Since I game on Linux, Steam provides enough value since most games with Proton are one-click install. Don't use other stores though.

Steam provides something else too - up to date and patched games for latest systems. Its hard to follow those otherwise.

However, I am sure it will turn out to be scam one day and you will lose access to all/most games you bought.

Steam+Proton is magical these days, I have no problem supporting creators and buying their games.

With Steam, GOG and Humble Bundle, it's never been easier to game on Linux. It feels like paradise.

In a way, gaming is in much better shape (re: convenience) than streaming TV shows these days. Yes, DRM for online play can be problematic for Proton -- but fuck those games!

Lutris makes it easy to install GOG and Epic store games as well. Epic has been giving away a lot of games the past year or two, so it's a great option for Linux. Amazon Prime also gives away games that usually redeem on GOG or other stores. Great time to be a patient gamer. I have a huge, 100% legal collection of games that were all free thanks to these stores competing to build up their reputation.

is rutracker relatively secure for torrent downloads?

If you're download tv or books, then you should be okay as you won't be executing anything. I wouldn't trust software pirated from there (or other places).

Are books and video generally low probability as attack vectors then? Are PDFs harder to exploit?

Ofcourse they are. Majority of that stuff isn't executable, or if it is, it relies on exploits of viewers, so by using something else you are probably safe.

Also, there are sandboxes if you are unsure and you can convert to safer formats.

Anyway, I yet have to meet somebody that was fucked up this way, I guess there are numerious easier options.

Its way more probably that your country will hunt you, if you live in that lame country in which case VPN is a thing :)

Adobe Acrobat (Reader) opens PDFs from download locations in “Protected View” by default, which disables potentially dangerous dynamic features, and also by default opens all PDFs in a “Protected Mode” sandbox which restricts otherwise possible system access. You want to make sure that those are active. I believe that’s on Windows only, not sure what the implications are on other systems.

Without those restrictions, PDFs can execute embedded JavaScript on open, which can access and execute local files.

Preview on a Mac doesn't execute JavaScript in PDFs. To make sure you are not spreading anything to anyone, open the PDF in Preview and print it.

Same thing with Word.

Not sure how ebook readers handle js or xml exploits.

I have used Rutracker for almost ten years without one bit of malware.

You can use Windows sandbox or Sandboxie to test it out and do a sanity check, but in general, yes, it seesm OK. You never know though, given the current state of afairs in the world.

On the other hand, you can find almost anything there, faaar more then on most other places.

Regarding 2, what is MPV here?

Probably this: https://mpv.io/

Or, use SMPlayer, the nice x-platform frontend: https://www.smplayer.info/

It has awesome integration with open subtitles and remembers everything you do on a video so if it crashes or you stop, it just continues with everything set like volume, position subtitle sync etc.

smplayer is/started as a frontend for mplayer, but it looks like you can set it to use mpv as its backend.

Unfortunately libgen is pretty hit-or-miss for me, especially for fairly recent, or non-English, or pre-digital-age (badly scanned, if at all present) publications, or stuff like ISO standards.

There is a torrent of all ISO standards out there somewhere.

Presumably with some cutoff date?

You might be interested in this then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176479

Z-Library, while larger than LibGen, is still very incomplete as well.