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1. Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:14 JST Narbray

   in reply to

   • Narbray
   >this will be long and I will divide it in parts (in the others I will talk about my experience on WINE, Lutris and things like that that I consider relevant)
   
   When it comes to OS Window (mostly) and Mac have controlled almost the whole market, just like with android, getting out of the control of this monopoly is one of the most important steps if not the most important to start using completely open source, but unlike Android and iOS, changing the operating system of your pc is extremely easy, I won't say you won't miss window, especially if you play games or use very specific programs to work like Adobe's suit, you will definitely have a hard time configuring and installing everything, but do not be overwhelmed and much less fooled, using completely linux and open source on your pc is possible and much easier than it seems and I guarantee it, first believe that linux is pure terminal is a stupidity and a big lie that I also believed, most software already have graphical interface and personally I use Linux Mint that already comes with everything you need included so you do not have to use the terminal or install the most fundamental programs for different functions. However it is true that many of the guides on the internet make use of the terminal, well do not be afraid of the terminal, believe me that when you get used to using it is very comfortable and easy to use, but not always necessary.
   As I said I use Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com/), a free, lightweight and low resource distribution and designed for users who are new to Linux and the truth has proved to be very easy to use even more than window with a great level of customization and excellent aesthetics not too far from window nor too close.
   Also in linux you can make use of Lutris and WINE for games and Window software but I will talk about this later.
   Linux mint comes with everything you might need, an update manager, a secure software store, an office suite, a firewall, a configuration panel with everything you can configure and customize, tools for backups and an excellent tool called Timeshift that allows you to make a capture of the system to restore it in case you break something and this is incredibly useful for inexperienced users because any problem you have just return the system using this tool, includes the Firefox browser, a player, an image viewer, in short everything you may need, and of course all this can be replaced by the software you prefer.
   For desktop environments is in 3 editions, XFCE edition, MATE edition and Cinnamon edition, I personally use the xfce edition which is the lightest and is excellent to revive any old pc you have, but the recommended is Cinnamon which is more powerful but has many more features making it more complete and much easier to use, I have tried all three and the truth is that all three edition are excellent and it will depend on how powerful your pc is (although the truth is that Cinnamon does not consume many resources but it is recommended for powerful computers).
   My experience using Linux Mint has been wonderful, I decided to try linux for the first time more than a year ago in an old pc 2gb of ram DDR2 (a real fossil in which it ran excellent) and I liked it so much that now I don't see the possibility of using window, currently linux Mint is my main system and I don't think I'm going to change it for a long time.
   Probably what scares people the most is the software, however I have found alternatives for linux to practically all the programs that I used before, besides since I had window I had already started to make the change to open source and most of this software includes versions for linux however in extreme cases you can make use of Wine, a compatibility layer for window software that so far personally has been excellent much better than I expected.
   es everything easy. (although I have heard that there are many problems with nvidia hardware I have not had any hardware compatibility problems so far).
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:15 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     browser, one of the most important tools we use everyday, unless you live in north korea then you are fucked.... i used chrome a long time ago, i had the wrong notion that it was 'the best browser` and my switch to Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) was not even because i wanted to use open source software, it was simply because the problems with chrome got on my nerves, it was very slow to run and i never understood why, it also consumed a lot of ram memory, so i made the switch to firefox and it was incredibly easy and so far i have no problems with firefox and i still use it as my main browser both on my PC and on my android phone. Despite how easy it is to make the switch and how complete are browsers like Firefox and Brave people still continue to use chrome despite how problematic it is, anyway who understands society, it is true that in android chromiun is much better than firefox but still so far I have not missed any functionality of