kyub @ kyub @discuss.tchncs.de

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2 yr. ago

Windows on its own is inferior and MS preys on its users by extracting more data and pushing them more into price-increasing cloud-based subscription models where privacy, ownership and the term "Personal Computing" means nothing anymore, and where its cloud infrastructure (where all your stuff lives) also is a big juicy target for hackers all over the globe, so you should absolutely, if you can, move away from Windows to a neutral OS like Linux, where you remain in control over what you use and the security of your infrastructure (if it's too hard for you, pay someone to take care of it, instead of shoving your whole life and all of your company's business secrets into MS' cloud).

The couple of areas where Windows can be seen as "superior" on the desktop are also mostly not due to Microsoft, but due to other developers (only) developing their stuff for Windows due to its popularity. So if you use some proprietary applications or special hardware which only work on Windows, you've made yourself dependent upon that OS. And by staying on that OS, you're not changing anything. You should move to Linux and insist on developers to make their stuff work on Linux as well. Or else nothing changes and MS will continue to do what they want with their users. It's a downhill spiral and it started with Win8 or Win10. At some point, Windows will be so bad and Linux desktop will be so good that a change will happen automatically. But still, you should switch now to accelerate the inevitable process, and not support MS for much longer. The monarchy is dead, we live in a democracy now. (Well, most of us)

Yes, the change can be hard, especially if you've used a lot of proprietary Windows-only stuff. But it's necessary. The operating system is too important for it to be 100% controlled by a privacy-disrespecting, US intelligence service obedient company. Sure, Windows might still offer you a better experience for your specific workflows in some cases. But it's a poisoned apple, and more and more poison gets added over time. Just move away and stay away. Adjust your workflows. Make a statement. Every new Linux user is another argument in favor of the open operating system, and another reason for developers to start building for Linux as well. If you stay on Windows because, say, your career depends on you using some proprietary Windows-only stuff, then OK, use it as long as you have to. I'm not telling you to stop using what you HAVE to use. But if you stay on Windows even though you could just as well move to Linux (which most people can), you're not doing anyone any favors except that you're supporting the status quo and slowing down important progress.

And about the games using anti-cheat ... just skip those. You don't even want them on Windows. That's literal malware you're installing onto your system, just to play a video game. Sure, Windows itself also contains malware, so maybe users just don't care. Fair point. But I still can't recommend people harming the security and privacy of their systems so blatantly. Some of the anti-cheat stuff is actually compatible on Linux if the developers allowed it to be (technically it is compatible in most cases, but devs have to allow it specifically), but please just don't support such things. There are many great games out there to play besides games using anti-cheats. Just like there are many great Linux-friendly applications you probably don't know about yet besides those Windows-only proprietary apps. It is some initial work to adjust and make the new discoveries, but it's worth it. Even necessary, considering how user-hostile Microsoft/Windows has become.

Though the early game is hardly important, because it's always easy. Like a tutorial area. In pretty much all games. Mid- and end-game proficiency is much more important.

I ask myself the same question all the time. So you supposedly have this super advanced space-travelling civilization, and they're somehow interested in us, who aren't even able to colonize another planet yet, and are destroying our only one planet in the meantime. We're like monkeys in a zoo to them. Why should we be interesting for a much more advanced civilization? At best, they'd monitor our "progress" as a civilization from afar, and maybe make contact once we've become a Kardashev type 2 or 3 civilization. If or when that happens. Still a long way. We haven't even ensured that our home planet is safe from us. Or maybe they want specific resources from Earth. But then we'd get much more visitors, who also wouldn't be friendly I guess. So I think it's highly unlikely, which means I also think this is being staged, intended to gain more funding.

Probably the "space theory" from the German BND (like the national NSA here). When they were confronted shortly after the Snowden revelations with why they're illegally collecting network data in bulk on their own citizens (in addition to international ones) they basically said "Well, we collect the data from satellites in earth's orbit, and because that's not on German soil, that law doesn't apply so it's OK for us to do this". I mean, of course they will do whatever they can to grab as much data as they can, and use whatever excuse or reasoning that allows them to continue to do so, and these kinds of institutions seem to exist in some extra-legal space anyway, so they don't really have to fear a lot of repercussions unfortunately, but that excuse was REALLY wild. Also shows the absurd ways in which systems or laws designed to protect us from abuse are being successfully and routinely gamed.

Looks healthy. There was activity and new releases in 2021, 2022 and June 2023. Also, the app might be near feature complete, and if that's the case there will only be sporadic work left like keeping it updated/compatible or fixing security ssues.

