Now that Windows 10 is released... I feel like installing Linux Mint.

[Maximilian]

If you need help with Linux, you can always ask me.

Been using it for 12 years

Cheers :thumbsup:

The linux mint forums are pretty good as well, asked around there last year to get my mint server working

 

[Skaendo]

Nope. I may have failed to wear my tin foil hat though. In legal speak that is just CYA in case that information comes back from the WEM system. They state the same thing if you ever submit a crash log to MS for some reason in case the app that crashed had that information in memory when it execeptioned.

As it is stated it may be for CTA, but this also gives them legal rights to collect this PERSONAL information, and is a 'so called legal' invasion of privacy. And just because it's legal doesn't make it right.

I keep telling people that Microsoft, Google & Apple are being pressured by the NSA for just this type of information. This is considered spying on the American people and in direct violation of my 4th Amendment rights. I'm not doing anything to bring them to my house, so why would they need this information? Go ahead and call me paranoid, I wear my tin foil hat at all times.

 

[imagoon]

As it is stated it may be for CTA, but this also gives them legal rights to collect this PERSONAL information, and is a 'so called legal' invasion of privacy. And just because it's legal doesn't make it right.

I keep telling people that Microsoft, Google & Apple are being pressured by the NSA for just this type of information. This is considered spying on the American people and in direct violation of my 4th Amendment rights. I'm not doing anything to bring them to my house, so why would they need this information? Go ahead and call me paranoid, I wear my tin foil hat at all times.

And, I'll keep telling you keep your tin foil hat on. Considering that Linux has been demonstrated to have been a wide open door for a couple of years now, what are you going to run?

I am not sure why you consider Microsoft, Google and Apple unique in this "pressured by the NSA." Anywhere there is a repository of information, every intelligence organization is the world is interested in. The other thing is the NSA is not likely interested in watching you download porn on the web and what anime you watch. They are far more interested in watching things like your banking records, employment records, debt histories. If they were really interested in you, they would just install one of the sniffer machines at your ISP. Also don't regale me with stories of TOR, VPN's and proxies. None of those really protect you long term and your browser (or yourself) will leak more about you than those systems can protect you.

Besides the NSA just keeps the various hacks and cracks around that sit latent in openware so it isn't like those apps protect you. TOR is basically broken right now etc.

 

[Skaendo]

banking records, employment records, debt histories.

Also personal information they don't need in the NSA database.

But you haven't said that the NSA doing this pressuring is not against the law. Do you agree that it is considered spying on American citizens, and is in violation of the US Constitution?

 

[rtoledo2002]

Thanks for reading.

I decided that MS monitoring my every keystroke and mouse click (including sucking up my online passwords) wasn't for me. I'm still even a bit leery that the "release" version of Windows 10 might still have that capability within it, laying dormant, possibly to be able to be re-activated by the NSA. (I mean, why else would they go to that extent, to do all of the work to embed that capability into the OS. Surely they plan to use it for more than just beta-testing.)

Edit: No wonder they want to make it free. <Oprah> Free spying on everyone. </Oprah>

As soon as the official version gets released and IF IF Media Center exists as a built in or APP , I will get it, and just have lastpass change my passwords for every web site I have and they can kiss my big fat ass D:

 

[rtoledo2002]

If you need help with Linux, you can always ask me.

Been using it for 12 years

been using it off & on since Linus set it free and it continues to disappoint to this date. but I will say I just installed Ubuntu last week and it was the most stable so far. now if there was ONE program that actually worked any WHERE near like Media Center on windows 7 . I would not be here typing.

as for Mr. Paranoid. read up on the history of Berkley and BSD / Unix and see if you can find hard to get documents on WHOM finaced that project and how long it was kept classified. it's been there since the inception, and windows NT , the grandfather of 7 and 10 was just an offshoot of another system that "copied" from BSD . tried not to get too paranoid , cause that rabbit hole is deep. :\

 

[Skaendo]

now if there was ONE program that actually worked any WHERE near like Media Center on windows 7

I agree, to a point. I've been using Debian for quite a while, and while it has evolved a lot since its inception, the media playback options lack some functionality. I do not however like Media Center or Windows Media Player. In Windows 7 & previous versions they lack tons of codecs and don't even support some.

