k3a

It may look cool at the beginning but I guess you will change mind after 5-10 years..

Same here, I was lucky to work on a successful project and now have enough money to be independent. I am also going to support free and open software (I actually released some of my code and helped with small pull requests and I am donating a bit already). I mostly use free software now.

Corporations often restrict us and try to gain control and advantage over us. Just look at closed bios/intel ME. Why the hell is such an elementary piece of computer closed?

I purhased an expensive coffee machine. It works fine, except I would like to do a few minor software tweaks (add a note for each coffee config button to differentiate between them). If it were open, it would be very easy. Now I will have to reverse-engineer it and hope it uses some kind of filesystem and that extending it won't be too much work...

I am also totally against locked black boxes. This hiding and obscuring practice is just preventing learning, repars and inspections.

It is a similar problem like Intel ME and closed bios.

We use usecure proprietary code, closed unreparable one-purpose 'kiosk' devices yet we can still record video output or make a screen (camera?) recording. What are they thinking? This is all just to give them advantage over users, to more control and restrict them. Terrible.

Can't they use something better than SlideShare? I can't even display it fullscreen on mobile. Even a stupid old PDF would be far better than promoting this commercial crap.

If that's really true then I am glad I don't live there. Sounds like coporations want to own their workers completely. O_O

Try to steal my Trezor HW wallet. It is protected by a proper pin and passphrase and there are multiple accounts on it. So even if you force me to unlock it, I won't show them all. So I am actually more worried about my physical gold than Bitcoin.

Paid advertising? I use LibreOffice and it fullfills all my needs.

I understand, there may ve different needs in big corporations, of course. But that doesn't mean "everyone should stop using Excel and buy our cloud SW", sigh.

Good point. But I still prefer open free software, because there you HAVE the OPTION to inspect it!

If you paid someone (even multiple people/companies) to do professional audit over OpenSSL, it would be prevented.

Now, with closed software you are lost and the only thing you have is a TRUST the SW developer. Because inspecting blbs is much more difficult. And I don't trust them.

"get an iPhone" - what a stupid suggestion. Why do you think it is more secure for god sake? Because Apple told so?

The only way to regain control over SW and to prevent spying and data leakage is by using free software, where you can read and modify the source code, build the firmware yourself. Because as long as there is source released and some company decides to add a tracking functionality, people will notice and make a fork without it.

This is how it works on GNU/Linux for a decade and I am happy I can use it. Now I only wish people stopped buying these smartphones with proprietary blobs tracking them and demanded free software.

Most people are easy (I don't want to say stupid) and don't see the problem unfortunatelly. :(

Yes, with Android we at least have this option of running AOSP/Lineage and F-Droid.

If only HW and chip manufacturers released Linux sources (or ideally had support in the mainline Linux branch) soon with proper drivers (ideally open)...

Manyfacurers keep releasing lots of closed junk smartphones every year :/ but as long as people will continue buying it, nothing will change.

I recommend HW wallet like https://trezor.io Trezor is well thought off, very secure way of storing digital currency. I have been using SW wallet but switched to Trezor recently and finally I feel my coins are safe..

Just make sure to chose a good pin and passphrase (I recommend setting up both). Ideally somehow compute or derive this pin/passphrase so that you never forget it. I mean generating a random pin is a very bad idea as you will almost surely forget it over time and you will lose the wallet.

Unfortunately. I still use it as my primary desktop but I see why people prefer others.

It seems like most people don't want flexibility and configurability and they don't want to learn to manage OS. They just want to use PC comfortably and don't care about anything.

For example one of a few things I find annoying on Linux is multiple GUI frameworks, each having it's own OpenFileDialog so I can't always easily open recent folder or recent file. It looks totally different in Qt and in GTK.

I think Linux kernel is very solid and cool. But userspace is a mess, there is probably not enough standardization. For example also X11 (hacky, security problems) vs still buggy and unfinished Wayland. :( Compare that to OSX frameworks.

Yet I love free software, appreciate all effort people put into it and will continue using it. Maybe one day I will also be able to help GNU/Linux improve..

We need to start making 'open web embeedded in this infrastructure'. I mean some open communities (outside facebook) and lists of websites containing useful and true information. Wikipedia helps a lot and I love this ycombinator news..