The Linux Experiment

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#privacy #linux #webbrowser

00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: Proton Mail, the private and encrypted email service 01:51 What's Browser Privacy 03:03 Google Chrome 05:14 Mozilla Firefox & LibreWolf 07:11 Brave 09:14 Tor Browser 10:51 Microsoft Edge 11:57 Opera 12:56 Vivaldi 14:07 What should you use? 15:05 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

So, Chrome is THE most used browser in the world, on mobile, and on desktop. Out of the box, it doesn't have an ad blocker, or a tracker blocker enabled. To use that browser to the fullest, you'll also need to use a Google Account, and thus everything you do in your browser will be collected unless you specifically disable it.

You can disable a lot of things in your Google account and the web browser settings, but you'll need to download extensions to block the most invasive trackers and limit fingerprinting. Chrome is also not open source.

On Privacy tests.org, we can also see that Chrome has weak fingerprinting resistance.

Firefox has a good reputation for privacy, but it's not the best choice either. By default, it collects telemetry data, including how many tabs you have open, how many windows, how many webpages you visit, the number and type of extensions, duration of your browsing sessions, and some technical data on your OS, the version of the browser, the language, and your IP address in their server logs. Firefox can also use this data to recommend extensions to you.

In terms of protections, Firefox doesn't block tracking scripts or pixels but it does block social media trackers, cross site cookies, cryptominers, plus all tracking when you're in incognito mode. Firefox is open source, so you can be reasonably sure that it doesn't collect more than what it tells you.

If you like Firefox but you don't want the telemetry, and you want improved fingerprinting protection, then there's Librewolf.

Brave offers a lot of what you'd be able to do in another browser with extensions, but it does so out of the box. They call them "shields", and they block ads, trackers, fingerprinters, and cross site cookies by default. They also auto redirect GOogle's AMP pages to the "real" website, and they redirect tracking URLs so you're not even visiting the tracking domain at all.

The ultimate private browser is probably Tor Browser, but it won't be for everyone. Tor Browser blocks everything that the website might want to learn about you, so there's no tracking at all, and no fingerprinting, but ads aren't blocked.

Edge is based on CHromium, the base for CHrome, but they remove everything Google related from it, to mostly replace it with Microsoft related things, like a Microsoft account.

Edge, by default, has an opt-out for telemetry. It will block trackers from third party sites, and some ad trackers as well. It also collects "required" diagnostic data that can't opt out of, and this data is used to personalize ads from microsoft. If you use a microsoft account, you'll also give MS a bunch of data in the process, including device information, usage data, browsing activity, bookmarks and more.

Opera is yet another chromium based browser, which gets the worst results on privacytests.org. It has a unique fingerprint, and doesn't block tracking scripts, or pixels, it doesn't resist fingerprinting, it doesn't remove tracking parameters, and it also doesn't block the major tracking cookies.

It doesn't send "do not track" signals by default either. Their privacy policy also states that they might share personal data with third parties, which can be worrying, as Opera has been bought by a chinese consortium in 2016.

Vivaldi is also a chromium based browser. At first start, it will ask you what you want to block.

Vivaldi doesn't collect any data, browsing history or anything else, even if you use a Vivaldi account, because everything is encrypted in there.

Try out Kasm Workspaces to stream desktops, OSes & apps to your browser: https://www.kasmweb.com/community-edition

Or you can use KasmVNC, the best open source remote desktop solution on Linux: https://github.com/kasmtech/KasmVNC

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#nixos #linux #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: Kasm, the best remote desktop tool 01:22 What is NixOS? 04:20 Using the configuration file 08:58 Nix Package Manager 11:03 Updating and unstable channel 12:48 Nix is way more than that 14:53 Sponsor: get a PC made to run Linux 15:58 Support the channel

NixOS is a Linux distribution that is completely and entirely reproducible. Everything you use is defined in a configuration file that is used to build your system. All the services, packages, options, partition layout, hardware, everything, is in this config file.

If you're a developer, your eyes might be sparkling right now: that's right, one config file to exactly replicate your entire development environment.

You also can never get into dependency hell. Packages all declare exactly which versions of each library they need, and these versions are all installed side by side and kept, not erased by newer versions.

To create your configuration, there's a main configuration file in /etc/nixos, called configuration.nix.

