Well said. Thanks for sharing a good read and generous ongoing commentary.
We've employed Ubuntu with SecureDrop and enjoyed
its security features. Agreed, it is not Windows.
At 04:23 PM 3/19/2019, you wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
Most of you will have noticed that I haven't been contributing to this
mailing list, much, of late. This is due to a variety of reasons, which
I would like to tell you about here. The Cryptome Mailing list is one
of my few pride and joys, having first discovered it way back at the
beginning of the 21st century.
First of all, when I retired I decided to get involved in a number of
different projects, which have taken up a lot of my time, and which I
had to prioritise, so that I could pursue those which I felt was most
important for my self development. As well as finishing off my house
project a la France, and my new home here in the South of England, I
have undertaken to become more involved in learning Linux. Ever since I
discovered Linux via a computer club presentation on the subject during
my membership of a computer club on the Isle of Wight, a club which is
called the IWPCUG, and is still in existence, I have become
increasingly interested in Linux as an operating system. There was a
small group of members there who were devoted to Linux, in the club,
which at the time mostly followed the Microsoft Operating System as that
was the most popular and attracted the most members.
May I say, it took me a number of years for me to move over from
Microsoft Windows to Linux, and I started off by installing Ubuntu, on a
dual boot basis, on a couple of my desktops, so that I could get to
experiment and understand it better. I have never been mathematically
inclined, nor have I been interested in programming, in fact, studying
them tended to make me fall asleep!!!
Due to my involvement in many other projects, it took me a long time to
knuckle down and devote myself to exploring the world of open source.Â
As time has gone by, I have watched and used Linux operating systems, in
particular Ubuntu, both because I became increasingly disenchanted with
Microsoft OS 10 in particular, even though it was free upgrade on the
previous Operating System, and because Linux operating systems improved
so much, particularly Ubuntu, that I felt that they had become user
friendly enough for even most ordinary folks to use and learn from. The
latest Ubuntu 18.04 for instance is easy to install and use, though,
like all operating systems, if one doesn't know what one is doing then
crashes become inevitable. Self over confidence is the big obstacle,
though it is also the way that one learns...how to make the same mistake
many times before one manages to find a solution:-).
Recently, two of my laptops decided to go down the pan, one after the
other, at 5 years of age, they were just too old, even for Linux; so I
had to buy new ones, and decided to move over completely to Linux,
installing different Linux operating systems on each one, Ubuntu 18.04
and Linux Mint 19.1 on the other. It was very easy to do so, as simple
and as straightforward as installing Microsoft 10 from a DVD or a USB
flash drive.
I hope John won't consider the following as advertising or marketing on
behalf of some corporation or company, but I have to say, that after
doing a lot of research I came across an HP laptop being sold by
ebuyeruk. com for just under £200.  What attracted me to it was not
only the spec, which was reasonable and good enough for what I wanted to
do with my computers, but because it came with DOS, and not MS Windows,
and I knew enough at the time to be able to install a Linux Operating
system on to it.
After much deliberation, I bought one, and installed Ubuntu 18.04 onto
it. It went like a dream, an hour or so later, I was on the WWW and had
installed my various email providers and it all went a treat. However,
not all was well, and after a few little "experiments" of installing new
software and trying out a bit of this and a bit of that; I managed to
crash the computer and, my knowledge being so scant, I didn't know how
to restore it, not at all like Windows 10!...so finished up
re-installing the whole system...:-(. It is very difficult to get
access to the Internet when the only computer one has, has crashed!:-)
:-)
It was at that juncture that I decided to buy another HP computer, of
the same model, HP255 G6, as the first install and experiment had gone
so well, and without having at least one computer to work with, I had
little chance of learning problem solving without access to the internet
and World Wide Web, so I spent another couple of hundred quid to get my
second one. Most of the adverts I have seen for Linux using computers
has a cost of anything from £1000 to £2000!!!
Since then, I have been really enjoying myself, exploring all those
resources which the WWW has to offer, from Linux based sites to Linux on
Youtube. Youtube in particular, I have found invaluable, there are some
really good resources on there, and, after spending a lot of time,
watching videos and listening to tutorials, got a better understanding
and more rounded approach to the subject. I feel much more confident in
what I am doing, and, by having a second computer, keeping one for my
main form of communication, and the other for experimenting, I am
finding that I can rescue myself from many basic difficulties. Linux,
for me, has been great fun and is a great way of learning about
computers and operating systems these in my turpitude, as well as being
open source and free to users, there is a wonderful community out there
which helps others, and most of them do it voluntarily and because they
want to freely share their knowledge and experience. There are those,
of course, who like to belittle others, or joke at one's expense, but
one has to learn to find more helpful sites and disregard the trolls.
I hope this posting encourages those of you who are interested in all
aspects of computing, and who still use MS or Mac operating systems to
consider moving over to Linux, and other open source systems, as they
have improved a lot, and are so much more secure, and they are very
powerful too, as long as one persists in ones learning and practicing on
them. In particular the discovery of virtual software and virtual
machines has been of great help and service to me.
I realise that I am very lucky as an individual of course, I am in
retirement, and have a small pension and the facilities and time in
which to indulge myself in these areas, there are many people in this
world who don't have the same kind of opportunities, the money or the
time to do such things. I believe that one should always take advantage
of opportunities which are presented to oneself, so that one can self
develop one's knowledge and ideas and explore the world around one. So
many of our fellow human beings don't have such opportunities, so, those
of us who do have such a luxury, should make the most of what we have
and enjoy and learn and listen and entertain and be entertained by
knowledge and exploration as well as sharing it with others. The WWW is
such a marvelous resource, in my view, developing all the time, and
giving people the opportunity to learn so much more in their individual
lifetimes that it is an opportunity not to be missed.
ATB,
Dougie.
