Are you tired of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for your computer's software? Tired of having to buy upgrades, and new hardware to run the upgrades? Tired of crashes, security flaws, cyber-attacks, and worrying if your computer is safe to use? Had enough of license agreements, lock-downs, and restrictions on what you can do with your computer? Worried about your business being sued for making a careless copy?
It doesn't have to be that way. You can live your life free of Microsoft, and free of their thousand and one petty annoyances. And you can save money in the process.
This website is devoted to helping you say Goodbye to Microsoft, and to "Take Back the PC."
This post deviates a bit from the theme of saying goodbye to Microsoft -- but only a bit, because one overlarge, overbearing tech behemoth is much like another. So, by popular demand, here are alternatives to help you break your dependence on Google services. I'll try to update this as I get more information; suggestions are welcome.
Google Search. I use DuckDuckGo. Here are fourteen alternative search engines (not counting Google). Correction: I had previously said that Ixquick is a privacy front end for Google. That's true of Ixquick.com, but Ixquick.eu does not use Google, so it's still a good choice.
Google News. I use Yahoo! News. There's also Bing News if you don't mind using a Microsoft product.
Gmail. Your ISP should provide a mail account (and may provide webmail). Ditto your web hosting service, if you use one. Otherwise, there are many free webmail services. I've used Yahoo! Mail. I've heard ProtonMail recommended. I've also read a recommendation for Fastmail. Don't use outlook.com/hotmail.com.
Android Phones. I like the old Blackberry Z10 and Q10 smartphones -- you can still buy refurbished units from Newegg -- which use the QNX-based Blackberry 10 OS. Newer Blackberries, alas, use Google's Android OS. The only other option I can suggest, if you must have a smartphone, is an iPhone.
Google+ (G+). I don't use any social media, so I'm short of suggestions here. I can't in good conscience recommend Facebook as an alternative. Other suggestions are welcome.
Google Groups. For email lists, I still like Yahoo! Groups. For "net news", I'll use a web broswer that supports NNTP directly, or some other newsreader program. (Currently I'm not using net news.)
Google Ads. I don't use any web advertising service, so I'm a bit short of suggestions here. Suggestions are welcome.
YouTube. I also don't upload videos. But I found this list of 10 alternatives with a web search for "alternatives to youtube".
Google Docs. For online collaboration, Zoho seems to be competing with Google. I haven't tried Zoho Docs or any of their other services. I work entirely on my desktop PC, not on the cloud, and I use the LibreOffice suite.
Google Analytics. If you need stats and analytics for your web page, here are lots of alternatives to Google Analytics. (That web site, alternative.to, is terrific for finding alternatives to just about anything.) Or just do a web search for "alternatives to google analytics" -- you'll find a lot of articles like this one.
So far this week's upgrade to Debian 8 has been relatively smooth. I've found a few applications removed from my Start menu, but they're still on the system and easy to add back to the menu. The first big stumbling block was today, when I tried to use serial port /dev/ttyS1 (known to DOS and Windows users as COM2).
Long-time readers will recall my serial port problems with Debian 7, which I finally resolved. This was something different. Any attempt to use /dev/ttyS1 produced the message "Cannot open /dev/ttyS1: device or resource busy". Oddly, /dev/ttyS2 (on the same serial card) and /dev/ttyS0 worked ok.
The Serial HOWTO wasn't particularly helpful. It suggested using setserial to diagnose the port, but any attempt to do setserial /dev/ttyS1 gave the "Device or resource busy" message.
Googling the error message was more productive. One of the pages turned up was this one, which explained how to use lsof to list open files (a busy device will appear as an open file). Doing lsof /dev and then examining the output yielded this interesting line:
which indicates that /dev/ttyS1 is being used by a program that I can reasonably guess is called "ModemManager". Sure enough, checking the active processes with ps ax | grep Modem yielded
789 ? Ssl 0:00 /usr/sbin/ModemManager
Obviously the Debian "Jessie" upgrade saw that I had a serial port, and concluded -- incorrectly -- that I wanted to use it for a modem. So a new Google search, for "debian jessie disable modemmanager". That turned up this forum page which informed me of the commands
and Presto!, I now have access to /dev/ttyS1. As I understand it, the "disable" command will prevent the ModemManager from being restarted the next time I reboot.
