Linux instead of Windows 10?

[Dragunov]

One day? That's all it took you? My god. I can't believe that. I've never managed to install an OS in under a month before!!!!!

Well, considering everything else I had to do today......

[like2angle]

Hello all,

I am a big fan of Debian Linux, its what Ubuntu or Kubuntu same OS with a more MS windows looking GUI is based on.

For you Mac users, OSX runs on top of Linux.

Once you understand Linux the whole computer word comes into amazing focus. Plus, all the software is open source, which means its free for you to use. It will run from CD without having to actually install it.

In my opinion Linux, although more powerful and safe than Windows the graphical interface is not as slick or fast as M.S. Windows. It also has a higher learning curve.

Steve

[ocabj]

For you Mac users, OSX runs on top of Linux.

As I commented earlier, OS X is built on BSD, not Linux. It uses a hybrid BSD-based kernel.

[y0manda]

If you're asking I would recommend Windows 10. If you have another computer laying around install Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu > Windows

[soul]

Its good to know you got 4 converts, unfortunately that is not enough to turn the tide. Its just 4 weeks since Windows 10 was released and 75 million installations already way past total Linux desktop stats and getting close to cross OSX. It is the fasted adopted OS in the market till date.

I have tried few distros, and even run it on Raspberry Pi but in my view it is not that great for desktop. It has improved a lot, and the competition is keeping everyone on the edge which is good for users.

[NYT]

for home computing, depending on your needs and wants, its either win 10 or osx. the various types of linux that are out there are good but user experience is still harsh.

for those of you complaining about "privacy" issues with 10, there are several articles out there on how to disable win tracing. check this out: https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking

if youre truly worried about your security, i would recommend you get a good firewall with an intrusion prevention feature set.

[Cowboy T]

for home computing, depending on your needs and wants, its either win 10 or osx. the various types of linux that are out there are good but user experience is still harsh.

for those of you complaining about "privacy" issues with 10, there are several articles out there on how to disable win tracing. check this out: https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking

if youre truly worried about your security, i would recommend you get a good firewall with an intrusion prevention feature set.

A good firewall doesn't stop the OS from "phoning home" and reporting on whatever you do. Proper security is layered, not just, "install a firewall and an IDS/IPS."

As for disabling Windows tracing, you don't know that you got it all. Only those with access to the source code actually know that, and Microsoft keeps that under tight wraps. I remind you that the NSAKEY issue was only discovered because the DEBUG symbols hadn't gotten stripped from a module of code. Who knows what else is in there? Yeah, it's a bit "", but since I do INFOSEC for a living, I do think about those sorts of things, too, along with other stuff.

[NYT]

A good firewall doesn't stop the OS from "phoning home" and reporting on whatever you do. Proper security is layered, not just, "install a firewall and an IDS/IPS."

As for disabling Windows tracing, you don't know that you got it all. Only those with access to the source code actually know that, and Microsoft keeps that under tight wraps. I remind you that the NSAKEY issue was only discovered because the DEBUG symbols hadn't gotten stripped from a module of code. Who knows what else is in there? Yeah, it's a bit "", but since I do INFOSEC for a living, I do think about those sorts of things, too, along with other stuff.

nice, i do it for a living as well and work for a few banks how about you? were you at defcon this year?

and yes, you are diving into TFH territory for sure. depending on the firewall and ids/ips you can figure out almost exactly what is and isnt going in and out of your network. i think youre giving ms a bit too much credit, they dont exactly employ tier 1 personnel with those H1B visas.

if i worked for ms, it would be fun to see what exactly their os' ability is to call home. taking into account that their hosted servers are what ms is now built around, i would venture to say it isnt more than what google has going on with chrome.

[Cowboy T]

nice, i do it for a living as well and work for a few banks how about you? were you at defcon this year?

and yes, you are diving into TFH territory for sure. depending on the firewall and ids/ips you can figure out almost exactly what is and isnt going in and out of your network. i think youre giving ms a bit too much credit, they dont exactly employ tier 1 personnel with those H1B visas.

if i worked for ms, it would be fun to see what exactly their os' ability is to call home. taking into account that their hosted servers are what ms is now built around, i would venture to say it isnt more than what google has going on with chrome.

Nah, couldn't make DEFCON, would've loved to, though. No banks anymore (used to); I do government security these days. Sadly, as too many newspaper articles have reported, they don't follow good advice from folks like you and me and thus get repeatedly pwn3d. I'll certainly concede that, with the proper tools, and the proper knowledge of how to use them,you can generally see if something questionable is going on. Do most end-users have that knowledge? I believe the answer is no. Heh...if only I were allowed to tell you all about some of the things I've seen...and you probably have similar stories.

I used to work for MS. Yep, a former Microsoftie! They are actually very clever people; don't underestimate them. Those H1B visa people you speak of aren't the ones making the corporate decisions; that's way higher up at the CxO level. And yes, they will do whatever the NSA tells 'em to do in order to keep their big, fat US Gov't contracts. That's just the way it is, unfortunately...sad, but true. They've already been caught doing it multiple times. Since you're in INFOSEC, you already know.

And that's one big reason why I have trouble trusting Microsoft. The "level of assurance" that I have that they're trustworthy not to spy on me is not at all high.

[NYT]

Nah, couldn't make DEFCON, would've loved to, though. No banks anymore (used to); I do government security these days. Sadly, as too many newspaper articles have reported, they don't follow good advice from folks like you and me and thus get repeatedly pwn3d. I'll certainly concede that, with the proper tools, and the proper knowledge of how to use them,you can generally see if something questionable is going on. Do most end-users have that knowledge? I believe the answer is no. Heh...if only I were allowed to tell you all about some of the things I've seen...and you probably have similar stories.

