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Hello! This has been requested from me dozens of times, and finally, from years of experience, I have created this guide that will serve an insanely large portion of computer users, from the most novice to the intermediate and advanced users. Everyone will find something here, this is a guarantee for both Linux and Windows users. This is something I have put my heart in, easily much more than the smartphone guide that people know me for. This might be one of my most definitive works by far, I carry this much confidence.
A little briefer, I have used Windows since the W98 dialup days, and Linux for the past 5 years. I have a fair amount of experience with data compression, archival and preservation, besides the OPSEC work I do here.
Before I move forward, I will thank many people:
- Narsil (https://git.nixnet.services/Narsil)
- DigDeeper (https://digdeeper.club)
- Ameliorated Team (https://ameliorated.info/)
- simplewall by henrypp (https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall)
- WindowsSpyBlocker project (https://crazymax.dev/WindowsSpyBlocker/)
- Energized HOSTS project (https://github.com/EnergizedProtection/EnergizedHosts)
- many who I cannot name or are lost in time
- and my dumb brain for remembering everything I put out here
There are some prerequisites for using this guide:
- You must know how to move mouse and type on keyboard, and copy paste files
- Have a little patience and vigour to learn things
Now that the basic things are out of way, we can move forward to the guide, which consists of 13 sections.
IMPARTING BASIC PHILOSOPHY
F(L)OSS VS CLOSED SOURCE
F(L)OSS means Free (Libre) Open Source software, and it means that the software is freeware, AND the source code that are building blocks of software, are available openly and freely for modification, reverse engineering, compilation and studying purposes. The correct way to say it, as Richard Stallman says, is FLOSS and not FOSS.
There are nuances to various software licenses (Apache, GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, MIT et al) which is out of scope of basic philosophy and concerns developers and highly advanced users or business users.
Generally freeware software (free as in free beer) exists whose source code is not available. This is freeware software and not open source or libre.
Closed source software does not provide its source code, and may be free or paid. The developer closes source code from public usually for these reasons – inclusion of non-free software code components, or monetising software, making a free artificially restricted version to monetise, or inserting ads/spyware/malware of some form.
As is obvious, FLOSS is highly transparent towards community and is generally laborious work done for free for the society’s greater good. This is rare in the case of closed source software, which serves one of the forementioned purposes.
The soul and spirit of FLOSS is socialist/communist, in a similar way to piracy. The purpose of it is to serve the greater good. In comparison, the soul and spirit of closed source software, outside rare cases of benevolence, is highly corporate and fascistic, similar to a leech, which in many cases these days may suck money out of your wallets for subscriptions. It may also serve as a leech to suck your data for telemetry and spying purposes.
FLOSS will rarely cause telemetry issues, and if it does, there will always either be a developer announcement or community uproar about it.
Always try to pick FLOSS software wherever possible, unless absolutely necessary otherwise, depending on job or social circle circumstances.
DEVELOPING EXPERIENCE AND VIGOUR
To do computing, there must be developed a little taste for computing. It is no different than a collector’s hobby, or an enthusiast for anything, be it pens, pencils, watches, cars, bikes, clothes, food and so on.
Computing is an art, and not just a way to get shit done and shutdown. You can not just do things but live with a computer. It has more capabilities and a bigger canvas than your itty bitty locked down smartphone or a crappy iPad. You may think that smartphone gets 95% of the job done, but there is no personal taste in convenience. This is the most non-human like part of convenience that people miss. There is a certain work ethic and class that computing has, when you sit on the desk and chair (not gaming chair).
There are simple ways to develop this vigour and proactiveness, like reading changelogs of software you want to download, install or update. This readies you in advance for knowing what the new software version carries with it, and forces you to learn more things naturally.
You should also, instead of blindly clicking the system update button, check what things are being updated. You will not die if you take a few minutes doing this practice every week. You may also benefit from it, at times.