chrome, but if you still want to continue using a browser similar to chrome I personally love Brave (https://brave.com/), I personally prefer to continue using firefox but I was using brave both on desktop and android for a long time as my secondary browser, but Brave launched a lot of constant heavy updates (this is not bad) and I barely used it so I decided to change it for something lighter, currently as a secondary browser in linux i am using chromiun which is available in the linux mint software store and developed by the community itself and so far i am going fine with it, on my phone i have switched to Bromite (https://www.bromite.org/), but recently i have been warning me that it is outdated and the truth is that Bromite has not been updated for at least 3 months, this is a problem that i hope will be solved soon, let's see I use to download images from pixiv frequently, and for some reason the mobile version of firefox doesn't let you download images from the pixiv website, but the chromiun based browsers do, it's for reasons like this that I try to make my secondary browser a chromium based one, but I haven't found many good alternatives for android so I may end up switching back to Brave if Bromite doesn't solve this update problem.
     all along i have been using firefox as my main browser, and i have no complaints so far, maybe a little more customization would be nice but this is actually a bit irrelevant, the mobile version is the one i see a little bit of devil compared to other browsers and i hope this will improve in the future, for the time being I will continue like this and leave brave as an alternative for the future as I want to avoid using chromiun based browsers, firefox comes pre installed on linux mint and receives updates through the linux mint update manager so it integrates very well into the system and runs very well on my dinosaur pc with only 4 Gb of ram and so far I have no complaints.
     I hope bromite solves this problem quickly and the project is not abandoned because I really like your browser is light and already includes everything you need for privacy so it is excellent to have it as a secondary browser.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:15 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     ok I will try to make this shorter because no one wants to read those huge texts.
     getting rid of google and android has been the hardest thing I have had to deal with in this whole process, I still use a lot of closed source applications on my phone and getting rid of google completely has been impossible.
     since i switched to linux i have wanted to install a rom also to my phone but there is none available for my tecno spark 6 so i have had no choice but to leave all the crap that comes pre installed from google and more, searching on the internet i found that some bloatware can be uninstalled using adb and i have done that to remove some of it but i have read that it is not recommended to remove google play services this way and that it is safer to keep it updated because sometimes google usually releases security updates on it, so i had to look for an alternative and this is to use a vpn based firewall, I have tried almost all the ones in f-droid but I had a big problem to solve, I could not enable a vpn and the firewall at the same time, plus I also needed to block tracking and ads of the applications I used, but at the end I found the application that brought everything I needed in one and so far it has worked great, InviZible Pro, an application that allows you to connect to a DNS and set rules to block all connections ads and tracking, also includes a firewall to restrict internet access to all that Bloatware junk that brings my phone and also allows you to connect to Tor and thus be anonymous and deal with censorship. After trying lots of applications this was the one that convinced me the most and I've been using it for a few months now.
     my intention is to buy a new phone and get rid of these roms full of bloatware but for now I have no choice but to continue in this way.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:16 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     I don't trust my ISP, and believe me when I tell you I have reasons not to, so I always connect through a vpn, and if not at least I use DNS over HTTPS using Cloudflare (I also use cloudflare's vpn sometimes but I don't trust this one and I don't recommend it), I also use Tor a lot especially on my phone. I think tor is the key to keep you anonymous, but sometimes it is a bit slow and has its problems, so I also use vpn, sometimes I connect through Nord vpn, but normally the vpn I use is ProtonVPN and I have no complaints, the truth is that it works very well and I don't think I will change vpn in a while.
     I made this short because I don't have much to talk about here, I don't have a lot of experience using vpn and I have used proton for years, I have never used any other vpn but the 3 I talk about here and the other two I only have for emergency.
     https://protonvpn.com/
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:16 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     ok a little late my post of today but here I am
     
