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Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

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Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#61

Post by AlotOfReading »

PostOnce wrote: post #22
trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

Make sure libreoffice is included, and ublock origin. Show them how much faster it is, with fewer ads, and no subscription to Microsoft required just to write a document. The business customers might want to know that databases are a lot cheaper on Linux, especially for small business. Literally spoke to an automation company the other week that told me "we have to delete a bunch of stuff every time the database gets…

I can't imagine trying to replace MS word with libreoffice for businesses. I respect the project and the complexity of the task, but it's just not there for even light professional use.

As an example, I recently submitted a manuscript following standard format [0] with libreoffice. Nothing difficult, just basic professional functionality.

The only way to do it involved editing global default page styles (because custom page styles can't be used for title pages?) and other advanced features. Fair enough, at least it was possible. It's a shame the export process didn't preserve the formatting and screwed up page numbering.

I had to fix the manuscript in gdocs instead, where it was easy.

[0] https://www.shunn.net/format/story/1/

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#62

Post by trinsic2 »

gerdesj wrote: post #43
trinsic2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I need to think of a good way to automate updates..

"automate updates" A device can be woken up at silly o'clock and "apt update && apt upgrade && apt autoremove && shutdown -r now" can be run via cron. apt as deployed by Debian itself has options for automatic updates (via cron), which is the better option. Have a look under /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/

I was thinking about setting up a package as part of the system build to do remote maintenance and I wondered if manually doing those updates every six months would be too long of a window. That way if something breaks, I can visit the customers location to fix it if I have to.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#64

Post by AstralStorm »

repiret wrote: post #41

I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would s…

Thing is, because the whole design is closed as well as firmware, the security of it is near zero, even for sealing firmware device images (e.g. option ROM), much less bootloaders. Multiple security holes have been found.

There's no issue booting a boot rootkit with the standard Windows bootloader unless you manually seal the image with command line or group policy, and even then it's possible to bypass by installing a fresh bootloader because the images are identical and will boot after a wipe.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#65

Post by juped »

repiret wrote: post #41

I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would s…

These are old counterproductive FSF memes that should be retired, but stick around anyway.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#67

Post by theflyinghorse »

reassess_blind wrote: post #66
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #63

I may recommended the same for my parents. 20 years ago Ubuntu was the go-to for baby's first Linux. Is that still the case?

Probably Linux Mint these days.

Mint is great! I've been using it for years, everything just works out of the box

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#68

Post by jmholla »

trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

I thought I heard that TurboTax is moving to web only, but maybe that's only for personal use and not corporate?

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#69

Post by d3Xt3r »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #63

I may recommended the same for my parents. 20 years ago Ubuntu was the go-to for baby's first Linux. Is that still the case?

Ubuntu has unfortunately become the Windows of the Linux world - and I don't mean that in a good way.

Unless you want to be the perpetual IT support for your parents, I would recommend getting a user-friendly immutable/atomic distro, like Aurora[1]. Aurora uses KDE, which most Windows users would find familiar. It is immutable, which makes it very hard to break, and it uses atomic updates (basically updates either apply or don't: there's no partial state which can break the system). And in the rare event that something does break, you can boot directly to the previous version right from the boot menu, no need to run any manual rollback commands. My 70yr old mother also uses Aurora and has zero issues.

[1] https://getaurora.dev/

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#70

Post by d3Xt3r »

Aurornis wrote: post #57
PostOnce wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure libreoffice is included, and ublock origin. Show them how much faster it is, with fewer ads, and no subscription to Microsoft required just to write a document. The business customers might want to know that databases are a lot cheaper on Linux, especially for small business. Literally spoke to an automation company the other week that told me "we have to delete a bunch of stuff every time the database gets…

> Make sure libreoffice is included Probably an unpopular thing to say here, but in my experience pushing non-tech people to use libreoffice as part of a Linux transition is a fast track to getting them to hate Linux. Using Google Docs has been much more welcoming in my experience. Something about libreoffice doesn’t resonate with a lot of non-tech people.

OnlyOffice might be a better option here - its UI is similar to MS Office, and it has a much better MS Office file format compatibility compared to LibreOffice.
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