1y ago

Today i installed arch linux for the first time

196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Today i installed arch linux for the first time rule

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Today i installed arch linux for the first time

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You forgot "Only uses 10+ year old librebooted Thinkpad" on tech paranoid
- uses a modern Notebook which is QubesOS certified and runs coreboot
  
  I forget there are linux-friendly laptops nowadays.
- whats librebooted mean
  
  Replacing the bootloader with a FOSS bootloader called LibreBoot

Brave being listed alongside Firefox
Bestie Brave is literally just Chromium again. Not to mention the fact that their CEO is someone who got ousted from Firefox for being a tremendous bigot. It's not a better alternative to Chrome, it's just the same thing again. It you must use a chromium browser, use ungoogled.
- Brave also does sneaky shit with your data
  
  Could you elaborate on that?
- I personally use Librewolf. Its just a hardened version of Firefox so you don't have to do it yourself.
  
  I tried it but didn't care to find out if there was a way to stop it from deleting all my tabs and logins, and I'm not relogging into everything just because I needed to close my browser.
- Telegram being next to Signal is also questionable.
- I think the vanilla Brave Settings are better than Vanilla Firefox. Though something like Firefox with a custom user.js or Librewolf is a lot better than Brave
- Unfortunately he's also the inventor of JavaScript. Which makes the entire concept of Web 2.0 problematic by association.

I fall under Tech Conservative mostly, but I would like to edit the last 2 points to this for myself:
"Believe every publicly traded company is inherently evil"
"Doesn't morally support big tech, but uses some anyway"
- An important note to your last one is for some of us we don't get an option. Work does everything with Office 365? Welp, guess you gotta use Microsoft products now 🤷
  
  I mean, work is work, you don't get a choice in what product your company uses. My point was meant for personal use.
- Same

Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.
It feels like there needs to be a category in between conservative and paranoid. I'm probably 90% of the way over to tech paranoid but using Tor Browser and Tails is a little much.
- Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.
  For some reason, the best word to describe it in my mind is "fun". Just fun to learn and play with, fun to install, fun to configure and customize, and fun to daily drive. Definitely not fun when a random package update breaks your system (looking at you grub), but that hardly ever happens anymore provided you don't enable the testing repo.
  Also pacman is the fastest package manager I've ever used.
  
  Also pacman is the fastest package manager I’ve ever used.
  I hope you enabled parallel downloads, that makes it fast as fuck.
  
  Apt is very quick as well (with the nala frontend), no complaints there. I've been running Arch for the past 5 years and recently switched to Debian Stable. The "grub event" was certainly notable, but otherwise I don't think Arch is really that unstable or gimmicky. Arch itself is a very solid and dependable platform - the reason I decided to move is because I really don't need the bleeding edge packages from other projects anymore. With Flatpaks and all the rest of the /home-based package managers that are around now, I can keep a stable base system and install a couple bleeding edge packages that I want, instead of being forced to run my entire system as bleeding edge (do my printer drivers really need to make me bleed?).
  Overall, I'd say the Arch experience is as high quality as the Debian experience, they just target different usecases. Neither of them is better, it's just up to the user how bloody they want their system to be.
  
  Btrfs would beg to differ.
  
  Have you heard of our lord and saviour nixOS?
  
  Somehow mkinitcpio broke my initramfs the other day when I installed the latest microcode updates. Took me like an hour to debug the issue and boot from the fallback 😑. That’s the first time I’ve had an issue like that though. I’ve been using arch for a few years now.
- There is another version with two more tiers
  
  Please tell me there aren’t two more tiers to the right of paranoid. The last tier would just be “homemade pencils only.”
- Also the middle should be called Tech Centrist or Tech Social Democrat, daring to use the projects from philosophical minorities is not conservative at all.
  
  Conservatives are always trying to make themselves seem "cool and different" like the middle guy in the meme. Being anticonsumerist, pro-privacy and pro individual liberty is far from actual conservative policy goals but they obviously have to pretend otherwise.
  