This file uses its own specific syntax, that is entirely functional: it describes everything the system uses and with which options, from the hardware, the bootloader, the services, the packages, the apps, the users, everything.

This file is then used to build your operating system. Nix will read everything in there, and install, configure, and enable or disable everything, based on what the file contains. So, if you build a nixOS system with the same config file as someone else, you'll get exactly the same system.

Once you rebuild your system, there are now multiple entries in the boot loader: one for the new build, and one for the old one: you can always roll back to the previous configuration.

Of course, all of this requires root access to edit the main config of the system. But if you don't have root access, or if you don't want to add programs to your main reproducible config, but just test them out for now, you can also install packages as a regular user, using the nix package manager. Or you can add flatpak to your config file, or run appimages. But installing programs will be mainly done using the Nix package manager.

The Nix package manager works on any Linux distro, but also on macOS, WSL, and more. It's preverytty easy to use. If I want to install, for example, OBS, I'll just type

nix-env -iA nixos.obs-studio

The -i is the argument to install, and the capital A is to tell the package manager to install using the specific name of the package, instead of looking through the whole repo, which is way slower.

If I want to remove the package, I can use nix-env -e obs-studio, and it will be removed. Note that installing packages with nix-env doesn't add them to the config file.

NixOS works with channels. By default, you'll use the Stable channel, with tested packages that get security updates only, and major feature updates when there's a new release of NixOS, every 6 months.

To update, you can just run the command

sudo nix-channel --update

This will pull all the latest package versions from the channel your system uses.

Then you run the "nix-rebuild switch --upgrade" command, and your system will grab every new version of every package, and rebuild the system based on your configuration file.

Important to note, the new version of a package is installed alongside the old one. The new versions are the ones that will be used, thanks to a simple symbolic link system that always points to the newest version of a package, but you can rollback to an older one.

To get newer packages, at the risk of having a less stable system, you can switch to the unstable channel.

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00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website with Squarespace 01:34 France arrested people for being private and using Linux 03:53 Windows 11 is losing users 05:44 System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware 07:27 Debian 12 is now out 09:04 BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros 10:53 Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations 13:17 Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, Proton updates 15:03 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:07 Support the channel

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

France arrested people for being private and using Linux

https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembre-le-chiffrement-des-communications-assimile-a-un-comportement-terroriste/

Windows 11 is losing users

https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-11-lost-users-this-month-should-microsoft-be-worried

System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware

https://blog.system76.com/post/major-updates-for-system76-open-firmware-june-2023

Debian 12 is now out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfgPmUsirs

BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros

https://blendos.co/blend-os-v3/

Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations, Ubuntu adds quarter tiling, and staged releases for snaps

https://ubuntu.com//blog/release-management-for-snaps-made-simpler

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/06/ubuntu-23-10-window-tiling-feature

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-extensions-now-supports-donation/

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0beta/releasenotes/#whatsnew

Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, & Proton updates

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/proton-experimental-fixes-up-halo-mcc-ubisoft-connect-creativerse/

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-game-porting-toolkit-windows-games-macos

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#Linux #opensuse #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:47 Sponsor: Check out AlmaLinux and TuxCare's support services 01:54 OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 02:53 Installer: not the best 05:47 Default desktop experience 06:42 Yast: managing software 08:39 Yast: configuring the system 12:50 Interesting things 14:40 Conclusion 16:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly, with Tuxedo 17:12 Support the channel

It's a rolling release Linux distro, but they test everything thoroughly through their own build service.

Lets talk about the installer. First, you get a licence agreement.Y ou get very complete network settings, but they're not user friendly at all. Then you get to pick the role of your system: do you need a desktop, with GNOME, Plasma, or XFCE, a generic desktop for a minimal install, or a server. You can also get other desktop environments from the repos afterwards, like Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, or even just a window manager, like i3.

OpenSUSE tumbleweed is one of the rare distros I installed using all its defaults that did NOT manage to give me a bootable system. I reinstalled it, this time carefully picking my partition layout, and this time it worked.

Once I managed to boot the system, I got a very vanilla GNOME experience, with GNOME 44. No extensions, no themes, it's the default experience, and that's great.

On KDE, there's a tiny bit more customization applied, with an OpenSUSE logo as the menu, and the titlebars defaulting to the breeze classic look, instead of the cleaner "regular" color scheme. It doesn't depart from the base KDE layout, it's still super vanilla.

