So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7.
You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.
I'm going to recommend to you, or anyone, wanting to verify Windows 10 network behavior to do it without depending on software running on the OS itself. Try verifying it again using network analyzing software on linux or macosx, running downstream of your network setup. e.g., a router that's running linux you can ssh into and run "ngrep"(kinda like a commandline version of wiresahrk) and verify from there.
http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap
and a couple of USB-Ethernet adaptors
CentOS/RedHat derivitives: https://www.banym.de/linux/centos/setup-bridge-device-on-cen...
Debian/Ubuntu: https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections
It's probably overly complicated, but because I happened to have an extra router laying about it was the easiest way for me to do it. The setup ultimately looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/klNvoTS.png
The spare router is really only needed for the smartphone. Anything with an ethernet port can be connected directly to the linux laptop.
But simply installing software isn't enough, it needs to be configured. How does one set up OpenWRT or WireShark to filter for this kind of information? What pitfalls might one encounter? Do you need a CS degree in order to interpret the data? What keywords should one use when searching for more information?
With vague answers like the ones so far, you're just making it seem more difficult and intimidating for anyone that has little to no experience in this area. If we want people to be more concerned about their privacy, it needs to be as easy (or easier) for people to take control of their information as it is for them to give it away.
Edit: smtddr has the right idea, thumbs up. Should have hit refresh one more time before posting.
The "evidence" I have seen so far that Windows 10 communicates with its maker is, let's be honest, pretty scaremongery and includes things like LLMNR traffic - which is link-local! - and neglects to consider that Windows Update now checks much more frequently (because of the accelerated release cadence of a rolling release) and essentially torrents its updates now, P2P-style.
If there's a real privacy issue - and there may well be, especially on default settings - we need reliable, detailed, hard information to see what binaries send what to where to begin to address it, and to see what can be turned off, what should be, etc. Does anyone know if anyone's begun that analysis yet?
(Of course it really should be Microsoft openly discussing this, but in the absence of that, the mantle inevitably falls to independent researchers.)
Since MS knows that Windows communications are going to be under a microscope anyway the odds of them expecting to successfully hide the very existence of communications seem low to me, and once they're known to exist they WILL be inspected and publicized.
I'd expect the below-stack communications to be from espionage folks instead, quite frankly.
And anyway, even getting to this meant manually ticking out dozens of boxes in several settings windows and installing a packet sniffer to check your own computer for unwanted connections. Nevermind that running a packet sniffer on your outgoing connections usually means you suspect you have a virus (which is what Win10 is?), it requires technical expertise that 95% of Win10 users won't have.
No I don't think GP was driven by hatred of Microsoft, as much as a genuine dislike of an operating system which hands over control of your own computer to someone else. I always thought Stallman was being hyperbolic when he said "with free software the users control the computer, with proprietary the computer controls the users", but I don't anymore.
Windows 10 isn't the first software product to phone home, and that's what packet sniffers are used for the most.
I think this says more about Android than it does about Windows 10. Windows 10 has crazy defaults, but so does android and many android apps want access to my info for no good reason (e.g. news apps wanting access to list my accounts, my phone number, my contacts, precise location etc.). Comparing privacy defaults of Windows to Android is not comparing it to a particularly high bar.
There was a noticable performance hit, but my phone is 3+ years old. It likely would not be as much on a newer phone.
Hmm? I can do exactly this in the Privacy Guard settings.
You can choose which permissions you want an app to have and which you don't. You can also set to Ask every time as well as just blanket blocking/.allowing permanently.
As far as I'm aware you just long-press the app name in order to get to the more granular permissions controls.
There's nothing else I'm aware of that needs these long presses to get more options, save the stuff that Android has anyway.
HN rate limits replies when comments are nested. You either wait for the reply link to show up, or you clicky the time stamp.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-appops...
How do you know glasswire sees all network activity? What about data that piggybacks on legitimate network activity (e.g. the requests to update.microsoft.com)?
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploi...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
People just automatically assume that I hate Microsoft because I'm using Linux as the only operating system on my primary laptop. That's not even remotely the case.
Snowden released nothing specifically about Windows. No backdoors, no specific cooperation, only the NSA's bespoke malware (but they also have malware for everything under the sun, Linux, uEFI, RAID firmware, cell modems, etc).
Sure, the NSA were spying on Microsoft by hooking the fiber lines between Microsoft's data centers in order to gain backdoor access to Hotmail (now Outlook.com). But they did the same thing to Google and several other organisations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg
> same thing to Google
So what? The claim was about not using Microsoft's products.