NetGuard Pro - Allows you to see and control traffic from all apps, so you can prevent data flows to 3rd party hosts like the ones from Google or Facebook. The pro edition is paid and necessary, but it's all open source, just not gratis

Aegis Authenticator - open source 2FA authenticator

LibreTube - alternative, privacy-respecting, open source YouTube frontend using the Piped API

Tor browser for mostly anonymous browsing, Mullvad browser as default non-Tor browser (it's basically an open source Firefox fork made by Mullvad and the Tor team), but I also still have a regular Firefox configured with Arkenfox' user.js and some important extensions, as well as a Chromium with zero protections except uBlock Origin. I switch between those browsers depending on use case. Each browser has a different theme to make them easily distinguishable from each other, the "insecure" browsers which I only use for rare exceptions (websites misbehaving in any other browser) have a red-like color. All browsers are being run sandboxed.

On mobile: Tor browser, Bromite and Vanadium.

Please don't use Opera (or any other proprietary browser). It contains a lot of on-by-default spyware and it's hard or impossible to disable everything.

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/opera-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil13/ (post in German, but you can see what the browser transmits. It's a lot. Including the domains of all sites you visit). The best way to increase your privacy with Opera is to uninstall it. Apparently, this is how they make their money nowadays. They used to sell their browser, but it's free since a while. So users pay with their data.

Also, try not to use Chromium based browsers (not even if they are purely open source, based on the open source Chromium base). Its development is very much steered by Google and their interests and you can see the effects e.g. with their Manifest v3 which cripples ad blocking extensions, for example.

Nix

SuSE @ 1999, then Slackware in the same year.

Tried SuSE (bought as a box) as an alternative to the annoying, unstable and insecure Windows 9x, it was also the time when Linux as an alternative desktop OS was starting to get hyped in the media. Especially in regards to stability and security. Well, it wasn't hard to beat Win9x in those areas. Tried it a bit, didn't like it that much (I think it was KDE 1.x) and also didn't understand much of it. I was still intrigued though and wanted to really learn it starting from the commandline, but I felt I couldn't with all the SuSE stuff like YaST being preinstalled.

So I bought a big book (by Michael Kofler), it was the de facto standard book for really learning Linux from the ground up back then. And I chose a distribution which would be much more minimalistic (because I felt that makes it easier to learn). So I installed Slackware. I used it for like 3 years and learned a lot (all the basics), it was a hard journey though and other distros started appearing and they promised to be more modern or better than Slackware.

So I tried Debian next, then Crux, then Arch. This was all around 2002-2006. I can't remember exactly how long I used each, but I do know I've used Slack for quite a lot, then Debian rather shortly, then Crux also not very long (basically I just wanted to test a source based distro but compile times were annoyingly long back in the day), and then it was Arch all the way. Arch was fast, rather simple, always up to date, and it had the great AUR. I didn't ever look back.

I did take a break from Linux as my primary OS from approximately 2009 to 2017, mostly due to playing a ton of video games (Windows only, not runnable at all on Linux back then) and also due to my career path making me work with lots of Windows Servers, Powershell and other Microsoft stuff.

Since about 2017/2018 I'm back to Linux as primary OS (Arch, again) and haven't looked back since. Even managed to fully delete all physical Windows partitions now (I only keep it in a VM in case I need to test something).

I'm testing NixOS on my notebook currently, it seems to be "the future", but my main desktop will probably stay Arch for a bit longer still.

Looking back at using Slackware early on, I don't regret it, since I learned a ton, but it was tough using Slackware around the 2000s. I still remember a lot of fighting with programs which wouldn't compile due to dependency errors or other compilation errors. And a lot of Google searches for various compilation errors leading to rare and hard to understand solutions found in random forum posts. Compared to that, any Linux distro feels like mainstream these days. But it was an efficient way to learn.

Yeah, but a sizeable increase is still very important. These days, Mastodon, Lemmy and so on have decently sized communities everywhere so that you don't feel like just talking to yourself and a couple of friends anymore. And that's kind of a tipping point.

"Mass migrations" happen slowly, anyway. A lot of people are very hesitant to leave big social hubs just because of the value there is in having so many people around. But in the end, you have to. We can't stay on these proprietary social networks forever. Social networks and communication channels in general need to be non-proprietary, decentralized and open, without the ability of companies manipulating what you see and don't see. And without risk of losing everything when the one big company falls. It's a fundamental problem of all proprietary social networks.