There are examples of how this can save you, like the famous uTorrent 2.2.1 we all know, or Ubuntu’s file manager having to disable a functionality temporarily so that a vulnerability could be fixed, and so on. The most critical software to update is internet related, but everything else is not so critical. However, one of the biggest examples clearly would be the free upgrade offered to Windows 7 and 8 users, to Windows 10. Windows 10 was a nightmare of bugs and telemetry when it released, and there were no solutions. I primed my computer for the free upgrade, waited a couple days, and the forums and news all over basically taught me not to rush for upgrades. Let other people be guinea pig testers.
IDENTIFY PRETEND EXPERTS AND DRAMA QUEENS ON INTERNET
There are a lot of pretend experts these days. Some do it in the name of security, some do it on YouTube, some do it for drumming up hype purposes. Everything has a pretend expert these days, but I will restrict myself to the computing domain.
In the case of security, there are many people that ignore privacy and anonymity implications, telemetry implications, and act apologetic for corporate closed source software. This is generally done for Western Big Tech, especialy Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on. Most of them are generally either hopeless people, employed on behalf of companies for marketing, or secretly have shareholder stakes with these public companies. RUN FROM THEM! Run as far as you can. These people never have your security interests as a priority.
There are a lot of technology YouTube channels that try to capitalise and bank off of prominent and big software, and “recommend” it to people by reading the marketing sheet or website pages. Usually, they lack substance or are going to make a 2147483647th video about a topic, rinse and repeat. Unless something is FLOSS, if something comes from the corporate lovers, take it with a bag of salt, not just a grain.
It is not just corporate lovers, though, that have cults. There are some projects that are FLOSS but have toxic or propagandistic cults behind them. One of them has some wonderful recent examples, related to FlorisBoard or Bromite (Chromium-based web browser). One of them is largely known for scammy crypto currency and creating a harmful network effect by giving sponsorships to tech YouTube channels.
HARDWARE AND BASIC TIPS TO CONSIDER
- Do not fall for the special 50000 DPI mouse meme. 800-1000 DPI mouse works.
- For a desktop, get a $30-50 mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys. Get keyboard switches that make less sound (Cherry MX Brown or Kalih equivalent). You will save money forever instead of replacing membrane keyboards every year.
- Prefer brands for keyboard and mouse that can run without extra software. Zowie and Logitech are good brands. A lot of brands like Razer, SteelSeries and so on have spyware in the form of special software they “require” you to use for things like RGB lighting functionality.
- Get a $2 clip-on or USB strip lamp for your laptop, instead of finding a backlit keyboard laptop. Lasts years. And your laptop purchase choices will never be limited again.
- Get yourself USB 3.0 flash sticks made of metal instead of plastic.
- Wipe and clean your monitor screen, keyboard and mouse with alcohol every week.
- Take computer breaks every hour, and rotate your eyes and shoulders.
- DO NOT USE DARK MODE AT DAYTIME! Also, USE DARK MODE AFTER EVENING.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WINDOWS AND LINUX, SIMPLIFIED
You will not believe this, but Linux and Windows are almost identical today, with absolutely no emphasis on “almost”. The gap is so small, it is almost non existent now. Currently I have a setup of software that is identical and cross platform on both Linux and Windows, and the only difference lies with MS Office 2007 and CrystalDiskInfo.
You can easily keep Windows in a virtual machine (VM) using VirtualBox on Linux, and use MS Office inside it. Works even with Windows XP, and can run any 16 bit nostalgic programs (although you can use DOSBox or any of its frontend GUIs for it on any OS).
There is a compatibility layer (not emulator) called WINE, which you can use to run almost any Windows program natively on Linux without issues. A further improvement of it exists in the form of Bottles, a software based on WINE, available as a sandboxed Flatpak package. This allows to run things properly that even Windows 10 would not run today via backward compatibility.
Why would you need Windows? If you want to play one of those 5-10% specific non-Steam or non-Epic store games or some anti-cheat games that are unavailable on Linux natively or via WINE/Proton, this is a reason to use Windows. Or if you want to use the proprietary VSCode for your job, it is a valid reason. There are a few software like video editors you can count on fingers, or the latest subscription based Photoshop.
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Trusted repository is flathub.org .
^ Sandboxing is a security measure that isolates software code from interacting with other software code in memory. Think of it as you living your life in your own bubble, and others doing the same, and everyone keeping distance from each other.
