- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
- technology@lemmy.world
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Exactly why the Brazilian and German governments are switching to linux machines
The French National Police also use Linux machines with its modified Ubuntu distro Gendbuntu.
Plus, Russia uses Astra, based on vanilla Debian.
Not like Russia can legally nor want to be dependant on MS/american software.
Which distro are the Germans switching to?
Can’t find out the flavor on any websites. It might be a custom one and I imagine sharing the info would be more of a security risk.
It won’t be a security risk once it’s in use, IT across Germany will know within days of deployment. It will almost definitely be a modified version of some probably well known Linux.
No sense in giving an adversary info on the distro before it’s fully implemented though I imagine. (I would consider that a head-start even if they heavily modify a popular distro)
Giving the See👁️Aye advanced notice wouldn’t be smart, no matter how they wanted to play it.
It won’t be a security risk once it’s in use
I agree
I don’t think it really matters whether a potential adversary has a ‘head start’ all that much, security through obscurity doesn’t work super well when it’s going to be deployed to thousands of easily accessible devices anyway. It’d only just be a defense in depth, but even then meh. But it’s neither here nor there, they’ll do it whatever way they feel is best.
Basically all of social engineering is to get exactly what you’re talking about, a “head start”
Go to their LinkedIn: does the head engineer have MySQL version X on his skills, resume, job description, etc? Maybe somebody even endorsed them for it? “Wow they are THE best database administrator”
Now you know who you need to hack for their database access AND what zero days to research.
ANY info will be an attack vector
Social engineering is to gain access circumventing downcode, not really “get a head start”…
Most attacks are entirely social engineering. You’re not breaking into secure databases by pulling ridiculous zero day backdoors when it’s much easier to convince an intern to download a file or give you access directly. These super involved attacks are state actors, and no amount of trying to hide what Linux version is being modified will do anything for you there.
State actors of course also use social engineering
Ultimately the point is hacking really doesn’t involve the kind of subterfuge you’re describing here in a way where " what Linux is it " matters at all. I mean, windows is used for secure systems across the world, it’s hardly secretive.
And my houshold 😁
Ther is for sure a 2.5k line powershell script from someone totally trustworthy which fixes this issue though
Removed by mod
I would choose Manjaro over Ubuntu any day…canonical is garbage
I know linux is likely the better option here, but for me I have two word…
Winaero Tweaker
Although not the same, this has been going on for about two years now. Jensen Harris, a former MS engineer, criticized the ads as well as the design of the new Start Menu, over here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564399431545667585.html
Weren’t they doing this as far back as windows 8?
It just highlights the downward spiral to user hostility becoming the standard. Pretty sad.
This is why Linux rules tbh, little to no rules what so ever in terms of customizing your desktop whilst also not having shit like this too like having so much bloat and constant ads, like telling you to install edge everytime whilst protecting your privacy too.
linux rules because it’s the only os built for its users rather than some company stocks
BSD?
🤫 we don’t mention BSD out of reverence.
Haiku?
illumos!
Hmm does it support web browsers? And is it fully FOSS (except firmware and stuff like that)?
a rounding error on my part, sorry 😋
More seriously, I was thinking more of foss desktop environments and user programs (which are basically the same all over) than about the actual os - thanks for correcting me
Good thing I use Ubuntu for >90% of my computing now.
Yeah Canonical has never put ads in Ubuntu.
I’m under no illusion Ubuntu is perfect. But I PAID for my Windows licenses. And if I paid, I don’t want to see ads. I don’t care about Win 8’s penetrative pricing model or the $25 coupon. I don’t care that I paid for my licenses 10+ years ago. Don’t sell me ads on a product I paid for. And Windows serves up ads all the god damned time now. If there’s anything good to be said about Windows 8, it’s that it didn’t take every opportunity to sell me an Office 365 subscription ever second breath I took. I don’t actually remember the last time I saw an ad in Ubuntu, and I’ve been using it to varying degrees since 2011. I think we can at least agree Canonical is better than Microsoft, yeah?
All that said, I’ve had thoughts of switching to plain old Debian, especially now that I’d consider myself much more experienced and comfortable in Linux. But if I were recommending a distro to a new user, I am one million percent telling them Ubuntu or Mint, depending on how they feel about the Windows UI.
If they could inject the ad’s into your veins, they would.
So Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. They have a stranglehold on corporate America, power a huge the cloud infrastructure, hold one of the largest sources of telemetry/user data, and are the defacto standard of PC environments worldwide.
Why in the fuck do they need to pivot to ads? I’m genuinely curious. Even if they lost 50% of their entire business they would still be one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Because when you have shareholders, there’s no such thing as “we’re profitable enough”. Shareholders always demand more. Ads means more profit, at least in the short term. Next quarter profits are all that matter to public companies.
It’s obscene, but it’s the way it is.
It’s not just that they demand more, they demand more/faster growth all the time. It doesn’t matter that the economy has slowed down to borderline recession, it doesn’t matter that they pretty much captured all the market they can, they still need to make more and more money every quarter otherwise they’re considered a failure even if they are one of the biggest companies in the world.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 I’ll explain in two very simple words.
MOAR MONIES
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 because once untamed capitalism sees a money spigot they can’t help but wonder how wide it will open.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because for capitalism, profit is not the end, only a means to the end. The end is to accumulate sufficient capital to absorb all competitors and achieve total control of markets.
Yea but like, their competitors, when it comes to operating systems are Apple, which isn’t anywhere near small enough to be obtainable by anyone and Linux and Linux-Derivatives, which are also unobtainable due to their open source nature.
@accideath The point isn’t whether Microsoft will reach that end. The point is that like all capitalist enterprises it will forever strive to do so.
