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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

#491

Post by 1718627440 »

Orygin wrote: post #354
gerdesj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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/

> A device can be woken up at silly o'clock It can't. The device is in my room and making noise when on. If that device wakes up and wakes me up, it's either getting a force shutdown (breaking the update) or getting in the trash. Plus the device is generally left in suspend mode, so shutting it down would interrupt my workflow.

Updates on Linux distros are not really a problem. You can work the whole time and just run updates in the background. You can even switch to a newer Linux kernel, without closing any userspace programs.

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

#492

Post by 1718627440 »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #465
BatteryMountain wrote: post #245

The best path forward for home users and small business for non-technical users: Install Fedora with KDE. Install Firefox, Thunderbird and Chrome. Install uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger. Install LibreOffice & bookmark Google Docs. Install multimedia support, h264/h265, VLC/mpv/ffmpeg, enable DRM in browser. Install Steam if applicable. If they have a printer, connect it and show them how to print a page. Configure & t…

>Educate the user on how to do Software Updates Sorry to tell you that, manual updates are not a thing your average user is familiar with. In Windows land, updates install themselves

Then activate the automatic updates in your Linux distro? In contrast to Windows programs also won't block on startup and you need to wait for updating, because updates work in the background.

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

#493

Post by fsflover »

hollerith wrote: post #474
fsflover wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coreboot with Heads exists and works fine for me with Qubes OS. So it's not a hypothetical.

Coreboot with Heads and Qubes prevents malware that has inserted itself into the firmware of your ethernet driver, keyboard or block-storage device from modifying your software?

Yes? Qubes provides compartmentalization for the hardware you listed.

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

#494

Post by skopje »

blahedo wrote: post #103
skopje wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I use LO for its word processor fairly extensively and have been pretty happy with it, but for spreadsheets I am 100% on team gnumeric---it is rock solid, less buggy than Excel itself, and supports a lot of Excel formulas and formatting better than MS's own web client.

thanks for the suggestion i just installed it (macos). it solved problem #2, I'll have to wait and see what happens with #1 and #3. I like it but it's like going to a new grocery store and everything is in a different place than i am used to thanks!

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

#495

Post by mixmastamyk »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #487
gethly wrote: post #264

I have been using windows since version 95. I even liked the Millennium version, that was most hated before Vista. I tried Linux several times, but Windows just always worked and Linux usually had always some issues(mostly drivers, lack of good programs and no gaming). But now, after more than two decades, I am certain Windows 10 is my last Windows. Nothing lasts for ever, not even Microsoft's domination on personal…

I'd put Linux on a second machine and start learning. Forcing yourself to use it for a few days a week, etc. Needs to become a habit. Need to find solutions to all the expected issues. Can use an old machine if you need. You don't want the migration to be harder than it should be, and doing everything at once is way too hard.

First step I forgot, move to open software on windows first.

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

#496

Post by grogenaut »

fainpul wrote: post #315
grogenaut wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just run it in a windows vm for just that use, there's great ways to make this almost seamless in linux. works better than win/etc.

CAD applications usually require graphics acceleration. I've tried to make Fusion 360 work on linux using VMware, VirtualBox and GNOME Boxes – performance was unacceptably bad.

worked great for me using virtualizaation

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

#498

Post by blahedo »

skopje wrote: post #494
blahedo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use LO for its word processor fairly extensively and have been pretty happy with it, but for spreadsheets I am 100% on team gnumeric---it is rock solid, less buggy than Excel itself, and supports a lot of Excel formulas and formatting better than MS's own web client.

thanks for the suggestion i just installed it (macos). it solved problem #2, I'll have to wait and see what happens with #1 and #3. I like it but it's like going to a new grocery store and everything is in a different place than i am used to thanks!

Glad you liked it! For charts in particular, I find gnumeric to be more solid than any other spreadsheet software I've tried (including Excel)—the charts are more stable and more configurable, and there are options for more of them (e.g. histograms, which are something I frequently want and Excel just doesn't support, or at least didn't used to). Downside: once you've got a spreadsheet with really informative charts, it's sometimes hard to share, because saving it as .xlsx breaks some of them. :(

Oh, another nifty feature of gnumeric: if you save it in its uncompressed format, it's literally .xml (good both for version control and for scripting certain kinds of things)

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

#499

Post by Woodi »

rixed wrote: post #220
cam_l wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly have only come across one company that is app only. That was because I was with them when they changed over, otherwise I would never have signed up. This was my local gym which sacked their front desk staff and moved to app access only, and with an app infested with trackers at that. Needless to say I don't go to that gym anymore.

Want another exemple as fresh as yesterday? I'm on a move, had to pay some transport company to move some stuff for me, pick-up date tomorrow. Paid online, website asked for a confirmation from my bank's app (N26), fair enough. Opened the app, just to be greated with "Please Update. The latest app version includes new features, enhancements and stability improvements" with the only choice: "Update now". Being confron…

Counter example, from the future :)

Year 2034, you have a nice vintage, lightly used electric car. Battery still charges and whole box drives. Do you need to buy new car or gov need to prohibit you using it or enforce to scrap it ? Most likely yes - battery is about to explode, possibly on crowded crossroad...

Real problems sometimes demands 0 or 1 action.

Just "phone app from everyone" etc is monopolies inflicted harm on society.

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

#500

Post by rightbyte »

WorldMaker wrote: post #483
rightbyte wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Spectre etc. only is a problem if the user choses to run hostile code on their computer.

I think "chooses to" is doing a lot of work there in your understanding. Spectre exploits were found in the wild even in JS code submitted to ad networks. I suppose a user could choose to uBlock all ad JS and never visit webpages they don't trust. Those are choices, sort of. But also that's a bit victim blaming isn't it? Do you want to explain to your grandfather or partner or child "Oh sorry, you had a password stol…

Sure I am might have been a wee bit too bitter writing that.

The point I want to make is that allowing remote code execution is such a big attack surface that it makes all the other security measures look silly, which indicates that signed execution contexts in them self is an attack on privacy and control etc.

If there was any actual security concerns there could be a push for server side rendering or something.

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