> So what? The claim was about not using Microsoft's products.
No, the claim was that Snowden revealed some Windows issue. That hasn't been shown. PRISM has absolutely nothing to do with Windows at all.
Where is this Snowden-Windows smoking gun? I haven't seen it.
PS - I find it odd that you'd link to that image instead of the main article which tells you exactly what PRISM is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
July 31, 2012
Microsoft (MS) began encrypting web-based chat with the introduction of the new outlook.com service. This new Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption effectively cut off collection of the new service for FAA 702 and likely 12333 (to some degree) for the Intelligence Community (IC). MS, working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal with the new SSL. These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.
Did you not see the evidence in the bottom left corner?
( Microsoft 9/11/07 )
They were compared to the other businesses listed on that lide.
> PRISM is the theft of unencrypted data on dedicated lines between data centers.
This is as common misunderstanding. There are quite a few NSA programs that tap lines, which serve as inputs to XKEYSCORE. Some of these taps are line taps or Tailored Access based attacks, but those are not PRISM.
PRISM is the "polite" way the NSA gets their data, using FISA warrants and the cooperation of the business. They ask for a tap, and the business accommodates them. IF a business decides to not be part of prism, that's when the NSA simply takes the data via other means. The entire point of PRISM as a program is that it involves asking private business to participate.
> PRISM has absolutely nothing to do with Windows at all.
When windows 10 decides to make all those network connections, where are they going? They're writing to some sort of database at Microsoft. Now that windows has made the network part of the OS, the situation at the remote data center becomes relevant.
It was the theft of unencrypted data on dedicated fiber lines between data centers.
It actually didn't impact Windows, it impacted Hotmail, OneDrive, and other Microsoft "Cloud" services. Ditto with Google, Apple, et al.
This is the exact opposite of what was claimed in many of the documents that were leaked. One example;
July 31, 2012
Microsoft (MS) began encrypting web-based chat with the introduction of the new outlook.com service. This new Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption effectively cut off collection of the new service for FAA 702 and likely 12333 (to some degree) for the Intelligence Community (IC). MS, working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal with the new SSL. These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.
From; https://search.edwardsnowden.com/
That is the very definition of collaboration.
So getting worried because Microsoft is turning against their users by exploiting their data is a legitimate concern. I have disabled all these settings too but I must say that Microsoft damaged the trust I had in them. I always used windows and I am a big fan of the .net framework and of visual studio. But I am now considering learning Linux. I have zero interest in an OS that leaks my personal data.
And you seem to be driven by pure passion toward your beloved corporation that you felt the need to create an account here, 1 hour ago, just to inform us how mute Win 10 is compared to an android phone.
That's great. And what have you done about Microsoft not telling you what is inside each Windows Update?
FWIW, https://fix10.isleaked.com/ is what I've been going off of so far
At least, this is the same what I did (standard privacy settings and monitoring my network with Glasswire) and I have the same experience.
Feel free to contribute.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
And you'll have to keep doing it after every Windows update. Is Windows 10 really that good to be worth the trouble?
Google started engineering features that were supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway. Google forced people to divulge their data, for instance location, for navigation. It did not actually need the level of data it collects to provide navigation, it was just a way to steal their location privacy to increase its marketing reach and to improve the service not necessarily for the user but for its own business needs. How long before Microsoft starts employing the same tactics. You know you have a choice but it's a totally false choice!
Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as Windows with a better underlying OS or Unix with a decent UI. Either way it's a win.
Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395
As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare.
Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again.
Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked.
To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048
Since he's a Mac user, that's not necessarily a good bet. Safari wins out handily in battery life, and Firefox's UI text rendering (tabs/URL/bookmarks) is comparatively atrocious.
Chrome benefits from its cross-platform bookmark sync, but the snappier interface, extra hour of battery, and the fact that it comes preinstalled all make Safari a pretty popular choice on OS X.
EDIT: Though I suppose Safari is a sorta-open-source project in the same way that Chrome is. Mostly it's the same as WebKit, but not entirely. Does Apple get much in the way of community contributions, or is it a "we have to publish the source, but we're not going to take your input" arrangement like Android?
The operating system is fine. Complaining about a bunch of built-in applications gets us nowhere.
I'd rather complain about the fact that the default filesystem is case insensitive, for instance.
i see that as a positive thing.
