machiavellian

Why do NFTs make then inherently bad? AFAIK they are not trying to pivot into selling monkey pictures but rather selling prepaid phone cards to cover server costs for large communities. Why is this bad?

DISCLAIMER
I am not a computer security expert, merely a hobbyist having read some blogs from people who sounded smart. It is more than probable that I am mistaken in one or more parts of this post.

Linux is not more secure than Windows. By default, it’s actually considerably more vulnerable than Windows. Source

In my opinion an antivirus doesn’t really solve your problem. What you actually want is sandboxing, which means restricting user and program privileges. I recommend getting familiar with SELinux (or alternatively AppArmor, although it isn’t nearly as effective) and bubblewrap (or alernatively Firejail, which requires root privileges to run and is thus a bigger threat vector than bubblewrap).

Aside from that just disable any service you aren’t using (like ssh), use a deny-all-allow-some firewall, and verify what you download. If the link says “100% REAL 1 MILLION FREE ROBUX DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE NOW”, then maybe don’t click there.

Because even an antivirus won’t help you if you download malware, which isn’t compiled by skids who lifted the code from some darknet hacker forum. Antivirus isn’t some magical tool which makes your computer inherently more secure. Meaning you can’t offload your responsibilty to a program running with kernel level privileges. Your computer, your responsibilty.

P.S: If you want a more secure computer, I’d recommend a minimal and/or rolling release distro (openSUSE, Arch, Void, Debian) or FreeBSD/OpenBSD (BSD variants mitigate many of Linux’s inherent flaws).

It isn’t as hard as people imagine it to be. For starters you could watch a few entertaining videos by MentalOutlaw or listen to Opt Out and Watchman Privacy podcast.

When you feel more at home with the terminology and understand the basic process behind cryptocurrencies in general and Monero, you could get a wallet, look some at some of their recommended guides, buy some Bitcoin at a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange, trade it for Monero and badabim badaboom - you now have Monero.

I recommend either Haveno Reto or Bisq. Nevertheless, always do your own research and make your own choice. This is a good place to start.

You can use centralized exchanges as well as they make the process a bit easier but then you have to KYC yourself. Which isn’t a big problem because when you trade Bitcoin to Monero, all following transactions are anonymous.

If you want to go hardcore from the start, you could use decentralized P2P exchange to get Monero for cash but this is a bit more advanced and comes with a premium.