Yes, I came across that after posting my question.

Yes, here the author makes a case of sorts:

The " ... diversifying your entropy sources." bit sounds good. Might as well keep it running.

Indeed ... 8^D
I could have never paid £2K for a workstation but I am quite sure that you are right, a Pi would work great.
That said, I think that what I need (like most desktop users) is the best randomness available without much ado or expense.

Can't find the post now, but it seems that haveged is not at all expensive to run so my guess is that between the kernel and the haveged service running, I may be properly covered, at least randomness-wise.
Time will tell.

Thank you both for your input.
Much obliged.

Best,

A.

NB. for real randomness security use a Pi, not your £2K workstation.

References:
https://github.com/jirka-h/haveged/blob … /README.md
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=48879#p48879

Disclaimer:
Reason for asking =  a good deal (if not all) of this is over my head.

Not being sure about what to do about Excalibur, I have been having a look at various things related to security.
Yesterday I remembered haveged, checked that it was running and, recalling that I had set it a few years ago, checked the available entropy.

Turns out that it returned a value of 256.

But I recalled having changed it to a higher value (1024?) as suggested in various web pages.
A look at /etc/default/haveged revealed the present setting:

$ cat /etc/default/haveged
# Configuration file for haveged

# Options to pass to haveged:
# DAEMON_ARGS=" "
$ 

I checked the haveged service was running and the available entropy setting and poolsize:

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
256
$

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize
256
$ 

But that was not what I recalled having set as per the recommendations at that time.
So I looked up web pages I had bookmarked and edited the file, uncommenting the setting and editing it to what I remembered (?).

$ cat /etc/default/haveged
# Configuration file for haveged

# Options to pass to haveged:
DAEMON_ARGS="-w 1024"
$ 

That would give me a value over 1000 which was the accepted minimum value at the time I set it up.

Then I stopped / restarted the service, checked that it was running and the available entropy setting and poolsize:

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
256
$

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize
256
$ 

What was going on?

TL;DR
I seems that as of kernel 5.10.119, the value of 256 bytes has been hardcoded.
See this link:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/704737

Right ...
Like I said at the start of this post, all this is over my head, reason why I am asking about it.

I do know that entropy is important, more in servers that desktops, but still important.
The "As long as your computer doesn't ... " bit does not mean much to me, more so in the context of all that is going on with Linux these past few years.

And yes, the  "... 256 at any time is way more than ever necessary." bit did bring a smile to my face.

That said, I'd appreciate the opinion of those members who actually understand / have a grip on this stuff.

Best,

A.