Ian,

From another noobie, may I wish you every success with this interesting project and I look forward to hearing of your progress.

Best regards,

Noel

( Xorsyst ) 

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From: main [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Ian Henderson
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2016 9:09 AM
To: main@lists.alug.org.uk
Subject: [ALUG] Building an (air gapped) offline Linux laptop as a newbie toLinux

Hi, all,

I am new to Linux.

I'm porting over to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the Unity desktop from Windows 10.  I want to keep things as simple (and hopefully therefore as reliable) as possible, for home/office critical use.  I also want to stick to the main and universe repositories.

Because prices were much lower for Linux-compatible laptops than with Win 10 installed, I can afford two.  I plan to divide them into one for critical offline-only use, and the other for universal online use.  I will air-gap the two.  But it also means that I need to complete the final build of the offline air-gapped laptop ahead of porting data, after which it will not go online again (unless for a wipe and rebuild).

For the offline-only laptop, I am looking at the following range of apps.  Could I ask that you check my ideas, and offer suggestions and advice, please.:-

1)  An office-like suite, for which I will be using LibreOffice, which is installed by default.
2)  I need a whole-directory and free space overwriting utility, as well as the means to securely delete individual files.  My understanding is that shred and wipe are available by default.  I am looking at bleachbit for the whole-directory and free space wiping.  But the software centre says "sudo" for this app: does that mean it has elevated privileges and is this a bad idea?
3)  GtkHash for SHA256 etc. cryptographic hashes, primarily to verify backups.
4)  Can anyone suggest an archiving utility which also verifies the files within the archive (I can then hash the archive file backup)?  Archiving does not necessarily have to include compression.  Are any installed by default?
5)  GnuPG.  I understand that this is installed by default?  Am I correct that I can encrypt with password files if transferring on FAT32 USB or CD/DVD with this?  Is it GUI?
6)  CD/DVD burning, including both copying using a single optical drive, ordinary file burning and creating bootable CD/DVD from ISO images.  I'm looking at Brasero for this.

Can anyone suggest any other apps I should include ahead of locking off the build?

I'm also assuming that the default 16.04 LTS supports formatting USB sticks to ext4, including encryption?

Also, anyone any thoughts on using live-CD version of Ubuntu for online banking (in case the online unit got owned)?

Please remember that I am a complete newbie to Linux.  So please remember if you start talking about OpenWTF 0.666.1066 I will have no idea what you're talking about!  Not for some months yet, anyway. :)

Thanks for your help,
Ian

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