My Windows 7 box is for media only and not connected to the internet. I prefer to use MPC-HC, which is the old Windows Media Player that has been revived and supports most if not all major codecs, and has the features that I use. MPC-HC is the only app that I even have installed on it.

read up on the history of Berkley and BSD / Unix

Berkley BSD/Unix is just that. This is the OS that Apples are based on. (by 4BSD it became funded by DARPA)
GNU/Linux is just that as well. (GNU = Gnu's Not Unix)
Windows originally was created as a shell for 86-DOS later purchased by Mr. Gates, revised and renamed to MS-DOS.
Windows NT, 2000, and newer use a 'hybrid' kernel. (HAL, microkernel & kernel mode drivers)

The linux kernel was developed on a Minix OS (I believe), written in C, and is Unix-Like. Not a Unix kernel because at the time it was created the Unix kernel was proprietary. Owned by Bell Labs.

 

[ViRGE]

Skaendo, Politics & News is several doors down. This is a technical forum and we would appreciate it if you leave the politics at the door, as the unsolvable nature of politics generally derails technical discussions.

As for the rest of you, please get back to the subject at hand. Which I guess at this point would be using Linux as an alternative to Windows 10

-ViRGE

 

[3spooky5u]

Cheers :thumbsup:

The linux mint forums are pretty good as well, asked around there last year to get my mint server working

Ya no problem

Also try http://www.linuxquestions.org/

 

[SunburstLP]

I really think you should give it a try. You don't have to install it that's the nice thing about Linux just give the live session a try.
As long as you don't do a lot of streaming media(netflix, amazon ect.) or gaming it's a great OS.

If you're really concerned about your privacy you might give tails and tor a go. It's a bit more restrictive than mint and a bit slower but it's secure.

Ubuntu and Netflix played nice and got libnss updated so *buntus and their derivatives can use the HTML5 player without any leg work. Prior to that you could either spoof the user agent to get HTML5 or deal with pipelight and compholio.

As far as Prime streaming video, I don't know. I don't have Prime so I've never tried.

Tails is a very interesting OS, but I don't think it's meant to see desktop/only OS usage. No persistent data retention, etc. If you gotta do something shady, it's a great place to do it. It's like the devs shot out the street lights for you. If you'd like to know more about Tails, I seem to recall that Jupiter Broadcasting did a show about it a few months ago.

I wish W10 the best, I'd like to be compelled to use Windows on occasion. Good competition makes for a better market place. As it stands now, I haven't booted into my Win install in 6 months or more. Between Steam for Linux, PlayOnLinux and the free cloud MS Office, I don't really require MS' desktop products anymore.

 

[Skaendo]

As for the OP, Mint is a fork of Debian. Forks like Mint, Unbuntu, Xunbuntu, etc, tend to be crap. I would suggest trying a base distro like Slackware or Debian or prob not like RedHat, Suse. These will be more polished under the hood.

Although you may need to learn some basic CLI for these, it is a lot less painful than it used to be.

*Suse is actually a fork of Slackware, but is well established, maintained and supported.

 

[Maximilian]

As for the OP, Mint is a fork of Debian. Forks like Mint, Unbuntu, Xunbuntu, etc, tend to be crap. I would suggest trying a base distro like Slackware or Debian or prob not like RedHat, Suse. These will be more polished under the hood.

Although you may need to learn some basic CLI for these, it is a lot less painful than it used to be.

Are they still rocking gnome 3? :\

 

[Skaendo]

Are they still rocking gnome 3? :\

Unfortunately yes. I tried Gnome 3 that was default, then tried Gnome 4 in testing. Finally I said screw that crap and went back to KDE testing (4.14.1).

 

[Maximilian]

Unfortunately yes. I tried Gnome 3 that was default, then tried Gnome 4 in testing. Finally I said screw that crap and went back to KDE testing (4.14.1).

Damn. That new LXQT looks like it will be a pretty sweet desktop environment :thumbsup:

 

[Skaendo]

Damn. That new LXQT looks like it will be a pretty sweet desktop environment :thumbsup:

LOL, yet another port. There is one (2) big problem(s) with Linux. Forking and porting. I mean sure things like new DE's should be made, but the underlying problems don't get solved when you fork and port, then you have new problems on top of the old ones.

*I also notice that there isnt a build for Slackware or Debian. Coincidence, or on purpose?

 

[Jodell88]

LOL, yet another port. There is one (2) big problem(s) with Linux. Forking and porting. I mean sure things like new DE's should be made, but the underlying problems don't get solved when you fork and port, then you have new problems on top of the old ones.

*I also notice that there isnt a build for Slackware or Debian. Coincidence, or on purpose?

LXQT isn't a fork. It is a continuation of the LXDE project. It's the same devs plus the guys from the Razor-qt project that joined forces.

 

[Skaendo]

LXQT isn't a fork. It is a continuation of the LXDE project. It's the same devs plus the guys from the Razor-qt project that joined forces.

It is a port,like I said. Says it right on their front page.

 

[lxskllr]

It is a port,like I said. Says it right on their front page.

