He calls himself a lefty

I started with ubuntu and antergos now im void+funtoo. It feels good.
I reccomend trying out KDE if you have shit tons of ram, its super comfy. of course with any DE its opinion.
if you like that kind of bloated, unminimal but comfy software, heres a chart with more such things.
personally I think a middleground is probably the best for normal use but I like some of these things.

Windows 7 users cannot excercise collective(or individual) control over their software. GNU and BSD users can.

So, since I don't have fucking 1k on hand to get a libreboot laptop, what else can I do to prevent my hardware from fucking me over?

read the OP before you call windows 7 free software

Try to get one with a processor from before Intel Core 2 Duo (at least I think thats when the backdoor got put in). Thats probably the best you can do with hardware tbh.

buy old hardware and libreboot it yourself, or just buy old hardware before CPU backdoors became the norm.

alternatively buy open hardware such as a lemote

Its intel core 2 duo or before that are backdoor free.

reject kapitalist software and it's every reaching control in all forms.

if you still have the addiction to video games make sure to avoid supporting proprietary restrictions management services such as steam.

GOG is the main alternative, right?

i prefer qbittorrent TBH

...

Cringe

like a playground insult my man.

LOL

This is a textbook example of someone too scared or stupid to do what other people are doing so he attempts to shame them into not doing it.

If you need help with GNU+Linux or BSD just ask.

COMRADE STALLMAN WILL SRM ALL BOURGEOISIE SCUM

Stop using proprietary software.

Because of Linux, I no longer feel so alienated by the technology I use as I did when I used Windows! ^_^

You can do whatever you want but when you act like you're at the forefront of the revolution for using software it's fucking embarrassing.

no, it's embarrassing how obviously ignorant you are yet still try to act superior.

Listen, there's only one fucking thing that will bring you to the forefront of the revolution, and that's the extent to which you Google Bookchin. Whether you run free or proprietary software is merely supplementary to this.

richard stallman has done more for the revolution than bookchin ever will

don't shitpost

hmmm

enabling non-porkies to control their computers is very important but so are books. stallman isnt even explicitly gommie, as much respect as I have for him.

A lot of this software is not what I'd reccommend personally, we should make our own leftypol guide sometime.

/g/ is libsoc remember

Looks like anarcho communist to me

I do use Loonix.
Have used it for 17 years now.
But I would like to just interject for a moment to warn you fellas that it's almost impossible to have a 100% free computer these days.
AMD and Intel CPUs require non-free microcode firmware to properly function.
If you use NVidia you pretty much have to use the non-free nvidia driver if you want to use your GPU to its full potential.
If you use an AMD GPU you need non-free firmware to have hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding.
If you use WiFi there's a huge chance your WiFi card requires non-free firmware to function, hell even most plain wired network cards also require non-free firmware to properly function.
What we need it's to push and support the use and manufacturing of free hardware now.

Also 2013- AMD cards and 2009- Intel cards contain a black box (aka backdoor) that nobody knows what's there for.

There's been a few crowd source attempts

No wonder there's so many consumerist retards on this board when people can't even differentiate between free as in freedom and free as in beer.

Yeah nah

Once you experience software freedom and the superior UNIX philosophy you can never go back.

That's right. Also, refusing to snitch to the police is lifestylism as well.
t. Bob Black

for example? I'd pay 10000 bucks for free hardware that can stand up to the current generation of CPUs and GPUs

D'oh. was meant for

Come on chat with me on Discord about post-anarchist anarchism. Err I mean post-left anarchism.
-Bob Black

Bob did nothing wrong tbh. Taking matters into his own hands would've been needlessly dangerous when he could get armed thugs to do it for him for free.

crowdsupply.com/
crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation
crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v

arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/founder-of-gnu-bestows-blessing-upon-open-source-crowdfunding-site/

if you've got that 10k there's places it can be put

I've been using Linux for about 3 years now, exclusively Mint and I've been thinking of changing. Anyone have any suggestions?

Arch (Manjaro, Antergos, etc if you want the benefits of Arch in a ready to go install)

What browsers does everyone use?

I've been using pale moon and at first I really liked it, but as time has gone on it's become more and more unstable, randomly and needlessly drawing shittons of CPU, usually after too long being open, and sometimes just becoming interruptible.

How's the security on Arch? All I know about it from my time on /g/ was that it was a giant meme and that installing and updating it was an ordeal.

