This! Good advice! I went this path last year so i can give some extra advice for everyone who wants to start:

Before doing anything, buy a new router and put your iot devices and phones in a isolated guest network. Maintain the router updated. After that, you can work, learn and test without fear. Everything stays in your home.

Then like @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz already said, once you get confident, you can run a vpn tunnel to access your lan. This setup is pretty robust, hard to fuck up, and doable even for newbies. (If i can do it, everyone can, i assure you). Lots of guides out there.

Last advice, which you should already be doing, but setup a backup.

I love Debian, I use it as a desktop and it’s installed on all my machines, but it has some problems/quirks that make it hard to recommend it for desktop usage.

First one is that it doesn’t have sensible defaults, the OS expects a user who is an admin, one who will configure things to their liking. I would consider this to be a feature, if it weren’t for the second problem, the documentation. The documentation is wayy too dated, lots of pages in the wiki haven’t been updated since Debian Buster days!

A better recommendation would be probably a Debian derivative like MX Linux. They are more opinionated, but as far as I know, they come with better defaults and offer newer guides, documentation, etc.

Thanks for sharing, i haven’t been able to find a good guide, will check it out. Or more accurately a guide that i can follow with ease.

@zarkanian When posting videos try to put a descriptive title or a summary with your thoughts in the body. Not only it opens up discussions about the topic, it always make me more likely to check the content. It’s not in the rules but i think is nice etiquette.

A bit off topic but i used to had a fiber provider which on rainy days internet would intermittently go down. I think the outside terminal was exposed or something. Also between 2AM and 6AM internet would start dropping packets like crazy.

I see, i will study it over the weekend a bit better and see what i end up doing. Thank you.

I’m leaning towards it, i will probably bit the bullet. Thanks for your comment.

I did, but i don’t know if changing things there will cause conflicts.

Since i have no experience using luci i don’t know what behaviour is normal or expected, and to what extent the custom software glinet uses changes it. Do you think that tweeking the preconfigured networks would cause conflicts in the long run?

After sleeping over it, im leaning towards going full vanilla. It should be easier to find tutorials to solve and isolate problems.

Anyways thanks for your comment.

Glad to hear it! My pleasure, always happy to learn.

Fair enough, now i feel a bit ashamed since you are way way more knowledgeable than me. I have only been a Debian user for a year and half.

I made the reply because i remember that when i was looking to enter into Linux, Debian testing was recommended as a great compromise between stable and unstable.

My surprise when i went to the Debian wiki and said, pretty ambiguously at that, that i shouldn’t use it! Reason being that it wasn’t as updated in security patches as stable. No one told me that bit when i was asking. Since i didn’t know the risks involved, i took the safe option and went with stable, in the end loved it.

I have to admit that for your case it makes sense to use it. You know the risks, know where to patch it up, and it helps to contribute to it by testing it and submitting bugs. Thank you!

I do still think that testing shouldn’t be recommended, but i see and agree that it has it’s niche where it works and can be great for some people.

Anyways, i hope i didn’t came too hostile in my first reply! Cheers

I disagree, the strong points of debian are the stability (long periods of testing, without new changes) and security (by applying security updates quickly).

Using testing or sid means to forego the strong points. At that point you are better served by other distros which focus on having newer packages.

Also i would be cautious about using Debian testing (forky).As far as i know its the worst in terms of security. Stable has security update priority over testing. And some people say even sid it’s better on that front by having even newer packages.

Disclaimer: I daily drive debian stable and game on it without hiccups. Rock solid. BUT i have 7 year old amd rig and the games are not demanding.

Nice suggestion i will look it up, thank you!

Thanks for the reply, i will keep it mind.

I will keep it in mind, i will be mindful of commands and flags. No typing without being certain of what each command does.

Thank you, even if its simplified, the browser example was really helpful. So in summary, having software up to date and being aware of what you do, should in most cases be safe. I was asking just in case there was some configuration i should do before connecting. With browsing i know that if i use something like firefox and ublock, i should be safe from most malware unless i screw up pretty bad. I will probably research ssh a bit more, as how it works, but you put some fears away. Thank you again.

Thanks for the tip!