Because they're porting away from GTK. I don't blame them. GTK is a moving target, and Gnome doesn't care about anything but Gnome. I'm a little concerned about the future of Xfce. The project is too small to be continually cleaning up after Gnome. I was always a big GTK fan, but I'm planning my exit. Maybe KDE, maybe LXQT. Depends on what the future holds.

 

[Skaendo]

Because they're porting away from GTK. I don't blame them. GTK is a moving target, and Gnome doesn't care about anything but Gnome. I'm a little concerned about the future of Xfce. The project is too small to be continually cleaning up after Gnome. I was always a big GTK fan, but I'm planning my exit. Maybe KDE, maybe LXQT. Depends on what the future holds.

I'll have to see how LXQT develops, and if they make a Debian build, not a *buntu. It has a very nice look to it. For now I'm going to have to stick with KDE. I used to use XFCE, but yea they have issues, it's almost too lightweight for me. Gnome has gone in a weird direction if you ask me. Like the apps menu, gets too cluttered for what I like. No structure whatsoever.

 

[postmortemIA]

As for the OP, Mint is a fork of Debian. Forks like Mint, Unbuntu, Xunbuntu, etc, tend to be crap. I would suggest trying a base distro like Slackware or Debian or prob not like RedHat, Suse. These will be more polished under the hood.

Although you may need to learn some basic CLI for these, it is a lot less painful than it used to be.

*Suse is actually a fork of Slackware, but is well established, maintained and supported.

to each their own. IMO, you linux purists are doing more damage to it than you are helping. mint or ubuntu are nice casual linux distros, and their popularity shows that's appreciated.

 

[SunburstLP]

LOL, yet another port. There is one (2) big problem(s) with Linux. Forking and porting. I mean sure things like new DE's should be made, but the underlying problems don't get solved when you fork and port, then you have new problems on top of the old ones.

*I also notice that there isnt a build for Slackware or Debian. Coincidence, or on purpose?

Because they're porting away from GTK. I don't blame them. GTK is a moving target, and Gnome doesn't care about anything but Gnome. I'm a little concerned about the future of Xfce. The project is too small to be continually cleaning up after Gnome. I was always a big GTK fan, but I'm planning my exit. Maybe KDE, maybe LXQT. Depends on what the future holds.

Exactly. I'm not a developer. Far from it really, I wrote a few programs in QBASIC back in the DOS 5 and 6 days. To me, this is exactly what will keep Linux from making real in-roads on the desktop. I fiddled around a few months ago on Manjaro getting LXQT installed when it was released. I got it installed and then realized that as a relatively unobservant, uncaring about framework, Unity-using idiot, that I had no idea what programs to install to maintain the slim profile and zippy performance of LXQT.

I don't mind googling about how to do stuff. That's something I quite enjoy since just using my computer is really a hobby. However, I can't sell my Dad on it, he just wants it to work. He doesn't have time to have to google how to get his <insert whatever here> to work.

When Android and its whole ecosystem came into prominence, I got really excited about the possibilities of funding being pumped into Linux development. Then SteamOS almost made me pee a little with optimism. They have been doing good work. Android has its own mess with version and device fragmentation, and SteamOS is doing a dang fine job of making things better. At the end of the day, I still (thankfully, lol) wouldn't be able to get my mom to successfully install a distro and use it.

It's not like people want this to be some exclusive, nerdy A/V club on steroids, is it? Think about how hard it was a few years ago just to install video drivers.

At the end of the day, GNU/Linux is my OS of choice and I really enjoy using it. I don't have to wrestle with my system as much as I used to thanks to development progress. I'm also willing to live with the fact that a very small population of us are kindred spirits in how we choose to use our machines.

What can we do as a community to make it better? I should clarify; I mean people like me who couldn't develop their way out of a paper bag. I file bug reports when warranted. Beyond that, I dunno.

TL;DR - Linux, I love you and I'm worried about you. Call home when you can.

 

[3spooky5u]

Damn. That new LXQT looks like it will be a pretty sweet desktop environment :thumbsup:

What about i3?

 

[Skaendo]

to each their own. IMO, you linux purists are doing more damage to it than you are helping. mint or ubuntu are nice casual linux distros, and their popularity shows that's appreciated.

In your sig I see that you don't have a sys with Linux on it. Why is that?

What about i3?

i3 is primarily targeted at developers and advanced users.

 

[bbhaag]

My sig doesn't have a linux distro listed either so what's your point?
Your join date and posting history is awfully peculiar Skaendo.

 

[Maximilian]

What about i3?

Looks like DOS. :| I never liked the command line back then, that hasent changed much.