Given the path of the US right now, this is the wisest decision any American can make.
Indeed. Wise decision for everyone else too.
It’s a bit more urgent for US Citizens.
Why don’t they upgrade to a Canadian OS then?
Arch started as Canadian. GhostBSD maybe?
OpenBSD.
I always thought OpenBSD was Quebec. I just learned now that it is based out of Calgary. Who knew?
Soon the filthy commie anfifa OS will be made illegal there.
That would be 9front though.
I mean, sure, in terms of OS choice.
I think there are some other decisions that give it a run for its money if you don't limit the scope to computing, though.
Given the state of the united states, and the world in general, gaining control over your personal privacy and security are fundamental to any other initiative you undertake
While true, desktops and laptops mean nothing now. Most people dont even have anything other than a phone.
If youre using android or ios, youre not private and you are being tracked 24/7.
Sadly my s23 only runs android and Linux phones aren't good enough yet.
I don’t even do email on my phone. I like the large monitor that doesn’t require glasses to see. Two monitors even.
I derive no joy from watching video on a phone.
This. Also, get a VPN service, like Nord that's preferably not based in the US. Also, Microsoft is literally installing spyware on your computer already. (CoPilot and Recall). They would have NO problems turning over your computer data to the Trump regime on their whims.
I highly recommend mull and learning how to use vopono, it's an incredible combination.
s/ American/one
Wat dis dud sed ⬆️
You forgot :
You are aware that, unlike (e.g.) OpenBSD, Linux is (legally) an American product, right?
I assume you mean The Linux Foundation.
While the LF is US based, the real “product” is the distro and you can choose a non-US distro. My distro of choice is based in Spain.
And, if needed, the kernel could be forked to anywhere in the world without disruption.
Many core programs are built primarily by US firms, like Red Hat, but even OpenBSD relies on many of those. Same story with the forking. OpenBSD maintains some of this themselves (like X11).
What kind of product do you think an operating system kernel is, whose development is driven by a US citizen (Linus Torvalds) under the patronage of a US foundation (Linux Foundation) and with significant involvement of several US companies (Red Hat, Microsoft, NSA) and is usually delivered with a whole host of software from US organisations (foremost: GNU), if not a US product?
I do not consider a stand-alone kernel that does not ship to end users to be a product. But we do not have to argue definitions or semantics if you disagree.
Linux distros are certainly products though (paid or otherwise).
Russia can create a Linux distro, and even modify the kernel, regardless of the rules controlling US companies and foundations. They can certainly vet and remove anything they do not like as well. They just cannot distribute their code via linux.org.
The willingness of Linus to reject Russian participation in the kernel may have more to do with his being Finnish than his being American. There are many American sanctions and restrictions against Huawei (China) and yet they remain one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel. They use their company email. And the US does not seem very anti-Russian to me (as a third-party to both).
Huawei is a Platinum sponsor of the Linux Foundation. Half of the Platinum Sponsors are from outside the US. Those foreign sponsors could easily establish a non-US based Linux Foundation if needed.
Thank your for saying “usually” regarding the the typical Red Hat/GNU platform (same software). I use Chimera Linux (based out of Spain) which skips a lot of that. It also adds some atypical Microsoft tech, a lot of Google tech, and a typical Linux kernel.
Same, I also run Linux only for gaming. Steam Deck convinced me too.
There are unfortunately still useful things that only work on Windows, which is why I still begrudgingly dual boot. I like the idea of ReactOS, but development is slow-going and it’s still only alpha quality at the moment.
I hear ya!
Agreed. Remote desktop from Linux to windows with multiple monitor support sucks. Laggy and full of quirks, that make the options unworkable. Which sucks cause I work home office a lot and remoting to my work PC does not work well.. So I still have windows at home just for this.
I fully flipped over every device in my house off windows about a week or two ago, and so far so good!
I've been daily driving linux on my personal laptop since 2009 (16 years now!?) for school / work / personal work-esque stuff, and my work laptop is now OSX. A few weeks ago I flipped my gaming machine from windows to popOS and been quite pleasantly surprised at how well gaming on Linux is these days. So much so, I convinced my wife to let me flip her gaming machine to Linux as well.
