In case anyone is not aware, there are user-friendly tools (that take their cut) which ensure maximum mining profitability for available hardware.
NiceHash, MinerGate, Awesome Miner and others - many have an affiliate program and fight against botnets (and antivirus often block the actual mining programs they download).
Thanks for the heads-up! I saw NiceHash and MinerGate mentioned off-hand in a random well-SEO'd article as easier alternatives instead of setting up everything manually[1] (before that I didn't even realize this was a thing!), and Awesome Miner came up recently as an option that appears to be freemium with a one-time purchase instead of a percentage.
I chose NiceHash personally because it is open source. It was literally download, click 'Benchmark', then after that finished, click 'Start'. They even transferred the ~$3 I had earned when the Bitcoin transaction fees dropped low enough to make it "worth it" even well below their normal minimum payout threshold.
Do you have time to provide a bit of context for your links? The first one doesn't even mention "MinerGate" on the first page of the 30 page discussion, and the second is just a yes/no list with no explanation of why things are where they are on the list or credentials for who made the list. There doesn't seem to be any recent or ongoing massive backlash against MinerGate anywhere online.
NiceHash, MinerGate, Awesome Miner and others - many have an affiliate program and fight against botnets (and antivirus often block the actual mining programs they download).