this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Privacy
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More importantly, run an operating system you can trust.
I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop, I just don't trust M$ Windows with their AI crap.
another cultist
No operating system is trustable unless you coded it entirely yourself on an air gapped machine with your own hand crafted compiler, and even then you are still exposed to hardware backdoors
You're confusing "trust" with "can guarantee to beyond a shred of a doubt that the system is not compromised in any way".
And you're confusing an established industry phrase with specific usages with the more generalized concept
who you hiding from, the NSA?
I work in IT, almost no one takes security seriously and your reply is proof of it
That implies you can trust yourself to even code a compiler in the first place.
Can you?
Not even sure why your mind decided to turn this into a personal attack, but it's a good sign you just want to be blocked
I didn't; I just followed the line of logic you have established that the only way to be sure is if you do every step of the chain by yourself, ignoring, ya know, the entire point of society making progress.
But sure, you do you.
that's prettt much impossible without going to insane lengths
For some, particularly businesses reliant on software that can't perform on anything but Windows (and occasionally MacOS), sure. For individuals it is much easier. Installed Linux Mint a few months ago and I set up a VM for the stuff I truly needed some form of Windows for (tried dual booting for a bit but found that inconvenient). None of these are insane lengths, unless the cutoff for that is, "anything above minimal effort."
And know how to discern obfuscated code
Even more importantly, software can be exploited.
In the past, I had dual booted windows and linux (Ubuntu, I believe), and eventually, windows managed to screw with the bootloader and brick the install. Never tried dual booting again. Windows VM on Linux is a much better solution.
Every single time I boot up my windows install it screws up the boot order and I have to go into UEFI and force it to load GRUB on startup again. Fucking malware.
There's a reason that my windows install and my linux install are always on separate disks. Can't fuck up my bootloader if you don't know it exists.
Are you okay?
and what access controls does limux provide forcamera access? because I haven't seen any such fearure yet. I'm all for linux but it does not help with webcam issues.
to solve this issue you do need to go insane lengths. like apparmor/selinux or whatnot.
.
if you think your average linux distro is trustworthy, you're mad.
there's a tons of binary blobs, not to mention all the known and unknown hardware backdooers that you can't remove by running linux.
most of the software your average user installs is untrustworthy as well.
the security model of linux is outdated at best, no proper isolation of programs. the linux kernel is leaky as heck and filled with tons of bloat.
You can get a Intel ME disabled laptop or a 15 year old one one that never had it, then put on some FSF approved OS that bans closed source software and compiles everything from scratch, isolates every program like with jails or Qubes or one of the newfangled container based OSes and tunnels all your internet traffic through some sorf of anonymization layer like Tor or I2P and ideally it's all happening in memory only and never writes to disk. But then again we know there are hidden microcontrollers with full memory access hidden behind obscure instructions in CPUs.
You can't tell me those aren't insane lengths.
Practically speaking there is no such thing as a "trustworthy" computer and suggeting linux magically makes it trustworthy is laughable. Completely ridiculous.
You need hardware disconnects on all sensors and physical obstruction of devices like cameras in order to have some level of certainty that they aren't being misused.
Is it really insane though?
Even a decade ago, it took longer to download a Linux distro than it did to make a bootable disc, boot to it, and install.
Seriously, the very first time I installed Linux on anything was maybe twenty minutes of actual effort total, with the rest being waiting for things to download or process during install. I can't call that crazy lengths. Not everyone is as confident in following instructions and willing to take a risk, but it isn't some kind of hyper specialized skill, and the very fact of a bootable storage means you can verify a given install would work on your hardware.
Now, changing roms on android? I would agree that doing so is absurdly more difficult than it should be, and there's more pitfalls that can screw things up. But I didn't get the impression you meant that.
linux is not secure
And you're not civil. shrugs
if you think your average linux distro is trustworthy, you're mad.
there's a tons of binary blobs, not to mention all the known and unknown hardware backdooers that you can't remove by running linux.
most of the software your average user installs is untrustworthy as well.
the security model of linux is outdated at best, no proper isolation of programs. the linux kernel is leaky as heck and filled with tons of bloat.
You can get a Intel ME disabled laptop or a 15 year old one one that never had it, then put on some FSF approved OS that bans closed source software and compiles everything from scratch, isolates every program like with jails or Qubes or one of the newfangled container based OSes and tunnels all your internet traffic through some sorf of anonymization layer like Tor or I2P and ideally it's all happening in memory only and never writes to disk. But then again we know there are hidden microcontrollers with full memory access hidden behind obscure instructions in CPUs.
You can't tell me those aren't insane lengths.
Practically speaking there is no such thing as a "trustworthy" computer and suggeting linux magically makes it trustworthy is laughable. Completely ridiculous.
You need hardware disconnects on all sensors and physical obstruction of devices like cameras in order to have some level of certainty that they aren't being misused.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but you have an axe to grind, and you're already budgeting throwing around things like ridiculous.
At my age, having been on the internet for over half of that fifty years, I've learned to tell when somebody is just ranting into the wind.
Nobody is having the same conversation you are. And that's okay, you do you, you have that right but, dude, c'mon, you know that's not what I meant, or what the comment I replied to meant.
So, I'm not blocking you because I hate doing that, but don't waste my time or yours with escalating this.
Linux?
linux makes it better, ofc its not perfect, but most people aren't hiding from the NSA
more trustworthy than windows ≠ trustworthy