Moving away from Microsoft Windows

[Navigator]

Well just to let this one out, this weekend was significant in a symbolic way. I removed MS Windows from my home system (although not completely, I still have 2 VMs with WIN7), and adopted a Linux distro as my main OS.

It was a slow process, for almost 20 years never considered moving away from WIN, then, little by little, installed some VMs first --getting the feel of it, then went into dual booting, and then to barely touching MS until it felt natural to wipe it out from the hard disk.

Privacy concerns played a role, also curiosity, but in the end a computer is just a tool to get things done -- work, networking, artistic expression, etc..

But going for the broader perspective, it also means embracing community efforts, which is the part I find significant. Yes I will still use MS, at work, and for other stuff, and I do think it is more "easy/comfortable" to use than to type things in the command line and consider dependencies, MS Office and Adobe are also way better than anything I have found on Linux, and I don't have the money to go for a Mac.

Nonetheless, it feels like going in the right direction, so to speak :)

 

[furryfrog]

I have used Linux for the last 5 years and I'm not looking back. My computer needs are not as involved as yours though, but I still can dual boot into windows if I need to (though It has been a year). I use linux Mint, which is a great distribution to get started with in linux, and would suite most users, especially if most of what they do is web browsing and entertainment. Ubuntu is another alternative for first time users.

Navigator, Which distro did you pick for your main OS? It sounds like you are competent on computers, so I am guessing you may have skipped over the "beginner" distro's like I am using.

 

[Foxx]

But going for the broader perspective, it also means embracing community efforts, which is the part I find significant. Yes I will still use MS, at work, and for other stuff, and I do think it is more "easy/comfortable" to use than to type things in the command line and consider dependencies, MS Office and Adobe are also way better than anything I have found on Linux, and I don't have the money to go for a Mac.

I use Libreoffice (_http://www.libreoffice.org) and the Gimp (_http://www.gimp.org) as alternatives to those two windows programs. There's also this site that I've used to find good equivalents for various programs: _http://alternativeto.net

Generally, for most modern distros, you shouldn't have to do much of anything with the command line if you don't want to (it's quite powerful and fast, though, if you learn your way around it), or consider package dependencies as they should generally be resolved automatically with your distribution's package manager (as in, you should only have to tell the package manager to install the Gimp and it should do everything else).

Also, if you haven't found it, Alt + F2 is a pretty standard shortcut on most desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc) that will bring up a box that can launch a program by typing, which I find to be a very quick method to open programs I want. I also use Synapse, which has some additional functions: (_http://lifehacker.com/5704221/synapse-is-a-super+fast-tightly-integrated-application-launcher-for-linux)

I have used Linux for the last 5 years and I'm not looking back. My computer needs are not as involved as yours though, but I still can dual boot into windows if I need to (though It has been a year). I use linux Mint, which is a great distribution to get started with in linux, and would suite most users, especially if most of what they do is web browsing and entertainment. Ubuntu is another alternative for first time users.

Navigator, Which distro did you pick for your main OS? It sounds like you are competent on computers, so I am guessing you may have skipped over the "beginner" distro's like I am using.

I've used Linux for probably about 11 years now and I recommend Linux Mint (or Mint Debian) to people. I don't think it's only for newbies, but generally very well put together, clean, easy to use, and powerful (Debian, which Ubuntu is based off of, both of which Mint is based off of, is a solid and robust distribution with a long history). No need to add unnecessary complications, I think, and it can be customized to basically anything you want (as is the case with many other distros).

 

[Tomek]

I personally use OpenSUSE 13.1 since a few months and I'm very pleased. I tried Linux Mint several times, it's a very good distro also but I'm concerned about privacy. Linux Mint depends on Ubuntu repositories and, as you might know, Canonical put Amazon spywares in Ubuntu, now. So much for trust ! I've also tried Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), that uses Debian repositories, but I must agree with the general opinion that the distro managers aren't doing a very good job at maintaining it properly. The update packages are buggy.

As for my home server, nothing beats Debian !

I still need Windows for a few things, like InDesign, and my Windows VM is more than enough for that.

 

[Navigator]

Navigator, Which distro did you pick for your main OS? It sounds like you are competent on computers, so I am guessing you may have skipped over the "beginner" distro's like I am using.

Well, not sure about beginner's distros, actually I tried dual booting Mint, and I thought it was great except for some minor things (Firefox kept freezing dunno why), right now I am trying elementaryOS as the main one, (also an Ubuntu fork) so far so good, it has excellent user interface and now that I think about it, it could seem to be a "beginners" distro for an advanced user, but I think you should not wrestle with the OS, it should be easy to get things done, not to get in your way.