Not all of them. Only the big and successful ones
@accideath All of them. That is the definition of a capitalist enterprise.
Not every larger company is automatically evil, just because they exist within a capitalist market. A lot of them are, sure. At least to some extent. But there still are privately owned enterprises that do have a conscience.
Also, calling them “capitalist” enterprises seems redundant.
@accideath I’m calling them capitalist enterprises to emphasize that they are capitalist enterprises. They accumulate capital. That is what they are and defines what they do.
A capitalist enterprise does not decide it has enough and can retire and take up gardening. It is not a person. It does not have a conscience.
Better question is “why not”?
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because capitalism demands infinite growth.
Would be nice if pivoting to ads caused them to lose 50% of their business.
Sadly it won’t.
Because they were “leaving money on the table” instead of getting it for their shareholders.
the shareholders don’t get that. the top managers, CEOs etc. get it. some of them may be shareholders as well, but that’s not how they fill their pockets.
Isn’t it obvious? Start Menu is being used by every windows user but is not generating any revenue Serving ads will enable them to better support the platform and provide more advanced features. Ad supported version is better than making it a subscription like some third party apps have done. Start8 I think, basic copy of Microsoft’s Start Menu but paid.
I think it’s the same reason games offer a cash shop for things you can get in-game. Sure they’re making billions but why not billions plus ad revenue? I don’t agree with the practice but the answer always comes back to money.
it was already full of ads on win10
Yeah, lol people forgot what ads are. News feeds, Xbox and other office apps you haven’t bought yet, are also ads, just their own products.
I’ve used Linux on every PC except my gaming PC for years. This year I made the final leap because of decisions like this from Microsoft.
Very few games have failed to work, the ones that have are all from Epic and they fail because of their shitty anticheat software. The only other things I feel the lack of are paint.net and the Affinity apps.
EAC is now largely compatible with Linux, but devs have to enable support per game.
I recommend browsing protondb to see how (if) people have made games with anticheat work, you might need to change proton versions, add launch options etc.
It was Fortnite and Fall Guys, I’m not really missing them.
How many PCs do you have, lol. And Gimp and Inkscape are pretty good art programs.
5 in use. Main Gaming PC, Laptop, Game server pc, media server PC, and another for testing things out. Whenever a family member upgrades I get the old one so most of these are pretty old.
I have gimp and other graphics tools, I also have a LOT of hours of use in the ones I mentioned so there are things I know how to do quickly in those programs but not in their counterparts.
Pinta is a fork of an older version of paint.net: https://www.pinta-project.com/ I have no idea if it is any good. I just thought that this might solve your problem.
I have Pinta, it’s ok but lacks a lot of the plugins I used and hasn’t been too stable. The graphics editing thing is something that will,just take time for me to rework my workflows. Gimp is great, I’m just not used to it.
KDE Plasma 6, and their distro KDE Neon, are both really good.
There are many very friendly Linux communities on Lemmy who can help you get set up.
I had the same issue holding me back from giving up Windows, until I discovered the Python keyboard module.
How to bind key presses to it varies, but here’s a recipe for Ubuntu, as an example:
Overall, it’s not quite as elegant, as AutoHotKey, but it’s ultimately a more powerful, since there’s so much else I can also do from the same Python script.
Edit: Most notably, I don’t recall AutoHotKey having any nice way to tell which apps are open, and Python can quickly call out to
ps. It’s been on my to-do list to leverage this to let me map keybindings according to what is open (i.e. a favorite game, or a move player.)KDE can do that without third party software I believe.
@tsonfeir But Linux does not have AutoHotkey. This is the biggest deal-breaker for me by far. AutoKey seems be the closest thing, but it’s such a massive pain to even try to use by comparison.
Depending on your usage, perhaps this re-implementation of AHK for Linux might be of use to you.
Interesting, thanks. I think ultimately, seeing this port’s adherence to AHK v1 syntax, I’d just have to bite the bullet and learn Python or something, though…
Never mind, I’ve since stumbled across
xdotool!
Fuck me, there is no worse way automating things
I doesn’t have auto hotkey because for the most part, you can control Linux from the command-line without someone having to invent a new scripting language from scratch to control it.
I heavily recommend you familiarize yourself with bash and the system commands you’ll need to send key presses, move windows, spawn and kill programs, etc.
Hmm, thanks. Can it simulate mouse-clicks?
Apparently,
xdotoolcan! I guess the next thing would be generating GUIs. I think the final issue is that this would cause quite the fragmentation given how I use the same scripts on my Windows-only work laptop… but I’ll think about this more…
Windows 11 looks like a crappy knockoff of KDE with all the good bits removed and replaced with spyware and adware.
It looks much better actually, with the fancy blur and transparency effects. Not to say it works better than Linux, and I’m sure it must be possible to customise KDE to look better.
Yeah there are plenty of kwin effect you can install that would make it as pretty as windows 11 if that’s important to you. Just like there are plenty of themes you can install if you want a macOS experience instead
Yeah, if there is one thing that windows 11 does well is looks. I think its fancy.
Fedora+KDE ftw. I switched my un upgradeable windows PC to fedora and I couldn’t be happier.
Maybe this is why you can’t have a toolbar on the taskbar, to force you into the start menu more.
HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON OLD MAN
Every time.
Because this old man hasn’t learnt the lesson…
We love a good call to arms, what more can be said
If Microsoft does that I’m wiping out my laptop and going back to Linux*
* only reason I moved away is I bought a new laptop to replace my 2010 Mac mini that ran LinuxMint, and the laptop came preloaded with Windows 11 and I decided to just keep using it as-is as I liked the UI.
Fun fact: it is not an entirely new idea. Microsoft did something similar with Active Desktop in Windows 98 but was later removed.
It’s like they want to go out of business
