Why not trust Linux? No activation, full control over all the processes. Seems like a good solution for people who "care".

It's good in theory but in practice you'd need to spend a lot of time and money doing deep audits yourself, both hardware and software. That just really isn't a worthwhile investment for the vast, vast, majority of people.

At the end of the day it all still boils down to trust based on reputation, incentives and oversight. Openness is important but no panacea.

Well at least the surface area of the audit is a LOT smaller than on macOS, Windows, etc.

I really doubt that's the case if you use more than a few small apps which is the case for the vast majority of users.

Must I link a running process list of my Linux laptop vs my macOS laptop?

  ps aux | wc

Linux:

  177

Mac OS X:

  44

macOS?

How do you know the process list is accurate for certain?

The point is, there’s potentially back doors in everything, including the C compiler that built your Linux kernel.

We've all read reflections on trusting trust... still my point stands, it's hard to argue that Linux is not lighter than the mainstream OSes.

Something like a default Ubuntu install (which might be somewhat "mainstream") actually has a surprising amount of stuff running in the background. Of course it's all open-source or otherwise completely documented, so it's still easier to figure out what's what than with Windows or macOS.

It can be lighter but what does that mean in practical terms if the cost of maintenance is monumental? I think with even just the barest bones practical computer with wifi + with email + browser + compiler and their dependencies is well beyond the scope of what one person is able to audit. You'd need a team of at least 20-30 individuals before that starts making sense.

If only it was possible for massive armies of people to inspect source code for possible defects or backdoors?

Further what if it happened we were unsatisfied with this we could all collectively hire more people to audit the software stacks we rely on in order of priority instead of expecting each person to hire dozens to vet the software they are presently running.

Further if only even if we can't ever arrive at 100% surety we can get closer and closer to satisfaction.

> If only it was possible for massive armies of people to inspect source code for possible defects or backdoors?

You mean like what Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. already do?

Its silly to advice against reasonable actions like switching to an OS that respects your privacy based on unreasonable standards that aren't met presently anyway.

Don't bother leaving that disease ridden hag covered in boils you can't possibly invest the resources to sequence the full genome of this clean looking young lady over here it all comes down to trust amirite.

User experience and usability.

That has nothing to do with trust and is highly subjective.

Sure, but that has nothing to do with the notion of trust we're talking about here.

Perhaps, but if poor UX prevents a user from using an ostensibly more secure platform, then security of said platform doesn’t enter into the consideration at all.

Yes, we're all well aware. That's NOT what I'm talking about though. I'm responding to "Use Linux? How do you trust that?".

Please think about things before aimlessly countering someone's question.

How many distros are shipping with ASLR now? Last I knew there were still major distros that weren't.

Heck, do the common DEs sandbox their search indexing processes yet, given there's been various vulnerabilities there previously?

Yes, okay, you have control, but when nobody implements relatively basic defence-in-depth mitigations that have been available on Windows (especially) and macOS for over a decade it's just sad and undermines the argument that its security is better.

It's not that you shouldn't trust it, it's that you could from security perspective easily shoot yourself in the foot.

Does anyone know of a distro that focuses on usability and privacy"? Subgraph is still in alpha...

Either trust yourself, or trust someone else. (of course it's generally impossible to avoid some amount of trust in others.)

> I’m all about security and privacy, but everything is on balance with practically. If a three digit govt agency wants to find you, they have so many other ways than Apple.

Can't argue with that.

This is a false dilemma. If you walk outside and must necessarily put up with shopkeepers rights to record their premises we don't in turn invite people to publicly accessible webcams in our bedrooms/bathrooms.

I'd say you use as much privacy respecting hardware/software as is feasible given your present use case and circumstances and progressively look to improve this situation funneling your money towards people and projects that respect you and your privacy in order to encourage people to build the things you need.

If you already have expensive hardware that doesn't work with open source software I don't think it terribly reasonable to suppose you throw it in the trash for example.

Just buy something better next go round.

Windows before Vista/XP is quite good in terms of privacy in the "phones home" sense --- no activation and a fresh default install will remain absolutely quiet on the network. Activation started with XP (but easily cracked), and then Microsoft began increasing the noise and phoning-home crap shortly after that.

I find it ironic that one of the features removed starting with Win7 was the network activity indicator in the system tray. Of course, recent Apple hardware and software has no indicators either. The opaqueness is unsettling.