Debian 10 Buster | 1 Year Challenge | Week Two

Here was my second week of Debian and it was incredible. Debian 10 Buster is proving to be my best spin of Linux I have ever done. I go over my custom Kernel, performance tweaks, and a virus!

Custom Kernel

Making Games on Linux run buttery smooth
install with gamemoderun %command%

system.d cache tweaks

dxvk and esync

[TennesseeFrank]

Anytime you run Windows programs under WINE or PlayOnLinux you open yourself up to viruses and malware that effect the Windows programs. That's why it's always best to try and find a native Linux program to do what you need to do rather then use a Windows program. Glad to hear it was sandboxes in WINE and didn't mess with your Debian install.

[sabrinatigik]

I'm glad to know my comment helped you (seeing my comment in your video made me feel like a ~nerd~ celebrity hahahahaha)! I'm also happy - but not surprised - you're having a good experience with Debian! Let's see what you will have to show us in the next weeks. =D

[weltvonalex]

i respect everyone who really goes through and installs and uses debian

[ThatLinuxDude]

Sorry for a second comment, but the first one was a little too long and I might as well explain this:
8:20 Boy you're wrong if you think Windows Viruses in Wine cannot attack the system itself (in most cases)...
Alright, it can't necessarily attack / itself (permission denied galore, you're right there), but your Home Folder is a different story altogether.


- Wine has symlinks to Home Folder areas in the Virtual Drive by default in most cases, meaning that the C:\ Drive being targeted can mean damage will come to parts of your Home Folder
- Wine also can have some Virtual Drives added by default to some places of the home directory or otherwise a Virtual Drive that literally links to / by default, potentially... with that in mind all it'd take is a virus that targets other drives if they exist too in the Wine environment and some real damage can take place there.
- Wine also has the / mount in File Browsers. Alright there's very little chance that this will ever be made use of given it doesn't exist on Windows, and isn't necessarily a 'drive' as such either, but that's still something to note with Wine.


Alright, it can't destroy your system unless you're a foolish person and run Wine with Superuser Privileges, but it can definitely do a lot of damage to your Home Folder, and let's be real here: A home folder is way harder to get back to how it was before a Windows Virus Attack than a root partition.
I've seen it happen myself, I stuck Feren OS in a VM, tightened it so it had no network access or anything, and then stuck a copy of a WannaCry sample (I completely erased the sample a long time ago) inside of it. It encrypted the user's home folder Documents, Pictures, Videos, Desktop and more all in seconds. To make matters worse it seems Wine can also translate autostarting to Linux in some cases to so for that time it persisted with logins to that user. *It is possible for a Wine-powered virus to do real damage.*
...a lot happened following that with Feren OS (from the Wine prompt dialog to blacklisting wine from Startup, etc), but it's still a lesson that should be told regarding Wine.
PS: Just tell me if you want video evidence of it happening, I still have an unlisted video on my channel showing it happen in the tightened VM.

[geogmz]

I've used almost all the most popular distros until I met Debian.. Not a freaking issue since day 1.. I've broke some stuff but there's always a documented roll back on the internet for the stupid things I've done to it.

[mitchelvalentino]

I’ve never attempted such tweaks. This is really interesting! Thank you!

[TheRosswise]

First?? Wow, keep em coming Chris. Thanks for the killer Debian videos.

[oMeGa]

hey Chris. i found your videos very recently and i got to say you always deliver content. i really appreciate sharing your experience and the fruit out of it. Im not the type of guy who hit like on anything unless it is really really peeling for me. with all my 10 years on YouTube i only liked two videos this one is the second and 4 comments. i just subscribed which makes it the one and only subscription. i will definitely install this Debian on a dual boot system and try to alternate as much programs as possible from Windows. looking to hear for new experiences soon. 👍

[MichaelFerrie]

Glad you are enjoying Debian - You should try Debian on a laptop, I usually just run Windows 7 in virtual box if I ever need to run a windows program rather than farcing about with wine but I don't really play games so don't need the performance. I noticed on your installation you said that Debian wasn't user friendly on first impressions. However I'd argue the simplicity of Debian makes it a lot easier to use than win10 or macOs. Can you imagine if you only used Debian trying out windows or osx for the first time? Would they be user friendly, finder, apple spotlight, iTunes, the app store, apple ID, cortana, windows defender, windows firewall, user account control.... Think of those then think of Debian.

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Chris. The virus story was very interesting.

[wvagner]

I am really enjoying such nice Debian videos! It's hard to find good Debian tweaks.

[MarioMaresch]

this one was the last push for me to go with Linux - happy now for 2 weeks - greetings from germany.

[Innocentdarkness]

nice weekend !! told u frankdebian....but if it works it's good !

[MichaelVash]

Will be trying these tweaks to see if they help Vanquish run with a few more fps. Hardware is just showing its age at this point.

Waiting for the new AMD CPUs to build a system

[jonspoonamore]

Since your 1st Debian video, I've gone back to re-test Debian (Buster this time) and LMDE3. So far, both are looking and running great in VirtualBox. I will be testing this weekend on hardware. Buster is on par with Manjaro in performance!!! But, Manjaro beats all distros on having ready-available software ready to install.

[ThatMfTaika]

Virus: I live!
Chris: Not for long....

[human]

Devil Man Cry that sounds like a nice game.

[mercuriete]

The end of your challenge is in five years from now when you realised that you forgot that you were in a challenge.
xD you have a gaming server (stability+performance).

[bertnijhof]

I think swappiness=10 does not improve performance. It just almost completely kills swapping. In general you do not want to keep unused program-code in memory, you want it swapped out. You do not want to keep e.g. the program-initialization code in memory. You save memory, if it is swapped out. Swapping does not cost performance, if it is done as a preventive measure during low load situations. Swapping does costs performance, when it must be done in a hurry to free up space during program loading and high load situations.

By the way in Ubuntu you will find sysctl.conf in /etc. For 2 years I did set swappiness=10 too, but now I leave it at its default and I did not notice any significant change during normal operation. Only I will have a few hundreds MB of available memory more to load new stuff. Running virtual machines in a 8 GB machine I will need that additional memory from time to time.
I think we are sometimes somewhat arrogant in thinking, that we are better at defining the defaults than the people writing e.g. the memory management of the kernel.

[aitchpea]

In my experience, the clam antivirus is quite good at spotting windows viruses. It certainly found one in a game I downloaded from a less than reputable source