11–20 of 78 posts
When you overwrite the disk, you say you should use dd if=/dev/random, but the reason why this is much slower is because /dev/random blocks. Use /dev/urandom because it doesn't block -- Before you ask, yes this is still secure. Or you can use dm-crypt and create a temporary container with a random key to wipe it. This will be a bit faster than the above. See the Arch wiki for details[1] [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.o…
If you like using an unstable bleeding edge system where you have to configure everything yourself by hand with absolutely zero tolerance for user error, use Arch.
If I'm on a tight schedule with doing mission critical projects on my work computer where there are hard deadlines and Murphy's Law involved, forget it.
If you're curious, I'm currently using Mint with Cinnamon.
Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?
Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu)
I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment.
Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(
When you overwrite the disk, you say you should use dd if=/dev/random, but the reason why this is much slower is because /dev/random blocks. Use /dev/urandom because it doesn't block -- Before you ask, yes this is still secure. Or you can use dm-crypt and create a temporary container with a random key to wipe it. This will be a bit faster than the above. See the Arch wiki for details[1] [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.o…
Or, you can use the (S)ATA Secure Erase[1] command which was designed from the start to securely wipe a hard disk and should handle wiping reserve space etc. properly. [1] https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
Almost agree 100%, but why would you encrypt the whole disk? There is no need for that. It's 100% free software availabe for anyone. Encrypt your home directory. And this has Ubuntu figured out quite nicely IMHO.
Almost agree 100%, but why would you encrypt the whole disk? There is no need for that. It's 100% free software availabe for anyone. Encrypt your home directory. And this has Ubuntu figured out quite nicely IMHO.
Arch is just too much time for me doing sysadmin and keeping up with breaking changes (it's a rolling distro, so all kinds of system configurations are possible, many are untested or just bleeding edge). If you like using an unstable bleeding edge system where you have to configure everything yourself by hand with absolutely zero tolerance for user error, use Arch. If I'm on a tight schedule with doing mission critic…
But I do admit the initial setup was pretty intense, I loved the learning experience.
I'm also using Cinnamon, on Arch. It's quite clean and nice. :)