Did you know most coyotes are illiterate?
Pretty good video. It’s not like he explains how to do anything or even picks very good software to begin with, but his genuine excitement is really all that’s required. Getting people interested is the important part, and they’ll learn much better by using their own motivation. This video also gives off a strong “I’m an idiot, and if I can do it you can do it” vibe which can be really reassuring to those who are just too intimidated to even dip their toe in.
I’m not a security expert by any means, but here are a few things I know as a regular user:
Always keep your system up-to-date and only download and execute software from the official Arch repository if you can help it. Malware often takes advantage of outdated systems that don’t have the latest security patches, so by staying as up-to-date as possible you’re making yourself a very difficult target. The AUR is a user-based repository and is not inherently trusted/maintained like the official Arch repos, so be careful and always read PKGBUILDs before you use AUR software. Don’t use AUR auto-updaters unless you’re reading the PKGBUILD changes every time. Ideally try not to use the AUR at all if you can help it; official Arch Linux is usually quite stable, but AUR software is often responsible for a lot of the “breakages” people tend to get with Arch. If you have to run sketchy software, use a virtual machine for it, as a 0-day VM escape is almost certainly not going to happen with any sort of malware you’d run into. ClamAV or VirusTotal may also help you scan specific files that you’re wary of, but I wouldn’t trust that a file is clean just because it passes an AV check. Also, never run anything as root unless you have a very specific reason, and even then try to use sudo instead of elevating to a full root shell.
Don’t open up any network ports on your system unless you absolutely have to, and if you’re opening an SSH port, make sure that it: isn’t the default port number, requires a keyfile for login, root cannot be logged into directly, and authentication attempts are limited to a low number. If you’re opening ports for other services, try to use Docker/Podman containers with minimal access to your system resources and not running in root mode. Also consider using something like CrowdSec or fail2ban for blocking bots crawling ports.
As far as finding out if you’re infected, I’m not sure if there’s a great way to know unless they immediately encrypt all your stuff and demand crypto. Malware could also come in the form of silent keyloggers (which you’d only find out about after you start getting your accounts hacked) or cryptocurrency miners/botnets (which probably attempt to hide their CPU/GPU usage while you’re actively using your computer). At the very least, you’re not likely to be hit by a sophisticated 0-day, so whatever malware you get on your computer probably wants something direct and uncomplicated from you.
Setting up a backup solution to a NAS running e.g. ZFS can help with preventing malware from pwning your important data, as a filesystem like ZFS can rollback its snapshots and just unencrypt the data again (even if it’s encrypted directly on the NAS). 2FA’ing your accounts (especially important ones like email) is a good way to prevent keyloggers from being able to repeat your username+password into a service and get access. Setting up a resource monitoring daemon can probably help you find out if you’re leaking resources to some kind of crypto miner, though I don’t have specific recommendations as I haven’t done this before.
In the case of what to do once you’re pwned, IMO the only real solution is to salvage and verify your data, wipe everything down, and reinstall. There’s no guarantee that the malware isn’t continually hiding itself somewhere, so trying to remove it yourself is probably not going to solve anything. If you follow all the above precautions and still get pwned, I’m fairly sure the malware will be news somewhere, and security experts may already be studying the malware’s behavior and giving tips on what to do as a resolution.
This video has a lot of self-hosting and somewhat advanced stuff being mentioned, but if all you want to do is start dipping your toe into Linux then it’s not nearly as hard as you’d think. I would try running Linux in a VM (i.e. VirtualBox) to get a feel for how it operates and build up confidence that way, as well as maybe watching some videos on how people set up and use their Linux etc. It will be a learning curve, but as long as you pick a beginner-friendly distro (e.g. Linux Mint) it’s really no more difficult than if you started using Windows for the first time. Keep backups of your data and/or put Linux on a secondary computer and you should weather the initial few weeks just fine.
On the upside, when you have problems in Linux there will be logical solutions with answers that can be searched for, whereas in an OS like Windows or Mac the solution is probably “I dunno! Reinstall?” or “You just can’t do that, sorry”. It’s also understandable if you don’t want to touch anything complicated, but I do think one of the best parts of Linux is really just getting messy, making mistakes, and learning. Because things in Linux make sense, over time you’ll learn how to use a computer again. I feel strongly that Windows/Mac/Android/iPhones have (intentionally) dulled the average person’s computing skills and put them into a state of learned helplessness. Everyone thinks computers are complicated wizardry because nothing on those proprietary operating systems makes logical sense, and trying to troubleshoot anything results in wasted time and frustration.