Just FYI I installed the apk from the github repo (not the google play version) via Obtainium a few days ago and it tried to make a connection to 2 cloudflare IPs during setup of my account. Without prior consent or any mention. So just be aware that there is still some form of telemetry or unwanted connections happening, even though they removed the telemetry flowing to Mozilla’s own telemetry endpoint. K-9 had zero of this, it just spoke with your mail servers and that was it. So be careful and block outgoing app connections by default. I did not analyze the data being sent, just that there were those 2 unwanted connectiins happening.

First one I bought with my own money for my first own PC was the 3dfx Voodoo 2 (~1997). It was the best 3D GPU (addon to an existing 2D GPU) at the time.

Well that’s retro but I used to only screw in the side that’s easier to reach because that already secures it while also allowing you to more easily unplug it again.

Won’t be like that much longer. Windows continues to become worse, Linux (desktop) is on a steep upwards trend. I’ve been using desktop Linux since 1998 and desktop Linux has always been at or around 1% market share, for 15-20 years it was just flat basically, which tells the story that only geeks and nerds used it, which is the story that everyone’s familiar with.

But these days? It’s approaching 5%, and most of that climb was just in the recent 5 years. That’s insane. At the same time, Windows continues regressing from about 95% market share in 2009 or so to something like 70% these days. And this tells the story that people are growing increasingly fed up with Windows (and rightfully so).

In all other areas, Linux is already the dominant OS. It dominates servers, supercomputers, mobiles and embedded systems. Since Microsoft doesn’t appear to get their sh!t together, it’ll soon dominate the desktop as well.

Is the situation in USA bad? Yes, in several aspects (and getting much worse if the current fascism movement wins out in the end).

Is the situation in China bad? Yes, in much more aspects.

Most important goal for USA right now is to ensure they’re not regressing into an authoritarian, fascist regime. Because then, the situation for US citizens will start becoming really similar to China or Russia. After that, goal is to combat climate change. And preventing World War 3.

Default recommendation for new ex-Windows users is to use Linux Mint, it’s very simple and includes most things you need. Mint also has great documentation and community resources (forums, etc.), especially for beginners. It’s also based upon the most popular distro, which is Ubuntu. So there’s a high degree of Ubuntu compatibility, which is a plus.

After the distribution choice, there’s the desktop environment choice. Here, I’d recommend either the default one from Mint, which is called Cinnamon (use this if you don’t have a preference), or KDE Plasma as an alternative. Both are very similar to Windows, but more powerful in terms of customization and features. (Well, of course anything on Linux is very customizable already due to the open source nature, but these 2 already offer a lot of GUI customization options without any tinkering). It’s not recommended for a beginner to switch desktop environments, you can do that later on when you’re more comfortable with Linux. If you’re curious about the other desktop choices, try them out in a VM or separate system. At the beginning, always use the preinstalled desktop environment.

Only slight downside of Mint is that it still ships with X11 by default, which is the older graphical subsystem as the foundation of each desktop environment. Wayland is the new one [actually it’s just a set of protocols which the compositor implements, but that doesn’t matter here]. Many distros already use Wayland, but it’s still experimental on Mint. For many users, this will not make a difference in practice, which is good, but Wayland is more advanced and has more advanced features which will never land in X11, and also higher security. If you have any non-standard needs regarding things like HDR, adaptive VRR, different per-monitor refresh rates, no tearing, per-monitor scaling, good touch support, and other “advanced” things like that, chances are you’re better off with Wayland. Most users probably don’t need to care that much though.

Anyway, should you need a Wayland-based distro alternative, or generally a second distribution recommendation, I’d say Fedora. It’s also rather easy distro, maybe not as easy as Mint is, but also very user friendly and more ahead of the curve in comparison to Mint (newer kernel, newer packages, more frequent updates).

Most users will be fine using Mint as their first distro, though. Mint will also soon be updated to Wayland as well, it’s just a matter of time. Be sure to keep your system updated.