     I'm going to take the opportunity to tell my experience with antivirus, open source and linux
     
     >keep in mind that I consider myself a total noob in all this software stuff, do not do what I do and do not take into account what I say, talking about viruses and linux is a very sensitive issue for the community and I understand it, but this is just my personal experience and everyone decides what to do at their own risk.
     
     i have been using linux for more than a year now and i don't use window at all, before i used to worry a lot about antivirus but i couldn't find one that i liked and after trying many and not being able to pay for one, i started to think that window already had a free antivirus, and so i started to use only window defender in my pc, of course i trained myself a lot in common sense against viruses, probably the best weapon against this some say and eventually i stopped worrying about antivirus, when I started to switch to open source I tried ClamAV on window, a headache I couldn't even make it work well and it was incredibly slow so I discarded it pretty fast and went back to my window defender, until I switched to Linux, and as linux didn't bring antivirus I started to wonder which one I should install, but things in linux are very different there were not many options so I went back to ClampAV, slow and consumed a lot of resources and did not end up convincing me, everyone even in the linux mint community told me that I did not need antivirus in linux, for the way linux works it is true that it is much more difficult for a virus can do something on your pc, but I think it is a bit questionable to recommend a novice user not to use an antivirus and less in a system based on ubuntu, however not being able to find a decent antivirus for linux I took a decision, I will not use any antivirus and over time I have simply downplayed the importance of antivirus and no longer think they are necessary (at least for me) so I do not use any on my mobile beyond the one that comes installed by default (based on trustlook), of course as I said in the first post I still use VirusTotal although I recommend Hybrid Analysis (https: //www. hybrid-analysis.com/) which I believe is superior and is not google, I use it to analyze links and small files and thus add an 'extra layer of protection', I also started using Firejail, a tool that allows you to run programs in a controlled environment and thus if you get infected with a virus limit this wreak havoc on your system, in fact I run all my browsers through firejail and is an application almost invisible you do not even notice it is there (firejail is also very easy to configure).
     
     To sum up my experience taught me that I did not need an antivirus on my devices, and currently I do not recommend my friends to install antivirus, but if I warn them to keep in mind that if you install things outside the official stores will be running risks, which is quite ironic being that I always recommend that they do not use the play store ...
     
     so far I have had no problems with viruses, not that I have noticed and I'm doing very well this way, so even if clamAV improved a lot I doubt if I would install it, anyway clamAV I think it has a lot to work on especially optimize its performance a bit as it is slow and consumes a lot of resources but unfortunately there are not many open source options to choose from.
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:17 JST Narbray

     in reply to
     I generally prefer to store my files locally, however I do make some backups to the cloud. Currently for this I use MEGA, for when I wanted to change my cloud I always watched recommendations of Mega, so in the end I decided to try it, and so far I have done very well with this, but, I have learned of all the controversy behind mega and the truth I have begun to not trust them much, so I'm thinking of starting to use Proton Drive which came out of beta recently and is now ready for use, I have seen it recommended as a good option for privacy and security so I may consider making the change soon, the bad thing is that drive is still young and lacks many features, it doesn't even have a desktop application so you have to do everything through the browser and that doesn't give me much trust.
     
     Do you recommend me to change or do you think I should not worry about mega? :zt_think:
     anything that comes from china does not give me trust :noa_disgust:
   • Narbray (narbray@varishangout.net)'s status on Saturday, 18-Mar-2023 11:53:18 JST Narbray
     Although my english and my japanese have been improving progressively even so the translator is still one of the tools I use the most, finding an alternative that is at the height of Google Translator is quite difficult especially to translate web pages, but that does not mean that there are not good alternatives and stop using google for this has been very easy for me, I currently use two three translators, one of them is the already known DeepL (https://www.deepl. com/) which has been by far the best translator I have used so far even better than google, its only drawback is probably not cover as many languages as google but at least it covers all the most spoken and important ones, so when the deepl translator is not enough I use Lingva (https://lingva.ml/) a front-end for google translator with all the functions it has to translate text and a nice and intuitive interface (I like that as with google translator it shows you the romaji of japanese). Now to translate images the thing changes a little, I have not been able to find any good translator for this function and it would be good if you could recommend me one XD To translate web pages I use TranslateLocally for Firefox extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/translatelocally-for-firefox/) from the Bergamot project and although the translations sometimes are not very good at least it's something... I thought about using the Firefox Translations extension developed by Mozilla but it gave me problems downloading the translation engines so I discarded it, besides I don't like that the application can't be disabled for private tabs. My experience using these translators has been very good, both translators have a simple and easy to use interface and deepl launches excellent translations and it is advisable to have the paid version although it can be used for free without problems, also on mobile I use the deepL application and it has worked very well, my 'complaint' would be in the translation of web pages, where you can see that there is still much work to do. So far I haven't missed the google translator at all.