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."
A massive global technology outage on Friday took down airlines, medical services, TV broadcasts, banks and scores of other business and services around the world, a stunning example of the fragile dependence the global economy has on certain software and the cascading effect it can have when things go wrong.
The outage was attributed to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is used by scores of industries around the world to protect against hackers and outside breaches. A software update issued by CrowdStrike appeared to be at the root of the problem, resulting in crashes of machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system.
We didn't notice it. Our desktops run Linux, our web servers run Linux, and we weren't flying anywhere or buying anything. (Airlines, retailers, and health-care services were named as among those affected.)
UPDATED An update to a product from infosec vendor CrowdStrike is bricking computers running Windows.
The Register has found numerous accounts of Windows 10 PCs crashing, displaying the Blue Screen of Death, then being unable to reboot.
“We're seeing BSOD Org wide that are being caused by csagent.sys, and it's taking down critical services. I'll open a ticket, but this is a big deal,” wrote one user.
That article contains a link to a workaround that may help some users.
"Do note that while the focus is on Windows, Linux machines can run CrowdStrike software too, and I’ve heard from Linux kernel engineers who happen to also administer large numbers of Linux servers that they’re seeing a huge spike in Linux kernel panics… Caused by CrowdStrike, which is installed on a lot more Linux servers than you might think. So while Windows is currently the focus of the story, the problems are far more widespread than just Windows."
I'm now thinking we escaped because we are small end users, and CrowdStrike products are used more by large enterprises (like airlines and banks).
Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That's when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the first program written in their newly developed BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language on the college's General Electric GE-225 mainframe.
Little did they know that their creation would go on to democratize computing and inspire generations of programmers over the next six decades.
I believe that Altair BASIC, Microsoft's first product, was the only microcomputer software that Bill Gates ever wrote. But the BASIC language was in use before Gates came along. (I learned it on a PDP-8 minicomputer.)
From How-To Geek I learn that Haiku OS R1/beta4 -- the open-source continuation of BeOS -- has been released.
Be Inc created BeOS in the mid-1990s as a super-modern operating system, but it failed to catch on. Over 20 years later, the open-source Haiku OS project is picking up where it left off, and there’s a new beta release available.
The Haiku project has been developing an open-source continuation of BeOS for years, based partially on some BeOS code, but much of it has been built from scratch. Haiku R1 Beta 4 is now available, as the first major release in a year and a half. It might be the most significant upgrade yet, as it makes Haiku much more viable as a typical desktop operating system.
It's good for those of us on the "WinTel" platform to be reminded that our alternatives are not just Windows and Linux, or Windows and Linux and BSD Unix. These days I'm much less a student of operating systems, and much more just a user of operating systems. But for those wishing to learn, getting involved with a project like Haiku can be very educational.
And if you feel so inclined, send them a few bucks, so they can make their year-end fundraising goal.
Her: "Hello sir, are you the primary computer user in your household?" Me: "You can assume that." Her: "I am calling from Microsoft corporation. We have been scanning your computer and we can see that hackers have taken control of it. I need you to start your computer and sit down at it." Me: "What version of Windows am I using?" Her: "It doesn't matter, sir; all versions of Windows--" Me: "You don't know what version I am using?" Her: "Of course I know, sir." Me: "Then what version am I using?" Her: --long silence-- Me: "Yeah, I thought as much." *click*
Well, damn. After six years of reliable service, I've just been informed that my Blackberry Z10 smartphone is going to be "decommissioned" -- i.e., remotely bricked -- on January 4th.
Long time readers will recall that the Z10 has kept me safely away from the Scylla and Charybdis of Android and Apple. Alas, I now seem to have no alternative but to choose one or the other.
I've settled on an entry-level Android phone, the Moto G Play, available refurbished for a not-extortionate price. Time will tell how well I get along with Google.
Long-time readers of this site may recall my three-level backup system. Daily, my wife's computer and mine are backed up to each other over the local network, via a cron script I wrote. Also daily, each computer is backed up to its own USB hard drive, via Back In Time. And weekly, more or less, I use scdbackup to back up to DVD-R media (which can be safely stored off-site).
Or at least I did, before the upgrade to Debian 10. After the upgrade, my scdbackup scripts failed. I thought perhaps the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit was the problem, so I recompiled scdbackup from scratch, but that didn't solve it. I kept getting afio errors.* What had suddenly and inexplicably broken?
Finally I decided to investigate the mysterious "error code 1" that afio was returning. And on the afio man page, I found this:
-1warnings-to-ignore
Control if afio(1) should exit with a nonzero code after printing certain warning messages, and if certain warning messages should be printed at all. This option is sometimes useful when calling afio(1) from inside a backup script or program. afio(1) will exit with a nonzero code on encountering various 'hard' errors, and also (with the default value of the -1 option) when it has printed certain warning messages during execution. warnings-to-ignore is a list of letters which determines the behavior related to warning messages. The default value for this option is -1 mc. For afio versions 2.4.3 and earlier, the default was -1 a.
