all 27 comments

[–]sad_campaign 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Linux, BSD, macOS, Solaris, HP/UX, and practically every other operating system or computing environment out there shares the same history, file structure, and works basically the same way. Not counting licensing choices, APIs, and the languages that the front end is written in (I am looking at you Apple). This is because macOS, Solaris, and HP/UX, among others are bonafide Unix certified. While BSD and Linux are Unix-like. The one and only major outlier in servers, home computers, and other areas is Windows with it's NT kernel, NTFS, and horrible file management and practically non-existent package manager. With macOS now using x86 every major proprietary software is available on macOS, and crossover for Linux and Mac is simply icing on the cake, so to speak. Windows is non-existent in the mobile space with the exception of netbook like ultrabooks. Servers and mainframes are where Linux shines, and what you have is a hodgepodge of desktop users for gaming and business workstations, consumers who use aging or cheap-ass laptops as desktop replacements, and a shrinking number of embedded systems like ATMs and POS machines. The only things keeping Microsoft and therefore Windows alive are: 1) Businesses that never want to upgrade and pay for extended support 2) Gamers that still use Windows and those who use Xbox 3) Colleges and many large corporations mandating use of Office 4) Patents dealing with DRM and the FAT based filesystem that practically every USB flashdrive and Android uses.

Let me put it this way, out of all the people you know how many have within the last year bought a MS product? Honestly I can't remember the last time I ever did, and sure I have Office365 from my school, but that is free for students of institutions that already have an Office License (meaning that MS didn't make any money from me). All my computers are either from Apple or System 76. The last 6 phones I have had include 2 Androids, 3 flip phones with KaiOS, and 1 iPhone. I mean hell I am an accounting student at night (WGU) and freelance bookkeeper by day and all my clients use either LibreOffice, OpenOffice, or GoogleDocs, Xero, and Quickbooks Online. I use SoftMaker Office heavily since all my clients can read the files and only touch Excel if I am doing a proctored exam. Fedora 32 with WINE and Steam dualbooting on my Mac Mini with Catalina and the games, software, etc that entails is enough games for me and many of my friends. Out of all my friends I can think of only 3 who have an XboxOne and 6 that uses Windows for PC games. The vast majority have a PS4 and/or Switch and doesn't mind gaming in Linux as long as Steam and WINE are installed. I think that Microsoft will manage to stay around for quite some time, but more in the capacity of IBM and less Google. Just my two cents, so take it for what you will.

[–]jmichaelhudsondotnet 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

ransomware hit all windows, it is vulnerable and essentially a cloud operating system, where any TLA can get into any windows system trivially.

macOS has gone downhill and is not much different now, I have seen some things that demonstrate it is not secure.

Ubuntu Linux comes from an org called canonical, like mozilla, and frankly it is very likely backdoored as well. The more corporate the development team is, the more easily it is infiltrated with spooks. Same thing at things like the wikipedia foundation. It is endemic in our society, that even the "non profit" orgs appear all squeaky clean, but that is a ruse. Almost all non-profits are tightly controlled by the same corporate forces, on their boards, making hiring decisions.

Then there is systemD from red hat, many including myself argue that systemD makes the system no longer linux as it is a fundamental change in philosophy and function. This is a giant security nightmare as it is difficult to audit and has far reaching access to the system. And with processors, especially "intel" having known mini-computers(potentially with wifi...) built in, it is a nightmare.

Qubes, Tails, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Devuan, are some possible real alternatives, but using any of these requires real learning, real knowledge, and selecting specific hardware. Which is another aspect, so many devels who could have potentially audited systemd are so annoyed by that prospect, they left the entire platform, so a double whammy against security. Using ubunto or fedora is NOT a privacy solution, although it is an improvement and often the only option some people will have.

So we are running headfirst into an empty swimming pool of total top down control and domination of everything digital, lead by people like bill gates, who frankly act like they have a brain slug as they push their freaky agenda, overlooking all of these drastic anti-privacy changes, and use their money not to fund independent auditing and security improvement, but journalistic organizations so they can quash any story.

Then people like myself who have real experience with this stuff,

a. sound like we are from neptune when we talk to normies

and

b. go broke because every employer is looking for easy answers, one stop shops like apple and microsoft, and "the cloud"(azure hq now actually run out of israel and executives are actual spies).

While encryption itself gradually gets declared illegal, wifi signals are used like radar to 3d image the room you are sitting in right now, and it is impossible to get anyone to even sit at a dinner table without an unauditable unsecurable tracking/listening -computer tower condensed into a tiny box-.