Gaming is actually easy on Linux but since most games are specifically written for Windows and the Windows stack (DirectX, etc.) and also primarily tested on Windows and many game devs don’t test on Linux, there are sometimes things that might not work out of the box or you might need to try different options or compatibility tool versions (e.g. experimental version of Proton, or GE-Proton, or things like that). But Valve and lots of other individuals are constantly improving the situation and fixing compatibility issues should any come up. Compatibility is generally super high these days (like around 90%) so most users will not have any problems, especially not if they are playing any kind of recent or popular games where there’s a lot of focus to get them to run well, but some specific things or titles still might not work. For example some unethical game studios (most notably Epic Games, Bungie, EA, Riot) utilize integrated anti-cheat tools in their games (most notably Fortnite, Valorant, LoL, Destiny 2, Battlefield) which deliberately block all Linux users, even though the games would technically run on Linux as well. You can and should check protondb.com for general Linux compatibility reports of a Steam game, and areweanticheatyet.com for Linux compatibility of games which include anti-cheat components. If you’re not sure, check both sites. An anti-cheat component often only exists for the multiplayer part of a game, not for the single-player part. Most single-player games do not have or need any anti-cheat components. Generally, do not install games on an NTFS partition or re-use your Windows-based NTFS partition for games. This can and will cause problems. Always install your games on Linux partitions like ext4, btrfs or xfs.

If you use dual-boot (Linux being installed on another partition alongside Windows), be sure to disable the “fast startup” option in Windows (somewhere in the power management settings). And if you have an issue of the clock being wrong after you boot the other OS, then you maybe want to configure Linux to write the time back into the hardware clock in your local time format, which is what Windows expects to find there. But you can also reconfigure Windows to write its time back in UTC format (registry setting), which might be the format Linux expects to read from the hardware clock. Not sure what Mint does by default. I’d say only look into this if you have problems of the clock being wrong after you boot from Windows to Linux or from Linux to Windows. If the clock is always right, then you don’t need to reconfigure anything. Just keep in mind that Windows by default writes back its time in local format, Linux in UTC format.

If you want to install additional software: If you come from Windows, you might be familiar with visiting websites of software then downloading a setup.exe/msi from there. That’s NOT how you install software on Linux. On Linux, you first look if there’s a package available for your distribution (use the preinstalled programs/tools for that). The primary place for this is your distro’s package repositories. Then you might check Flathub (the default Flatpak (distribution independent) package repository). You will find most software there already. If you don’t find it there, check any Mint community repositories. Afterwards, check if there’s an AppImage available (those are basically one file which contains all files needed for the program, no installation). If you still don’t find anything, ask on a Mint forum. You usually DO NOT install a software from its source code form or any installer/setup scripts, especially not as a beginner. This is an easy way to make it either too complicated or to break your system. Always try to find existing packages for your distro first (use the preinstalled programs/tools for that), then try the distro independent Flatpaks, then AppImages. You should find everything you need like that. When you think of installing software on Linux, think of how you’d install software on Android or iOS, you use an “App Store” or install an existing package (similar to .apk / .ipa) directly. Any other method is NOT recommended for a beginner. On Mint/Ubuntu/Debian, software package files have the .deb extension.

I get that it’s a nice daydream to think of open source projects as existing in some kind of independent, ethereal vacuum just because the code is out there and accessible from any place on Earth. But every software project is (mostly?) dependent on the jurisdiction in one country, in this case it’s the US, and so their laws about sanctions and so on apply. And yes, this means that unless conflicts/wars between nations happen to cease, that we will eventually have completely separated blocks of politics/culture/military and also IT. Globalization is over. China will have their own stuff, Russia will have their own stuff, and US+EU will have their own stuff. And none of those countries should continue using high-tech products made by the other because they could be sabotaged and it might be hard to find, so it’s best to not use them at all and just cook your own stuff. It’s unfortunate, but bound to happen in the current state of the political world.

• Pomodoro timers (hit a keybinding, a 25min timer will start. Within that time, do something productive. After that time, you can do a 5min “break”. Then probably start the next timer. You can also adjust the timings of course)
• Treat the thing you want to do instead of your task as the thing you can do as the reward after having done the task first (kind of a gamification mechanism maybe)
• Develop a habit of always doing something productive (from your backlog) each day, unless you’re sick or so
• If the task seems so big or hard that you don’t even start, split it in parts. You rarely have to do everything at once. Splitting it into parts also allows you to not over-exert yourself, so you’ll have more time for the things you’d rather want to do afterwards

Noroi - The Curse (2005, Japan) Supernatural first-person video documentary style POV, but with higher image quality than Blair Witch Project for example. No jump scares, just very creepy and unsettling. Slow burn, but good pacing IMHO. No weaknesses IMHO, hence on top of my list. Just a very unsettling and disturbing, almost real-feeling, horror movie.