Valve is doing this for strategic reasons and also because they wanted to start the handheld PC market (Steam Deck). Strategic reasons: Microsoft could at any point buy several important gaming studios or distributors, distribute a lot of games (maybe exclusively) via their own store (they even announced that several years ago, but they didn't do it in the end). MS could even implement small things which make Steam perform worse on Windows, as its 100% controlled by MS. If you compete directly with Microsoft on the Windows platform, you will eventually lose because MS can do some very tiny tweaks which happen to make your product be more annoying or slower to use than Microsoft's own. That way they'll still fly under the radar for anti-competitive behavior. So Valve has to ensure that their main business model (selling/distributing games on Steam) remains future-proof, and that means more independent from Microsoft's agenda. To do this, they need to push a fully neutral, but viable alternative to Windows for gaming. Which is Linux.

Win7 was also the last "neutral" version of Windows in terms of integrated spyware ("telemetry") features (or rather, the lack thereof). Since Win8, this OS truly rolls downhill in many aspects. Since Win10, with greater speed.

Arch, Debian, NixOS, Fedora Silverblue, Raspbian, GrapheneOS[Android]

• Arch
• Debian
  • My favorite overall, they're community-run, stable, well-maintained, have a rich history of being awesome, and they're just top quality general-purpose distros. I tend to use Arch for more recent desktop systems and Debian for server systems or older desktops.

• NixOS
  • What I'm dabbling with currently, the concepts here are amazing but it's a bit of work at first to truly get value out of it. Still, seems to be a good option for my next notebook OS.

• Fedora Silverblue (respectively the immutable variants)
  • Also cool, as is Fedora in general, although with the recent Red Hat fiasco and Fedora's plan to introduce opt-out telemetry I'm more hesitant now. Some time ago I'd have listed Fedora at the top but now it's slid down a bit.

• Mint
• Kubuntu
  • Easy recommendations for new users coming from Windows

• VanillaOS
  • I like the idea of making it possible to install packages from all distros (they will then run in a distro-specific container). I wouldn't use it, but it's cool

• Kali
• Tails
• Alpine
  • From the more specific distros

• Slackware
  • Honorable mention, because it introduced me to Linux back in the day (yes, I liked starting the hard Unix way). I wouldn't recommend it these days but it's kind of like the granddaddy of all Linux distros, and it was awesome in its prime. I'm sure it can still be used today but it's gotten quite niche.

There seems to be a lack of good basic computer science education unfortunately. Schools and so on never caught up with the speed of technological advance. And back when I was in school, teachers taught things like "How do I use formulas in MS Excel" in computer science. It's probably still that way, so it's not neutral at all, instead you're learning how to use specific software products (often, Microsoft's). So relying on school education alone may be hopeless. But you can always learn for yourself or from others.

Why should I downgrade?

Apple's stuff is:

• Locked down hard, meaning you get completely vendor-locked-in, and you can't install alternative OS (there is none I think) or even apps from different sources without voiding warranty or using unsupported, unreliable hacks like jailbreaks for specific models.
• Privacy-invading. Sure, not as bad as proprietary Android distros, but still far from privacy-respecting
• Account-bound. Everything is tied to your Apple account. To even set up or use the product you need an account.
• As proprietary and closed source as it gets
• Ridiculously overpriced, so very low value for the money
• The company is known for its anti-competitive and monopolistic, even mafia-style behavior (e.g. when insisting on their 30% cut for all apps, insisting that apps use the in-app-purchasing system and not allowing "subscriptions from outside of Apple's ecosystem", stuff like that. If app developers don't comply with ridiculous rules, they get their apps taken down, and since the AppStore is the only source for apps, this means they have 100% control and can kill any app which they don't like or which they perceive as competition for Apple's own apps.

Use GrapheneOS. It's a secure, fully privacy-respecting open source distro of Android (based on the open source Android) without any Google services/apps by default, but with full Android app compatibility.

The right way to implement telemetry:

• It's off by default (opt-in). To increase visibility of this option, it's OK to ask the user via popup, during setup, or similar, whether he would like to turn it on
• Once it's on, the user should be informed BEFORE each upload takes place about the exact content which should be uploaded, and asked whether he wants to send it (Y/N)
• Transmission must only contain truly necessary data
• Transmission must be encrypted

People can be changed, it just takes time and it might be hard. It also depends on how open-minded they are. Also, with technology, you have the additional problem that many people still don't understand most technology even on a basic level, and they might not know anything better than what they're currently using. If you show it to them, it might not even be so hard to get them to change. So I think there are a lot of factors at play. But even in the hardest cases, hard doesn't mean impossible.

No. Soul = personality, nothing magic.