3d ago

Torrenting on Linux

I used to torrent a lot many years ago, before the rise of streaming services, and back then relied on what people told me: you don't have to worry about malware when you have a Mac.

I've been thinking about torrenting a few things that are pretty much unobtainable any other way but I worry about the security aspect. I've seen people say that with Linux there's no need to worry but simply trusting this seems careless to me now and I wanted to ask your views on this.

Do you torrent and are there any additional precautions one should take? Thank you :)

6 comments

Basically, you want a VPN. I'd recommend AirVPN. You can toggle an OpenVPN config on/off for your whole system's connection from the network menu in the lower right on Mint, it's crazy convenient.
Linux has a lot fewer desktop users than Mac, so it's generally even less if a target for this kinda stuff.
If you want to be extra safe, backup your home folder and/or have it on a separate partition, so if you need to reinstall your whole OS because of a virus you won't lose anything important. You would just reinstall the OS and reinstall your apps and all of your data for those apps would still be preserved, so it'd be like it was never wiped.
But yeah, in general just don't open an executable unless you know it's safe. Video/audio files are basically always fine to open.
- Cool, thank you for the advice :)

6 comments