/tech/ - Technology★

Ubuntu does all of that more or less. The only reason normalfags don't use it is because they all need to play their flavour of the month gaymes to stay up to date with gaymur culture.

GNOME.

Probably KDE and MATE as well. I haven't used them lately.

><still be secure

Can you give an example of an insecure desktop? Or even a relatively secure one that isn't completely focused on security, like Qubes?

>>874363

But isn't ubuntu compromised? It has such a bad rep around here.

>>874365

It's not compromised. It used to optionally send queries typed into the internal catch-all search bar to Amazon, but it no longer does that. The worst thing it currently does is very basic opt-out telemetry.

This board's opposition to Ubuntu is 20% legitimate gripes and 80% contrarianism.

>>874366

s/optionally/by default/, sorry.

>>874365

It's all relative. Every computer using a modern intel CPU is "compromised".

Ubuntu gets a bad rep because it has retarded shit turned on by default. But there are derivatives that are essentially the exact same thing but without that shit. If you want something that you can pump out into the masses than you're going to need to tone down on the puritan autism. Ubuntu or its derivatives more or less offer everything you're asking for.

https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Babbies_First_Linux

>>874366

How much work would it be to use debian unstable instead of ubuntu?

>>874371

>sandniggers are retarded

truly surprising

>>874373

Good work on letting ideology blind you to the point, dumbass. The only reason we know why or how any of this shit works is because we've learned from others. It's not at all intuitive. Command lines, shells, FORTH is intuitive. Typing words that you understand into a machine that understands them. Web 2.0 isn't usable. Web 3.0 is a fucking labrynthian hell of arbitrary icons (of which some ar einteractive, but it won't tell you) and ill-defined visual borders. This is all learned behaviour, and UI/UX has always been a huge scam because of it.

>>874376

Your sample size of 1 random sand-nigger has me convinced, that's for sure.

'It just works' is a bad principle for free software. The user should invest his time learning the system, or it'll be like he's not even using free software. You have 4 freedoms, but if you don't use them, what's the difference?

>>874379

>>874382

It's not for me. When i refer friends to linux i want a stable, easy distro so they don't go back to windoze10 immediately.

Put them on Kubuntu. Not even joking, it's basically sexy Windows. It comes with an option during install to encrypt the home folder too, using their normal password, so it's as secure as a normalfag would need.

>>874382

Who cares about free software. Linux is just better than windows regardless.

>>874369

Depends. If you're familiar with loonix and have a specific setup in mind, it takes less time. If you just want to use your computer and haven't learned weird nerd shit it takes more.

If you need to ask, maybe just stick with Ubuntu. Debian is worth trying if you like trying distros.

>>874362 (OP)

you dont switch to linux to be secure.

you can be hacked when running linux

try peppermint.

>>874388

It's better in some ways, but not in all ways. I'm not sure which one is better overall, I haven't used WIndows for years.

Something that very much stands out in my memory is how much more consistent it is to install WIndows programs. You download a .exe, you click the .exe, you click next a few times, and you're done.

Installing software on Linux is a mess. If it's in your distro's repositories it's usually easy, but then there are alternatives, like

- install a snap

- install a flatpak

- download a .appimage

- edit a repo into your sources.list

- download a tarball, compile, make install

- download a tarball, run directly from the tarball

- run a 100 MB+ shell script with a secret tarball appended to it

- run a shell script that doesn't quote its variables and instead aborts if it finds spaces inside most (but not all) paths that would cause trouble

- run a shell script that directly alters your .bashrc

- wget --no-check-certificate https://website.com/installer.sh -O - | bash

- wget https://git.io/our-executable; chmod +x our-executable

- pull our docker container

- there's a README.md but it's empty, figure it out yourself

- clone a git repository to the path of another program's configuration directory which then runs the installer when it launches

I always figure it out in the end, but Linux does not have its shit together in this regard. That makes sense, because it's fragmented and its developers have different incentives, but it's bad.

>>874384

Kubuntu seems great out of the box. Really improved since i last checked it out.

>>874400

*disables javascript*

what now hackerman?

>>874406

https://github.com/maxchehab/CSS-Keylogging

>>874408

So randomize input field names and you're golden?

>>874371

"performant" and "stable" also used to be antithetical characteristics of a computer system.

>>874406

>*disables javascript*

Most larger or even medium-size sites will be anywhere from semi-broken to totally broken to displaying a blank page. It's not the days of Geocities anymore where HTML, some basic CSS, some images, and a flash object here and there was cutting it.