Fairly low chance of this. She could be using Safari (closed source), Chrome (closed source) and in third place Firefox.
NB if a binary with additional closed source blobs its not really open source anymore according to the standard definitions of open source.
The problem, and the reason I wanted to give it a try, is software. Things like gotomeeting and such simple work there and are difficult to get working on linux. It cost me a (remote) developer, so I decided that my travel/home rig would be win 8.1 with linux in a VM. So far it's quite convenient, but I don't use much on the windows side.
I think with more adoption we could fix the software issues.
This claim is usually made by Windows users who don't want to invest any effort and time to learn another desktop -- which they had to do in Win8 anyway.
Linux offers several nice desktops (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, E17, etc.) which we can freely choose from. I am a Linux user since the 90's and I have always used it as my primary desktop. It works perfectly well for me. I consider the new Windows metro "desktop" more horrible than even simple Linux desktops.
Freedom has a price. Education has a price. Both require the sincere willingness to do something for it.
Maybe the average Linux user is OK with this, but I can't help but be bugged by it. Cost of having so many options, I suppose.
Elementary does better than most, but only by including a set of software designed explicitly to fit there.
As far as the general look and feel though, it still manages to feel more consistent. There are enough conventions like "clickable things have a hover effect" and relatively consistent styling of UI icons (pre-10 anyway) for it to feel like it's all one system.
Not that OSX is any better - Apple's own Pro apps always had different look that the rest of the system. iTunes was always experimenting with looking odd. Also, third party apps look different - Office, Adobe apps, etc.
So, it nothing wrong with Linux, all systems are like this.
I used to make this claim as someone who had been using desktop gnu/linux for several years. I've been using OSX now for a year and so stopped making the claim. But it is really frustrating to hear people say "it works for me" to rebut claims that it doesn't work for most people. Such counters and arguments over them are basically single data points. If the point under discussion is "does desktop linux work well enough to gain massive amounts of market share?", then you need to run actual large scale trials comparing how hard it is for people to...
1) Start up a spreadsheet program and do things
2) Check social media and play some random video
3) Play League of Legends
4) <insert your favorite thing here>
Some of these things are indeed comparably easy in, say Ubuntu (or were pre-unity) for me, but I was an MIT undergrad that hung around SIPB, the computer club. My massive amounts of tech privilege make it impossible to individually evaluate if the user experience someone has with spreadsheets is acceptable unless I put real study into it. The same is probably true of many HN commenters. So until someone spends the time and money to run actual user experience studies, we have no data to say that the linux desktop can take over the world.
Also, there isn't even one "Linux desktop". There is mint, Ubuntu+gnome classic, Ubuntu+unity, ubuntu+some weird xmonad setup.
Another argument I often see for why Desktop Linux has an advantage is that "Linux is free as in beer". But it is not. If someone making $15/hr takes more than 8 hours (not unrealistic, at least for an MIT CS student back in 2010) fiddling with things and trying to get them to work, then desktop Linux is more expensive.
Learning Linux is like learning LaTeX. It requires serious effort to become powerfully useful but then you never want to miss it because there is nothing that can actually compete.
OSX and Windows are easier to handle at the first place but if you get into the details then you may have more trouble than in Linux (driver problems, document formats) because there is no obsolescence in Linux. In OSX and Windows you depend on the cooperation of the manufacturers. In Linux drivers, applications, and document formats written decades ago still work.
> Learning Linux is like learning LaTeX
This is a particularly fantastic analogy when you look at the type of error messages that LaTeX produces.
Nevertheless LaTeX is still the favorite DTP system among scientists. LaTeX is actually not too hard to learn. It just requires some mental effort to get it. Scientists are willing to do that. Some people obviously don't.
Maybe but using a Linux distro like Ubuntu or Mint or similar is more like using an Office package.
That said, every single time I've tried to use a Linux OS either as my primary laptop or desktop OS I experience significant problems that no end user should have to deal with... the last time, I added a drive after install... the system updates included an update to grub.. next reboot, wouldn't even load... after 3 days of setting up my environment, applications, vmware, etc, etc... I can't even fucking boot.
The time before that I couldn't get both monitors to work... twice before that I picked recommended hardware for linux support (straight intel graphics) and hit weird regressions when the OS updated on one, and the other just some wierd suspend issues..