All of these things are demonstrated then memory holed, and somehow, there are all of a sudden way more intelligent people willing to write corrupt code than there are intelligent people remaining to work for the public interest. And those that are, like myself, (if i toot my own horn a little bit), get stalked and are essentially thought criminals. People like cory doctorow, btw, look like they care but are likely comprimised, and there are honeypot "hacker" entities like "ecohackerfarm.org" that lure people into entrapment operations with undercover police.

Underneath all of this is the conflict with china, where all of our devices shipped to and from there are part of a real covert information war, where EVEN IF, you create a private tech stack, both countries would attack it immediately because it would enable one or the others agents to use it inside their borders. I will never trust a product out of china, or israel, in this lifetime, but there are some americans and europeans remaining who are not co-opted. In my opinion, but they are going to be under attack like I am, and for us to organize or have meetings without direct interference, is nearly impossible. The public itself is being eliminated, there is only a two tier system now, those within the state security/defense/offense apparaturs, and cows. And the cows children are vulnerable to epstein because of this also.

It is a very very bad situation. I have done all I can to prevent this, but it is putting me in danger. And once you are being stalked, who wants to be your friend? Either you are delusional or, you are being stalked and that is likely to be contagious.

If you have the brains to appreciate this, contribute to my work(btc at my site) or people like me will cease to exist, sooner rather than later.

[–]happysmash27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What are your feelings about Gentoo without SystemD? There is still the Intel ME problem, which is why I dream of getting a Talos Secure Workstation someday, there might be issues with the kernel itself – even limited HDCP makes me worried, and even with Wayland supports DRM now :( – but… okey, maybe Linux really is declining even in other respects, even if perhaps fairly mildly, as the 2017 article argues.

As for devices out of China, how do you feel about the Librem 5 vs Librem 5USA? Surely an open source device that can be independently audited could be safe, right?

It is a very very bad situation. I have done all I can to prevent this, but it is putting me in danger. And once you are being stalked, who wants to be your friend?

I do, certainly. I would really like to be around more people who care about these things as much as I do, or better yet, care more than I do. It is hard to stay strong against abuse when most people mind so little that they actually choose to use proprietary software for important things that have alternatives available, like image editing or communication.

If you have the brains to appreciate this, contribute to my work(btc at my site) or people like me will cease to exist, sooner rather than later.

Hmm? Which website? What is the URL?

Looking at your username… I'm guessing https://jmichaelhudson.net? I will try that one. Yes, it works.

My website, happysmash27.me, doesn't have much other than file hosting. Maybe I should add some pages and styling to it.

[–]jmichaelhudsondotnet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

gentoo, talos and librem are all good paths forward I happily endorse and promote, at least they look like they are trying.

If you went to my site, did you find any ideas there you liked? Did you check out my books at leanpub? Did you tell anyone else to check it out?

If you really want to be someones friend on the internet, help them promote their work, and then we do so together, and this is how the internet is supposed to work. If you notice at my site I warn people away from things I know are dishonest and promote a ton of people who said things I like, even if it is just a twitter meme or that I would invite them to dinner.

But to just say "what you are doing is good" and then do nothing else, is pretty weak sauce. We are all divided and change happens when groups of people do things together, and ideas get linked together, not because we are all giving each other thumbs ups and then going back to our isolated existences.

[–]sandovdiego 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

practically non-existent package manager.

That's a good thing in my opinion. I don't like the Linux mentality of "the distribution should package all my applications". I want the OS to provide a base system and then I get my user applications from the application developers.

[–]jjjj 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Linux would do so much better if they'd update their fucking packet managers with the latest versions of software and make them more graphical and user-friendly. So many damn times I've had to search through websites to find the most updated version of software, then install from command line or even compile programs. The general public doesn't want to fuss with all that bullshit, they just want it to look good and be able to click next and install.

Stop trying to make the general public use the command line, it's not gonna happen.

[–]m68k 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

You may want to try something of a rolling release like an Arch based distro, where Debian based distros will always lag behind (by design, not really a bad thing if you tend to use slightly older software).

Note, Ubuntu has alot of their apps coming in Snaps now, which IIRC auto-updates.

