My Linux Mint Project

[me.moo@posteo.me 80]

For a technical guy it has taken me a surprisingly long time to be bothered to try and seriously use Linux. My excuse is laziness and a lack of being bothered. However, today Ive got the laptop dual booted with Linux Mint 17.2. I eventually want to use Linux as my main op, sooner the better.

 

So far I have managed to install Wine and figured out how it works and configured it ok (i think), mainly because I wanted to try and run msecure which I use for passwords and stuff. That has worked fine apart from two things which I cant seem to get around.

 

The main one is that the msecure main window does not list every item, only one entry/line. All the data is there and I can find what I want using the search filter but all I can see is one single line instead of the list. I can see all the details I need in the right hand pain so the app is usable,

 

The other thing is that when I try to open the database I can't access the partition it resides on (in fact no partition outside the Linux environment shows up). I can copy it over using a file manager so it is not a problem but I guess this is a limitation under the Wine runtime.

 

I have used msecure to enable me to sign in to Airvpn already so its been worth it just for that so far

 

I'm doing a couple of on-line courses to get me going but if anyone would like to comment or chip in, feel free. I might well be asking questions at some point

[zhang888 1066]

Why do you pull those Windows apps along when you move to an open-source world? This would limit your usability and freedom.

A not less important question is why you trust some closed source application with all of your passwords.

An exception might be LastPass - it's also closed source but at least it received a high attention from the security community and might

be considered somewhat safer, with native Linux support.

 

Wine has some issues with rendering certain menu items, especially if they are not coded in a certain standard.

In any case, look at KeePassX.

[me.moo@posteo.me 80]

Well the reason for msecure is that I looked at and evaluated loads of such applications and it was the only one that fulfilled all my requirements and from my research I found nothing to suggest I couldn't trust mseven as a company. That doesn't mean to say they are but I have no worries using it. There are several reasons I rejected Keepass, one being the pain of importing over 500 records of about 15 different record layouts, something which msecure can handle with a breeze.

 

Lastpass is just convenient for browser sign-ins, it is not able to hold all the information I need over several platforms with immediate sync - msecure can do all that too. Its the only Windows application I need to get started, I cant't think of anything else at the moment that can't be replaced by something Linux!

 

This is an ongoing thing, doing it bit by bit and I'm open to any comments from experts such as yourself.

 

Many thanks

[me.moo@posteo.me 80]

Another thing I found with msecure under Wine is that if I minimize the window then it completely dissapears. The process is still running and I have to kill it and restart. This would be ok if I could simply keep the window open but it acts modal - it insists on keeping in front of any other window and won't even move to a slave monitor out of the way!

[Baraka 32]

Please keep this thread going! Linux Mint is the most popular *nix distro by far and many more people using this service will be migrating to it, I'm sure. Maybe this thread should be moved to the How-To section? Off-Topic just doesn't seem to do it any justice.

[rickjames 106]

Why do you pull those Windows apps along when you move to an open-source world? This would limit your usability and freedom.

A not less important question is why you trust some closed source application with all of your passwords.

An exception might be LastPass - it's also closed source but at least it received a high attention from the security community and might

be considered somewhat safer, with native Linux support.

 

This ^

 

Imo just use a .txt file and toss it on a separate encrypted drive.

[OmniNegro 155]

 

Why do you pull those Windows apps along when you move to an open-source world? This would limit your usability and freedom.

A not less important question is why you trust some closed source application with all of your passwords.

An exception might be LastPass - it's also closed source but at least it received a high attention from the security community and might

be considered somewhat safer, with native Linux support.

This ^

 

Imo just use a .txt file and toss it on a separate encrypted drive.

I use text files for all my usernames and passwords. I do not even bother with an encrypted drive. I just make a 7zip archive with AES-256 encryption as the container for the text files. It is amazingly simple and secure enough for another few million Human generations.

[zhang888 1066]

Totally agree.

 

Best password manager is:

 

To encrypt:

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in mysecretlist.txt -out mysecretlist.enc -pass pass:YOURPASS

To decrypt:

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in mysecretlist.enc -out mysecretlist.txt

 

All that can be done on an already encrypted USB drive or partition.

[go558a83nk 362]

Totally agree.

 

Best password manager is:

 

To encrypt:

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in mysecretlist.txt -out mysecretlist.enc -pass pass:YOURPASS

To decrypt:

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in mysecretlist.enc -out mysecretlist.txt

 

All that can be done on an already encrypted USB drive or partition.

 

so I assume it will ask for password to decrypt?

[zhang888 1066]

so I assume it will ask for password to decrypt?

 

Yes it will, and this password will not be echoed so you can use it safely even when somebody is watching.

Just remember to wipe the text file later, if using a less trusted environment.

 

You can even automate it with something like a bash script to lock the database and then use srm to wipe

the original file 32 times, and then unlock script that will only echo the file to the terminal and not write it to disk.

The oppurtunities with using software that you -know- how it works are endless. Just adjust it to your use case.

[me.moo@posteo.me 80]

Great advice and info from above so thanks.

 

I was using an encrypted exported csv for a while, however for me the abitity to sync any changes almost instantly is very important.