On 07/09/2021 02:11 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> I'm running NoScript on my web browsers and have things
> locked down pretty tightly. Lately, though, more and more
> web sites have stopped working. It seems that JavaScript
> has become so pervasive that any attempts to block it cause
> many sites to fail. I use Seamonkey as my browser, since
> I don't like the way the Firefox user interface has been
> evolving - but more and more I find I have to grit my teeth
> and fire up a copy of Firefox (to which I haven't added any
> security options) in order to access sites that do (e.g.)
> online billing.
>
> From time to time I'll take a look at what NoScript is
> doing, and the ubiquitous Google comes up all over the
> place. I'm trying to opt out of the surveillance state -
> is this becoming an impossible dream?
>
Ubuntu can be a bit annoying ...you've got to murder all
their cloud crap for starters. They also seem to think
they have a "better way" for a lot of little, basic,
stuff. Apply the whip ....
I always put good old LXDE, not LXQT, on UServer - with
as much --no-install-recommended's as possible. I see
Lubuntu is switching to LXQT now - so much for them ...
BUT, on the whole, Ubuntu Server is a good hard-working
distro.
For general-purpose desktops though, plain Debian is
by far the easiest to set up and tune the way you want.
MX has a number of little lucky charms however ... I
tend to recommend it for newbies. I see it's been at
or near the top distro for quite awhile now.
My Tumbleweed box has gotten uppity though. While
the theoretical eternal updates are attractive
they've pissed me off lately. FFMPEG switched
to a version that doesn't support H264 - basically
every IP camera in the universe - and after spending
a couple of hours trying to compile the better version
but coming up against the dependency wall, well to
hell with it. Doesn't even have hddtemp anymore.
Sure you can FAKE it with smartctl and a python
script and a symlink, but why SHOULD I ?
And SELinux ... basically a firewall behind a firewall
where ONE should almost always be enough. Gotta do
battle with SELinux just to get ANYTHING to work right.
DID get MX to run on a Pi-3 the other day ... just a
tad pokey, not as bad as TWeed - I'd say "usable".
On a Pi-4 it'd be pretty ok.
BSD ... I've just never had good luck with any of
them. They're very bossy about how they want to
set up the disk and don't always want to install
a GUI no matter how much you kick them. As a pure
terminal system however, well, they'd be fine and
maybe offer even a little more security than any
Linux you can get.
Centos - RIP. IBM ruined that. I think Scientific
Linux is still around, another RPM distro that
at least used to be pretty nice. OpenSuse/TWeed
is still a Cadillac system, so long as whatever
YOU want to do with it doesn't run contrary
to what the DistroLords have in mind these days.
OpenSuse/YAST is still the most helpful distro
I've ever encountered - you can do in a minute
with their tools what you'd spend hours doing the
hard way in any other system.
And hey, there's always Plan-9 ... which IS a real
working OS that saw a fair bit of action ... but
it's not compatible with anything. You can also
emulate a Z80 and run CP/M. I remember when the
first IBM-PCs came out ; you got an IBM-DOS disk
AND a CPM/86 disk. I think the CPM/86 disk would
boot up through the P4 chips (the core2-quads
still ain't awful). Turbo Pascal - all hail ! -
came in a CP/M version up through v3 as I recall.
I like Pascal ... still use Lazarus/FreePascal
quite a bit - THE quickest easiest way to put
a GUI program together by FAR.