I've tried Mint on a live CD and it comes way too bloated for my taste, too many media related software that I don't need for this purpose. A basic text editor, a spreadsheet editor, and basic dependencies to compile Bitcoin Core as well as Tor should be it. Im either going to use Xubuntu or try the latest Debian release. Seems pretty easy to install nowadays compared to back then. Does anyone here use that distro at all? It comes with a full disk encryption setting on the wizard.
I'll try automatic partition setting and just encrypt the whole thing. Im not sure if it encrypts the boot partition too, but I want it to encrypt for sure swap and home. Some people don't realize these may remain unencrypted and leak your data on there.
I would argue it's good to learn to use the command line (and vi), but it comes with a steep learning curve. After that, it's much more powerful and faster than using a GUI.
Back in my school days I was told GUI is only for the lazy and if I wanted to be cool and fast I should learn Command Line instead. It took me a very long time to understand this because to the average human the Command Line looks like something straight out of a NASA computer. First seemed like a joke. But ended up being true. It is much faster and easier. And you are even told every thing that happens in background most of the time too. Easier to tell why some things go wrong sometimes and can monitor how things run. Things you do not get with Windows or most of the very user friendly focused Operating Systems and GUIs.
Amazing to say the least. I recommend any body who is bored to start learning how to use a Terminal, it is a fun process and helps with your mental too. They say your brain is less likely to degrade if you keep learning new things.
I used to be console-command only but I realized sometimes you just want to rely on a graphical interface. When manually crafting a raw Bitcoin transaction for instance, you can screw up somewhere by entering the stuff manually. I would rather do it on the GUI. Granted, you always have maximum control with the terminal but this comes with great responsibility, and I don't want to gamble screwing up in the process specially in the context of irreversible transactions. Same goes for full disk encryption. One could write a bible about LUKS setups with the command line but I would rather stick to the basics and get it done on the GUI, unless I really needed something so specific that I required to enter it manually.