this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Privacy

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Originally this was a reply to this article about a Windows feature called Recall, but there's a good argument the author's concerns resonate far beyond Windows and Meta to proprietary generally.

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[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 45 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've done OSINT research and that alone converted me into a privacy advocate. Seeing how Alphabet, Meta, and MS have allowed creep to get training data... Whew. It's breathtaking and complicated beyond the ability to explain in 114 characters.

Y'all, we are cooked. Currently. Present tense. If you aren't freaked out already, you're missing about 85% of reality.

[–] Charlxmagne@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Yeah OSINT existing is proof that no backdoor is secure, not even mentioning what you can buy from data brokers, something authorities wouldn't need warrants for.

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[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 10 points 1 week ago

US corporate "leadership" has a rapists mentality. Consent is not needed. They will do the crime either way. and daddy sam let's them get away with it.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

imagine how great it feels to say this for like 10-15 years while getting dismissed as a conspiracy nut.

and then having it happen exactly as you said it would.

[–] randamumaki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 week ago

It's called the Cassandra Complex, named after Cassandra/Kassandra of Troy.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you think this is new, you're very naive. They just have better tools to spy on you now.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

i didn't say its exactly new, quite the opposite.

its just that we can't stop it anymore.

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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 39 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Switching from Windows to Linux isn't going to block them from monitoring your use of online services. Facebook doesn't even do anything in the OS space.

[–] illi@lemm.ee 45 points 1 week ago

I think what they are getting at is that Meta does this and they find it likely Microsoft might be doing something similar.

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[–] Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)

To all the people who are criticising this guy for working for Meta, I would like to remind you of the phrase, "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer".

I am very much a left-winger, but I still read right-wing papers and articles, I like to know what the other side is thinking.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago

FUCK YEAH, YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

Shit I was just about to install PopOs! Which is developed by a US company. It's maddening trying to find the right distro that fits all the requirements.

Edit: Opting for Mint.

[–] Una@europe.pub 27 points 1 week ago (5 children)

According to Distrowatch mint and Zorin are from Ireland, opensuse and manjaro are from Germany and more was lazy for more searching

[–] ijhoo@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (9 children)
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[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (9 children)

A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

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[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What does linux need to try?

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[–] albert180@piefed.social 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've wanted to switch to OpenSUSE for quite some time now from Fedora for the same reason. Should really do it now

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[–] tiny_hedgehog@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I use Ubuntu. Can someone tell me if that’s “independent and outside US jurisdiction”? I know it’s made/maintained by canonical.

What are some Linux distros that we should avoid? What are some that are independent?

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[–] datendefekt@feddit.org 11 points 1 week ago

Was considering migrating from Fedora and getting a MacBook, but this is making me reconsider.

[–] ijhoo@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Does that mean that fedora is not recommended?

[–] NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fedora is an international collaborative effort but Red Hat is the main sponsor and it is US based. We will have to be careful and observe

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

And the new leader (whatever the fuck it's called) is going to be a Red Hat employee. It's why I left Fedora despite liking it quite a lot. That's way too close to IBM for my liking

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