After my recent grumble about Windows updates, it's only fair that I relate the trials of upgrading from Debian Linux 7 to Debian Linux 8.
I couldn't put it off any longer. Debian 9 is due to be released next month, and I figured I had better upgrade from 7 ("wheezy") to 8 ("jessie") before that happens. I had done a fresh install of 8 to my wife's computer back in December, but for my computer, with its countless customizations and installed applications, I wanted to take advantage of Debian's ability to upgrade the operating system without doing a clean install. (Long time readers may recall that I upgraded from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 6, but did a fresh installation of 7.)
I really, really, really don't want to hear any Windows cheerleader telling me how difficult Linux is to manage.
Although I use Linux for all day-to-day computing, I have two old laptops with Windows XP licenses, and I have them configured to dual-boot Windows or Linux. Every now and then I need to run a Windows application that won't work under Linux; they're handy then. And even though Windows XP support ended long ago, Microsoft decided to make a patch for the WannaCrypt worm available for XP.
And since I might be travelling with the laptop, and might need to boot Windows on the road, and since Windows will automatically connect to a local area network, and a Windows box can be infected by merely connecting, I thought I might as well install that patch.
Three hours later, I still couldn't.
The last time I updated this laptop -- shortly before support ended -- the update included Internet Explorer 8. I've never used IE8 on this laptop; I have Firefox installed and always use that. But Windows Update needs IE8, and when I launched Windows Update (on our safely firewalled private network), I was informed
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
The "Diagnose Connection Problems" button was spectacularly useless; it merely told me that the computer couldn't connect to the Internet. Reading the error log informed me that the computer couldn't make HTTPS or FTP connections to microsoft.com, though it could make an ordinary HTTP connection. And IE8 wouldn't display google.com, either.
Firefox worked fine. I could ping microsoft.com and get a reply. So I know the router is working, the laptop is connected to the router, the DNS is working, and the Internet is working. It was just IE8 that failed.
After a few hours of trying everything Google could turn up on the subject, I managed to get IE8 to visit Google. (I disabled almost every plug-in. Later I'll figure out which was the problem.) And Yahoo. And any other web site I tried, except anything at microsoft.com. (Pause for a moment to savor the irony of Microsoft's pet browser being able to visit anything but Microsoft.)
I've had enough. I'm going to disable SMB networking as thoroughly as I can, since Microsoft's buggy SMB software is the infection vector. And I'll do everything I can not to use Windows when travelling. I'll make this the "home laptop" henceforth.
This is why people don't update religiously. First, updates break working systems. (I am not the first to discover this.) Second, one of the things broken is the update function!
Postscript: I finally got the patch installed. I used my Linux desktop to download the patch .exe file for Windows XP SP3 from this web page, copied that to a USB memory stick, and then plugged the USB stick into my laptop and manually ran the .exe file.
A highly virulent new strain of self-replicating ransomware shut down computers all over the world, in part by appropriating a National Security Agency exploit that was publicly released last month by the mysterious group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
As luck would have it, I learned of this risk hours before the outbreak, thanks to this article at bitcoin.com:
What’s worse than a government agency (CIA) committed to violating privacy rights through weaponized malware? A bumbling one that hands your computer over to more common criminals who want banking information, tax refunds and anything else from which they can profit. What’s worse than an agency with weaponized malware blowing in the wind? Two agencies (NSA).
The tools that are infecting computers worldwide were indeed developed by, and then leaked from, the NSA. (Thanks for nothing, spooks.) The bitcoin.com article contains tips about how to protect yourself, and links to Windows patches, if you haven't yet been hit. Fortunately for us, the attacks seem to be focused on Windows systems; our Linux desktops are so far unscathed.
