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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

#81

Post by foxandmouse »

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.

Couldn’t agree more, if you’re pitching Linux to a non-technical user, you need a gentler off-ramp, not a cliff dive. LibreOffice is a UI time capsule..more archaeology than productivity. Most millennials would think they’d accidentally opened a flight simulator.

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

#82

Post by pessimizer »

linuxftw wrote: post #18

Thanks for fighting the good fight. My chief concern is that you will alienate some of your customers because normies think privacy is for crackpots. I don't have any experience being in small business computer repair, but just my feeling as a neutral 3rd party. Try to identify the problems the customers have. If privacy isn't one of their concerns, convincing them to switch PC OS is not a great fit on that basis.

Normies don't think privacy is for crackpots, that's a meme among techies who are trying to justify surveilling their users.

Normies desperately want privacy, but think it is too hard to do, they're too dumb to figure it out, even if they figure it out it still won't really work, and that they won't be able to use stuff that they don't want to live without. They are often right, because they are smarter than they think and the industry is working against them full-time. A lot of people's incomes (on this very site) depend on keeping normies ignorant.

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

#83

Post by rolph »

gerdesj wrote: post #50
trinsic2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok thanks for that reminder. I'll look into that.

Don't bother - no idea what your parent is up to. Linux - the kernel is GPL 2 - that means you can use it to your heart's content. If you make changes, it would be nice if you shared them, please do. A Linux distro will generally have a similar license. Again the idea is that positive changes that you make are made available to everyone. That is the idea of the GNU Public License: If you take our freely available stu…

so if someone takes our freely available stuff, bundles it with a newly assembled system, and sells them, at a marked up price, like normal business does, it wont be an issue if no mention is made of GPL2 and what that means for the end user.

the idea that positive changes are made available to everyone, is not yet broadly salient. at least now, poster is probably aware of that condition.

you seem to be up on GPL2 , what happens when someone packages distros on disk or stick, and sells them for profit ? thats something to be aware of as well.

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

#84

Post by d3Xt3r »

Terr_ wrote: post #11

I know this isn't Stackoverflow, but... Does anyone have a good mental model for disentangling the issues of full-disk encryption versus secure-boot? I've been badly procrastinating with my desktop's new SSD because of it. Use-case is: * Dual-boot where I choose in BIOS/UEFI to go to either the existing Win10 drive or new Linux drive. * I don't need unattended boot at all, I'd rather enter a passphrase every time. *…

I second slicktux's suggestion: look into OPAL, it's much more easier to setup and use compared to LUKS. The best part is, the encryption is transparent to the OS, so you could multi-boot between multiple OSes and not worry about encryption or compatibility with partitioning tools etc.

Your drive does need to support OPAL though, check out sedcli for managing SEDs.

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

#85

Post by skopje »

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 switched from Google Docs to Libre Office a few months ago. I'm surprised how buggy LO is, because I tried it a decade ago and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better. I don't plan on going back to MS or Google, but I am very frustrated with the number of bugs in LO's spreadsheets, so I try to keep my sheets simple and CTRL-S a LOT!

Examples: [1] I selected a range of cells recently, by clicking and dragging, and when I let go of the mouse button, all of the selected cells shifted up and to the right by one cell, and CTRL-Z didn't undo it! [2] I have a workbook and when i duplicate a sheet with a chart, the chart is blank, so i have to delete it and re-insert a new one. [3] Sometimes the left-hand X-axis is cut in half, and I have no idea why, but if I create a new doc it goes away. I really, really want to promote LO, but it is very buggy. I can deal with it but I don't think others would.

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

#86

Post by heavyset_go »

__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?

Canonical keeps packaging things like Firefox as Snaps and that leads to weird issues sometimes. If it were up to me, I'd avoid anything using Snap because of the potential for headaches.

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

#87

Post by IlikeKitties »

heavyset_go wrote: post #72
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…

> I would say that specifically with Secure Boot, Microsoft actually promoted user choice: A Windows Logo compliant PC needs to have Microsoft's root of trust installed by default. Microsoft could have stopped there, but they didn't. This was not the case with the initial rollout of Secure Boot, it was combined with locked BIOS to lock PCs so that they could only boot Windows 8 on some devices. This was the case on W…

> There is also a real potential for abusing TPMs or cryptographic co-processors to enforce remote attestation.

People here REALLY need to start understanding this issue. Remote Attestation is the kind of tech that if abused will end free computing over night.

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

#88

Post by d3Xt3r »

excalibur wrote: post #76

I used to run Office in Wine back in the day. Is that not a thing anymore?

You can still run older versions, but anything from 2019 onwards will struggle - and you can completely forget about the latest M365 versions.

Luckily OnlyOffice is a pretty decent alternative with excellent compatibility with MSO formats. And there's also the web versions of office, which is now a decent alternative (unless you're a power user who needs macros/VBA etc).

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

#89

Post by heavyset_go »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #69
__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 ap…

In my experience, if you aren't dealing with power users, normal people won't be able to break their Linux install. The standard permissions model stops them from doing anything stupid, and they don't know enough to be dangerous.

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

#90

Post by josephcsible »

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…

TPM and Secure Boot would be good things if there were no way to prove to third parties that you're using them, or have them configured a certain way (i.e., remote attestation). It's the fact that that is possible that makes them reduce user choice and promote state and corporate surveillance.
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