>>874434

That is the proof of concept of the attack, but, given the extension is fully valid browser-side css, it could as well be served by a visited unsuspected website. If you find a basic XSS vulnerability on a website you could potentiality be stealing its users logins and passwords, instead of just its cookies as is usual.

>>874376

>widely documented how babies and very young children are able to interact with touch devices because of how retardedly simple they are and how obvious contexts are

>less usable than having to guess context and formatting of commands, typos, ambiguous characters and learned vocabulary

>>874442

Disable javascript is not enough. Smaller browsers like Lynx, Links, w3m and such are a better first step, if you care about security at all.

>>874451

JS is the single biggest attack vector on the internet today.

Other attacks come from vulnerable programs you are running but JS remains the #1.

>>874448

>widely documented how babies and very young children are able to interact with touch devices because of how retardedly simple they are and how obvious contexts are

Source me that, thanks

>>874464

google it yourself fagget

>>874467

>no proof

Great answer

>>874362 (OP)

Of course. Try Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu

>>874470

I didn't say UNIX was intuitive.

>>874451

There's websites which are well viewable in minimal text browsers, and there are those which are a huge pain (even if they work without JS). The text browsers render the page as a vertical sequence of text, so any menus, side panels and other boilerplate. can cause you to require lots of scrolling around to get to the actual content. Generally websites which have a somewhat complicated layout and were't designed with text-based brosers in mind can be quite frustrating to browse with these.

The goal is obvious, if you can sit someone in front of a screen and convince them the magic box isn't going to steal their soul and they figure out how to use it without having to get too much help, it's user friendly. Being obtuse isn't a good quality, you can be feature rich while being user friendly, just have layers.

>>874362 (OP)

yes, Ubuntu. now the problem is how to get normalfags to use it. just add a bunch of shiny shit that uses up the CPU/GPU/disk/memory, and problem solved.

>normies

Go back to reddit.

>>874582

>reddit spacing

>>874362 (OP)

<user friendly

Linux is very user-friendly and practical for everyone.

<easy to set up (just werks)

It is not hard at all. However there are so many compatibility issues where anything you plug into your aux jack won't work, audio won't work, and random other components just won't fucking work. This applies for brand new cutting edge 3 thousand dollar computers and old computers. There is so much proprietary shit it's not compatible with and that's the only reason I've stopped using linux because I have great hardware but it doesn't fucking work with linux. Linux audio especially needs some serious fucking work, I am so angry that for years and years it has not improved at all, and there are all these same problems still. Before someone says to fix it myself, I can't, there's all these complications and I also no longer have anywhere near the free time I used to have to and am basically too busy just surviving that when I do have free time I can't waste it on some frustrating coding stuff that isn't going to go anywhere anyways because someone will not give access to something or won't add the fix or whatever else.

<still be secure

Linux is always secure.

>>874400

Dude I'm on Windows 10 right now. Anything I type in Steam, I suddenly get ads and youtube suggestions about what I was talking about. Started talking to a guy on Steam about North Korea, suddenly tons of North Korea shit. Pinterest also is linked too. Youtube, Google, Steam... all this stuff linked together and tracking the shit out of me. Most of this isn't OS but it wasn't so bad for me on linux, on linux suggestions were always generic and not relevant at all, meaning it was doing a shit job of tracking me. Plus I'm pretty god damned sure that everything in my notes that I go through with Notepad++, everything I search locally on my computer, and all my files are being tracked. Linux, besides just being a way better and less frustrating OS, having tabs in the file explorer, allowing you to save filenames that you couldn't on windows, etc. is also reasonably more secure. I'm pretty sure we're at a point in time where you can't fire up a browser and connect to the internet without basically everything being tracked but there's steps you can take to at least reduce things. I also maintain multiple personalities and writing styles and just output tons of random shit all the time all over the place and intentionally toy with and manipulate their algorithms to make it suggest silly things or to game the system and so on but the thing is I have to operate under the assumption everything I do is 100% being tracked, that all my accounts are being accessed by or falling into the hands of my adversaries, and that both government and non-govermental entities are going to fuck with me if they can. Seriously the only problem with linux is just the incompatibilities. Stuff like your wifi not working, screentearing, various hardware not being supported, your digitizer not fully functioning, etc. As for software there's plenty of games and other stuff for linux.

