2
With Bitcoins being that much worth currently, I came to the conclusion of using a unique old computer just for this "use case".
I would like to run Ubuntu with bitcoin-qt (from PPA), but now the paranoia kicks in: what if the client is corrupted? I know that I can check against the MD5/SHsomething, but who guarantees that the client itself is not corrupted due to an error/mistake or even intentionally?
It is said that with PPA, nobody guaratees that the software itself is not corrupted, so I am unsure about transfering quite a lot of money to some software I don't know anything about.
2If you're really paranoid (not a bad thing) you can just avoid connecting your wallet-hosting (running the software) computer to the internet and avoid this issue entirely. In the end, though, the Bitcoin client is open-source software; no company guarantees that it will work no matter what source you obtain it from. Caveat emptor. – BinaryMage – 2013-04-03T16:28:53.420
ok, but is there a way (without internet) to be sure that my current wallet really is valid (and contains the amount of BTC I assume) any more? For this to know, you would need internet, correct? – Ice09 – 2013-04-04T07:56:59.840
3
Armory (an alternate Bitcoin client) has excellent support for offline wallets and superb documentation; I'd suggest you take a look at their page here.
– BinaryMage – 2013-04-04T15:18:21.620technically the company who develops the software (be it the original source code developers or a deviation of the original) is responsible for the stability. the entire bitcoin system is open source. if you dont want open source, bitcoin isnt for you. – Alex – 2013-04-16T16:46:06.177
you should ask the Askubuntu.com crowd. which is also a stackexchange site. – Alex – 2013-04-16T16:47:51.027
I felt this term wasn't obvious in the question, so note that PPA stands for Personal Package Archives.
– Nayuki – 2016-01-11T02:26:58.547