I agree "works fine" for the desktop is a huge stretch... it does appear to mostly work okay for my HTPC, except when it resumes from suspend there's no sound (fortunately it's got an ssd and reboots fast), or that if I happen to turn it on too early before the TV is on, the display doesn't come on the screen (guessing it picks the DV port instead of the HDMI)...
either way.. still stuff that's worked in windows/osx forever, without issue.
was this in the 90s, early 2000s? Linux hasn't had those issues in a decade. Suspend/Resume is horrible on Windows of me as well, my linux systems do so flawlessly, but there is a good 10% chance of blue screen when undocking my corporate windows laptop out of suspend.
The issue with booting was mid-late 2013, I haven't tried running Linux as the main OS on my desktop since, Windows 10 has me considering it.
http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html
http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security...
As long as you stay away from perpetually-beta distributions that I shall not name, driver problems are really a non-issue. I haven't had a malfunctioning peripheral under Linux in a very long time now (years?). Driver problems are on-par with what you see on Windows :-).
> missing support for newer OpenGL standards
This has been a common complaint about OS X for a long time, and no one thought desktop on it didn't work.
> fragmentation of desktop environments
As long as the desktop respects ICCCM (hint: they all tend to do) and you don't write your application using some obscure, non-ICCCM compliant toolkit, this tends to be a non-issue.
> it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input):
This is true. However, the expectation is that you'll usually run open source software from trusted sources (and you can run untrusted applications in an Xnest session). Methods aside, it's just as easy for a malicious user to keylog you on Windows or OS X, the Linux keylogger is just more trivial to write.
This is false. Windows has a mechanism since Vista (UIPI) that provide some UI isolation (lower privilege processes can e.g. not listen to keystrokes on higher privilege processes):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Interface_Privilege_Isola...
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625963.aspx
E.g. web browsers normally run at the 'low' integrity level and cannot eavesdrop on other processes (which are normally at the 'medium' level). It would be nice if someone with knowledge Windows internals could explain UIPI a bit more, I gathered this knowledge a while ago due to being interested in the topic :).
Of course, if users just accept anything at UAC prompts, everything is lost ;).
I recently installed a workstation for using CUDA, with X11, using nVidia's off-the-shelf packages (the Ubuntu CUDA packages have some compatibility problems).
- On Ubuntu everything worked fine first (LTS, 14.04), after some upgrade, X11 did not come up anymore. Some problem with DKMS. While debugging, it doesn't help that Canonical has made disabling the display manager completely non-sensical. Something akin to
update-rc.d -f lightdm remove
- On CentOS installing the CUDA package simply gives a blank screen and you cannot switch to TTYs anymore. You still have to manually disable nouveau, etc:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140808222919-219659043-rhel...
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/842496/nvidia-drive...
Of course, this is just an anecdote. But my experience while still reading Linux forums and helping other people, it's often still work to get and keep hardware running.
I don't have much experience with Windows. But on the few HP/Dell workstations that I have set up, Windows generally worked out of the box.
As long as the desktop respects ICCCM (hint: they all tend to do) and you don't write your application using some obscure, non-ICCCM compliant toolkit, this tends to be a non-issue.
There is much more to a desktop than just being able to display windows rendered by a random toolkit, such as: consistent keyboard shortcuts, consistent look an feel, etc. Every time that I tried to switch back to Linux, the lack of consistent keyboard shortcuts drives me crazy (though they are typically somewhat consistent within the applications provided by KDE, GNOME, etc.).
it's just as easy for a malicious user to keylog you on Windows or OS X
OS X uses GUI isolation, only applications that a user has explicitly enabled in the accessibility options can listen in on keyboard events or send events. Moreover, app store applications use sandboxing by default and can't see files outside the sandbox. So, this is false.
One of the first thing every Linux user needs to know is that he should only use hardware which is listed in the HCL (Hardware Compatiblity list).
If you want to have ready-to-run Linux then take a careful look at http://linuxgizmos.com.
I have a Win7 partition that I boot now and then when I must use software that can't be virtualized well enough.
In 4 years I've never lost work and I had only two crashes after messing with my GPU settings.
If only the biggest proprietary software we available on linux (Looking at you Adobe), I would never go back.
Just make sure to buy a Nvidia graphics card (and use their proprietary driver). The (proprietary) AMD drivers work, but their performance is much worse than on Windows.
I don't have a large experience with wine gaming but Hearthstone runs pretty well (too well, even) on Wine.
* Steam for Linux is pretty rock-solid, at least on the common desktop environments. Some bugginess once you get into bare window manager territory (particularly WindowMaker or anything that's designed specifically for tiling), but otherwise works without issue.