[–]jjjj 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I get by and figure things out, I was more talking about the appeal and practicality for the general public. I'm pissed off how long it's taking linux distros to make systems for the general public when a big part of what's holding it back is simply designing some UI's for a lot of the useful programs, pre-installed programs, making their packet managers like an app store(looks good and simple, stays updated with the latest stable versions), make it easy to uninstall or update programs. Basically don't make the normies ever have to touch the command line and compile programs.

I've wanted to see M$ lose their abusive grip on the Desktop OS market for so long but some of the easier things to change in linux that would appeal to masses just never happened.

Ubuntu has alot of their apps coming in Snaps now, which IIRC auto-updates.

That sounds more like it for the general public. Maybe there's hope.

[–]whistlepig 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but my impression is that you're just not aware of much of what goes on in different linux distros. For one thing, app store like package managers have been around long before app stores and is where app stores got the idea.

You may be getting the impression that only terminal based solutions exist for certain things because there is a preponderance of interest and articles written for those solutions. The more GUI ones don't require articles so they don't get mentioned. Also, its easier to put a terminal command in an article than to describe the long process of click here, here, here, drag, here, here, here, clickety clickety clickety etc.

Sure there are some programs that you'll just have to compile yourself if you want to use them, but they're the exception and typically you'd have to compile them to run on windows as well.

I think your current opinion may be outdated.

[–]jjjj 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't think so since I've used Linux for the past idk 15 years and I've used different distros. I'm on ubuntu now. I've installed many different programs often the versions were outdated in the packet manager so I had to go search the website and it often got complicated. I've also had a lot of issues with dependencies not being installed and some other messy situations that would never happen in Windows or OSX.

I'm gonna do a fresh install soon cause I'm actually having issues with my ubuntu setup so I guess we'll see how much progress they've made since my last major install/setup

[–]Optimus85[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You can use more cutting-edge distros like Fedora for the latest software. Your system might not be as stable though. Also, downloading and installing programs from the Web may create library conflicts and break your install.

[–]whistlepig 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Also, downloading and installing programs from the Web may create library conflicts and break your install.

Not as much with applications, but definitely riskier with more system type programs.

[–]cant_even 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This3

The latest of everything is only available in "tarballs" or somesuch: What am I supposed to do with them? Where do you put them? I don't even know where the old firefox is/was (is it still there?), and now I have an un-zipped thing in my "home directory"...

[–]happysmash27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Gentoo could really use a faster package manager too, that also hopefully has less package conflict problems. Also, a good way to deal with proprietary software that has library conflicts, like Steam. These have been really big issues for me lately, and I've been spending a lot of time updating everything with emerge.

I think more of the general public should learn to use command lines to a degree. because command lines are very good user interfaces for many things, but I don't think the public should be introduced to Linux and needing to use them. Rather, I think Linux distributions should have powerful graphical tools that users can use when they first switch, then they can optionally learn about the command line when it is more convenient to do so.

[–]bald-janitor 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is good News!

[–]WhoFlu 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I've been using Ubuntu on one of my computers, and it's quite comparable to using a Mac. The main difference seems to be buttons are in different places. That is minus the overpriced hardware and being controlled by Apple. I haven't yet transitioned my main computer over to dual-boot Windows/Linux (I still enjoy video games!) but I should do that sometime soon.

edit: And windows is REALLY pissing me off with automatic reboots i can't disable, updates i can't disable, and telemetry I never opted-in to.

[–]whistlepig 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You might be surprised at how many windows versions of games work with no hassle on linux via steam. I don't game much anymore, but everything I've tried has worked flawlessly. Kingdom Come being the most recent. You just turn that functionality on in the settings of steam.

[–]WhoFlu 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, I'll have to try it out soon!

[–]m68k 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

Microsoft will take over Linux, and we'll have to move to BSD. :3

[–]Optimus85[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

If you want to be a purist try Trisquel or Debian. Proprietary drivers and firmware are what taint the Linux kernel.

[–]m68k 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Nah, i did better. I installed Arch. :D

[–]Optimus85[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good choice! I'm on Pop! OS cuz I'm lazy(it simplifies a lot of things for gaming). Tried installing and compiling Gentoo once and it ended with a kernel panic after rebooting. :(

[–]solder0 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

No it won't.

[–]bald-janitor 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Cope

[–]m68k 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

:3

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]whistlepig 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    I'm running adobe software within a virtualbox windows vm. Works fine. Might be worth trying if you its important to you, but I think maybe it isn't important to you?

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]whistlepig 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      ah... well .. if you're writing windows programs then I guess that it wouldn't be a good idea to use linux no matter what. I totally understand.