  Conservative means "not extreme"
  E.g. conservative estimates
- I use arch as my main disto with Firefox but use tails and tor for "purchases"

🏳️‍⚧️ Congratulations on coming out and I wish you a successful transition. 🏳️‍⚧️
- worst username award 🏆
  
  Ty I couldn’t have done it without real life inspiration to guide me.
- bruh
- lolll

For fellow paranoids:
Mullvad browser is a fairly new Firefox fork which aims to reduce fingerprinting potential while also having sane (paranoid) defaults. Developed with the Tor project. Basically the Tor browser but without connecting to the Tor network. Passes coveryourtracks.eff.org.
SimpleX Chat is a fairly new privacy oriented IM platform which seems to address many issues current ones have. Development is very active. E2E, video and voice calls, decentralized, doesn’t have user ID of any kind.
- Both projects sound great, thanks for explaining
- Do you know how Mullvad browser compares to Librewolf?
  
  Tor/Mullvad are better for anonymity use cases, but when you go tweaking it (settings, add-ons) you are no longer blending in with the pack. LibreWolf suits a more privacy-oriented use case I think since it’s not aiming to mimic Tor, but just have privacy settings mostly maxed out & you opt into everything you are comfortable with, such as cookies—whereas base Fx you have to opt into more privacy.
  
  It's librewolf if they had a VPN to shill to you
  
  Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).
  I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.
  
  Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).
  I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.
  Edit: here’s some good information: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues/1

What does MKBHD have to do with this? He's just a tech reviewer who kinda fits between tech normie and tech conservative
- He's the kind of guy that looks at a Fairphone and says "if you compare this to a Pixel, the Pixel is faster", talks about how important repairability and sustainability is, vows to mention it in future phone reviews and then proceeds to never mention it ever again but instead keeps on saying how great the new iPhone is.
  I'm not kidding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkmzDwgvqQM
  
  Hey I watched this video when it came out a year ago, and honestly don't remember a single thing about it, other than I had already "liked" the video. Damn my brain needs an oil change...
- And he mostly talks about phones anyway... hardly relevant to the avg pc enthusiast as he only covers macbooks and not their competition, which is silly.

What if my favorite OS is Mac, my favorite browser is Firefox, and my favorite app is self hosted?
- It means you're Tim Cook's mistress
  
  Ain't Tim Cook gay?

I'm a tech conservative?
- Yes. The meme said so and it is now universally and unrefutably true.
- Same, a I’m a tech conservative too, mostly though
  I don’t trust big tech
- I am but I've used windows for about 25 years so 🤷‍♂️
- Doesn't sound right does it?
  
  It's the only time in my life that I'll wear a conservative title with pride.

Conservative is the wrong word there
- Not really. People who use the apps are trying to preserve (conserve) the time when privacy wasn't an afterthought. It's not working, but they're sure trying.
  
  It's not working, but they're sure trying.
  You have no clue.
  
  Conservationists are not the same as conservatives.
  The only thing that conservatives are trying to conserve is their own privilege and impunity.
- It's using the word conservative in its literal definition, rather than the definition it's been given by some that incorrectly use it to describe their beliefs.
  The word they're looking for is "Facist"

The fact that the favorite OS of the tech conservative is an Arch based distro and and a Debian based distro instead of pure Arch or Debian makes this meme inaccurate.
- Tails is also total ass as a daily driver. I know, I did it for a long time before the lack of persistence was such a pain I had to give in. Like, you can save in your data partition, but having to install/configure everything on each boot sucks, and if you made the system partition writable it would defeat the point of Tails.
  
  I don’t think Tails, backtrack, kali, and similar distros were ever intended to be daily drivers. I’ve only used them as live ISOs to leverage their very specific toolkits.