Tumbleweed comes with a lot of preinstalled software, like Evolution, GIMP, LibreOffice, a few games, Tiger VNC, Transmission, and of course, the Yast utility. Flatpak is preinstalled, and flathub is enabled, which is really good.

Yast is a control center and setup utility that's been the mainstay of OpenSUSE for years, basically since its first version. It lets you configure your system in depth, way more than what the default settings in GNOME or KDE let you do.

So, first, Yast lets you manage software. You can add, remove or edit software repositories, and their GPG keys, and you can install packages or apply patches.

This opens a very complete graphical package manager that reminded me of Synaptic. You can install libraries, drivers, whatever is not available in GNOME Software or Discover. It's all RPM packages.

But YAST is also a super complete tool if you want to configure a lot of advanced settings graphically. Yast lets you configure the boot loader entirely, you also get a services manager, to let you enable, or disable various services that run in the background. There's a sysconfig graphical editor, to set various variables related to your desktop. And then there are security settings, for AppArmor, configuring the firewall, hardening the system by disabling or enabling various features and settings, and you can consult the logs, all graphically.

You can also manage printers and scanners, but, the built in tools for this are... not great.

And then there are things I don't think are really needed anymore in a separate tool, like the date and time settings, the language settings, the network settings, the partitioning tool, all of these have equivalents in the Plasma or GNOME desktops, and as far as I can tell, the Yast utilities don't do more than the built in tools.

Once I used it, I started to wonder why desktop environments don't give users access to these configs, or why there isn't a third party tool to manage these.

Tumbleweed also comes with a graphical btrfs snapshot manager: It lets you create or delete snapshots, which you'll be able to restore to revert your system to a usable state.

OpenSUSE also has a web portal to find and install applications.

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#linux #opensource #technews

00:00 Intro 00:42 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your own linux or gaming server! 01:38 Ubuntu 23.04 beta is live, with tons of improvements 03:21 Ubuntu Cinnamon is an official Ubuntu flavor 04:51 Ubuntu Touch adds Waydroid support out of the box 06:30 Plasma Mobile apps get tons of improvements 08:09 Italy blocks ChatGPT 09:39 CentOS fails to patch older kernel versions in time 11:25 Valve will stops supporting Windows 7 and 8 13:04 Gaming News: AMD performance improvements, Dolphin on Steam 14:52 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly with Tuxedo 15:46 Support the channel

Ubuntu 23.04 beta is live, with tons of improvements

https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-23-04-beta-released-with-gnome-44-linux-kernel-6-2-and-new-installer

Ubuntu Cinnamon is an official Ubuntu flavor

https://linuxiac.com/ubuntu-cinnamon-joins-the-official-flavor-family/

Ubuntu Touch adds Waydroid support out of the box

https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-1-focal-release-3888

Plasma Mobile apps get tons of improvements

https://plasma-mobile.org/2023/03/29/this-month-plasma-mobile/

Italy blocks ChatGPT

https://www.barrons.com/news/openai-s-chatgpt-blocked-in-italy-privacy-watchdog-b096269f

CentOS fails to patch older kernel versions in time

https://www.neowin.net/news/google-discloses-centos-linux-kernel-vulnerabilities-following-failure-to-issue-timely-fixes/

Valve will stops supporting Windows 7 and 8

https://www.techspot.com/news/98099-valve-ending-steam-support-windows-7-8-81.html

Gaming News: AMD performance improvements, Dolphin on Steam

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/amd-radv-driver-will-soon-stop-eating-ram-with-some-games/

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/03/28/coming-soon-dolphin-steam/

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/the-last-of-us-on-steam-deck-is-not-great/

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#flathub #linux #opensource

00:00 Intro 00:33 Sponsor: Get more time to migrate off of Ubuntu 18.04 01:25 Why are people worried? 03:44 User accounts: not an issue if done right 05:40 Concentration of power in one single repo 09:09 Flathub will need App Stores 10:25 Companies are BAD 13:19 There are still questions 14:46 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 15:41 Support the channel

What is starting to worry people is the direction flathub is going in: they want to add payments, donations, and subscriptions so users can adequately compensate developers for their work.

This creates multiples issues: one is the user accounts, the other is the power it might give flathub, and the third is the commercial / corporate aspect of it. Let's look at all of that.

