[TriLUG] Linux Mint Site Hacked

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

I admit that I'm a bit disappointed in the attitude that the Mint
maintainers appear to have taken.  Mint was a good choice for newbies that
were coming from the Windows world.  It is unfortunate that some of that
mindset got carried over and someone was able to take advantage of them as
a consequence.

I, myself, have tried a lot of different distributions including: Centos,
Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, and Ubuntu.  I started with Ubuntu, which
in many ways is what I would likely recommend for a beginner as it is
fairly secure out of the box and has the feature of forcing them into the
concept of least privilege by using a normal non privileged account and
elevating their actions via sudo (or sudo -i but don't tell them that).  I
moved away from Ubuntu when they went their own way with the display
manager.  This is what prompted my foray into other distributions and
haven't looked back.  I can't really comment on the Ubuntu display, but I
do think that KDE is a good choice for those use to Windows as it is very
similar.

I also think that good package management and semi-automatic updates are
important features for a beginner distribution.

Interestingly, the things that make a distribution like Ubuntu good for
beginners, are on the flip side, what make it a difficult, if not lousy,
platform to try to customize and build software on.

> On 02/25/2016 11:17 AM, Thomas Delrue wrote:
>> On 02/25/2016 11:03 AM, Erik Nelson via TriLUG wrote:
>>> I understand the audience Mint is targeting, and there's certainly a
>>> great need for beginner friendly distros we can recommend to people
>>> interesting in joining the ecosystem. Isn't it our responsibility to
>>> set the example for best security practices, and to practice what we
>>> preach?

>> I agree, but where do we go from here? I reluctantly would like to turn
>> this into a which-distro-would-you-recommend-for-switchers-poll.
>>
>> Mint has been (past tense) my go-to recommendations for
>> Windows-switchers and I agree that these incidents are troublesome to
>> say the least, so what would be a good distro to recommend to someone
>> who would or could switch but "won't eventually want to learn how to
>> build a kernel by themselves" (sorry Arch folks... I love you all but
>> this is not one for you).


> Self admitted Archer, I haven't built a kernel since I was running
> Funtoo last year :P
>
> I'd either recommend vanilla Ubuntu, or Ubuntu Mate. Ubuntu remains a
> solid choice
> for a new user despite the loud Unity hate. Ubuntu Mate is shaping up to
> be a
> fantastic choice for anyone looking for a traditional desktop experience
> that just works.
> If you haven't already tried it, I highly recommend you spin one up in a
> VM; it's a delight.
>
> Alternatively, if I'm talking to someone whose technically competent and
> just looking
> for a gateway into the Linux world, it's hard to go wrong with Debian
> Jessie.
>