You can use core for offline signing if you use raw transactions. It's possible but not easy or even safe for most users. Not safe because if you make a mistake it could get very costly!

You don't have to do anything. You don't have to keep electrum or even your computer running.

1) The purpose of the receive tab is explained here. It's just to provide a workflow for receiving bitcoin. If you prefer to use the addresses tab instead then that is ok too.

2) Disable full wallet file encryption if opening electrum is too cumbersome for you. That is go to wallet menu > password enter your password in all three fields and uncheck encrypt wallet file at the bottom. If you do it like this you will still need the password to spend your bitcoins but not to view your wallet file and get receiving addresses.

Otherwise do as xdrpx said. That command can also be run on the command line `electrum listaddresses` on linux and MacOSx.

3) Addresses are generated in sequence and behind the scenes each address has an index number like 0,1,2 etc. Electrum considers an address as "used" if it has received bitcoin to it at least once. Electrum maintains 20 unused addresses past the index of the last used address. That number 20 is the default gap limit or lookahead window. So the answer to your question is that as you start to receive funds to your addresses Electrum will generate new ones automatically.

Note that if you change the gap limit like xdrpx said you better make sure to note it down alongside your seed backup so that if, in future, you restore your Electrum wallet you can change the gap limit again. You will have to do that if you restore from seed.

If you can afford the resource usage of Core you should be running Core.

Watch-only or not watch-only the privacy leak is the same.

Alternatively if your authenticator app was authy you can look into recovering access to your authy account via your associated email address or phone number.

I asked thomas on IRC about this and he said he would look into creating a binary but looks like he didn't do it. I got the feeling that they don't want to encourage users of EOL MS operating systems.

2.9.4 was originally created to accommodate Ubuntu LTS Linux users who can't use python 3 for some reason.

You can send to any and all addresses using electrum. Other wallets and websites don't usually support the segwit addresses that electrum creates i.e. bech32 addresses. So you will have difficulty withdrawing money from exchanges, receiving money from other bitcoin users and so on. You can send to anyone though.

If you want to create a segwit electrum wallet then follow this guide except that when you are asked to choose between standard and segwit you elect segwit. Then simply grab a receiving address, switch to your current wallet file and send your coins to the segwit wallet's address.

Also it has nothing to do with sites hosting electrum wallets. Electrum wallets stay on your PC and are not hosted on sites.

- Wallet files are not removed when you uninstall electrum.

- To upgrade you don't have to uninstall the old version. Just install the latest version and it'll upgrade you automatically. It'll also find your wallet files automatically and use them.

- You can open a different wallet file via various methods. You can also save backup copies of your wallet file via file > save copy.

Cold storage won't help if you download a malware version of electrum. The author of that malware already knows the secrets the wallet is going to use.

I've heard that arch has the latest packages in its repos however when it comes to other distros it is best to install from source using pip3. That's because electrum has a very fast release cycle while distro package maintainers don't release as often so you get outdated packages on distro repos.

I use opensuse myself but debian is good too

The answer depends on the banking system of your country. If bank transfers are reversible in your country then its possible for a bitcoin buyer to scam you like this. If that is the case then you should only deal in person with cash. Yes you can meet buyers on localbitcoins that will meet up with you in person and buy for cash.

You can safely buy and sell on localbitcoins.

There is no harm in having an electrum watch-only wallet on the same server as the ecommerce store. A watch-only wallet can't be spent from so there is no risk to having it on the same server as the store.

Alternatively you can skip using electrum entirely and use a bip32 library to derive addresses from the MPK on the fly.

Yes assigning different addresses to different customers is the right thing to do.

There is no need to use an old version. Always use the latest version of electrum.

You've set a password and now you've forgotten it. If you have the seed then restore using that. Here's how you can do that: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/restoring-your-standard-wallet-from-seed/

There is a notify command line option that'll tell you when funds are received to an address. There are also various get* options like getaddressbalance and gettransaction. Please run `electrum help` on the command line to see all these options. It is better to use the CLI or JSON RPC interface than reading the wallet files directly.

You can do `electrum setconfig rpcport` to set an rpc port. Different ports for the different daemons.

Why are you exporting addresses to a database? You can get electrum to generate them on demand for you.

Please don't use that old version of electrum. Use electrum 3.0.5 if you must update. Here's a guide for that: https://www.reddit.com/r/Electrum/comments/7cjjpg/electrum_synchronizing_message_on_tails/

If you are already on 3.0.5 then try changing servers.

If you had a password set then there is no way you were vulnerable to the json rpc exploit.

Edit: What electrum version was the wallet originally created in? If you don't know the version do you know the time period it was created in?

You need the corresponding private key or seed. IF you don't have that you can't spend from your watching only wallet.