The sha txt file should've been available alongside the iso file from the mirror you downloaded it from. Honestly, as long as you used one of the mirrors that the Linux Mint website provided, you should be perfectly fine.
wanderingmagus
Good to hear! Let us know if you need any help with the install - some computers will try to fight the install, others are much more amenable to it. As long as you follow the instructions from the Linux Mint page, you should be fine.
Have you tried Linux Mint? That's pretty user-friendly. As long as it's a .deb, you can double-click install through a GUI, no terminal needed. There's an "app store" with most of your standard apps, like Discord, Slack, Teams, Skype or VLC, and it has an office suite pre-installed along with an email client. The first time you start, there's a welcome screen that helps you through setting up the firewall, appearance (you can make it look like XP if you want), backups, NVIDIA drivers, and update manager you can ignore or manually update or automatically update. I don't know your system, but it's pretty intuitive for Windows users (I use a Windows 10 theme). I'd encourage you to give it one more try, if you're still open to it.
Hope all the other comments and suggestions are helping! Installation is honestly the only "hard" step for Mint. Once you're done with this, it should be smooth sailing - and if you ever need any help, just ask!
Poe's Law and the lack of /s strikes again!
Isn't surfing the web the main use case for a large portion of the PC/Laptop user base? Pretty sure for wide swaths of people, "executable", "startup program" and "HDD" have no meaning. Not saying that's "right" or "wrong", just that that's my observation. You could make the argument that they might as well switch to Chromebook, and in fact, many do.
For intermediate users, there's a graphical startup program menu for selecting startup apps, at least in Mint Cinnamon. Usually programs for me won't be able to access my HDD only if I did an even more advanced thing and made a docker instance without permissions - other than that, I've been able to connect programs like Steam (Flatpack) to my external HDD without issue. But maybe that's just Mint, idk.
Linux Mint and Zorin OS work out of the box for most users. Usually the most complicated part is just the installation process (which can be an absolute pain if the starting system has Intel RST, Secure Boot and Fast Boot all enabled). Of course, more advanced users always can run the risk of breaking something (I accidentally broke my system irreparably at one point when I did a dumb and formatted my Swap for some reason and had to reinstall) but that's also true of Windows.
It's not necessarily just about the government. Built-in backdoors also give malicious actors more ways to access your own private information, whether to steal your identity, transfer money out of your bank account, use your credit for loans, or blackmail you. Also, other governments already use your online speech to arrest you for saying things they don't like - see China or Russia. Many EU countries are only one election away from having a government that goes in that direction already. This is only going to make it that much easier for them.
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/06/2024-05-22-Recommendation-HLG-Going-Dark-c.pdf
- Implementing lawful access by design in all relevant technologies in line with the needs expressed by law enforcement, ensuring at the same time strong security and cybersecurity and providing for the full respect of legal obligations on lawful access. According to the HLG, law enforcement authorities should contribute to the definition of requirements, but it should not be their role to impose specific solutions on companies so that they can provide lawful access to data for criminal investigative purposes without compromising security. To that end, experts recommend developing a technology roadmap that brings together technology, cybersecurity, privacy, standardisation and security experts and ensures adequate coordination e.g. potentially through a permanent structure.
- Ensuring that possible new obligations, a new legal instrument and/or standards do not lead, directly or indirectly, to obligations for the providers to weaken the security of communications by generally undermining or weakening E2EE. Therefore, potential new rules on access to data in clear would need to undergo a cautious assessment based on stateof-the-art technological solutions (which should in turn consider the challenges of encryption). When ensuring the possibility of lawful access by design as provided by law, manufacturers or service providers should do so in a way that it has no negative impact on the security posture of their hardware or software architectures.
- Enhancing EU coordination and support to address situations where technical solutions exist to enable lawful interception but are not implemented by providers of Electronic Communications Services. In such cases, for example when home-routing agreements or when specific implementation of Rich Communication System (RCS) do not allow lawful interception capabilities, clear guidance and a dialogue facilitated at EU level would improve the cooperation with Electronic Communications Services.
- Conducting a comprehensive mapping of the current legislation in Member States to detail the legal responsibilities of digital hardware and software manufacturers to comply with data requests from law enforcement. It would also take into account specific scenarios and requirements that compel companies to access devices, in compliance also with CJEU caselaw and case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The goal should be to develop an EU-level handbook on that basis, and depending on the aforementioned mapping, to promote the approximation of legislation within this area, and to develop binding industry standards for devices brought to market in the EU, to integrate lawful access.
- Establishing a research group to assess the technical feasibility of built-in lawful access obligations (including for accessing encrypted data) for digital devices, while maintaining and without compromising the security of devices and the privacy of information for all users as well as without weakening or undermining the security of communications. Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement, Council of the European Union, 22 May 2024, pp. 23-24.
Veilid is a peer-to-peer network and application framework released by the Cult of the Dead Cow on August 11, 2023, at DEF CON 31.[1][2][3][4] Described by its authors as "like Tor, but for apps",[5] it is written in Rust, and runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS,[6] and in-browser WASM.[7] VeilidChat is a secure messaging application built on Veilid.[1][4]
Veilid borrows from both the Tor anonymising router and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), to offer encrypted and anonymous peer-to-peer connection using a 256-bit public key as the only visible ID. Even details such as IP addresses are hidden.[4]
Poe's law strikes again, you forgot this: /s
Guess it's a moot point because as far as I know they didn't end up using that name for their videos.