* A very large number of indie games are targeting Linux either alongside or soon after Windows. Kerbal Space Program is the prodigial example here, and seems to be leading the charge for Unity3D.
* Pretty much everything made by Valve now runs on Linux natively, for obvious reasons. A part of me hopes that - when GabeN gets over his fear of the number "three" - Half Life 3 will launch on Linux/SteamOS first.
* Some non-Valve big-budget games and publishers are gradually making their way to Linux - both new and old. Borderlands 2/PS, much of the Tropico series, Cities: Skylines, Serious Sam 3, The Talos Principle, KoToR II (no KoToR I yet, alas, but since it's the same engine, there's probably a good chance of that changing soon), Civilization V/BE, various others.
* SteamOS is, in my experience as of late, excruciatingly difficult to install; Valve, in their wisdom, ships it as some zip archive instead of a more typical DVD/USB image. Perhaps the SteamOS installer is meant to be written to a USB stick with Windows rather than with Linux? Whatever the case, I've yet to get SteamOS to actually install, though I'm planning on revisiting it soon.
* Single-monitor setups are generally fine. Multi-monitor setups become problematic, since the games tend to do wacky things with their resolution and fullscreen-window sizes; I generally work around them by running games in windowed mode.
* Which graphics card vendor to go with depends on whether or not you want to stay strictly on the free software path. AMD's cards are currently vastly superior to Nvidia's when running on FOSS drivers, in no small part due to AMD actually participating in said driver's development. Nvidia's cards are currently superior to AMD's when running on proprietary drivers, though this might change once AMD migrates from fglrx (the current non-free driver) to something based on the FOSS "radeon" driver.
* Wine is quite fantastic nowadays, though game compatibility is still hit-and-miss. I regularly play Fallout: NV on Linux+Wine with very few issues (namely, the occasional crash after a few hours of gameplay); Fallout 3 is playable, but you can't use the Pip-Boy radio due to a bug with Wine and DirectSound (?) (sound will be garbled, and the game will crash with a deadlock after a half-minute or so). Valve's games are naturally very Wine-friendly (though this is no longer necessary, of course). Steam works reasonably well, but requires installing some font packages in order to get text to show up. Older games tend to work better than newer games.
I disagree. MS-DOS "works fine", and had many users. I would say that on average, UIs on Linux (both commandline and GUI) are better than those on MS-DOS, hence Linux UIs also work fine.
I wouldn't claim that the average Linux UI is great, or follows any HCI guidelines, or whatever. What I would claim is that it doesn't matter; all that matters is that it's possible to get the job done. Just like it was possible to get the job done on MS-DOS.
Regarding the XKCD reference, I think that's covered in the parent's statement "if you come over, then all the desktop software makers will port their software to Linux". Those kinds of distinctions make it all too easy to move the goalposts; eg. "Linux is useless because it doesn't run MyProprietaryApp(TM)".
Strongly disagree. I have no trouble getting around in KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE or i3. They are all just fine.
Seriously, I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count different UI toolkits (every other one having its own font rendering, duh), service/daemon management subsystems, audio subsystems and VFS implementations, each having incompatible API and behaving differently. Every other program has its own standards - what would happen upon just clicking a link heavily depends on where you do this. Most software "somewhat works", not "works just fine". Besides, maybe, the very core GNU userland, which is, indeed, rock solid and quite consistent.
I'm unaware of alternatives, though. Fear, there aren't any. </rant>
GNOME 3 in perticular is the best arranged desktop in my opinion because the way it separates the desktop and application launcher/switcher/search into two distinct modes and makes context switching so easy with just a key press, a click, or a hot corner. Everything is always in the same place and easy to access with little cognitive overhead. Whereas using the Mac application bar is really messy, trying to follow flyout menus that go off at odd angles, etc., and that's far from the only reason I dislike the UI. GNOME follows the way my mind works. I'm either using the applications I want or switching between them, and unifying everything in these categories makes so much sense, I'm surprised everyone doesn't follow the model.
That's entirely my opinion, and I tend to be biased and think the only reason people complain about the desktop experience is because it's not whatever they're used to, but the only thing I know for sure is that there's no one way to arrange a desktop that appeals to everyone.
How is making a feature (that is opt-in) good enough to get people to opt-in a bad thing here?
See Spotify for a very recent example of this process.
When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.