>>874404

My experience as a long-term linux user that has been forced to switch over to windows is that installing programs on Windows is an arbitrary nightmare. There are a few things where installing stuff on linux was also a nightmare and I just gave up and didn't bother, like this one stupid linux game, but most stuff you install on linux can be done through the software manager or by downloading a file and unpacking it and you can upgrade it easily all with gui.

no

>>874382

autism

>>874384

>It comes with an option during install to encrypt the home folder too

Don't ever do that, unless you have a multi-user setup and want some measure of protecting users' data from each other i.e. practically never. Full-disk encryption is more performant and gives better protection.

>>874469

>spoonfeed me

how about no

>>874598

This. I tried installing a .NET application on a fresh install of Windows 10 only to have it fail to pull down .NET 3.5. I can't believe that with a 50 bazillion TB base install size they couldn't bundle all the old .NET runtimes.

Another example: Dependency hell when trying to install a simple Python app that just werks on Linux. You have to install Python 3.x or 2.x and then whatever other Python libraries that app depends on. Rinse and repeat for anything that is not a statically linked Win32 exe.

>>874701

>anything that is not a statically linked Win32 exe

You're not from around Windows, aren't you?

>>874362 (OP)

It used to be. Then GNOME 3 and KDE 4 happened.

>>874379

this >>874383

Normies want to push buttons and see flashing lights. they don't want to have to open terminals and read man pages, you silly bastard

>>874371

how does this retard press everywhere on the screen except where he's supposed to? I don't think this man has simply never used the internet before, but has never used a computer before. you can't get more intuitive then finding a box, clicking on it, then entering text. You're taught this through simply using a word processor.

tl'dr I call bullshit

>>874587

>Linux is very user-friendly and practical for everyone

The problem is convincing someone to learn a new OS tout court. When people complain about Linux I always remind them of how much of a bitch it was to learn upgrade from Win7 to Win10 (etc). It just takes a little practice, but most people don't have the patience

>>874698

>muh spoonfeed

not that anon, but if you're going to make an exceptional claim, you should be ready to provide the evidence. you sound like those retarded SJWs who always say "its not my job to educate you." Well, I've got news for you, if you're investing in a discussion with someone else, then yes, in fact, it is

>>874376

>too retarded to CLICK ON THE FUCKING SEARCH BAR AND MAKE THE KEYBOARD POP UP

NixOS and GuixSD. Both use a declarative system approach where you define the system you want to have with a config file in the form of .nix and .sch respectively; NixOS uses a mishmash of Haskell and some other langs, whereas GuixSD uses Guile Scheme for everything.

Upgrades are atomic, rolling back to previous generations is also easy if something goes wrong.

GuixSD is still in alpha, but NixOS is quite nice.

>>874695

FDE scares normalfags.

>>874404

This is the biggest problem that I've ran into when fucking around with linux as a brainlet winblows user. It's nice when something is just a .deb file that runs an installer like windows .exe files, but sometimes I'll download programs that have no readme what so ever and a bunch of files I have no clue what to do with. Even in windows programs they usually have really in depth readme's that go over the simplest most obvious aspects of installing a program. But in linux I'm stuck trying to research a million different things and every time I find an answer it leads to more questions.

Today I was trying to fuck with the hosts file on my kubuntu VM and I couldn't figure out how to make changes to the file. I couldn't just right click it and run it as sudo (admin?) or whatever. I didn't know the command to run the text program I had installed as sudo in terminal. Shit like this is stupidly complex for no real reason.

I come here asking for help hoping that I'm just fucking retarded but every time I'm met with the realisation that linux is just this counter-intuitive and difficult to use. I'll still continue to tinker with it and probably switch to using it as my main OS once my graphic tablet arrives and I can stop spending time playing video games and a leisure activity, but jesus christ is it daunting.

>>875375

No

>>875361

$ sudo nano /etc/hosts

also

$ man -k editor

>>875320

A person who never dealt with touch or pen input computers doesn't know a concept of text input field, search bar and that you are supposed to touch it. In feature phones, there is a highlight pointer that selects icons or fields and instantly makes them active. A keyboard is already present and in order to start writing text you select notes, new note and start typing immediately for example. He doesn't even notice the search bar, Ii just seems like a decoration to a person not familiar with it. Notice how he taps every text element, but doesn't even try the search bar. Plus the magnifying glass on a stick doesn't really say that it is supposed to search. It's a dumb skeumorph element from detective cartoons and spy movies, a person not familiar with western culture won't even remotely guess it's function. Button saying "Search" would be much better, plus it highlight the input field more precisely.

A dimple text-based interface would do the job much better.