Trusted repositories are apprepo.de, appimage.github.io and appimagehub.com as of year 2022.
No trusted repositories because only Ubuntu Software Center offers programs in this package framework.
LINUX AND WINDOWS SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATIONS
This is going to be very juicy, and everyone will find something here. This comes from a few decades of experience, so enjoy. There are a lot of recommendations I will share, and while there might be an overlap with AlternativeTo, there will also not be a complete overlap, hence the uniqueness.
The following software is shared by both Linux and Windows, which will astound you, because the quality of these is the best in their respective categories. There will be a (*) marking for the better one, and (^) if it is FLOSS.
As you might have noticed some patterns and anomalies:
LINUX AND WINDOWS TELEMETRY
WINDOWS
Let us start with the obvious. Linux has no telemetry and spying. However, Windows is a telemetry nightmare. However, it may be the case that a near utopian state has been achieved with a few ways. Let us take this nightmarish difficult problem and hammer it down quickly!
Prerequisites:
Steps:
One would ask, why step 3? This is being done because simplewall is not a firewall but works over Windows Filtering Platform (WFP), which is different from Windows Firewall. Both complement each other. simplewall allows to block application internet traffic directly with ease of use.
You basically have more or less no telemetry here. The only domain that passes through is go.microsoft.com, which is like Microsoft’s DNS resolver for its products, Windows Defender definition updates and Powershell help.
To quote Microsoft’s connection endpoint explanations, I will quote them directly from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-windows-21h1-endpoints
Microsoft forward link redirection service (FWLink) The following endpoint is used by the Microsoft forward link redirection service (FWLink) to redirect permanent web links to their actual, sometimes transitory, URL. FWlinks are similar to URL shorteners, just longer. If you disable this endpoint, Windows Defender won’t be able to update its malware definitions; links from Windows and other Microsoft products to the web won’t work; and PowerShell updateable Help won’t update. To disable the traffic, instead, disable the traffic that’s getting forwarded. HTTP go.microsoft.com
go.microsoft.com is not a telemetry domain here, as we can clearly see. It is harmless and different. Windows, that was a nightmarish dystopian tentacle monster sending thousands of packets per second, is a harmless puppy this way.
AME has a lot of work put into it, as discussed in an earlier section, and the work of WindowsSpyBlocker and simplewall projects make this miracle possible.
LINUX
We are just going to enhance our tracker and ad blocking, because there is no telemetry in general to deal with. Linux is great. All the big distributions, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware are great. Many smaller ones like Void, Alpine, EndeavourOS, Devuan are also great.
NOTE: Ubuntu performs checks for Snap system updates, the only point to note. However, all distributions perform update checks, so it is upto your paranoia how problematic you think it is.
Prerequisites:
How to edit a HOSTS file on Linux, Windows or Mac: https://archive.is/dndUD or https://i.imgur.com/bor5cJ5.jpg
For second one, just go to your date time settings, and you should find something like “Automatic Date and Time”, just disable it and you can set time manually. It is never too hard, just like for your wrist watch or wall clock.
For the third one, it can usually be found under “Location” system settings. Easy toggle.
For the last one, you can learn how to setup a DNS provider in Linux, Windows or MacOS here. https://web.archive.org/web/20211023112345/https://www.dignited.com/29741/change-dns-server-windows-linux-macos/
NOTE: the example above uses Google and Cloudflare DNS providers. AVOID THEM and use better ones for your privacy, like AdGuard or Uncensored DNS, my favourites. Quad9 is also decent.
WHAT YOU SHOULD REALLY DO
Even despite all of what we did in Windows, if you read through the above section of software recommendations for Linux and Windows, almost all software is common, and what is not common has a competent or better Linux alternative. And as discussed in an earlier section, there is barely any reason to use Windows.
Linux is incomparably faster, lighter, great for privacy, security and anonymity, and much more immune to viruses and escalation privilege problems. Linux can do basically everything, this is not to be understood as Linux is less. The magnum opus power of Linux, once you learn and get good with it, is unlocked from its Bash Terminal, the black DOS-like screen thing.
