29 Jul
2018
29 Jul
'18
12:11 p.m.
On Sat, 28 Jul 2018 11:56:12 -0500
Michael <mb_trinity_desktop(a)inet-design.com> wrote:
Hi All,
I’m running Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS, Trusty Tahr with TDE as my only desktop
installed. I do have some Gnome (and probably KDE) odds and ends programs
installed as well.
I’ll also agree I’m pretty much a Luddite and have no desire for anything on
my box talking to anyone on the Internet without my knowledge and express
permission.
tl:dr
Q1: How do you find phone home services?
Q2: How do you remove them?
Q3: If Ubuntu isn’t it, what is?
I went to Ubuntu (from CentOS) a couple years ago
because it’s suppose to
be ‘easier’ and it does do multimedia much better, but it doesn’t really seem
to concern itself with customer ‘privacy.’
And that is where you shot yourself in the foot. Greater ease-of-use always
ends up meaning less control of what's installed when it comes to Linux,
and Ubuntu is notorious for its relative lack of concern with privacy.
You would be better off with almost any other distribution--baseline Debian
(or Devuan) would probably be easiest to transition to, because it uses the
same package management tools. Also, there are a lot of people on here
using those distros, which means you have an excellent source of advice at
your fingertips.
Q3) In the event this can’t be done in Ubuntu, is
there a TDE supported *nix
variation that may be ‘harder,’ but doesn’t just add a bunch of anti-privacy
crap willy nilly?
I guess I don’t really mind going back to (re)compiling things on each OS
up-rev (libre, gimp, etc...), but it is a bit of a pita if there’s an
alternative...
How much control do you need? How much work are you willing to deal with?
In order of increasing control (but also increasing work), you could move to:
1. Debian, Devuan, or any other *non-commercial* mainstream binary distro
that the TDE website lists as having appropriate packages. Install from a
server disk image if you can, then layer TDE and whatever else you want on top,
to reduce the number of vestigial packages from other desktop environments.
2. Arch Linux is a rolling-update distro (so you shouldn't have to reinstall
everything
ever, unless you really screw something up) that offers a higher level of customization
at the cost of requiring more command-line use. I'm not sure of the current status
of TDE on Arch, but there used to be packages for it.
3. Gentoo Linux is also a rolling-update distro, but it distributes source code
rather than precompiled packages. This allows an even higher level of
configurability—all optional package features can be turned off—at the cost
of having to manage everything from the command line. The package manager
takes care of the compile-install cycle for you once it knows what it needs to do
(I generally let it run overnight). Not all TDE packages are available for Gentoo
(and none of those that are, are official), but user-made packages for the base
desktop plus several of the other programs do exist.
4. Linux From Scratch. Enough said. Even I'm not that crazy.
E. Liddell