Procrastination can only take you so far. After putting it off last year, I finally had to upgrade my wife's operating system. She had been using reliable but elderly Linux Mint 14, and she was encountering more web sites that needed an updated browser...which means either a lot of painful manual installation, or an updated Linux with an up-to-date repository.
She liked the MATE desktop, and I like the Debian ability to upgrade to a new version without reinstalling, so now that Debian officially supports MATE, I decided to install Debian rather than Mint on her computer. The downside is that I'll have to install much of the non-free compatibility stuff (like Flash player) the hard way. The upside is that, after I upgrade my computer, we'll be running the same distro.
So, off to debian.org to grab the latest official version, 8.6.0. There does not seem to be a CD image for MATE, so I downloaded what I knew to be a lightweight desktop: LXDE. (Specifically, CD image debian-8.6.0-i386-lxde-CD-1.) I knew I could install MATE from the repository.
The good news is that CD installation went without a hitch. I had previously left a spare 20 GB partition on her hard drive, for a second operating system, so I simply installed Debian to that. I always make /home its own partition, so once I had Debian installed I edited /etc/fstab to redirect /home to that partition. (In theory I could have specified this at installation, but some installers format the partition, which would have wiped all her data. Manually editing /etc/fstab is more work, but I thought safer.)
I'm happy to report no problems with graphics display or sound card -- both worked perfectly after the install. Debian even recognized that she has an HP printer, installed hplip, and configured CUPS for her specific printer. Nice.
It is always the case that some applications need to be installed manually. Firefox and LibreOffice were part of the base install, but I had to add these from the repository:
Icedove (Thunderbird) Enigmail BackInTime Mozo (MATE's menu editor)
About Acrobat Reader -- Adobe stopped supporting that on Linux years ago. But before they did, I downloaded the last supported version (9.4.7) and saved it on hard disk. So I had that available for installation -- it may be antiquated, but some PDF files still demand it. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Adobe has updated versions of Flash for Linux -- I thought they had discontinued Linux support there, as well.
I still need to install some Firefox plugins. And I'd like to find something like the Mint applications menu, that runs on Debian. I'm used to the Gnome 2 menu, but she's not. But all in all, this has been a very clean switchover, taking perhaps four or five hours of my time.
My wife called this to my attention; a web site called "smartwebuser.org" (I refuse to post a link) that warned "If you live in Canada and have a Linux computer which is over 6 months old, then we advise you to keep reading." What followed was a puff piece for something called ScanGuard. It sounded suspiciously to me like all those "cleanup" apps that are advertised in email and occasionally on TV, that promise to protect your PC from viruses and malware, and make it run a zillion times faster. It sounded like a scam to me.
A quick Google search for "ScanGuard scam" confirmed this. First I found this Yahoo Answers discussion, where it was reported that the program will advise you that there's a problem and you need to spend $49 to fix it.
The item in question is ScanGuard, a PC cleanup, optimization, and protection program. It’s a very new program; according to Whois records, the site came online in June 2016. I don’t find any discussions of ScanGuard earlier than September.
As for the company behind ScanGuard, all I can find is a reference to “a highly regarded Microsoft Solution Provider.” No “about” or “contact” links on the site. That’s a huge red flag. ...
Installing ScanGuard goes a little too fast for my liking. There is no licensing agreement to read, no “I accept” button, no “cancel” button. A corporate lawyer would never allow those items to be omitted. ...
The only review of ScanGuard that I could find comes from a brand-new site called Top10BestAntivirus.com, which was registered in October 2016. Warning bells went off right away, when I saw that the top 2 items here are TotalAV and ScanGuard, two unknowns that have the same domain registration information. The reviews for both are glowing and vague, and the other products listed are all affiliate links.
Here's another odd thing I found while researching this software. The domain name for ScanGuard (scanguard.com) is listed as "for sale" on several domain marketplaces, with prices ranging from $10,000 to $22,800. Hedging their bets? Very odd, to say the least.