Tech paranoid all the way, although not the same type of tech paranoid as Luke Smith. The only good computer is one you have the hardware schematics to (i.e. virtually none of them). Thinkpads are just another brand of overpriced laptop. Besides the occasional steam game, I heavily prefer FOSS only and will flat out refuse almost anything that has drm. My unlocked bootloader android phone is so heavily locked down with privacy stuff that I cause Google to lose money merely by existing.
- The only good computer is one you have the hardware schematics to (i.e. virtually none of them).
  Purism, System76 and, more recently, Framework
  
  What's the point if they still have AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc. chips on them?
  
  This is only for laptops by the way. System76 desktop BIOSes are still closed source. It's such a shame that there's no FOSS BIOS for desktop PCs, hopefully AMD OpenSIL changes that.
  
  PinePhone Pro for the mobile side. The schematics are available. I quite like mine, especially with the keyboard case. It's basically a pocket laptop.
- Assuming the schematic is for repairability, not security. Seems unlikely that enthusiasts would have the equipment to non-destructivly identify malicious deviations from spec, introduced by competent actors.

"I can't live with modern tech anymore"
uses modern tech
A truly paranoid individual unplugs every piece of technology and uses nothing with screens, buttons or electricity going through it.
- Your body uses electricity to send nerve signals...
  
  Your body uses electricity to send nerve signals…
  "self-hosted alternative to nervous system 2023 foss reddit"
  
  No, nerves use cascades of ion potentials. Those are just triggered by touch or electricity.
- We call them The Amish
- The truly paranoid are not reading this on here :p

i am litterally a 100% match with conservative wtf did you hack me (except I use XMPP for phone service, JMP.Chat is an amazing thing!)
- Could I reach people using WhatsApp with this?
  
  From memory you can, but that may have changed, there is a useful page ok their wiki that keeps track of all services that work and refuse to work with them since they use VoIP numbers and some companies refused to accept them

I fit somewhere between normie and conservative. Philosophically, I agree with the tech conservative, but I also have shit to do and when FOSS gets in my way, it's hard to justify it.
I use Firefox because it was an easy switch.
I used Signal until they killed sms support. Sorry, most of the people I know use a default messages app. And the day I force everyone I know to use Signal is the day they stop talking to me.
I dabble in Linux, but I main Windows because I'm not a programmer or IT admin. I know how to use it, for better or worse, and I don't have to memorize terminal commands to perform even basic tasks. Sure, gaming is getting better on linux, but it's still a compromised experience and I still, to this day, have to look up tutorials and terminal command every time I try to do anything on my Linux box.
But...wherever possible, I use FOSS software.
I like to call it the tech pragmatist. I agree with the conservative, but I'm not that smart and I got shit to do.
- A lot of us are in this boat. I do daily drive Linux but I am very fortunate in that I'm my own boss so I can use whichever computer I want.
  And yeah, there is no way to force people to use Signal. It is what it is. Fortunately here in Europe WhatsApp is the default messaging app. It is at least better than SMS for UA non-iPhone people.
- Signal killing sms was heart breaking

I'm in the last column with the exception of thinking RMS is a misogynistic transphobe asshole
- Luke Smith, too
  
  Just finished reading up on Luke Smith. Yup. Fucking hated everything he had to say
  
  No idea who he even is, so sure
- Fuck RMS. A hideous, slimy grandpa attached to a computer.
  
  And the reason free software exists.
  Also one of the only people I’ve seen who routinely attempts to ensure people don’t insult each other (like you have) on the mailing lists he frequents, so he gets another point in my book.
- You fell for corporate propaganda IMO.

Wish I could just ditch Windows and Whatsapp for something else....... I've tried Linux but every time I quickly wanted to do something it first took me 30/40 minutes to get it working :⁠'⁠( was driving me insane after the cool factor of daily driving Linux went away
- How long ago was that and what did you want to get working? In my experience anything I do has been smoother on modern Linux than on Windows.
  
