Hacker News Reader

Comment by tumblewit | Hacker News Reader

Its funny how Windows and Android, the two most widely used operating systems, are a privacy nightmare and basically spyware at this point. Remember you can install tools and ROMs that are privacy focussed but also realise only a minor percentage of the users bother or are aware of these.

I wonder what the sales pitch would be to sell privacy focussed products to the average Joe.

View on HN

Both of these are the cheaper option in their respective market. iOS and macOS are expensive because the hardware is expensive (as in, the hardware in part pays for the development of the software), and Linux is expensive in that it's almost always more time-consuming to set up since it doesn't have Windows' first-class driver, hardware, and software support.

> since it doesn't have Windows' first-class driver, hardware, and software support.

Ironically, Linux sometimes has better driver and software support for specialized things like Thunderbolt ethernet adapters, or software if it was written for MacOS but later adapted to Linux because of their similarity within the scope of POSIX. And, because Windows can't run 16-bit software on 64-bit CPUs at all, Linux has the total advantage here because WINE works with 16-bit as well.

Agreed! Just wanted to pile on, the driver thing is a bit hit/miss.

Broadcom/Realtek (sometimes)? Good luck. Intel/AMD/Aquantia? Probably good to go.

There are vendors that give Linux first-class support; buy them.

edit: Realtek is a little hard to pinpoint, they tend to have drivers... but fairly buggy.

I have to replace the r8169 module or something similar with r8125 for my (onboard) networking to work under stress. If I push too much bandwidth, it'll just drop.

come on. i use an old dell latitude e7440 which i run kde neon on. takes 15 minutes to get installed and i can get surfing in 16. No nonsense, no nothing. i assume newer devices would be better but "time consuming to set up" is something i have not seen in the last 3-5 years of my using 100% exclusively linux devices.

Not sure why macOS (M1) is expensive here. For the hardware/performance/software you get it’s not really expensive if you compare the alternatives like surface or any of the intel based laptops. Sure, you can get a cheap laptop for under 500$ but that won’t last long either.

I don't think it is funny, nor coincidence. A lot of people are poor and have to sell themselves out with privacy. They cannot afford a premium brand like Apple.

Apple isn't any better - Apple gets the hash of every program you run on a Mac.

Can you throw out some example tools and ROMs?

I used that a few years ago and liked it: https://www.lineageos.org/

One can even take it a step further and use microg.org to get lineagos with optional google services. Has worked great for me last year or so.

Seconding this. LineageOS with microG has been great, combined with Aurora Store's anonymous Play Store for the singular app I require that doesn't have an FOSS alternative.

Simplewall for Windows: https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall

I think Apple has (with varying success) been making that pitch for several years.

There's no privacy on Apple with a closed source ecosystem and all the iCloud connectivity syncing your every move.

The “closed source ecosystem” is not nearly as restrictive as people make it out to be and is something that you willingly sign up for when buying apple products.

Not sure where you got the idea of “icloud syncing your every move” but literally every icloud implementation can be disabled at your discretion.

I for one only have my reminders, wallet, calendar and drive synced.

Even with that said, none of this implies a lack of privacy in any way.

Your every move is quite literally transmitted to Apple. That's how Find My works.

Find My data is end to end encrypted.

Find my can be disabled…

And it’s sole purpose is to help people find their devices, it’s saved many people i know from a very large catastrophe.

"the researchers' iPhone transmitted more kinds of data, including device location, the device's local Internet Protocol (IP) address and the Wi-Fi network identifiers — the MAC addresses — of other devices on the local network, including home Wi-Fi routers."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com