Also good:

• A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, South Korea): less horror, more artistic, intelligent and original. Great story
• Shutter (2004, Thailand): my favorite jump-scare horror with cool effects
• Incantation (2022, Taiwan): great supernatural slow-burn horror with a cool twist
• Hereditary (2018, USA): great supernatural slow-burn horror, original as well
• Sinister (2012, USA/UK/CAN): great supernatural horror
• Event Horizon (1997, USA/UK/CAN): great sci-fi horror, very unsettling
• REC (2007, Spain): one of the best zombie style movies and also one of the most horror-like ones
• It Follows (2014, USA): kind of a stupid plot but it works. It’s original, well executed and unsettling (supernatural)
• Smile (2022, USA): an even more stupid plot, but also well executed. The ending is bad. But it still terrified me so it works at its core, and that’s all that horror films need to do (supernatural)
• As Above, So Below (2014, USA/France): the weakest one on this list but it’s very original as well, I like it because of that

Winter is on its way out due to climate change. In around the year 2100, it’s estimated that there will only be 3 seasons left, no winter. And summer will be much longer and much hotter. So the 3 seasons will be spring, then a 2-season long summer basically, then fall. That’s it.

But you can already see the disappearance of winter today because there’s much less snow and it’s much warmer than like 30 years ago. (Speaking for Germany)

Linux for gaming Linux for servers Linux for desktops/notebooks Linux at work Linux for mobile

Well, US politics are more important than those of most other countries, because they still are a huge world-wide influence. But once enough climate change related disasters happened, everything will change anyway (for the worse). If you’re young enough to experience the resulting chaos in a couple of decades, you should start preparing for that now (e.g. saving up, not buying houses near oceans, and so on), instead of worrying about more temporary and short-lived political decisions. Unless they directly and significantly affect your life in the short term already, of course. Humanity does and will not be able to fight the climate change based on past and current observations, so buckle up.

Yes, but my post is for the people who DO care about privacy issues. I also don’t like the defeatist’s attitude. You can always start making things better. My post is for those who want to make a better informed decision, that’s all.

Reasons are the data transmissions happening by default and Mozilla’s questionable inclusion of add-on things like Pocket. See for example:

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mozilla-firefox-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil20/

vs.

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/librewolf-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil8/ and https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mullvad-browser-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil22/

You might need to translate the site to English. If you compare that, you can see why it’s easy to recommend the forks over the original. That said, you CAN configure Firefox to also behave well, but that takes an extra effort. It is far from there by default.

Well, they’re only doing what they announced already like 1-2 years ago. So we knew it was coming. This is also accompanied by Google making YouTube more restrictive when viewed with adblockers. Google is (somewhat late, to be honest) showing its teeth against users who block ads. I always expected it to happen but it took them quite some time. Probably they wanted to play the good guys for long enough until most users are dependent on their services, and now their proprietary trap is very effective.

On the desktop, you should switch to a good Firefox fork right now. Firefox can also be used but needs configuring before it’s good. The forks LibreWolf or Mullvad Browser are already very good out of the box. There’s the potential issue of the forks not being updated fast enough, but so far these two have been fast. Mullvad shares a lot of configuration with the Tor Browser, so using it may break some sites. LibreWolf might be “better” for the average user because of that, but otherwise I think Mullvad is the best Firefox fork overall.

On mobile, Firefox-based browsers aren’t recommended, because on Android, the sandboxing mechanism of Firefox is inferior to that of the Chromium-based browsers. And on iOS, all browsers (have to) run on Apple’s proprietary Webkit engine anyway, but well this is Apple we’re talking about so of course it’s all locked-down and restricted. It’s one of the reasons I don’t even like talking about Apple that much, just be aware that as an iOS user, your choice doesn’t mean as much when it comes to browsers, and your browser might not behave like you think it does on other platforms.

So on mobile, I’d suggest things like Brave, Cromite or Mull. Or Vanadium (GrapheneOS). If the browser doesn’t have built-in adblocking capability which sidesteps the MV3 restrictions, make sure to use an ad-blocking DNS server, so your browser doesn’t have to do it. But you still need it. Adblocking not only helps you retain your sanity when browsing the web in 2024, but it also proactively secures you against known and unknown security threats coming from ads. So adblocking is a security plus, a privacy plus, and a sanity plus. It’s absolutely mandatory. As long as the ad industry is as terrible as it is, you should continue using adblocks. All the time. On every device and on every browser.