  Probably 1,5 months ago. I used Fedora 38 - to be fair I was really impressed with how far gaming has gotten. Basically anything I trew at it just worked (big F for Rust). However my audio kept breaking when switching application's which I could only fix by restarting. Besides that I was really annoyed by Fedora somehow not picking up my second display from time to time. No idea what happened but every like 20 restarts my second display wouldn't work, or games suddenly started to display on my second display instead of my main. These where probably the biggest things for me, besides some applications I use for debugging not being supported on Linux. Anyhow I'll probably try Linux again in a couple of months, maybe another distro, since I do really enjoy programming on Linux.
  
  Yeah both Linux (IMO, I use Mint BTW) is getting better but also windows getting crappier.
- A lot of linux platforms are pretty plug and play now unless you're trying to get a programming running that wasn't built for Linux. That's why I think both Linux and proprietary operating systems have their place. Its just too bad not everyone makes their stuff for linux. It's definitely getting better though.
  
  unless you're trying to get a programming running that wasn't built for Linux
  That's exactly what people do. Everything we use was made for windows. Games. Editing software.

I'm a software engineer that uses windows and firefox, has no social media accounts (minus message boards), and owns a google pixel. Be confused. You can't stop me.
- This is the way. Because all the rest of that other stuff is fine and dandy.. but I gotta work, and jobs often requires a Windows environment. Video games are plug n' play w/ windows. I know about proton, but for now.. it still isn't perfect. Firefox because it works just as well as Chrome without the feeling of Google overseeing everything. Most social media has turned to constant ads and trash, and Pixel because Apple locks down their phone with little to no customization.
  
  If proton can handle starfield at launch, its jover for windows.
- Chaotic neutral
- has no social media accounts
  I regret to inform you that you are posting this comment on a social media site/app.
  
  (minus message boards)
  I regret to inform you that you stopped reading.

Tech normie also uses VS Code as a text editor sending data to Microsoft & using proprietary plugins.
- tbf vscode is a decent, open-source editor with great support for Rust (it's rust-analyzer's primary platform with nvim and Clion on the second place)
  (but the official ms packages ship with a custom config with ms telemetry, branding and marketplace)
  basically just use code(oss) or vscodium instead of binary vscode releases
  
  Most of the language servers can run with Vim, Neovim, Helix, Kakoune, or Emacs as you noted. You could run VS Codium if you’re the “Tech Conservative”, but ultimately if you’re going all the way to “Tech Paranoid”, you won’t touch VS Code or Codium knowing Microsoft is steering the ship with another EEE plot in mind. It’s all a part of that package with Microsoft™ GitHub® + Codespaces® + Copilot® trying to vendor lock-in the developer experience into the platform.
  
  It's "open source" as a technical matter, but the fact is that plenty of common extensions are still strictly controlled by Microsoft (like say, Live Share) and can't be used with vscodium due to licensing. It's a pretty useless editor without extensions, and the marketplace isn't exactly "open", either.
- 🥺
  
  Yep, you best pull your Chad chaps, & decide what’s better: Church of Emacs or the Cult of vi.

I run arch, have the latest iphone, watch MKBHD, amd use tor… so…. yeah i dunno
- the fuck is My Kebab Beats His Dad?!?
  
  I just tried to decode that acronym for a bit too: "mystery kanban bunny haired boss"? He's a tech YouTuber.

I dislike this meme, it's inaccurate

I watched one HTML video 5 years ago, and now I'm using a De-Googled phone, Linux, and get a more paranoid than I should when I see and Echo Dot. This is not what I signed up for...

I'm between conservative and paranoid and watch mental outlaw.
- Same, the best of both worlds and a weird cat thing
- based.win

Look at me, I AM big tech now Self hosted, or it doesn't exist
- Self hosted, or it doesn't exist
  As the enshitification of the internet continues, this is going to start becoming more and more the case for me
  
  I self host some stuff, because I dislike that I'm buying only the rights to consume certain kinds of e-media, instead of buying the e-media itself. So I make us of the consumer rights laws in europe and make a decrypted personal copy and stream it myself from my home server (an outdated laptop)

Middle panel on most points, but only because too dumb & impulsive to be tech paranoid.
Don't be dumb & impulsive, kids, it is not a good mix.