Firefox

If you want sandboxing use firejail (unaffiliated with firefox, you can run any program in it) until mozilla fixes their sandboxing code and implements the servo code.

What's the best distro to use for general/school work? I don't care about muh minimalism or ricing

Everything but Arch, and especially not incompetent Manjaro. Their whole community is full of naive normies who see nothing wrong with being fucked by big corporations. Not very good security awareness either, just look at their suborn refusal to sign packages.
I strongly recommend Debian, it's more minimal than Arch, easier to bend to your purpose, more stable, there are more devs working on it. There are distros out there that are better in this or that category but Debian is by far the most well-rounded one.

It's shit.

Depends on what you need and want to do.

Mint Cinnamon or Mint MATE. Just don't forget to enable all updates in their update manager.

If you want security and shit stick to one of the bigger distros backed by redhat or canonical honestly (fedora, ubuntu, centos). they have SELinux and AppArmor and have corporate backing (porky wants security too) and round the clock paid devs.

If you want to be a paranoid security man (not judging just categorizing) consider dropping lignux and switching to OpenBSD (or try out QubeOS).

Arch is more hobbyist and hacker distro (the original definition of hacker).

Debian is a nightmare compared to Arch.

Take it from someone who has used both and doesn't just shit on Arch because it's a meme.

Arch

Why is that? Personally I'm conflicted between Arch, Debian and Gentoo right now.

If you want to use any new software prepare to have your shit JUSTd hard on debian.

The package management is a piece of shit compared to Arch too. Arch is just simple as fuck.

I've used both, and I loved Arch when I was still a newb. But I prefer that Debian separates dependencies into different tiers so that I don't get as much bloat as on Arch. I also find their huge dev community and their practices as well as general philosophy way more reliable than keep-it-stupid Arch devs and lazy Arch maintainers who automate their builds. Debain also goes out of its way ensure good support for various different use cases, particularly when it comes to privacy and security. For example, on Debian I can update packages over tor and use their .onion repos. This is all done by installing a single package and modifying one configuration file.

Debian stable isn't the only Debian release. Extreme stability does come at a price though. Only a subset of users will have a need for new and shiny version numbers, and those are usually competent enough to be able to run Debian testing or sid. It's actually trivially easy to switch releases, just know that maybe at some point you will have to fix something. On Arch it will happen more likely although I didn't have that many problems on Arch either.

the problems I had with debian testing was that it wasn't as bleeding edge as arch yet didn't offer any improved stability.

I can understand the need for a new feature of some specific software but why do you really need completely everything to be so bleeding edge anyway? Some software is backported by maintainers, otherwise it's fairly easy to backport it by yourself as well.

I like new stuff

Really made me think

ok buddy

Nobody's claiming that using free software makes you into a kewl radical. It is somewhat of a software communism put in practice though - as long as we differentiate between free software and open source software, the latter really being nothing more than a business friendly-attempt at subverting the first.
As they say, you can lead the horse to water but you can't make it drink.

...

It's called GNU/Linux.

Except that's exactly what the OP says, and what it says every time you have these circlejerking LARPy Linux threads. I'm not opposed to free or open source software at all, I've actually been thinking about at least dual booting with Linux recently, but this whole attitude of "you're not a REAL leftist if you don't use Linux" that resonates from a lot of these threads needs to die.

Nah, you're just being a butthurt faggot. Get over your free software hate.

...

I'll ween these normie dos fuckers off proprietary software yet.

No
GNo.

fix'd that for you fam.

I'll spoon feed you.

Propietary software is a way for porky to seize the means of production in this age. Free software movement is an oposition to that (even if the founders themselves like stallman are alienated fucks who know nothing about communism).

Right now, the battle is within shit like SAAS. The future porkies envisioned, the worker has to log to a approved platform that only they own to work and PC's will be as limited as macs so it won't work for anything besides what porky expects. Thus, killing petty bourg and proletarian with automatation, but perpetuating the exploitation.

Besides skype, all the work I do, I do it in my Debian VM (because working in windows is painful). Plus having shitposting muh privileges.

And most devs actually do something like this, corporate policies are just bullshit.

But I'm playing Freeciv as I type this.

I run Void on my webserver but I'm hesitant to use it for desktop/laptop. What's your opinion?

Void or Slackware. Really, anything that isn't related to Redhat or Canonical is fine. Make sure to avoid systemd as well, the cancer that's killing GNU/Linux.

