In 2008, a man told me that he was running Ubuntu without any antivirus software because Linux OS had built in abilities to shield off any intruding software.

I am a photographer. And I show many of my photographs on Russian websites. Therefore, I visit Russian websites everyday. Because of this, my PC is under surveillance.

There is nothing to be afraid of, but just the disgusting feeling. I want to shield off the surveillance.

What Linux OS can shield off surveillance?

Thank you.
DiaNobb

The age of privacy is over, but you could look at Tails

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Any Linux will be resistant to virus' that target Windows, but to prevent surveillance it is more a matter of what browser you use and extensions you enable.
You need to use a browser that resists tracking along with extensions to block hostile web content. Firefox offers protection by default since it limits cookies to the site they originated from, so they can't track you at every site you visit. It also does not sell advertising so it does to pass your data to that subdivision like Chrome and Edge does.
Extensions like uBlock Origin will prevent suspicious web content from even being loaded when you visit a site.

For your needs, you might be able to get by with a Linux you boot from a USB drive, then use it to visit these sites. When you are done and power off, nothing is saved as everything was running in memory and not written to the disk.

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Depends upon the country you live in. In most cases a reputable paid VPN would be fine, but that may even be overkill.

If in a country that loves to watch what their citizens are doing, tails or tor may be the only option. But using that in some of those countries may get you in trouble.

I do not know what surveillance means, you had to install spyware ?

But you can try this. Create a script that does this when you want to go to a Russian Site:

1. Rename ~/.mozilla to ~/save.mozilla
2. chmod 400 ~/save.mozilla
3. Start firefox
4. Pruse russian sites and only russian sites
5. when done remove ~/.mozilla (or maybe rename to russia.mozilla)
6. rename save.mozilla to ~/.mozilla
7. chmod 700 ~/.mozilla

This is in case you are worried about a javascript process looking at your cache, settings and whatever else Firefox saves.

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In addition, I would suggest to use TOR (Torbrowser) and/or a vpn.
TAILS is certainly a good (if noet the best) start.
Tips for using tor and vpn on Tails: https://www.privacyaffairs.com/vpn-with-tails/
Strong privacy needs strong measurements.

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That doesn't mean you can protect yourself as much as possible. There is a 'lot' of information you don't have to 'dump' into the cloud (like a lot of FB and youtuber users tend do for example). Just shrugging it off as 'I have nothing to hide' is not the 'answer' as any information can be exploited no matter how benign you may think it is.... Just think about it, in the near future, a nefarious AI 'could' scrape up everything it can find about you/us... and then become you/us as identity theft.... So keep things close to your vest so to speak!

What do you mean by surveillance??? How paranoid are you? How restrictive is your country. Go from simple to very complex setups depending on your needs.

For me here in the USA, I make sure a firewall first and foremost is setup on each machine. Then the firefox browser, turning off telemetry, blocking adverts, cookies, trackers and such with say ublock origin. Finally set my DNS server address to a local PI-Hole machine. Of course I don't allow most services (Sftp, nfs, samba) to have a 'presence' on the internet either via firewall and also binding some services to an interface not on the Internet. Setup strong passwords. Any Linux distribution will work fine for what I do.

Bottom line, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Tails/TOR/VPNs/disk encryption/external firewalls/etc...

Linux and secured Linux is good for many things, but nothing makes you immune from surveillance. The best thing is to limit your activity so they have very little to surveil!

NOTHING makes you look like someone they NEED to surveil than acting like you are trying to avoid surveillance! IT puts you bright and dead center on their radar!

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I agree.
My privacy has already been compromised by a hack on my ISP. I was lucky not to be caught up in medical insurance and health system hacks. The government requires collection and storage of metadata of internet connections.
These are beyond my control.

TOR (Onion network clients), or a private VPN, avoids sending valid metadata unencrypted where your ISP can record it.

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I've no need for this kind of thing myself, but Edward Snowden does, and he recommends Tails

Just one more addition: security is not a software or a switch, it is a continuous activity. So you cannot find a safe/secure OS, you need to set it up (or configure) and also you need to maintain it. Almost all of the linux distributions offer the same set of [basic] functionalities, therefore you can use your preferred one. But obviously you need to learn to protect yourself (which does not actually depend on the selected operating system itself).

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Could you please explain the purpose of each of these steps in order to help me understand how they would defeat surveillance?

The government is not your friend and is the first to spy on you, but mostly by proxy. They contract with private companies like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Google, the larger communications companies, etc. in order to bypass FOIA. These companies will collect EVERYTHING on you, in real time, and store it forever, mostly in collaboration with each other so that your data file contains what they each collect separately. They run algorithms that can analyze your data to determine whatever information they can conceivably write the code to discover, going beyond simple things like learning your habits, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, fears, aversions, desires, expectations, etc., to tracking and storing your movements and real-time location, who you come in close contact with and for how long and how frequently, make predictions or draw conclusions about your words and actions with an ever-improving degree of accuracy as more data is constantly collected, know what you know by monitoring what you read or view online or off and how much of it you read or view, analyze what you write and edit when composing text and draw conclusions about why you change your words, learn the extent of your vocabulary, your thinking processes, your levels of knowledge in varied subjects, etc.

They can look ahead to a limited degree at what you're about to experience and predict how you'll respond when you do, or even create an experience to get a desired response from you. They can control the information you get online to manipulate your thoughts and beliefs, surround you with social-bots to lead you into conversations in order to find out what you think or believe about a particular thing or to keep you busy and waste your time when you would otherwise be doing something they don't want you to, flood you with information to drown out what you would otherwise see that they don't want you to, stroke your ego to lead you into actions you wouldn't normally take, lead others to believe certain things about you that aren't necessarily true in order to keep them away from you and isolate you from society, or to cause you problems in other ways as extrajudicial punishment for doing or saying things they feel are wrong but aren't illegal, etc.

They can also analyze whole segments of a population in the same or similar ways, using the mass of collected data on each individual. Computer modelling can determine the potentials for varying outcomes, allowing whole segments of society to be controlled.

What other purpose is surveillance for other than to control people without them knowing it? When have all these surveillance cameras we're surrounded by actually made any difference in making people safer? Why is facial recognition software being introduced, and digital currencies, and AI? Why is 'misinformation' suddenly such a bad thing and censoring people on certain social media sites for whatever they decide is 'hate speech' or wrongthink becoming the norm? Why are the mainstream media news outlets always pushing the same narrative no matter which one you choose to watch? Why was mass media created in the first place?

Their acquisition of your personal data isn't just beyond your control. The whole system is OUT of control.

Who do you think the 'hackers' are? Why do you think they allegedly hack these particular sites we hear about? How do you know if they actually did?

Be careful how you respond. You're being monitored.

A significant degree of surveillance takes place at the network level and the government OWNS the network. No OS, trick, or setting will obscure that surveillance once your traffic goes outside your direct control and into theirs.

Do not bet your life on obfuscation!

Tails. Also known as The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, Tails is a Debian-based operating system that focuses on privacy and anonymity. It routes all its internet connections through Tor, which makes it difficult to track