Understood. If you have problems with math, you can ask me. I’m still relatively good at that and have taught some math during my university “career”.
Yes, I understand that. My issue is that some people might still prefer a “light” hacker course that goes though a more user friendly version of Linux like Ubuntu. The advantage of Ubuntu is that it is well documented and has a rather helpful community. I’m not sure how much of a difference that would actually make. But if you think that Arch Linux is really the best for understanding Linux thoroughly, then go for it.
As I said, Ubuntu might be worth considering. Or Mint Linux, which is also quite popular. But under the hood, both are versions of Debian, so I don’t see a distinctive advantage of Mint over Ubuntu for hacking education purposes. You’ve probably chosen the right distribution with Arch Linux for learning how to hack properly.
It seems like you are trying to work towards some specific goal. Do you want to have such a deep knowledge of Linux to have a “hacker-proof” machine (though no machine connected to the internet is really 100% hacker proof)? This would look like a worthwhile goal. Especially when the purpose is to work with people who should have “trustworthy” machines.
Arch Linux is used here as a “practice”, only for the installation process. For that I spent some time installing Arch a couple of times in virtualbox, and with different guides, so to understand the installation process, which is where the bulk of learning comes. In contrast with Ubuntu, which has an automatic installation.
Overcoming the fear of the installation, certainly Arch Linux becomes more configurable from there on which is an advantage over Debian-based distros, but the main purpose to speak here of Arch is the installation. I would like to use Arch as my main machine, but for the moment I wouldn’t dare to, I view it as beyond the scope of my skills.
That would be something new in my personality.
I would like to, but as you say no machine is 100% hacker proof, we can only be so much secure. Before attempting to have a deep knowledge we need first to understand the basics, and I am still looking to know what the basics are if you know what I mean. I am just starting, and looking at how a computer operates seems like a good idea on starting to understand how to protect the computer.
Indeed I will keep that in mind, the help is most welcome.
That makes a lot of sense. Having a relatively secure Arch Linux as your main machine sounds like a worthwhile goal, even if you don’t call it a goal. In any case, it would see it at least as intermediate goal, even if you don’t want to frame it as “final” goal.
Going through the loops of installing Arch Linux multiple times certainly has positive didactic effects. It’s a form of learning by doing. That way you can start to understand the basics of hacking, even if it’s not hacking itself that you do in that step.