Oh ho. My shiny new Debian 10 uses the latest version of afio, 2.5.1. Obviously my previous Debian used 2.4.3 or earlier, which ignored all warnings (-1 a). So some otherwise innocuous warning message is getting reported as an error, and aborting the backup.
The solution is to add that option to the afio command issued by scdbackup. This is in the file conf/sdvdbackup_afio_value, which should be edited to contain afio -o -1 a (adding the -1 a option, to make the current afio work like older versions).
And with that change, afio and scdbackup are fixed, and I'm doing DVD backups again. __________ * afio is a compression program that scdbackup can use to reduce the number of DVDs required. It is more suitable than tar/gzip for this task, since a disk error will corrupt only one file and not the entire archive.
After my previous post, a chap from my local Linux Users Group tipped me off to uBlock Origin (Legacy), which is an alternative script blocker. I've been using it for the last three weeks on PaleMoon 29.2.0, and it works well, though not as easy to configure as NoScript.
And today I learned from reader "twp" that NoScript is still available for PaleMoon. Though not from the PaleMoon add-ons catalog; you have to go directly to the NoScript web page. NoScript "Classic" (5.1.9) is what you need for PaleMoon. I have now installed it and it seems to be working just fine.
Meanwhile, I have installed Opera, though not yet Vivaldi or Brave. It's been a busy month.
Well, it finally happened. After months of warning messages, the latest update to Pale Moon browser is incompatible with NoScript. So I think I need to switch browsers.
NoScript is (was) a very powerful browser extension that blocks Javascript by default, advises what sites (including third-party sites) are attempting to run Javascript on your computer, and lets you selectively permit them. All with an easy user interface. I default to blocking Javascript, and permitting it only for sites that I trust (a whitelist). This is, first, a privacy and security measure. Second, there are many websites that have toxic or incompetent Javascript, which may not be hostile but canparalyze my computer. And third, this lets me bypass some access restrictions.
So, I'm in the market for a fast, efficent, and privacy-supportive browser. I've identified three candidates:
Opera. Long-time readers of this site will recall that Opera was my favorite browser, until they stopped supporting 32-bit Linux. Well, I've now upgraded to 64-bit Linux, so Opera is again a contender. I've always liked the speed and ease of use of Opera, and in the past they were always a leader in privacy features.
Vivaldi. Though it's been around for years, I just learned about Vivaldi a week ago. This review describes it as "Opera meets Chrome," coming "from the same team that developed Opera back in the day." I like the sound of that.
Brave. I've been hearing about Brave for a long time, ever since it was just aspirational. It's now a real product, and many people recommend it.
A few years ago I posted "Goodbye, Google" as a guide to eliminating all traces of Google from your life. At the time I remarked "one overlarge, overbearing tech behemoth is much like another." Well, that's no longer true -- I now consider Google to be far more dangerous and abusive than Microsoft. So here, long overdue, is an updated list of alternatives to help you break your dependence on Google services. As always, suggestions are welcome.
Google News. These days I use Bing News (yes, I know, I'm using a Microsoft product). There's also Yahoo! News. DuckDuckGo now has a news search, but there's no direct link to it -- you have to do a general search, and then click the "News" tab.
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 widely recommended. I've also read a recommendation for Fastmail. Don't use outlook.com/hotmail.com.
Android Phones.I like our old Blackberry Z10 and Q10 smartphones -- you can still (in 2021) buy refurbished units from Newegg -- which use the QNX-based Blackberry 10 OS.December 2021 update: Blackberry is "decommissioning" all non-Android products, including the Z10 and Q10. 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 Maps. There's Mapquest, and OpenStreetMap, and if you don't mind Microsoft, Bing Maps. Alas, Yahoo! Maps is now defunct.
Google Groups. For email lists, I use groups.io -- replacing Yahoo! Groups, which has been shut down. For "net news" (Usenet news), I'm currently using the Pan newsreader. There are others.
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. I've seen Vimeo, Rumble, Bitchute, and Brighteon suggested, but I haven't tried them. Here's a list of nine others that might be worth a look.
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. There are many others.
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".
After reading of my adventures re-installing DOSEMU, Chuck G. shared this bit of useful news:
There's a new version of DOSEMU out there with precompiled binaries for Ubuntu and Fedora, called DOSEMU2. It's different and in pretty much an eternal beta state. It takes a bit more setup effort, but it does work.
Since I have the original DOSEMU working, I'm not going to attempt to install DOSEMU2 at this time. (Especially as I'd have to build from source; precompiled packages for Debian are not provided.) But I'm glad to hear that someone has "forked" the DOSEMU project and is continuing maintenance and development, since the original DOSEMU seems to have been frozen in mid-2013.
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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