I used to work for MS. Yep, a former Microsoftie! They are actually very clever people; don't underestimate them. Those H1B visa people you speak of aren't the ones making the corporate decisions; that's way higher up at the CxO level. And yes, they will do whatever the NSA tells 'em to do in order to keep their big, fat US Gov't contracts. That's just the way it is, unfortunately...sad, but true. They've already been caught doing it multiple times. Since you're in INFOSEC, you already know.

And that's one big reason why I have trouble trusting Microsoft. The "level of assurance" that I have that they're trustworthy not to spy on me is not at all high.

defcon was crazy as usual and our badges this year were idiotic 8" records that we had to wear around our necks all day. i dont know if ill go next year... but i say that every year it seems.

i honestly dont trust anyone haha. my tin foil hat is strong but i have come to the understanding that i can only do so much to ensure my security. luckily my networks are much smaller and compact than yours and i am able to manage with an iron fist for the most part. i thank god every day that i no longer work for siemens and their network team. that was just a huge pile of sh that grew larger and larger every day.

[Justintoxicated]

I use linux at work, I think I'll stick to windows 10 where I can at home. No reason to waste all my time finding hardware support and missing out on cutting edge features win 10 provides.

For privacy and windows 10 there's many scripts out there to fix your settings, but really all you need to do is not take the default install options when you install it. The checkbox is small, but as long as you uncheck it you will be fine.

Solutions I have no desire how to solve on linux.

DirectX
Windows snap to (top, side, etc)
Easily configurable and install-able nightly incremental backups for all systems in my house.
Networking to my central server such that I can stream video to anything (even my phone).
HTPC and DVI hardware / software and drivers for sound, tv cards etc.
Dealing with incompatibilities with MS word docs and linux word processing software.
Driver issues (never ceases).
Miss out on blue iris surveillance software (linux solutions are not as robust).
Remote access to my security cameras.
ORF raw image thumbnails working for linux.
Decent photo and or video editing software (lightroom photoshop etc).

That's just to name a few things, there are many many many more.

Linux has it's place don't get my wrong, free OS for hosting servers etc I totally dig. But I'm not into having to compiling my own drivers every time there is an update, readme's are not always so helpful. Hell I have been trying to get an older flash plug-in working for some time now at work, it's not just click and install RPM like it was supposed to be, it never shows up, and documentation is non existent on fixing. Partially due to being stuck on an older version of firefox, and not having yet dedicated days of my time to solve the problem. Theres just too many small issues to solve along the way.

I'm not a linux kernel guru, and I have better things to do than learn all the differences between flavors.

[boy&hisdogs]

I love my linux. I have Mint on two computers and it's probably the easiest transition from Windows. Plus it's huge and has tons os support as it is popular in its own right as well as sharing most things with Ubuntu, another one of the most popular distros.

My newest computer came with 8.1 and the one and only thing I did with Windows was burn a Linux cd. Even that was a chore due to the immense bloatedness of 8.1.

Sometimes getting all the right drivers and setting stuff up can be a bit tedious but it's wort it because Linux doesn 't gather crap and bog down over time like a rolling snowball the way Windows does. The Linux install on my web browsing computer is a few years old and is still just as fast as the first day without any maintainence or security programs.

[Cowboy T]

Hmm...many years past, I might've agreed with the "compile the driver" or "recompile the kernel" difficulty. End-users don't typically have that kind of knowledge, and we cannot expect them to. I'm not a kernel guru either.

But I haven't seen that issue crop up on anything resembling mainstream hardware for quite a few years now. Indeed, I find that, over the last several years, certain GNU/Linux distros (e. g. Ubuntu and its derivatives such as Linux Mint) actually tend to support hardware *better*, right out of the box, than recent versions of Microsoft Windows, from Vista on. Just plug it in and go. Even back when Ubuntu Dapper Drake was the current LTS distro, from June 2006, I had yet to run across hardware, either at home or at work, that didn't "just work" with such a distro. I had more difficulty with Windows Vista and Windows 7, actually, having to track down drivers that *might* work...or might not. Cisco AnyConnect SSL-VPN connection, for example, has proved a major headache with Windows clients and requires lots of maintenance to actually keep functioning. Same was true when we were doing IPSec before then. By contrast, our Linux boxes require, and required, virtually no maintenance; just install and go.

Remember, I'm not talkin' Gentoo Stage 3 builds, Linux From Scratch (LFS), or even server-specific-oriented distros like RHEL or CentOS here. I'm talking about desktop-oriented distros like the Ubuntu derivatives or similar.

[the86d]

Don't put a free-market WiFi card in a Lenovo, because they have a blacklist (anything that Lenovo doesn't make, it seems) and none of the *buntu distros have OOTB drivers for the one that comes with the notebook I have.

[sd_shooter]

Although I posted earlier in this thread pushing a Mac, I do use Linux Mint on one machine.

It's an older Lenovo T61. It came with Vista and that's still on the disk. However lately it has quit working properly - after about 5 minutes the machine just freezes.

So I installed Mint via a dual boot setup on the HD and it has been rock solid ever since! It's just a garage machine that I use for web browsing and looking at car service manuals etc but so far it has been trouble free. It plays youtube videos and Firefox updates itself from time to time.

If you want to rescue an older machine that would otherwise be recycled, try Mint