Can try it without installing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7MYJAVpt1Y

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_try_linux_repostrewrite/page1

Yeah it didn't take me as long to find them as i was afraid. I mostly remembered the gist of the articles and did a ixquick search and then just click on the one that showed I've already seen it and that was it in all three cases.

But i still don't know what the hell I did in the OP. Especially that first one. It was taking me to the gog forums. LOL.

I had three links, three windows open so I could copy them... and then somehow there was only one link and that went to the gog forums. That level of screw up takes talent.

I's blame the forum software before taking the blame yourself. You know how glitchy it is.

But.. evil hackers use anything as zombie or for mining.. consoles don't seem useless for that.

Consoles not vulnerable?

Password to your PSN (I presume that means PlayStation Network).... login from their own machine and change the password so to lock you out.

One little detail: I do not own and never have, a console.

A console might be vulnerable provided the attacker can find a way to execute code on the console in the first place. Video game consoles tend to be locked down when it comes to this sort of thing, and most hackers are probably more interested on getting homebrew running on consoles first; until that happens, it's unlikely that somebody would actually try to get your password this way.

If you do have a console or portable capable of running homebrew, you do then need to be careful of what software you run on it. Ideally, you't have one console for homebrew and a separate console for PSN or equivalent; this would also allow you to avoid being banned from PSN, but it's probably more than most people are willing to pay.

It's far more likely that somebody will trick you (yes, you, not your computer or console) into revealing your password than it is for your console to be hacked.

does the console have a browser ? does the browser run javascript ?
if yes, then there is your attack vector.

I guess when you say "there's no one here to help you" you mean in your physical local vicinity, because around here there's a lot of resources (*) and helpful Linux users always ready to help.

(*)
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/general_linux_faq_and_troubleshooting
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_try_linux_repostrewrite
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_judas_does_this_run_in_wine_thread_v1173
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers_news_faq_discussion
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/linux_playit_weekly_news
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/running_nonlinux_unity3d_games_on_linux_and_natively

Little off-topic, but Linus Torvalds doesn't sound anything like a Finnish name even though the bloke is from Finland. He is apparently from a Finn-Swedish family (a family living in Finland whose mother language is Swedish, which is the second official language in Finland). Frankly, to me Linus sounds quite special even for a Swedish name, but maybe some Swede could tell if it is a common name in Sweden. I thought all Swedes are called Olle, Palle, and Gustav.

ANYWAY. what I was getting at is that we can be all glad Linus was from a Swedish-speaking family. If he had been from a Finnish-speaking family, his name might have been e.g. Jarmo or Petteri or Miihkali. Would you really want to use an OS which was called e.g. "Jarmox Mint", instead of "Linux Mint"? Linux sounds kinda cool, while Jarmox sounds like ass.

Names like Olle, Palle, Kalle/Calle, Ville, Micke (notice how they all follow a similar pattern? that's due to how well the sound of that pattern of two short-vowel syllables with a single consonant sound between them fits in our language) are originally nicknames formed from Olof/Olov, Paul/Pål, Karl/Carl, William, and Mikael/Michael, but have later become their own actual names - for the record, I don't off-hand know any female names formed in a similar fashion, maybe Johanna->Hanna, and while Anna and Sanna follows the same pattern, I don't actually know where they come from.

Anyway. Linus is a fairly common name. And no, I don't know of a nickname in that pattern for Linus. One of my closest friends have that name, but he's more commonly called by his family name which more closely follows the pattern (two short-vowel syllables) than "Linus" does (one long-vowel syllable and one short).

I think I get it. The exploiters (clumsy term) wouldn't need to use something that your AV suite might catch, and thus you may not know anything bad happened until, well, something bad happened: they got some passwords and dinked around with banking stuff, signed you up for the NAMBLA newsletter, etc. And even then you wouldn't be sure because they could do similar stuff with, say, data obtained from a breach at Equifax or Target, some dipshit had a gov't laptop stolen, or what-have-you.

Basically, a breach using that exploit wouldn't leave any footprints since it's only reading what's in RAM without requiring something to be downloaded / uploaded to your PC.

Something like that?

exactly. AV works by looking for specific things once an exploit becomes known. or it works by keeping tabs on software doing specific things which are against the rules. systems before now didn't log for this stuff, which would have seemed like innocuous behaviour. catching metldown/spectre software in the act involves upping the level of scrutiny to something akin to what you find in IPS (intrusion prevention system) software, which is another level of restrictive to the system running it. IPS vendors have developed some network rulesets to match against packets of network connections involved with attempts to exploit these bugs. in addition, there has been configuring of process accounting to focus on and restrict certain execution patterns which are exploited heavily by me/sp. in particular, the TSX instruction set brought in with Skylake (6000 series), greatly speeds up these timing attacks, so there's already been some attention to keeping tabs on these instructions and killing software that use them. running an IPS isn't something that's practical in all cases though.

Which makes me think of something else. How do those of you on this forum pronounce the word "Linux"? Do you say "LINN-ux" or do you say "LIE-nux"? It's an interesting question because Linus Torvalds says "LINN-ux". Here's Linus speaking about it in a 16 second clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

before I knew the right way to pronounce it I used to "lie-nux".