$: google
Google Search Engine, property of Google Inc. (c) 1998-2018
Please specify your search terms:
> find Pajeena Ahmadi, the very sexy actress please

1488 Search results found:

>8ch.net/tech/res/874362.html<
hurr durr dumb sandniggers...

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajeena_Ahmadi<
Pajeena Ahmadi (1994-Present) is an aspiring Pakistani actress...

>>875484

There is no justification for his stupidity if he's ever used a search engine on a regular computer before. He knows that you click shit with your finger. He knows that you click the search bar to type something in on a computer.

So if a full grown man has never touched a computer once in his entire life then maybe it makes sense, but I doubt it. Plus the search bar is the most central thing, even a child could work out that's likely to be where the actions you want to preform are taking place.

He's just a retarded sand-nigger. Show me a larger sample size and with literal children who have never touched a touch device or seen one before and I'll bet my left testicle they will preform the task in half the time he did.

>>875656

>There is no justification for his stupidity if he's ever used a search engine on a regular computer before.

He hasn't, that's the fucking point

>>875484

This whole argument is retarded. We're just talking in hypotheticals.

>X person who hasn't done Y can TOTALLY do Z!!1!

>No he can't!!1!!1

>>875664

Still irrelevant. I've seen children adapt to new things far faster than this mud monkey.

>>875671

>Still irrelevant. I've seen children adapt to new things far faster than this mud monkey.

this. why would he tap on every other element, but not the box right in the middle. it doesn't make sense. was it explained to him what he was trying to do?

>>874362 (OP)

I don't know about security, but Mint is pretty user-friendly and easy to set up.

>its another OP thinks a bunch of reclusive loonixtards will ever want a functional OS

Linux users want their OS to break so they can fix it indefinitely for no reason whatsoever but to say LOOK HOW SMERT INAM XXDD

>>875769

Linux is a kernel. It powers operating systems.

why the hell would you want normies to use linux?

let them use windows/osx. let them be your meat shield against hackers and cia.

>>875671

>I've seen children adapt to new things far faster than (...)

Derp. They're children, of course they learn faster.

>>874371

Intuitive UI is a waste of time. Command lines are just as intuitive if you started with them. Both this shit and a command line practically require an instructor/manual to get started so why even bother?

>>874404

Only shit software doesn't allow

>- download a tarball, compile, make install

>- download a tarball, run directly from the tarball

Then you make an ebuild because it's easy.

>>876096

t. /pol/roach that uses steam

>>875944

This. For all the shit it gets, autotools is the most user-friendly and sane distribution mechanism. Can't recall the amount of times I've gotten stuck on making CMake/waf/Meson/memeoftheday do my bidding. Autotools just werks, and packaging autotools software or simply installing it can be done with little to no knowledge or intermediate problems. Even someone like i3's main dev could see it once they tried.

Fuck package managers. I just want everything to use autotools.

>>876109

quick rundown on how to make autotools werk?

>>876116

./configure && make && (sudo) make install

That's all you usually need to know.

I know this seems slightly more elaborate than ./install.sh or simply (sudo) make install, but bear with me.

Say, for example, you are building a set of packages from source, because your distro doesn't have them. So, you want to put them under a special prefix. Okay, you can do that, simply ./configure --prefix=/path/to/my/prefix. Now, program A has a feature that's not enabled by default, but you're not sure how to enable it, nor what it's called. Well, just do ./configure --help, and ./configure --enable-feature when you've found it. Now, it's all fine and dandy in your prefix, but you'd like to install a different version of the same program alongside an existing one. Just ./configure --program-suffix=-1.33.7 --prefix=/prefix --datadir=/prefix/share/program-1.33.7. That wasn't so freaking hard!

The thing with configure is that besides providing an easy to understand ./configure --help, every single package you're ever going to encounter will accept the same base set of options. This includes CC, CFLAGS, --(everything)dir=, --program-prefix/suffix, --build and host (for really easy cross-compilation), and a few more.

This makes it easy to make a script that passes the same options and installs several programs the same way, instead of having to figure out the options for each separate program that oftentimes don't even work or aren't even there (have fun cross-compiling mainline perl!), making the user's and especially the distro packager's lifes unnecessarily hard.

Other build systems either assume a lot of things, are lacking in user documentation, lack the --help option (e.g. CMake, go, a lot more), don't have a uniform way of specifying paths, often requiring patches to do your bidding (e.g. CMake, waf, python, go, ant, most go here), or are simply too obscure and hard to use (e.g. kBuild - what VirtualBox uses, what Docker uses, Qt/perl/ffmpeg's own configure spins, every single makefile-only project that doesn't comform to conventions, most games are especially edgy - see the "Required By" list for bam on archlinux packages)

>>876119

how do you use autotools as a developer?

i currently use normal makefiles how much more involved would it be to use autotools?