To handle payments, Flathub needs to implement user accounts. At the very least, they need to have accounts for developers, so they can publish their applications in their own name, and collect the money they make from these sales or donations. User accounts are also in the cards, to handle user payments

And some people seem to fear that these accounts would be an issue. Because you're centralizing data about Linux users in a single place.

And I can understand the issue here, but these accounts don't have to have personal information. If payment is handled by a third party solution, as it's planned with Stripe, then that account could basically just be a login and a password, and that's it. You don't have to use a real name, you don't have to use your everyday email address if you don't want to, and all the personal info used for payments would be stored by the third party.

The more worrying aspect would be the power Flathub could gain. If Flathub's payment solution works well, and developers start actually making decent money from it, then it means they'll be more motivated to use flathub as a platform to distribute their applications.

This could lead to software being centralized on Linux, with developers ignoring other packaging formats, and other repos, and Flathub becoming THE only app store on Linux.

First, let's not forget that applications on Flathub are 99% free and open source software. Even if the developer decides to only use flathub from now on, you still have the source code available.

Second, Flathub is open source. All the code for that platform is open, and they don't seem to plan to change that either. Which means that anyone who wants to set up a competitor remote.

Centralization is a problem when it also creates lockdown. Here, escaping a potential flathub centralization would be a no brainer, and super easy.

Now, of course, Flathub will have to create some form of legal entity to handle payments, money, and user / developer data if collecting that is required somehow. And if you've been hanging out in the Linux or open source community for a while, you probably know that companies and money are EVIL.

Jokes aside, what's to stop Flathub from creating a corporation, and then change licenses on their work once developers are hooked, and start charging high margins on what users pay, and basically get fat off the backs of Linux users and open source developers?

Well, first, that would mean you basically have 0 trust in GNOME, or KDE, because the governance of Flathub is being set up by people from GNOME and KDE, and some flathub people.

Second, if Flathub ever turned into some kind of Apple or Microsoft clone, do you really think they'd still get the funding they need to run?

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Stellaris 17 from Tuxedo: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-Stellaris-17-Gen4.tuxedo

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#Linux #laptop #review

00:00 Intro 00:27 Sponsor: 10% off your website with Squarespace 01:22 Form Factor & Build Quality 03:57 Specs and Configuration Options 05:38 Performance Benchmarks 07:53 Aquaris: external watercooling 09:42 Battery life 10:30 Mechanical keyboard 12:44 Display 13:28 Port selection 14:30 Mic, webcam and speakers 15:31 Price and conclusions 16:56 Support the channel

No 2 ways about it, this is a big device. It has a 17 inch screen, 16:10. It weighs 2.8 kilos, and it's 38 cm wide, 27 cm deep, and 2.7 cm thick.

The chassis is made of aluminium and has literally no flex, no bend, no creaking. It also resists fingerprints really well, thanks to a soft touch coating on the inside of the laptop.

You're free to open it, and you can access and replace the 2 M.2 SSD slots, the RAM, the wireless card, and the battery as well, which is screwed in and not glued.

The CPU is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX. All models come with at least 16 gigs of RAM, and an RTX 3070Ti with 8Gigs of vRAM. You also get 250 gigs of PCIe3 SSD, and Wifi 6 + BLuetooth 5.2.

It can go up to 64 Gigs of 4800 Mhz RAM, up to 4TB of PCIe 4 storage, and, either an RTX 3080, or a 3080Ti. And all cards run at their maximum Total Graphics Power allowed by Nvidia,. You also get a 99Wh battery.

On geekbench 6, it gave me scores of 2121 in single core, and 10219 in multi core.

I ran the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, at high settings, at the native resolution of 2560x1600, and it got me an average of 101 FPS. When cranking all the settings to the max, still at the native resolution, it managed to reach 97 FPS. At 1080p highest details, the Stellaris 17 got 110FPS.

It also gave me an idea about thermals, at 75 °C under heavy load, which isn't bad at all.

With its 99Wh battery, running in Nvidia on demand mode, with the display at 50% brightness, wifi being used to play youtube videos in a loop in Firefox, the laptop lasted for 8 hours and 12 minutes.

The keyboard uses Cherry MX ultra low profile switches. The key travel is really good, at 1.8 mm, and the click happens at 0.8 mm. Some of the keys aren't using mechanical switches, notably the function keys and the whole numpad, they're using membrane switches instead.