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LINUX AND WINDOWS TELEMETRY
WHAT YOU SHOULD REALLY DO (continued)
When I say that you need to learn Linux, it does not mean Linux is hard. Linux today is very easy to use, almost more hassle free than Windows. You are conditioned for many years since childhood to get used to Windows, downloading EXEs from random websites and installing things by clicking Next->Next->Finish. There is no taste, no learning in it. How will you get job work done when Windows forces you to sit for 5 hours for forced updates, and your work done overnight is lost? Linux does not have these problems. Linux is easy to use. You find Windows easy ONLY because you are conditioned since childhood to endure and workaround those problems. If you talked to a donkey everyday for hours, you would start loving it like family.
You can preferably, as discussed earlier, keep Windows in a VM using VirtualBox on Linux, and use MS Office inside it. Works even with Windows XP, and no need to give the Windows VM internet.
VPN USAGE AND PORT FORWARDING
Learn to use your VPNs properly instead of just thinking you bought and installed them and became hackerman.
VPNs are always a handy tool for geoblock bypassing to watch your favourite shows on Netflix, but it also allows to read articles that you may not be able to access from other countries.
Port forwarding is like tunneled NAT through firewall or router. Now if that sounds too technical, your network traffic is simply going through a designated tunnel number called port, which the firewall knows is safe. This prevents traffic leakage and any privacy/anonymity issues associated with things like torrenting or geoblock bypassing to access websites, in case of VPNs.
Refer to recommended VPNs here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220511164007/https://old.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/rikthc/list_of_recommended_vpns_2022/
Refer to this for VPNs that support port forwarding: https://web.archive.org/web/20220715040446/https://old.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/s9f36q/list_of_vpns_that_allow_portforwarding_2022/
Learn how to prevent IP leakage by using port forwarding with torrent clients here: https://teddit.net/r/VPNTorrents/comments/pq03u1/318_video_guide_finding_network_interface_and/
SOME OBSTACLES WE FACE
The need for using MS Office is a problem that everyone faces while using Linux, because of your school, university or office work. The hacky solution is to export your files as PDFs if you want others to view your work. However, this approach falls flat the moment you need to do collaboration teamwork based projects. The only viable and simple solution is, as mentioned twice earlier, keeping Windows in a VM using VirtualBox on Linux, and use MS Office inside it. Works even with Windows XP, and there is no need to give the Windows VM internet. You can enjoy editing documents or spreadsheets or presentations, without any formatting hassles.
I have to have Windows by my side, for another software, for example CrystalDiskInfo which is FLOSS and allows me to monitor the health of my external HDDs, something I cannot do on Linux, no matter if I used smartmontools, GNOME Disks or GsmartControl (smartmontools based). You could say that I am incompetent with smartmontools, but who is competent with it, and can easily look up their SMART data with their Seagate or WD external HDDs or SSDs? CrystalDiskInfo, a 6 MB EXE utility, just works without hassle, magically.
There could be some drives that people have, like tape drives, ZIP drives, floppy disks, DVD/BluRay writers or old printers, or scanners. These also do not enjoy particularly good support on Linux. There are capabilties printers possess that are beyond what basic support CUPS provides on Linux.
Windows serves some purposes beyond gaming, that have inherent value. This is acceptance of reality, not apologia.
HANDY TIPS FOR EVERYDAY LIFE
There is something we use everyday, called WiFi. However, people do not understand what 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz mean. They just think, bigger number more progress. 2.4 GHz provides more wall penetration for signals, and thus more physical coverage range for your devices, while having a throughput of roughly 7 MBps. On the other hand, 5 GHz bandwidth provides approximately 32 MBps which is a 4.5x speed jump, at the cost of 1/3rd physical range for your devices. Choose wisely what you desire, because the “ancient” technology may not be so bad for your needs.
The same goes for 5G, 6G and whatever new fancy cellular radio technology is coming.
Here is one other tip, if you want to use encryption for your documents or files, stop putting passwords on them directly, when you can just use 7-Zip or PeaZip, and use AES-256 encryption on them. If you compress them simultaneously, you might also end up creating smaller encrypted dossiers that might be 20-50% the size of your documents or files, saving time on internet uploads or USB stick copy/transfer times.