Somehow I fall within all these categories

with how contentious Red Hat and Canonical decisions have been lately, the mid panel should have Arch and Debian replacing Ubuntu and Fedora.
- This is very true. As soon as I get a new PC I'll switch to Debian.

Finally someone who doesn't call me either a corporate simp or paranoid

There's should be a Matrix app in the middle or at the right.
- Middle is Matrix and ActivityPub, right is Session, SimpleX, and Nostr
- Matrix has de-facto centralization around Matrix.org where all metadata floats back through them in one way or another. Due to the expense of all the mirroring required (every message + attachment from every DM & chatroom of every user) as well as the Python back-end being slow, it’s in practice not good to self-host despite in theory Matrix being good. XMPP runs on a potato relatively & has so much feature overlap (with the ability to extend being inherent to the protocol)—the only issue is fragmentation of servers & clients (though Conversations Compliance is close-ish to a minimal standard).
  
  I'm not very knowledgeable, but Matrix is only centralized, if you don't include non-matrix.org instances. You can safely chat locally without matrix.org, AFAIK.

People care so much about the weirdest stuff.

I use ms edge on linux. Evil laugh
- I just learned a few weeks ago about people who use Edge on iPads. Like, what?
- Laughs in .net core

With every passing year, little by little I go deeper to the privacy paranoid side.
But my focus is way more anti big corporation than pro privacy, that fact those are almost one and the same is mostly a side effect for me.

Tech conservative. What does it mean if I use librewolf?
- Your canine is free but not on fire
  
  Oh thank god.
  
  Awooooo!

is IRC still a thing? was huge 20 years ago, what happened to it
- It’s still around, just in a much smaller capacity. IRC clients are still being actively developed today too.
- Twitch chat uses IRC weirdly enough.
  Probably more popular than ever technically.
- I use it for book piracy, myself
  Honestly best way ive found

Between normie and conservative, I'm waiting for SteamOS to become publicly available to even attempt switching to Linux.
- I'm curious: what feature(s) of SteamOS are keeping you from trying/switching to Linux?
  If it's Proton, you get that for free with any Steam install on Linux. I've been using it for the last couple years. (And it's awesome)
  
  As for me - can't play Fortnite on Proton/SteamOS
  
  Seconding this, steamos (or whatever is on steam deck) is just arch Linux with steam installed. They may have some extra little goodies in there... But nothing major. When you install steam on Linux, you can change a single option in setting and steam will download proton for you. You can attempt to run any steam game and most will work fine. Battlebit remasted isn't officially supported, but it's worked since day 1 on my arch install and I'm just using that since it's the most recent hugely popular game.
- If true, that would be awesome if a new SteamOS became a Linux on-ramp (Debian base didn’t quite pan out).
- Try out EndeavourOS. It's based on Arch (Like SteamOS) and I have had no trouble with gaming so far.

I tick all the boxes for the middle one

I am on arch rn and I think that I'm still on the middle one from the pic.

I use Edge, my favourite (or more accurately, most comfortable) OS is probably Ubuntu, and I self host a bunch of stuff.
The hell does that make me?
- An independent and unique individual. Who cares what others think? You do what you do.

How do you tell if someone is an Arch user? You don't, they will tell you.

I’m mix of second and last one
- same here, simply can't do non-FOSS.

