Understanding LM and things to do after installation of 19.3 .

[Spud1200]

This is by no means a comprehensive guide or tutorial to Linux Mint. This is more of an overview with some things to do after installation of the Operating System of your choice.

The world of Linux is big and I mean BIG, from server software and operating systems to currently maintained and discontinued systems and software. Linux is big . For this somewhat of a guide , I'll cover some things to do with Linux Mint.

As of posting this, LM 19.3 is the most stable of the OS. With the release of 20.1 what is supported until April 2025 being Ulyssa 19.3 is supported until April 2023 being Tricia . When your dealing with names like Tricia or Ulyssa these are code names given to the OS upon development.

Linux Mint comes in three different flavors of the desktop environment . Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce .

1. Cinnamon is the most popular and is full and feature rich.
2. MATE is more stable than Cinnamon and is light weight on system resources.
3. Xfce is the most light weight . Xfce does not support as many features as say Cinnamon or MATE.
4. When choosing your desktop environment, look at your system. What can it handle, is it an older system with less capability. Should I install Xfce or Cinnamon. Over time you will become accustomed to what it is that you prefer. Their is no right or wrong way to do things. If you have a system say running 2Gib of memory and older system, then you might want Xfce. Newer systems then Cinnamon.

At the moment I'm using Cinnamon 19.3 64 Bit Tricia and for this the package base is Ubuntu Bionic .

So LM 19.3 !

Some things I like to do after installation .

1. Fire up Firefox and go to the address field and type about:config, read and look at the warning and continue. Type in the address field geo.enabled and set this parameter to false. Toggle it by double clicking on it. This will disable your geographical location on sites such as ipleak.net .
2. Again in the same field type media.peerconnection.enabled and toggle this by double clicking it to false. This will disable the likes of your IP Address being shown and leaked on sites again such as ipleak.net
3. In terminal type sudo ufw enable. Type your password and hit enter. If your unsure of the actual status of your firewall type sudo ufw status.

Something I have done and still do on my home network is to change the DNS address on my router . You can use any DNS address you want but trust me, moving away from your ISP is a good thing. If you have a VPN set up on your Linux Box, I would strongly recommend doing this, changing the actual DNS address of your router. You'll need the primary address and the secondary address of the service or servers you want to use. I'll offer some advise and that's if you bork things up, hit the hard reset on your router and give it a few moments, you should be able to connect again.

Maybe you're not security conscious but if you are I'll try to explain how to prevent DNS Leaks on your 19.3 installation . After spending many hours banging my head against the wall, I found the following worked for me. I researched countless articles, spoke to my VPN provider and managed to get help on the subject . This is what worked for me .


After doing the update of the machine, you need to install dnsmasq what is a lightweight and easy to configure DNS forwarder.

sudo apt-update
sudo apt install dnsmasq

Enter the following after the installation of dnsmasq . You need to disable resolved along with stopping it .

sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved.service
sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved.service

Remove the resolv config file and create a new one .

sudo rm /etc/resolv.conf
sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

Enter the following in to your empty resolv.conf file .

nameserver 127.0.0.1

Save those changes by hitting Ctrl & x and hit Y to save and overwrite the resolv.conf file .

Next you need to edit the network manager file and add the dnsmasq .

sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf


The network manager file should look like this after editing it by adding the dnsmasq.

[main]
plugins=ifupdown, keyfile
dns=dnsmasq

Save the changes by hitting Ctrl and x and Y and reboot the system .

Note: You will have to navigate using the arrow keys on your keyboard .


After installing dnsmasq and doing the outlined things above their are a number of other things you can do such as installing add ons in your browser for security, setting up a proxy in Firefox and customizing the OS for a better experience ..

Hope that helped a bit as these are things that just work me . Their is a number of ways to go about preventing DNS leaks in 19.3 but I personally found this the most simple .

Thanks for reading.

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