I use Libreoffice (_http://www.libreoffice.org) and the Gimp (_http://www.gimp.org) as alternatives to those two windows programs. There's also this site that I've used to find good equivalents for various programs: _http://alternativeto.net

Yeah, I do think those two will get you through just fine up until some point, specially LO. But I don't think Photoshop can be replaced by Gimp.

I still need Windows for a few things, like InDesign, and my Windows VM is more than enough for that.

Ditto that :)

 

[whitecoast]

Congratulations Navigator! I dabbled a lot in linux up to maybe a year ago. After some dual boots kind of kinked up my hard drive, the BIOS doesn't seem to recognize linux, even though it's the only thing on the HD.

I've pretty much resigned myself to windows for the time being, since it does everything I need and doesn't really give me any trouble. As for spying, I think the NSA has enough backdoors on the internet and other protocols that I seriously doubt linux offers any protection (I'm by no means a computer expert though).
I also have a nasty tinkering monkey on my back whenever I use linux, and often those experiments end up tangling things up beyond my ability to repair.

 

[aimarok]

Whitecoat, it looks like a bootloader problem, not a BIOS one. If your PC has a BIOS, you can always easily repair bootloader using some Linux LiveCD/LiveUSB. There are plenty of Howtos in the Internet. If your PC has UEFI it could be a bit complicated but anyway doable. And there is almost always an option to turn off UEFI in favor of BIOS emulation.
Backdoors can surely be set in protocols and algorithms, but it's rate because anyone can look at them and decide how secure they are. Usually backdoors can be found in implementations of these protocols and algorithms — binary files of your OS. And here comes the difference between free (libre) and proprietary software. You can be absolutely sure there is no NSA code in Linux kernel, which couldn't be said about Windows or MacOS.
Don't be afraid and switch to free software, it will pay you back :)

 

[Foxx]

And here comes the difference between free (libre) and proprietary software. You can be absolutely sure there is no NSA code in Linux kernel, which couldn't be said about Windows or MacOS.
Don't be afraid and switch to free software, it will pay you back :)

There definitely is NSA code in the Linux kernel, called SELinux:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux

SELinux is a set of kernel modifications and user-space tools that can be added to various Linux distributions. Its architecture strives to separate enforcement of security decisions from the security policy itself and streamlines the volume of software charged with security policy enforcement.[1][2] The key concepts underlying SELinux can be traced to several earlier projects by the United States National Security Agency.

It has been integrated into the Linux kernel mainline since version 2.6, on 8 August 2003.

I don't think there's any way to guarantee that there aren't any (known and intentional) backdoors in Linux, because one would have to audit (with a very high degree of expertise) millions of lines of code (I think it's in the area of ~30 million lines these days, and that's just the kernel) to verify it. Furthermore, there have been various significant and long standing exploits in Linux that might have been known long before they were officially "discovered", so a large and resourceful organization may have a list of exploits that it's aware of, that it hasn't made others aware of, in order to keep the exploits available for its own ends. Plus, software is only as secure as the hardware it's running on and we definitely can't be certain that there aren't any hardware backdoors present on modern computing platforms.

Regardless of whatever computing platform one is using, I figure if the NSA wants someone's information, they probably have a way of getting it, regardless of the security measures taken. I personally like Linux and it works well for my needs and wants, so that's why I use it, but I also had to stop "recommending" (trying to convert people to Linux) long ago, because it was clear that, in many cases, Linux wouldn't work for their needs or wants for a variety of reasons.

 

[mcb]

I think what is most important is what you are trying to accomplish, and what tools you need to do it. "Having" a particular kind of software or hardware is not, by itself, an accomplishment, but has more to do with identifying with possessions.

If you are concerned about being spied upon, I doubt that any of the easy choices is going to afford any significant protection. I always wonder what the real concerns are. There are, obviously to anyone here, appropriate and legitimate activities that can attract harassment from the PTB but I suspect that in general, outside this forum, the major concerns are paranoia not stemming from specific issues and, in many cases, concern about being caught at clearly illegal activities. If your concern is over harassment, switching operating systems is perhaps not the solution.

I am a professional Microsoft database and web application developer, and switching to different specialties now is not even an option. The platforms I use serve the customers well. As a volunteer, I can and do use other platforms to support non-profit endeavors, although non-profit corporations with sufficient resources, along with funding streams that support hiring people like me, can obtain Microsoft platform component licenses very cheaply and they can be better off doing that. They can find cheaper consultants if they go with other platforms, but in my experience they often end up paying to have a professional come in and clean up a major mess after their cheap consultants leave. (If they are running turnkey systems based on non-MS platforms -- POS, for example -- that can be quite a different situation, by the way.)