Oh god, this meme. It's not something I've ever seen before, but it's so true.
God, Tor, freaking Tor. Bless it's heart, really, but it's practically unusable. At least for me. I was really getting into it, trying to use it as a daily browser, ran with so much less ram than all the others. But it's practically unusable! All the shitty websites I had to go on daily for School practically didn't work, and half the websites would always take at least 10-15 minutes to get working because they keep thinking I'm a hacker. Or it's just region blocked, and I have to spend SO MUCH TIME making new connections in the hopes it doesn't go to a single blacklisted country. Sometimes even with a phone there to authenticate, it just doesn't work. So I had Firefox anyway, it was literally what Tor was built off of. And because of how unbelievably inconvenient and annoying Tor (Or more accurately, how shitty the Internet in general has got, I really wouldn't mind logging in to every website every time, with a phone authentication every so often) was, I ended up just using Firefox and using Tor for dark web stuff. Essentially, what it's supposed to be used for.
Linux...man, Linux was always one of those things I wanted to get into, but thinking critically, it would be very dumb for me to do. Almost every single thing I do is required by a Windows app. Critical and niche shit, mind you. So essentially, it'd be the Tor situation all over again. I'd be doing effectively everything worthless on Linux while molesting my computer for a VM for windows, which I would be doing on a daily basis for practically as long as I use the computer. So I'm practically stuck being a normie. I try to do everything I can to stop all these companies and shit tracking me and have my machine running faster, like running scripts to debloat windows, but in the end, it doesn't amount to too much. I'm stuck a normie, no matter how much of a poser I act.
- Wine and crossover can probably meet the needs of most of your windows app needs at this point, which realistically aren't a lot if you look into it, and keep a windows vm / cloud instance handy. Why not try a vm of Linux on your windows machine (or use WSL) to get your toes in the water to see if your assumptions are still correct today?
  
  I tried. I have very peculiar needs, I'm not joking when I say I use shitty old programs from before the millennium AT LEAST EVERY WEEK. Very specific niches that I have found no solutions for on Linux.
  Essentially, I need Windows for it's main selling point. Insane compatibility on software from every field. And until Linux can actually RIVAL windows instead of presenting Fisher price alternatives, I'm forced to stay with the shackles of blasphemy.
  I've tried it in the past. The actual UI and the general process of doing things was the least of my issues. I'm not loyal to Windows or anything at all, I can easily get used to that.
- Props for even actively thinking about it, that's always the first step! If you want to switch to Linux I recommend first switching to apps that run on both Linux and Windows. They exist for almost every use case, and you can migrate gradually app by app.
  
  That's unfortunately simply untrue. You can't, with a straight face, claim that there is any actual competition to Photoshop, Revit or a myriad of other, non-programming use-cases. It's easy to use Linux when you're a developer, it's almost impossible if you're an architect. Sure, you can use wine. Good luck, half of photoshop builds are borked. All Revit has garbage rating on wine. You just can't professionally escape windows if you're in a wrong profession.
- First of all, if you want to get into Linux, DO IT! It's truly awesome, I love it. Just get Mint, throw a Windows skin over it and nobody will notice, trust me. Honestly, it's incredibly rewarding.
  When it comes to browsers, I now have the best setup I could think of: LibreWolf. It's a hardened version of Firefox. It doesn't use TOR and all websites are accesible. I use Startpage as a search engine. Granted, it can be a bit slow but it gets great results and there is a button that lets you open websites via a Startpage proxy. LibreWolf by default erases all browser data on exit so for logins I use KeePassXC password manager. It has an awesome addon which automatically fills in login fields, it can do TOTP and autofill that, too. It's pretty great.
  For mobile KeePassDX is great

Even Linus himself uses a MacBook.
- With Asahi Linux
  
  Yep. It's possible to just pick your hardware, software, and other devices according to your needs. It always bums me out to see people limit themselves by stratifying along ideological lines.
  Sometimes it's enough that it's fun to go on the computer, y'know?

Guess I'm between normie and conservative since I use Windows and Firefox.

Watches Luke smith. Based.
- I watched a few of his videos and I don't get it
  
  Luke Smith is open about his love for Thinkpads, minimalistic and free software and a heavy arch user. So yeah. Based.