MONITORING DISK HEALTH AND DATA BACKUP PRACTICES
People lose their data. They cry. They are ready to pay thousands of dollars to a data recovery professional to do anything and recover their precious memories, or critical documents. STOP THIS MADNESS! Develop a simple work ethic so you never regret this happening to you.
It is very simple, so just might as well use some meat in your skull. Develop the habit.
Look for reliable HDD brands on BackBlaze, an organisation that issues quarterly, half yearly and annual reports on reliable HDD models and brands. They have been doing it for years.
Monitor the health of your storage devices every 6 months. You can use GNOME Disks or GSmartControl on Linux, or CrystalDiskInfo on Windows, to check the health of your HDDs and SSDs on your system. Change your HDDs before they hit the 3 year spin time (calculate hours/days into years if needed). CrystalDiskInfo on Windows allows me to monitor external devices’ health.
Fun fact, due to my years of work ethic, I recently managed to save my data from a dying internal HDD that goes back to 2008. Be like me instead of being the ignorant person who cries later.
Another policy to make your data more immune to being lost to the sands of time is a 3-2-1 backup policy. One copy as it exists on your main system, the other on an extra local storage disk (external HDD or SSD) and the third one offsite, on cloud or offline disks physically stored outside of your house in a safe place.
If you have Shift+Delete deleted your files on Windows, Recuva can easily save the day. For Linux, you can use Testdisk to do the same.
Borrowing from http://digdeeper.club/articles/linux.xhtml:
“Let’s say you’ve had some hacking _ ebooks stored on a pendrive - but you’ve decided to use it for something else - and now you’d like to bring them back. Type sudo photorec in the terminal and choose the relevant drive. Now press the right arrow twice to enter File Options. Press S to disable all the file types, then scroll down to pdf, press Space and Enter to go back to the main menu. Forget about specific partitions - it might have been repartitioned a thousand times since the data loss - so use the No partition - Whole disk option. Again, filesystem doesn’t matter if we’re looking through the whole disk, so just select ext3, move the cursor back to Search, and press Enter. Last thing you have to do is choose where the recovered files will be dumped. You can create a new folder “Recovery” inside /home if you want to. Before we start, I should warn you that the dumped files can take quite a lot of space - even all of it - so watch out. Okay, let’s press C, and the process can begin.”
“Right away PhotoRec will begin dumping a bunch of files (if it found anything) - and you can explore them real-time. The recovery can take quite long, so be patient. Now remember - PhotoRec goes after the underlying data - so you can find some partial or corrupted files - and the filenames are ignored since they are stored in the filesystem. You might be surprised at what PhotoRec finds - I’ve seen system-related stuff from like five installations ago, or old pictures I’ve used for shitposting on chans that I forgot have even existed. To make it easier to find the file you want, sort them by size so the useless <1KB ones will be shown first. If it was a text file, you can also type the command “grep -rnw ‘/home/YourUsername/Recovery’ -e ‘TextToBeFound’”, which will search for files containing a particular string inside the Recovery folder. Okay, that’s about it for our brief PhotoRec guide”
A SEEMINGLY LOST WAY OF GETTING NEWS INFORMATION… RSS
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are one of the most legacy ways to subscribe and consume articles, news and so on, on the internet, and can be done so for all OSes. We have great RSS aggregator readers, like Tiny Tiny RSS on Linux, Feeder on Android, QuiteRSS for Windows/Mac/Linux and so on.
RSS is a web feed format or protocol that allows standardised textual content consumption. Try it, you might just love the lack of ads and heavy, bloated websites that waste time, and be able to read articles peacefully. It is a legacy format that many websites support.
CONCLUSION
This is a piece of work that has emerged from a lot of soulful experience, as a hybrid Windows/Linux user who also happens to love documenting and experiencing internet and digital computing history. I think it will serve a lot more people than I think. Thankful to everyone for the help, once again. Everyone I have ever met that I gained experience from, thanks to you too!