in ways common Linux distribution struggle with. Each module is essentially a fractal of the total system. Compromising one still leaves the attacker with the remaining systems unaffected. A total pwn necessitates many attacks. Multiple vectoring means increased effort from attacker and a greater degree of security for the end user. Pointing to the imperfections of the current code without seeing the greater design goal and superiority above most distros is an indication of misunderstanding or carelessness IMHO.

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Except when ā€œoneā€ is the hypervisor, then all ā€œunaffectedā€ systems go down at once.

Plus whatā€™s the point of having a bunch of perfectly isolated ā€œmodulesā€ (on top of a singe-point-of-total-failure hypervisor) when all modules contain the same freaking code, Safe vault software?

It is careless and misunderstanding of user needs to recommend such a system to a non-expert in Linux administration. As I said above, if one asks whether he needs it, thatā€™s a sure sign he doesnā€™t.

Thatā€™s not entirely true. The hypervisor acts more like a valet to a self controlled quarantine modeled after the kernel with inter-module communicative restrictions. Subverting it still leaves the kernels security measures intact as it itself is a subsystem. At this point the systems reverts to the standard linux environment protocol. Superior still to a system without it because of its stricter access control. A compromised hypervisor must still adhere to the pre established rule-set established by the codeā€™s author. Making malware persistence very difficult. I do agree with your last statement though. It isnā€™t for technical novices.

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ok - i think i have to say something here ā€¦

I installed linux on roughly 6 machines over the last 2-3 years (all ubuntu long term support versions) ā€¦ tower pcs, eeepcs, laptops - one was a laptop with touchscreen ā€¦ i didnā€™t see a single pc/laptop with anything built-in that wasnā€™t supported by linux ! (ok - with one eeepc the fn+brighter and fn+darker buttons didnā€™t work ā€œlinearā€ but the brightness jumped ā€¦ but that was the only issue I observed) ā€¦ and after re-installing a printer into our home-network linux discovered the changed ip address automatically - with all windows pcs i had to re-install this printer ā€¦ sorry but i have a feeling you are talking about a linux long time ago ā€¦ or not one of the ā€œlarge onesā€

My father uses ubuntu 14.04 on his laptop and had WAY less trouble with it than my mother with her windows 10 (!)

@neverending_manga ā€¦ yeah ā€¦ and windows has solved this issue with the command line installation and because of that you are in danger of installing toolbars and ad-ware with every program you first search, then download and then install via exe-file ā€¦ much more handy than typing sudo apt-get install xyz ā€¦

ps: hmm more than 6 ā€¦ letā€™s say 8-10 pcs of course not an impressive amount ā€¦ but more than 1 pc :wink:

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I did not say that all flavors of Linux would work flawlessly out of the box on all hardware. But they have basic functionality (what you need for farming) on most hardware.

Debian has for quite some time had a easy graphical installer. But it is not a good distro for a beginner who is afraid of CLI.

You have no need for command line to setup a farmer:

Install Ubuntu. Click Firefox, download farmer. Doubleclick farmer icon.

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FreeBSD is great, Iā€™m currently using NixOS which has worked well so far though really Iā€™m secretly wanting to use Redox OS. :slightly_smiling:

I think is worth considering Freedombox . Itā€™s basically Debian for small servers, With a webui and designed with security in mind. Itā€™s been a bit of a slow burn project, but development pace seems to be picking up recently.

https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox

Iā€™m planning to sell some preconfigured Freedombox SD cards for the Cubietruck fairly soon. When SAFENetwork is launched Iā€™ll add that to the image too. Iā€™m working on a website for it, but itā€™s not quite ready yet.

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It is my hope, too, to have a SAFE node on my Freedombox one day.

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