I guess I am a cross between “Normie” and “Conservative”. I use macOS and Fedora daily, I watch MKBHD but also watch FOSS YouTubers. I use WhatsApp, but only because, in Netherlands, it’s impossible to live without it. I don’t use any Chromium, and I use Firefox, but I also use Safari.
Fuck getting labeled.

What a bunch of bullshit.
I self-host my stuff because it's cheaper, I run Gentoo since the last 15 years and use Chrome because it's just better and friendly. I also have a Xperia android phone and really, really don't like MKBHD.
- I'm somewhat curious as to whether you plan to switch to another browser when Google finally pushes Manifest v3 and/or Web Integrity API
  
  I honestly have no idea what's going to happen. Most probable outcome is I'll run two different browsers based on what works for me. I stopped acting "ethical" about computing a long time ago, with some small exceptions. I'm not here on Lemmy because ethics, but because I'm fucking pissed at Reddit.
- MKBHD
  I had to look up what that even was... but I use something from each panel: I work in software with websites & apps, so I have all the browsers and OSs ...
  
  Likewise, that's why segregating stuff in three panels is bullshit.

Somewhere between Normie and Tech conservative?
Real bummer that Signal decided to shit the bed.
- Wait what happened to Signal?
  
  They stopped the dual support of both SMS and private messages (for "UX" reasons).
  I've used it like 3 times since then, but to be fair, I have used it.

Weird to put the Self Hosted podcast on the FOSS-only Gentoo user seeing that Jupiter Broadcasting has been on the contrarian "Red Hat is actually good" train.

I feel like WhatsApp should be in the middle. The app is terrible, but the messaging is actually encrypted. We paranoids also appreciate Signal, and Element disappointingly gets no play here.
Also:
believes not every company is inherently evil*
It's kind of weird, then, how they all end up doing evil stuff, including the guys that explicitly set out with the philosophy "don't be evil".
We can all tell conservative is supposed to be the enlightened one, but unless the creator is using a very malice-driven definition of evil (as opposed to including accidental evil) this line is an own-goal.
- Do you think Whatsapp is actually encrypted and isn't a tool to get more information from its users because Meta pinky promised? Closed source piece of garbage.
  
  Open Whisper did the actual message algorithm, and I understand it's open source. It could be copying your messages at the endpoint, I guess, but nobody has caught it doing that on wireshark to date.
- Yeah, Matrix should be in the middle. Telegram is tech normie but in the east.
- actually encrypted
  Last time I checked (which has been a while admittedly) they used their central server for key exchange, meaning the whole encryption is compromised.
  
  I know it was bullshit when it first launched, but they completely rebuilt the message protocol later on. Shit, now you've got me worried, time to do research.
  Edit: Nah, it looks like it uses a perfectly valid key exchange algorithm. Maybe it goes via a WhatsApp server, but you shouldn't care because the algorithm is interception-proof.
- Last I read, you can’t use WhatsApp without sharing your contacts. This helps Meta build its shadow profiles and keep tabs on folks not even using it. The metadata is also often just as valuable as the actual contents.
  But eventually the “you’re the product” instance will dawn on ya.
  
  Last I read, you can’t use WhatsApp without sharing your contacts. This helps Meta build its shadow profiles and keep tabs on folks not even using it. The metadata is also often just as valuable as the actual contents.
  That's correct. When I use it (family is on it and it beats no encryption) I sandbox it, that's part of the app being terrible.
- Fuck anything created by Facebook. It wouldn't surprise me if the EFF released an announcement today saying that Facebook always had a master encryption key and have hard records of every conversation ever had on WhatsApp. Actually, I'd be willing to bet real money that is the case, if there was any way to actually resolve that bet.
  
  It wouldn’t surprise me if the EFF released an announcement today saying that Facebook always had a master encryption key and have hard records of every conversation ever had on WhatsApp.
  Literally not possible, from what I've read of the scheme involved. I haven't looked over it myself but I trust Open Whisper.

Tech conservative. Still use Windows unfortunately.

I think I'm somewhere in between two and three.

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