The only hiccup I've recently had was having to deal with windows-only, non-steam software. Ie. insta360. Luckily, there are compatibility layers / emulators I can use to be able to run it. It's slow, but good enough.
At this point, there's no good reason for me to go back to Windows or anything Microsoft. It's even become a red flag when I hear a business is using Microsoft's products. I want to hope Microsoft gets a wake up call at some point soon and turns the ship around, but I think they've got too many big-company deals to have to worry about their consumer products being shite.
Yeah the Insta360 desktop app runs through WINE just fine!
Have you got hardware acceleration working? I'll often take half a TB of 360 footage on a trip, and stitching it on Linux via Bottles isn't viable due to me not having hardware acceleration working. It takes days on my current Linux setup, as compared to less than a day with HW acceleration on Windows.
I have been just considering getting a Mac Mini M4 for 450 bucks next time it's on sale and using that as a DaVinci/Insta360 render server.
I have no idea who that dude is. I won’t follow his example.
Any reasons you don't want to try? Just curious.
I think they mean they already use linux. Or Unix.
Unix.
I actually had tried a few Linuxen in the past 30 years, and while I still have a soft spot for Gentoo and Void (edit: I love how everyone just ignores this part...), I noticed that Linux distributions have deeply fallen for over-engineering recently, making them not notably better than Windows anymore. Also, migrating from one US product to another makes limited sense to me.
You think Linux is an American product?
Yes, I think so. But I'm always open to constructive feedback: What kind of product do you think an operating system kernel is, whose development is driven by a US citizen (Linus Torvalds) under the patronage of a US foundation (Linux Foundation) and with significant involvement of several US companies (Red Hat, Microsoft, NSA) and is usually delivered with a whole host of software from US organisations (foremost: GNU), if not a US product?
Yes, of course, Linux has developers from all sorts of countries. But then, so do Windows and macOS.
However, as I wrote below:
I think that the first part of my comment was the more relevant part.
Linux has developers from all sorts of countries. But then, so do Windows and macOS.
Microsoft and Apple are subject to US authority. Linux is not.
the us gov't forced the linux kernel group to kick out its russian contributors that us gov't considered problematic and it will happen again as more people try to contribute to linux and the us gov't approve of them either.
How exactly are the US-based stewards of Linux development not subject to US authority?
How are they?
You skipped my question. Let me repeat it: What kind of product do you think an operating system kernel is, whose development is driven by a US citizen (Linus Torvalds) under the patronage of a US foundation (Linux Foundation) and with significant involvement of several US companies (Red Hat, Microsoft, NSA) and is usually delivered with a whole host of software from US organisations (foremost: GNU), if not a US product?
You skipped my question: How exactly are the US-based stewards of Linux development subject to US authority?
Microsoft is subject to US authority, because they’re legally US-based. So are Linus Torvalds and the kernel foundation.
Microsoft is subject to US authority because they're a US-based business. Meaning the gov can fine them or take away their business license or demand access to information they have stored, or any number of other things that Linux is simply not subject to, because they're not a business and don't store any user data at all.
What makes you think that US-based entities like the Linux Foundation cannot be fined by the government?
You know the argument is facetious when Microsoft Corporation is being compared to Linux Foundation.
The whole raison d'etre of one is precisely that it can not be owned and control whereas other is trying since its inception to capture value. The organization of both being in the same country its actually irrelevant.
Edit: don't want to invest too much time on this kind of discussion but, and I don't think Linux == Torvalds anymore, his Wikipedia page does state that he has dual citizenship, in 2010 said "I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them [U.S. political party], quite frankly." then in 2024 "I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression?" so I'm not exactly convinced he feels like a US patriot, whatever that might mean.
That's like saying you don't like American cheese, so you won't drive American cars. If you reduce operating systems to a handful of arbitrary traits this way, you may as well roll the dice and pick based on that.
I think that the first part of my comment was the more relevant part.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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