About to switch to Pale Moon myself when Mozilla kills the entire reason I used Firefox from the start later this year.

Xubuntu. Synaptic Package Manager is a must.

There's nothing wrong with systems, stop this meme.

Hello, Poettering.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

That said I do miss my autismal stumpwm setup all the time and all of the other shit I could do with my box without much effort. Windows has become exactly what the freetards said it would.

Synaptic is shit. Use pacman

At the same time as apt?!

switch to Arch ;;^)

the true redpill is realizing that economics and politics is less important than software freedoms

Yes, Ubuntu cancer should be avoided at all costs, and red hat enterprise has plenty of non-free corporate suspicious shit too, but fedora can be acquired 100% free with the freedora kernal and the community is quite solid and new user friendly. There really is nothing wrong with it despite its Red Hat sponsorship.

there is nothing wrong with ubuntu

See folks, that's the effect of using proprietary systems like Windows or macOS that brainwash you with a consumerist slave mentality.
No, I modify and make the tools that I use and share them with the community. You don't have to be a programmer to play an active role in the free software community either.

...

long since removed from default, and was always removable.

1. Shit load of non-free parts by default (YES STILL)
2. Developed by a known datamining corperation
3. THAT AMAZON CONSUMERIST SHIT SHOULDN'T BE INCLUDED AT ALL

1 majority of distros include non-free shit or provide it in the repos unless you stick to the FSF approved distros. which is a good thing to do if you can.

2 i don't know much about canonicals other endeavours.

3 and well i guess you can have that opinion

but for a noob user ubuntu is still what i recommend.

...

People should think about systemd once they understand init systems. Anything else is mostly memes.

Hes either a bit politically illiterate or is deliberately avoiding the "c" word to protect his (and the fsfs) image. Hes clearly left libertarian at the very least.

pic related is how I feel about Arch as a Mint user (the only place Cinnamon is a first class citizen)

I play certain video games (because I am a manchild) that don't work very well on a Linux distro. If they did, I'd switch completely. I use it on my laptop.

Cinnamon runs on my fedora build JUST FINE.

Not for me. I've tried it on GeckoLinux (OpenSUSE made with Cinn as default), Fedora, and Ubuntu, All were buggy, and broke harder with updates. It Just Works on Mint, probably because it's maintained by them.

I use updated repos for the software I need to be up to date. So I don't have the issues with Cinn on other platforms and still get the up-to-date software I need while still having the support base of ubuntu/mint.

Strange. Ive tried switching to plasma-kde because the visuals make my peepee stiff, but its SPERGS THE FUCK OUT constantly on fedora. I end up having to kill it with top and launch cinnamon. Used to work fine for me on mint ironically.

If you like KDE, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is basically Arch with some real QA for updates. OpenSUSE has a hard on for KDE.

I believe because when he started the FSF and GNU project it was the 80s and the soviet union was still a thing. Communism was associated with Authoritarianism and control over peoples lives.

This is probably why he avoids using the word Communism and he even calls proprietary developers communists ( I can't find the actual link where he flat out calls proprietary software companies russian communists. )

gnu.org/philosophy/po/bill-gates-and-other-communists.ru-en.html

Ive thought about checking out OpenSUSE but I always get distracted by some newfangled hipster distro. I think ill check that out tonight since its friday and such. Ive got some spare thinkpads around.

Does KDE support some pseudo-tiling like in Cinnamon where you can snap windows to the sides and into corners?

found it

gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html#communism

I would use Tumbleweed in a VM. No harm no foul there. I wouldn't deal with their point release.

Do a Tumbleweed net install.

Their terminal package manager, zypper, is pretty good. Very apt-like.

No idea, I imagine it does. KDE is pretty advanced, it's just heavy.

More infos on Tumbleweed and how they use automated QA

youtube.com/watch?v=GoKYpj6LuJg

Might have to put this on hold, just remembered my samba server is fucked up and I should really fix that tonight. Anyone have any idea as to why I cant open shares until I restart smbd and only temporarily? It was fine until I did a distro upgrade ubuntu server. I removed windozer and its still sperging out. Might do a full backup and fresh install.

logs have anything?

Alot of references to the public certificate being invalid. Strange considering my SSH certificate stopped working recently too as the public key changed without my intervention.

Ive been meaning to switch that damn thing to a different distro anyways.

strawpoll.com/x2f3y65

Which distro is the distro of the people?

