Can you still run Windows if you care about privacy?

Discussion in 'privacy general' started by zakazak, Oct 26, 2015.

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  1. zakazak

    zakazak Registered Member

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    The recent privacy terror about windows 10 and its background spying made me try out linux for some time. I went straight hardcore and installed Arch with XFCE. I like to configure stuff to my needs and thought XFCE might even be more lightweight than my Windows 8.1.

    More lightweight? No
    Did everything work? Hell no, but I was able to install and configure stuff to my needs. Comparable to windows? Not at all... Bugs? Yes.. missing support or troubles with some stuff? Oh yes.
    Touchscreen? Fail

    So I tried gnome.
    Productive DE? Not at all.
    Touchscreen? Yes, very nice support
    Lightweight? Pff.. usually even with 80+ tabs in firefox my fans won't turn on.. but gnome-shell alone seems to be enough to make my fans go crazy.

    So I am back at windows.. wow.. that scaling, that ease of everything and how it simply works. and resources? Well more disk space needed, but who cares. RAM? Well it uses more RAM but with 16GB RAM I don't care either. CPU usage? Lower than on Arch with XFCE. Is everything fast? Hell yes.

    I was thinking that I could live with less eye candy, less state-of-the-art, the troubles of configuring and getting everything to work in exchange of more privacy. But even after 1-2 months of playing around with Linux, as soon as I booted windows I kinda wanted to go back again.
    But what about privacy? Is it really a smart choice to use Windows these days?
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2015
  2. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Want to address just part of your post. You say you've tried a couple Linux Distros. On some computers I've worked on I've tried a dozen or more Distros before finding one that works. So as far as Linux ime you gave up too early.
     
  3. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    Perhaps your problems were caused by something you did, specially when trying to run your proprietary drivers with grsecurity.
    I tested Arch with KDE, XFCE, GNOME, MATE, and Cinnamon. Arch+XFCE ran with 200 MB and 0% CPU usage. Arch+GNOME ran with 320 MB and 0% CPU usage. I could make Arch+KDE run with 192 MB and 0% CPU usage too. Arch+MATE ran with 230 MB and 0% CPU usage as well, and I have a little dual core :p

    It's not a smart choice to use Windows, it's a terrible choice. Although more things do work on it, Windows is a closed-source operating system and you'll never know exactly what it does. You must decide whether you want something that 99% of software "just works" there, but with no privacy; or to use something like Ubuntu, Mint or Debian, which less software works there but you get more security and real privacy.

    It's a hard decision to make. I tried using Parabola (a complete GNU distro), but I have an old CRT monitor and since Parabola doesn't have the closed-source GPU firmware, my monitor only goes to 60 Hz and this hurts my eyes. But then I realized that the firmware only runs on the host device (my GPU) and not by Linux or the host CPU. Then I went to Arch.
     
  4. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    But I understand if you get frustrated if something doesn't work. I myself am using Windows right now hehehehe. But then when I get bored of games, I know where to go, to a place where nothing spies on me.
     
  5. Joxx

    Joxx Registered Member

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    no
     
  6. Nanobot

    Nanobot Registered Member

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    I've already made up my mind but I'm making another drivel thread/post pretending that I've serious concerns about privacy.

    "whymacsucks"
     
  7. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

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