My situation with my home computer and software is very different. For reasons that I still don't fully understand (but probably involving hardware issues as well as software), when I was using Windows at home I found myself constantly -- sometimes every day when I came home from work -- having to put on my IT support hat and troubleshoot one problem or other. It wasn't unusual to spend as much time troubleshooting as actually using the system. (I don't, by the way, seem to have this problem with Windows when I use it only for database and software development, and greatly restrict what I install on it.)

I eventually became completely fed up with all the troubleshooting, and switched to Apple about five years ago. While I still have a bad day with the system now and then (several bad weeks when my hard drive began to fail last fall), for the most part the routine of troubleshoot-before-each-use ended when I switched, and I imagine it was due to both better quality hardware (I bought good quality hardware, but in the PC world that can still turn out to be junk) and simpler software that isn't so vulnerable to bugs in 3rd party apps. I have been able to find the applications I need without difficulty, and when I am working (as a volunteer) with PHP and MySql, it is easy to plop a development environment on top of the Unix core in OS X.

No solution is ideal. It's about what is the job to be done and what tools are needed to do it. The extreme complexity of Windows can serve a purpose in business settings but I don't think it benefits home users, where the bulk of that overhead is just waste, and the complexity makes the system more vulnerable to the quirks of cheap consumer software. If you make extensive use of applications that can only run under Windows then maybe it is worth it anyway, but most of us don't. My original rationale was that running Windows at home meant a consistent UI and that what I learned about one environment (work or home) could apply to the other. I know better now.

 

[griffin]

Well just to let this one out, this weekend was significant in a symbolic way. I removed MS Windows from my home system (although not completely, I still have 2 VMs with WIN7), and adopted a Linux distro as my main OS.

Congratulations, Navigator, and everyone else here who runs Linux rather than Microsoft Windows. It's the wave of the future.

I use Mageia, which is a spinoff from Mandriva, and as a backup Scientific Linux, which is maintained by CERN and rock solid stable. Those are both Red Hat based distros, and I simply find them more attractive and flexible than hard core Debian or its derivative Ubuntu variants or Linux Mint. I've tried Ubuntu and didn't like it. However, whatever Linux distro you choose, it's better than using Windows.

But going for the broader perspective, it also means embracing community efforts, which is the part I find significant.

That's important, and it is especially satisfying for those who can contribute, even by reporting bugs.

Nonetheless, it feels like going in the right direction, so to speak :)

Definitely, keep going and eventually you'll be amazed at what you're able to accomplish using Linux.

 

[aimarok]

There definitely is NSA code in the Linux kernel, called SELinux.

Yes, but: 1) it's written in plain C and you can check it youself 2) was thoroughly checked before it got into kernel by its maintainers 3) was reviewed dozens of times by different companies and individuals after merging into the kernel 4) it's not used in desktop GNU/Linux distributions by default and ordinary user doesn't use it.
I had to be more clear in my previous post and had said "secretly implanted NSA code". Russian military guys made their own Linux based OS, and they are really paranoid. If Linux is not secure enough for you, you have to stick with mechanical typewriter.
My choice of going to Linux was based on freedom it gives. Six years ago I wanted to make two workplaces at my home PC. Windows didn't allow to do it. There is no going back to Windows ( MacOS comes only with hardware) for me, where software vendors decide what I can do with my hardware. Oh, and there is an antivirus software too…

 

[darksai]

If you are concerned about being spied upon, I doubt that any of the easy choices is going to afford any significant protection. I always wonder what the real concerns are. There are, obviously to anyone here, appropriate and legitimate activities that can attract harassment from the PTB but I suspect that in general, outside this forum, the major concerns are paranoia not stemming from specific issues and, in many cases, concern about being caught at clearly illegal activities. If your concern is over harassment, switching operating systems is perhaps not the solution.

I agree with this. As is often said/implied around the net, the only way to guarantee privacy is to never connect your pc to the internet. So it really does come down to "what are you protecting?". If you're working on your PC with material under NDA, which includes non-technical basic users (a journalist writing a review on an unreleased product for example) then "privacy" becomes a serious legal concern. Privacy then becomes a matter of security, and I think often the two are used where one is meant in place of the other as they are both achieved in essentially the same ways.


At home I use Cinnamon Mint as my host OS, and have a Win7 VM for just "in case" which I almost never use. At work it's a Win7 workstation with Linux server environments, which is pretty normal in the corporate scene. I've found the most fun way to go about it is not to be attached to anything specific and expose myself to different environments as much as I reasonably can, and the more I do so, the more I see what things I can expect to be the same/very similar between different products and what I can't. But I think for an average, non-technical user, I would say just choose an OS you like and feel comfortable with meets your needs and get to know it enough to be able to least do some basic troubleshooting.