The ad industry is itself to blame for this. There could in theory be such a thing like acceptable ads, but that would require ads to be static images/text, not fed by personal data, and not dynamically generated by random scripts which could compromise your security, and not overly annoying. Since that is probably never going to happen, you should never give up using adblockers. Since they basically fight you by reducing your security and privacy, you have a right to defend yourself via technical means.

https://system76.com/laptops

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks.tuxedo

I hope that our courts in western democracies are strong enough to stop these developments, but I fear they ara not. Once this kind of stuff is being attributed to (even completely unproven) “higher security” or “national security”, and once secret services run the software and identification routines, it will land in the same extra-legal space as internet mass surveillance already lives in: “No no, we’re not doing that. Okay, you got us, we’re doing it, but only in limited scope. Okay, you got us, we’re doing it on everyone, but it’s important for national security and we can’t disclose anything else”. And that’s usually when nothing can be done anymore about this, and laws and ethics will be outmaneuvered.

Arch breaking easily is such an over-exaggeration. I’ve run Arch so many years and the amount of tinkering I’ve had to do because of botched updaates is so minimal. Often times, they announce it on their main website even, with instructions on how to fix it. You also should have configured filesystem snapshots to easily revert after a bad update. Or have a USB installation medium ready to boot from and then repair/downgrade the affected bad package. That’s usually all there is to do, and it happens rarely.

If you have multiple problems after Arch upgrades, then I’d guess that’s a misconfiguration on your end, leading to unstable system behavior after updates. Arch doesn’t do any kind of hand-holding, you’re allowed to completely misconfigure and break your system, but then it’s also your own fault.

If you didn’t update for a while, you should probably update the archlinux-keyring package first, then do the rest of the updates. Otherwise, the other packages won’t be able to be updated when package signing keys changed in the meantime

So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend Arch for beginners, unless you really want to learn Linux the “hard way” and have a little bit of spare time and don’t mind reading on the Wiki, but still, Arch instability is kind of over-exaggeration. Arch is very stable for a rolling release distro, but you do have to do a little bit of maintenance every now and then. That’s the nature of rolling-release. I still wouldn’t call that unstable, though.

If the user is at least somewhat competent, antivirus is normally not needed. Antivirus has several issues on its own, before even considering its defense “capabilities”: it can contain spyware itself (harvesting user data, auto-uploading “interesting” files to the AV vendor cloud which leaks personal data, etc… e.g. Avast was recently caught spying on the web browser traffic of all their user base and then selling that data. Yes, that’s an AV vendor you’re supposed to trust), AV (like all software) has security holes which can be exploited (there was already malware which only worked BECAUSE you had an AV installed, and it wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t), and you have one more process constantly running in the background with lots of access rights which isn’t great either, it may even damage your system by finding and quarantining false positives, and if your system is already infected then any AV running on it is also compromised as well and won’t find certain malware anymore because the malware can hide its processes from the AV. Furthermore, AV is only somewhat good at detecting past threats, not good at all at detecting current, dangerous threats. (Typically, virus writers test their own creations against current AV anyway, ensuring that they don’t detect it). Also, no AV detects e.g. Windows 10+/MS Office/MS Edge/Google Chrome/etc.'s invasive telemetry, which is (in this case) a euphemism for spyware functionality bundled with an otherwise legitimate application. AV should at least warn about it, otherwise it doesn’t live up to its promises of combating spyware at all.

All in all, a competent user is likely to have more security/privacy issues or trouble WITH an AV, than without it. Which means, in the hands of a competent user, AV is the only thing on the system which behaves the most like malware. So simply by learning and following good security practices, you can avoid most if not all threats coming your way anyway, without any additional software needed on your machine.

That said, if the user is quite incompetent and executes everything at random and doesn’t really care what sites he visits or what phishing mails he opens, and generally has a carefree attitude when workilng at the device, then having an antivirus constantly scanning everything and maybe avoid execution of a known threat, can do more good than harm.

If you’re ever unsure, upload the file in question to virustotal.com - it will scan with something like 30 antivirus engines. You can’t do that on your own. That makes it more likely that something is found, if there is a known threat in it. Or ask on a forum. If you’re unsure your own system is infected, scan it with an offline virus scanner booted from a USB drive (preferably also with multiple scan engines), because scanning from inside an already infected system cannot ever guarantee full recovery. Although, no AV can ever guarantee full recovery regardless, which is why in the end you should completely re-install any infected system, and not rely on one AV’s cleaning capability. Because there’s no guarantee that the AV found and cleaned everything. If the malware contained a backdoor then maybe there’s new, undetected malware already present as well.

Flameshot is great, I use it every day at work and home. The integrated editing/annoation/drawing functions are superb.