Tor Browser 13.0.7 is botched release. It doesn’t works properly on a Windows 7 - it throws “tor.exe stopped working” error all the time. I tried reinstalling it multiple times with the same outcome. Previous versions (including 13.0.6) works fine, though.
P.S. No I don’t need your advice to update to Windows 10/11 : what for? To get the inferior OS that works many times slower, consumes many time more resources, and overfilled with spyware? No, thanks. I’m good.
1 reply
I’m not a linux expert nor widely linux savvy - but some are definitely more of a learning curve than others or serve specific purposes. If you want to just test/try some out in a virtual machine - I use https://www.osboxes.org/ + VMWare for testing (so … VMware Images )
I don’t think you can go wrong with Debian or Fedora or Ubuntu (Linux Mint is/was well known). As for privacy/security IMO they’re all much the same at a base threat level (and anything supported is better than windows 7)
Give em a try in a VM before a final decision 
Sure, I use Qubes OS/Qubes-Whonix, but I am also aware of ParrotOS. Neither of them are as user-friendly as Tails, so I suggest thoroughly reading their respective documentations before you consider trusting them. Otherwise, I use PureOS (Debian-derivative) on my Librem 5 USA, which is recommended and endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.
List of Free GNU/Linux Distributions - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
1 reply
I remember people saying Mint is the most Windows like version of Linux meaning more familiarity than some of the others. Back around 2010 I tried Ubuntu and found it surprisingly easy, so much so that I made it my main OS, apparently Amazon have added code into the system since then and that causes a few people to consider it a no longer secure version of Linux, would you happen to know if that is actually true?
I have looked into this option a few years back but found that you need a pretty large amount of RAM in order for it to work, I only use cheap secondhand laptops for security stuff as I wouldn’t want to spend hundreds on a decent spec machine, have some paranoia scare and feel that I need to throw it away.
I will look into PureOS though as I’ve seen some good things about it although also a few people saying compatible software is usually updated for other systems before PureOS gets the same updates.
1 reply
Sure, Qubes OS has strict hardware requirements in addition to being resource-hungry, so it is not for everyone. PureOS is usually a codename release behind Debian, but you can use the rolling release instead (Crimson) to match the current Debian stable.