>>876120

I've never used autotools as a developer, as I've yet to feel the need to distribute a software package. I've heard it's pretty bad - and the m4 macro language is pretty obscure, too, but it's mostly based around Makefiles, so you might feel suitably comfy, YMMV.

Makefiles are probably the least offending of the bunch, as long as you fulfill a minimum set of requirements, that should be pretty easy to satisfy:

* `make` and `make install`, of course.

* Allow user-provided CFLAGS/LDFLAGS, appending them to the "default" ones. No MYCFLAGS shit I have to figure out, take them from the standard environment.

* PREFIX and DESTDIR options.

* Every single one of these[1] that is applicable to building and/or running your program. Preferably lowercase, but uppercase is fine, too.

* Define all configurable stuff _at the top_ of the main makefile - nobody likes scrolling 3k lines to find the options they wanted.

* Provide documentation for people not acquainted with building packages - it should be as easy as installing deps and running make!

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html

>>876121

And oh, I forgot one:

* Use pkg-config or whateverlibthatfelttooedgyforpkgconfig-config

Package mint with a win7/win10 skin

Change graphical install to only option

Remove all options except graphical install

Preconfigure graphical install to be a button that says "Make me a linux" and show an animated gif of some swirly organic color clouds.

>>876120

Your question sparked my curiosity to learn how it works, too, and I found this: http://markuskimius.wikidot.com/programming:tut:autotools

It doesn't look too hard to get the basic stuff going, but as the writer noted, you're going to have to need to learn M4 to get some of the more intermediate stuff going.

most likely linux solus due to the software center being there and it is the new hip cool thing.

>>874400

>>874406

>>874408

>>874410

>>874434

>>874442

>>874444

>>874451

>>874460

>>874496

To solve this simple issue use UMatrix+Stylish add-ons and make own CSS or get it from reliable source.

In about:config search java enabled and disable it and telemetry. Now you have a privet browser that relays very very little data. By doing all of this I approve the use of Google

>>874362 (OP)

Some tasty bait you have there OP

>asks for user-friendly linux distro

>posts pic of a very user-friendly distro

Mmmm, taste great OP

>>874404

If you use Arch or Ubuntu you wont have problems with finding software

>>874362 (OP)

> user friendly

> easy to set up

> secure

Pick one

>>881629

It runs DOS programs natively?

>>876126

>Package mint with a win7/win10 skin

Ew, no. Why provide something worse than Mint's regular style?

>>881754

It runs a lot of games natively now too AFAIK but the main issue is hardware support because chipset drivers are a bitch to identify and provide for a booting system

415-553-0123 Niggers have claimed Ubuntu. Help! https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

>>883024

eopkg is a mess though

I swear this is not just me prefering apt-get or aur, Solus' package management is just weird.

They do offer some other way to get software, which trust me, is really great, though.

>>883149

When you get down to it there's really only two things that set any "linux" installation apart from any other: the package manager and the DE. DE's can be swapped out basically at will, but why haven't we just made package managers portable and installable anywhere too?

>>874376

>muh blank slate

Nobody taught me to bang your mom but I found a way.

I'd install Solus for normies and grandparents. Looks good otb, rolling release and stable. Installer is easy and includes non-free garbage like drivers and unrar by default. Also makes popular malware like chrome, plex and slack easy to get in the software center.

>>883155

>package managers portable and installable anywhere

Be more specific? Do you want a package manager to magically detect everything already installed or something weird like that?

>>883538

>and unrar

bbqlinux

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bbqlinux/files/

It's arch linux with graphical and live installer focused on Android development (just having a manual repo for android/bbq packages)

It's pure arch and much trustable than those tryhard arch gui malwared installers made by skiddies with kali-tier mindset.

<pros

You don't have to install packages from slow mirrors or repeat downloads for several setups since stuff are already ported in the ISO, you get to have octopi built in it (afaik) so this is easily the most ideal arch setup and easily you can debloat and batch download stuff in the graphical package manager

<cons

I don't know if their graphical installer still fucks up cryptsetup encryption and grub - if it does, you can manually install it.

>>883572

..and if you install bbq you will get that shiny arch *fetch logo since it's just arch gui installer with added repo and defaults, nothing else.