OK, what if I want to build a PC with an OS that is as secure and as free as possible all while being able to run new games reasonably well? Especially if new hardware is deliberately made with so called backdoors?

you can't have everything

just grow up and stop playing games

Just play LESS games.
There is plenty of good stuff to play without windows.
Non-Windows & Non-DRM
Rimworld
Factorio
Parodox Games (europa 4, cities skylines, Hearts of iron 4)
almost all GOG games at least run in wine, many run native as well.
Most CD games from pre 2007

TOTALLY free
Super Tux Kart
Nethack
MUDs
Dwarf fortress (I think? I dont play myself)

proprietary freeware

I already play very few games as it is. And more often than not the games that I do play tend to be older anyway. But it would be nice to have the option to play newer games without having to run proprietary software/hardware. I suppose the only answer would be to have 2 PCs then, I might have to be an idort.

and where will you get these newer non proprietary games?

Just two Partitions on the same machine. Force yourself only to boot to windows for the games, and use gnu/linux for everything else. Eventually you will feel less inclined to go through the effort of booting windows to play games and will settle for libre games or something more productive. It worked pretty well for me, I used to be HARDCORE addicted.

I dunno, ive only switched to it from netinst debian a bit ago. It seems nice so far but I cant say if itd be better or worse for you for a personal computer.

DF is on linux. so is IVAN, cataclysm roguelike, and unreal world.
for more modern and/or 3D, darkest dungeon, KOTOR II, from the depths, the wargame games, and rust are all on linux. just browse through the 'steamos' tag on steams website.

I use a win7 install for Earth defense force with friends, the same computer but a different drive inside of it.

we should make three charts, one for 'comfy bloat', one for 'maximum minimalism' and one for 'lightweight middleground'

What's the difference between using FLOSS and lifestylism? I'm all for people using FLOSS but the sole act of using it is not an anticapitalist action. In fact, the reason why the Linux kernel is so stable and constantly in development, is because most of it's code is written by corporations that use it on their own, proprietary hardware. Only 12.4% of commits in 2015 were made by independent users not affiliated to a company: cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/top-company-contributors-linux.png

Yeah, like porky gives a shit about one machine less they can spy/datamine/control. By using FLOSS (or even spreading the word about it), are you doing to end the spying/datamining/control of the whole population? The answer is no, since capitalism is a global system, where any intent of "exercising collective control over software" means jack shit since all of the population is tied to Windows {n∈ℝ} because of exclusive software and all. For as long as workers don't exercise collective control over production, you won't be able to exercise collective control over software and have it be useful.

What I imagine should be done, under socialism, is something like what Ecuador does but at a much larger scale and far deeper. (the Equatorian government promotes the use of free software, and state agencies are migrating to it: administracionpublica.gob.ec/software-libre/) This means, promote a population-wide transition to FLOSS, and have state-sponsored programmers that commit to, or create software according to the needs of society (i.e. if a Win/Mac program is needed and there is no equivalent for GNU+Linux, or it's simply shit)

sounds a bit authoritarian m8

but I am a proponent of making schools use 100% free software. it'll only take one generation to destroy windows. get kids using gnu+linux and we win.

X131e with coreboot and ME neutralized here famalam. Still on shit chromeOS cause I got it today but going to be spending the night installing OBSD :)

Because I'm a gay nerd who likes gaming.

But GNU and BSD users do have collective control over their software, and its good. Their software is free and useful. There are only a few applications for which its not atm, like CAD.
Only *some* people need windows exclusive software.

How am I going to be able to roleplay a futanari draenei in skyrim with all my favorite adult mods from loverslab on something like Linux? Last time I used linux I couldn't even play counter strike source. I don't think it's worth the sacrifice just because "muh NSA boogeyman"

CSS available on linux.

openmw.org/ru/
urbanterror.info/home/

In the land of open source gaming those are the equivalents.

If you want production level shit, Witcher 3 and CS:GO or CSS have solid linux support. Otherwise see:

gog.com/games?system=lin_mint,lin_ubuntu

store.steampowered.com/linux#tab=ConcurrentUsers

Looks like Urban Terror is migrating to the Unreal engine, rip. I'm sure people from the OpenArena/ioquake3 community will keep playing on the OG though.

One more thing I forgot to mention mods for morrowind get pretty crazy. See Morrowind overhaul. pick related.