Hi guys, after lurking here for a long time, I've decided to take a chance and to try to hack myself. I've never hacked any kind of console before and I'm fairly new to the topic, so please bear with me. Also, thanks a lot for all you great people helping us noobs out and answering all sorts of questions in your freetime.
I'm currently trying to figure out how to set up my SD card. I'm aware that I need to format it into fat32 and that before doing anything, I should backup my NAND.
1. From the "Backup/Restore your Nand"-guide (sorry, I can't post links since this is my first post), I gather that NAND backups should be done with hekate. I also understand that hekate and Atmosphère somehow belong together. Are these the only options? If not, what are the main reasons to use these?
Additionally, I'm wondering how to decide what CFW to use. Please correct me if any of this information is wrong: Homebrew supports a wide variety of firmware versions, new updates being released a couple of weeks after Nintendo has released a new official update. If one wishes to update, they should always wait for a "Homebrew version" of it, as updating with Nintendo would require being online (possibility of being banned) and burning fuses(?).
2. I am purchasing a Nintendo switch that has never been used, and confirmed via the serial number that it is hackable. How do I find out what firmware it is currently running, as it was sold by Nintendo? (Does it even come with a firmware or does Nintendo require their users to update once the console was turned on the first time? In other words, is an untouched Switch even running a firmware?)
3. How do I decide what kind of version I want to run? This is the kind of question that gets me confused the most, since guides and forum discussions vary strongly in the time they were created. I understand that in order to play the latest games, I need the latest versions. But I have also read about several functions that might seem cool which are not supported by versions 3.x.x (I think?) or higher. How did you guys decide what version you want to run?