Of course, in a thread about closed source software spying on users there's going to be a bit more people arguing the points of the former.
Is it so awful to use an acronym that reminds the reader of these practices? I think it's prudent to not use it, only because it detracts from his point when readers like yourself become distracted by it. But it's not as "rabidly anti-Microsoft" as you are painting it to be, either.
Are you kidding me? If you're a full-stack developer, then try opening Android Studio & PyCharm IDE at the same time, and after approx. 1 hour, things just get horrible. Everything is stuck. I don't know exactly what is happening, but somewhere the Swap handling horrible wrong.
No such issues on Mac OS/Windows :/
On the other hand, I've had my fair share of windows weirdness. My work machine will from time to time not shutdown and I'll come the next day to a bluescreen. What does that say about windows? Nothing at all, it's likely a driver issue too.
I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one.
Just to name a few:
Gimp and Photoshop
Inkscape and Illustrator
Maya/3DStudio and Blender
All these applications could run under Linux just fine if the vendors cared.
It's not so much about "caring" as about the ability to pay programmers to create profitable software.
Examples include Matlab, the Avizo image analysis suite, a certain simulation package that was described as AllSIM in a controversial discussion relating to CERN last week on HN and Maya (not scientific but it does illustrate the sort of high end very expensive niche stuff that tends to have Linux versions).
More commercial applications:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Proprietary_commercia...
http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/05/10-commercial-apps-for-li...
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxCommercialApplications...
YoLinux looks old and has some non-working links, so I'm not sure it's being maintained. (Indeed, one link leads to Windows and Mac OS X software, not Linux.)
Lin-App, the most promising site, hasn't updated "What's up" since 15.04.2011. (Also, its most recent comments are 2 and 11 months ago.)
As it says in the URL, the TechDriven story is also from 2011, and the programs are from Lin-App.
It's hard to see the signs of a vibrant ecosystem....
Basically, for the big names in computer-animated movies, the Year of the Linux Desktop has already happened.
There is no demand for this software on linux. Professionals have better things to do than choose their software based on ideology.
My motivation for using libre software is:
- When you use a proprietary software, you are using "somebody else's software, licensed for your usage".
- When you are using libre software, you are using YOUR software.
Software built for profit have better incentives for financial development support, and that's why it's hard for libre software to catch up on features.
We can support libre software with donations (or better not giving money to the locked competence), and more importantly using the libre software that lacks of the non-vital features, at least at personal level.
In the long run, libre will outlast the locked, it's a matter of financial incentives.
And if Linux had any significant market share (I'd say even 10-20%) you would have native Linux versions of most of that software - not entirely unlike what you have on OS X.
Edit: clarified.
On the other hand, my sister is a designer, and there are so many missing features on Inkscape that prevent her to use it in her profession life. The comparison seems unfair, but it is the closest thing to an alternative for Illustrator in the software free world.
What Adobe have achieved with photoshop is become the de facto standard for many aspects of design and image work. They have done this through a mixture of (1) being the best practical option and (2) some vendor lock in. We may not like it but well done to them.
That there are features and quality from the well-funded proprietary tools that are lacking in the free/open ones is undeniable. But the examples you chose are ones where if we had to use the free/open ones, we would be just fine. These are cases where free/open options are actually pretty darn nice.
I said that keeping in mind professional use. There are some people who can effectly replace Office with LibreOffice at work and the number is significant.
However, when you try to do the same with a designer then Gimp, Inkscape and Blender falls behind, so yeah... A dev could do a minor manipulation on an image using Gimp, but don't ask a designer to produce a print-ready poster using it.
On the other hand, Maya is available on Linux !
Edit: typos
And not on the automation side, I have also created professional quality icons on GIMP used on our web application.
Disabled every form of data collection possible from the Settings and also edited Group Policy and the registry to disable further collection.
I've also edited the hosts file and added entries for dozens of domains associated with MS telemtry and reporting.
At this point Comodo Firewall was still reporting some suspicious outbound connection requests which I've analysed and blocked most of.
System still works fine and is getting updates okay but I'm sure there is plenty I've missed or that people do not know about yet.
I'm honestly considering rolling back to a clean install of Windows 7 SP1. I'm really not liking Win 10 the more I learn about it.
There is however the issue that adding entries to the hosts file may not change anything, as the domains for this telemetry collection might be hardcoded elsewhere and would likely override/ignore the hosts file.
I wouldn't update on a work machine however - no need to put your time at risk.
It won't beg anymore ;)