As Rankin says, "the company is sketchy." I have not yet seen any reports of the program installing malware, but it's still early days, and most people seem to have had the good sense not to try this.
My guess is that they've milked the Windows market for all they could, and are now hoping to turn up a few suckers in the Linux marketplace. Do NOT install this program on your computer -- it's like handing them the keys to your house.
Say, this really works. I tried it again this morning, when the phone rang at an ungodly hour:
Him: "Hello sir, I am from Windows technical support and I am calling about your computer." Me: "Yup." Him: "I believe I am talking to the main user of the computer, is that correct?" Me: "You can believe that." Him: "Are you the main user of the computer?" Me: "You can believe that." Him: "Sir, are you the person who uses the computer in your household?" Me: "You can believe that." *long silence* *click*
Give them an answer they can't parse, and eventually they give up.
TORONTO—On Aug. 25, 1991, Linus Torvalds sent a mailing list message announcing that he was building a new operating system. Today, nearly 25 years later to the day, Torvalds took the stage at LinuxCon here, recounting that original message and the years since then. For Linux's creator, the success of the Linux operating system has a whole lot to do with the General Public License (GPL).
Torvalds also talked at LinuxCon about the risk of fragmentation of Linux, which is something that happened to Unix two decades ago. With Unix, multiple vendors made very different choices and took that operating system in disparate paths. For Torvalds, the choice of the GPL created by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was and still remains the answer to prevent fragmentation.
I don't know; the GPL hasn't prevented a dozen different desktop environments from proliferating under Linux. (And that's not a bad thing.) I suspect what crippled Unix, and left an opportunity for Linux, was the litigation involving BSD Unix 24 years ago. That case was settled, and BSD Unix is free and clear, but the cloud hung over "free" Unix for several years and doubtless hampered adoption.
The happy result is that we have both Linux and BSD Unix for our free (libre) software needs.
(Thanks to our friends the Millers for the reminder.)
I got another one of those calls, claiming to be from "Windows Technical Support" and working up to telling me my computer was infected. It didn't get that far:
Him: "Hello sir, I am calling from Windows technical support. Do you have a computer or laptop?" Me: "You can safely assume that." Him: (pause) "I know that you have a computer, sir. Do you know?" Me: "Certainly I know whether or not I have a computer." Him: (sounding confused) "Do you have a Windows computer?" Me: "Oh! No." Him: (sounding more confused) "Am I talking to the person who owns the computer in your house?" Me: "That's a reasonable assumption to make." Him: *click*
I'll have to use this gambit more often. I've never rid myself of one of these pests so quickly, short of simply hanging up on them.
applications: The software that lets you do things with your computer (word processor, Internet browser, email, etc.). The programs you see and use.
distribution: Also called "distro." An operating system (usu. Linux) combined with a selection of application programs, in a ready-to-install form. Different distributions are customized for different purposes, e.g., desktop computing, music editing, Internet server, and so on.
FOSS: "Free / Open Source Software," a catch-all term. Sometimes F/OSS or FLOSS.
free software: Refers to free as in freedom, not free as in free beer. Specifically, the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software.
howto: A short tutorial telling "how to" perform some task. See, for instance, the Linux HowTos.
Linux: Strictly, GNU/Linux. A free operating system, modeled on Unix, developed since 1991 by volunteers around the world.
open source: Refers to software whose source code can be examined, modified, and redistributed. Similar to but not exactly the same as "free software."
operating system: The software that manages your computer's hardware (disk drives, display, network connection, etc.). The stuff "under the hood" that makes your computer work.
repository: An on-line library of application programs for a particular distribution, in a ready-to-download-and-install format. In many distributions, programs can be installed from the repository with just a few mouse clicks.
Unix: A computer operating system originally released by Bell Labs in 1970. It is still widely used in several commercial variants, and in the open-source BSD Unix.
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