The touchpad is humongous. It's also thankfully centered, and it's covered in glass, so it's really smooth. It feels very precise, and using it with tap to click feels great.

It's a diveboard mechanism, so obviously you can't click everywhere on it, it has to be in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the sound it makes is satisfying and doesn't rattle.

The dislay 16:10, 17 inches, and it goes up to 240hz refresh rate. It is G Sync compatible, to avoid any screen tearing issues. It's decently bright, at 380 nits, and it has full sRGB coverage.

In terms of ports, on the left, you get the usual Kensington Lock, a USB-A 3.2 Gen2x1 port, a microphone input, and a headphone jack. On the right, you get an SD card reader, and 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports. And on the back, you have a port for the Aquaris external watercooling solution, a USB-C 3.2 Gen2x1 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Gigabit ethernet port, and a barrel jack.

Let's finish with the mic, speakers and webcam. The microphone is decent, but nothing to write home about. You'll want to run it at about 25% volume. The speakers get really loud, but they don't distort or sound tinny at all, they have a good amount of bass.

As per the webcam, well it's 1080p, and it can produce good results with decent lighting, but it's still a bit grainy even in natural light. It's just a small notch above the usual potato cam.

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#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: Extend the life of your Python applications 01:30 The Fediverse: a network of social networks 04:57 ActivityPub: all your social networks can talk to each other 06:44 How Mastodon works 08:33 How PeerTube works 10:19 How PixelFed works 11:39 Parting thoughts 13:02 Sponsor: buy a device that runs Linux perfectly 14:11 Support the channel

Join Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/servers Join Peertube: https://joinpeertube.org/ Join PixelFed: https://pixelfed.org/servers

PixelFed App for iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l PixelFed App for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pixeldroid.app/

List of Fediverse services: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/

Fediverse is a contraction of Federated Universe. It's basically a very large network of servers that form, well, a social network. But contrary to the ones you might be used to, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, the Fediverse is composed of different services.

The more well known are Mastodon, a Twitter-like microblogging service, PeerTube, a youtube-like platform, or PixelFed, an Instagram-like social network, but there are a TON of others.

Each service is also decentralized, which means there is not one big server farm where everything is hosted: each service is split into instances, basically independent servers, with different goals.

ActivityPub is an open standard, that lets all services on the Fediverse talk to each other. How does that work? Well, in practice, it means you can use your Mastodon app to follow a Peertube channel, or someone that posts pictures on PixelFed, or see new articles from a Wordpress website.

And this goes a bit further: for example, if I comment on Mastodon on a post from Peertube, that comment will also appear on Peertube underneath the video.

Let's start with Mastodon. Mastodon is basically Twitter, but open source and decentralized. It lets you post messages with up to 500 characters, it supports images, videos, polls, content warnings, animated avatar pictures, emojis, links, mentions, hashtags, anything you're used to on Twitter. Mastodon has 1.5 million active users, which might seem small compared to Twitter, but it's more than enough to have interesting conversations with a lot of cool people.

To join Mastodon, all you need to do is pick a server, also called an instance. You can pick any server you like, and it will let you interact with everyone else on any other server.

And then, you can use Mastodon on the web, by typing the address of your instance in your browser, for example, for me, it's mastodon.social, or you can use a mobile app.

Now let's talk about PeerTube. It's a Youtube alternative, although it's much, much smaller. Peertube is also decentralized, being split into different servers, that are federated together, so you can follow people from different instances and still have a complete subscription feed. It also supports ActivityPub, which means you could subscribe to my peerTube channel from a mastodon account, and have a post in your timeline every time I publish a video.

And as a creator, it also lets you sync your youtube channel to it, so you can auto-publish all your videos to Peertube in a few clicks, which is also a great help.

To watch peertube, just type the address of your instance in your browser's URL, for me it's tilvids.com.

Another cool service on the Fediverse is PixelFed. It's basically Instagram, without all the crap they tacked on lately, like reels, or lives. It's just pictures and videos. It's free software, it also uses the ActivityPub standard, so you can follow PixelFed users on Mastodon, for example, and it's ad-free.

It also lets you add filters, just like Instagram, or crop, resize, adding alt text, and you can use hashtags, locations, or create collections, basically photo albums.