Linux

They’re updated regularly. Take a look at your etc/apt/sources on both. Debian has everything coming from their servers, Ubuntu has a bunch more.

If you’re going Ubuntu -> Debian be prepared to switch to testing or enable some packages from testing or even use an alternate install method for some software (yt-dlp).

Are you using Ubuntu Long Term Release or not ?

• I'm subscribed to Ubuntu and Debian announcements via email, and I see much more often Linux kernel updates for Ubuntu than for Debian. It makes me wonder whether the Debian kernel is slimmed down, and that Ubuntu is focused on Enterprises with their kernel.

I wonder, if you are asking two different questions:

1. Why don't you receive notifications about updated packages?
2. Two: Security and bugfixes

For 1. it depends which desktop environment you use, Gnome/KDE have this update notifications out of the box, for other DEs (Xfce, LXDE, etc.) you might need to enable this with the installation of synaptic or similar.

For 2. Debian stable does not ship bugfixes but Debian stable ships security fixes. I highly recommend to subscribe to Debians Security mailing list, especially for security fixes concerning browsers and other stuff.

Edit: I have enabled automatic updates and I still receive regular notifications via Gnome Software, at least once per week.

Debian favors stability over anything else so the packages are thoroughly tested before release and then only upgraded for security issues, until the next release 2 years later when everything gets an update.

Ubuntu favors releasing more recent package versions constantly throughout the period between major releases.

You can install packages on Debian from the backports repo if you occasionally need an package to be a more recent version.

Another option is to install apps from Flatpak. The apps in Flatpak have their own separate dependency system and can be used on any distro.

If neither of these works for you and you find yourself constantly wishing packages were newer you may want to consider a different distro.

Some people switch their Debian from stable to testing to get similar updates to Ubuntu. You can try that but please understand you may experience the occasional issues.

Be wary of adding external repos (that don't point to debian. org) because they can mess with the package dependencies and prevent you from upgrading to the next version when it comes out. (This also applies to Ubuntu.)

Kali is a pentesting distro, it's not designed for malware analysis. The distro you'd want to use for malware analysis is REMnux, but it's mostly meant for static analysis. Static analysis is fine, but you may not be able to dig deep unless you're familiar with decrypting code and using tools like Cutter, Ghidra, EDB etc for debugging. Naturally you'd also need intimate low-level coding experience, familiarity with assembly language and/or Win32 APIs (or whatever APIs the malware is using). So this isn't an area a casual security researcher can just get into, without some low-level coding experience. But you can at least do some beginner-level analysis like analysing the PE headers and using some automated tools which employ signature-based detection, or you could analyse strings and URLs embedded in the malware; stuff like that.

Dynamic analysis is far more easier to get into and more "fun", but the problem is of course, with most malware being made for Windows, Linux is kinda irrelevant in this scenario. But you could still run Linux as a VM host and run the malware inside a Windows VM. The problem with running malware in VMs though is that these days any half-decent malware would be VM/context aware and may evade detection, so for accurate results you'd really want to run the malware on a real machine, and use tools like procmon, IDA, wireshark etc for analysis. But again, decent malware may be able to evade tools like procmon, so it can get quite tricky depending on how clever your malware is. You'd normally employ a combination of both static and dynamic analysis.

Industry pros these days often use cloud-based analysis systems which can account for many such scenarios, such as Joe Sandbox, Any.Run, Cuckoo etc. These offer a mix of both VM and physical machine based analysis. You can use these services for free, but there are some limitations of course. If you're doing this for furthering your career, then it's worth getting a paid subscription to these services.

Coming back to Kali Linux - it's not something you'd want to install permanently on physical machine, as its meant to be an ephemeral thing - you spin it up, do your pentesting, and then wipe it. So most folks would use it inside a VM, or run Kali from a Live USB without installing it.

There are also alternatives to Kali, such as ParrotSec and BlackArch, but really from a pentesting toolbox point of view, there's not much of a difference between them, and it doesn't really matter (unless you're a Linux nerd and like the flexibility Arch offers). Most industry folks use Kali mainly, so might as well just stick to it if you want to build up familiarity in terms of your career.

As for your Surface Go - you could install a normal daily-driver Linux distro on your Surface if you really want to, and then run Kali under KVM - which is personally how I'd do it. Running Linux on Linux (KVM) is pretty convenient has a very low performance overhead. You can also employ technologies like ballooning and KSM to save RAM, if your system has low RAM.

Most third-party Lemmy clients should support this. For instance, if you're on Sync, you can just swipe it hide the post (assuming you've configured it that way).

I'm sorry I don't know of any way to do that :( does it appear even when you're browsing your main feed??

Nope.