Is LMDE safe for personal banking, online shopping, ...etc?

[Moem]

the same hack enabled them to supply dodgy isos and dodgy checksum files that appeared to be verifying those isos. From the user perspective, once the download page(s) were taken down, nobody could again be deceived by the fake server.

Yes, that is fully correct!

[Shiva]

The first question should be : is banking or shopping on the internet safe (whatever OS you use) ?

There were numerous exploits stealing personal data like cards numbers, passwords ... because companies concentrate on profits (part of their job I agree), but not in security which is only a cost, so has to be put on bare legal minimum.
Compromising people's data comes utmost often from company security breaches because hackers are not interested in your account only (unless you're an alias of Bezos, Gates, Musk ...) but in a huge number of accounts which they can sell on the dark web.

So trying to find the best distro to buy or bank on line is almost irrelevant because you'll never know how safe your datas are kept in the company's base.

About distros, the only tip I could give is to never use one you don't fully trust. I'm using LMDE since Cindy (LMDE3) because I've faith in Debian and the LM Team - but not in Ubuntu, that's why I decline LM's main version even if I underline the effort of the team to avoid snap to become a pain in the ass for Mint users.

[t42]

I think it's time to cool out with declarations in this topic. OP was not seen on the Forum since 24 Dec 2023 and they ask at that time specific question and immediately received some answers. No need to tell story of your life to the competent person who used

RHEL-derivatives for work and Debian-derivatives such as Ubuntu/Q4OS

[hd66]

There is one Linux distro that is a "stand-out" in terms of security: Qubes, sometimes called qubes-os. A brief overview follows, but for full info you need to see their website at http://www.qubes-os.org/ but if you are already not interested in qubes pleasescroll down to the bold heading about safely installing LinuxMint below

i would add, openbsd still have a very-long-term ultra-secured reputation in the IT, in it's default installation.
but having a end-user usage (is possible) is still a bit specific for a random person...

[jeanpaul]

My question is this: I have an old laptop which I use exclusively for online banking and shopping, which currently runs Windows 10 and has no other software installed but Chrome. As W10 nears its EOL, I am looking to migrate back to Linux.

Hi,

Security for online shopping and banking doesn't really depend on the Linux OS you are or will be using, but more on the Browser and the security settings within the Browser.
You could f.i. install 'Librewolf' as browser within flatpak ... First of all Flatpak apps are contained, meaning they run in their environment and as such not immediately affecting the whole OS,
and secondary Librewolf is a Firefox based browser but more focussed on privacy and security.

Kind regards,
Paul

[Moem]

Mod note:
The related, but new question asked by modus-modus is now here. Please do not ask your questions on existing topics, start new topics instead.