I am afraid that is the state of affairs.
Languages get impatient with the slow pace of Debian releases and go their own way.
With Python, sometimes there is a choice between a Ddbian package and a pip install.
Julia goes one step further and has its internal libraries on the internet, rather than in the language install packageā¦ so you cant compile without the internet.
Thanks for the link, will try to follow and do but there are questions I just donāt know the answer to
Was hoping it would be easy just give my current address and it did the next bit for meā¦ā¦ but not the case !
I do vol tech support for low-information users, so I keep and use Windows for troubleshooting my āvictimsā needs. My fear is that MS might try to force a hardware change that would be another barrier to Linux.
They already do that and have been changing the goalposts posts for some time,
I am aware of that, but I am not aware of MS pushing any blatant anti-Linux changes. I believe hardware mfgrs have ventured there, but MS?
Its a debatable point, who drives the bus MS or hardware?
If MS says we need to sell more the hardware companies say how high (do we jump) the hardware companies want to sell more boxes so we get windows 7, 8, 10 and now 11. With higher specs needed.
When you have market leaders they push each other. When you consider windows 3.1 with office did everything we needed. What do we do now thats so much different. Except for the internet.
Thats why linux is good less system spec, older machines and still capable of most home or office requirements
I wouldnāt put it past Microsoft to do something like that, at least in light of their recent behavior in recent years, but if they do that, the solution is to make your GNU/Linux distribution the only OS installed on your computer, then install Windows into a VM (I prefer QEMU/KVM because of the great performance it provides for itās VMs) so we can continue using it (Windows) if we want or need to.
On the other hand, based on recent events (the end of support for Windows 10, and the major issues, mostly for enterprise customers, the November update has introduced), if they donāt improve, Microsoft may be the author of their own demise. By driving so many users (mostly residential) away by ending support for Windows 10, and with how sloppy they have become with the quality of their updates, even for enterprise customers, GNU/Linux could become the OS of choice for many residential users (they can continue to use their current hardware by installing a new OS), which in turn could make the transition away from Windows easier for enterprise customers, because more and more of their employees will become accustomed to the GNU/Linux OS, reducing re-training costs.
Currently, I think that Microsoft has forgotten, or never learned several important lessons:
- They owe their profitability to their customers.
- We tend to get as good as we give (more on this below).
- Without their customerās trust, no organization can survive for long.
- Greed provides short term profit, but long term loss.
I often hear people say āI can give as good as I get!ā, meaning that they can hold their own in any conflict, but the reality is that no matter how good you are, there will always be someone better. Iāve also heard people say āWhat you give will come back to you ten-fold!ā, which Iāve found to be the truer of these two statements in the more than seven decades of my life.
All in all, I suppose weāll have to see what comes, and deal with it as we go ā¦
Ernie
I guess it boils down to who you can trust the most. Linux, microsoft, google or apple. To my knowledge, I have experienced no malware invasions while using Linux the last 8 years. Problems have been minimal and I can usually find solutions on Linux based sites and that will involve using the terminal. By no means do I understand most of the tech stuff you guys talk about. My trust of anything microsoft, google or apple is ZERO. To me, these are all major spy machines in bed with government (US) and gruesome data miners like palantir.
I have been using for 20 years and have never seen anything, but tomorrow things could change as it becomes more popular.
I worked for apple in the UK and only ever saw one virus on a mac, but that is 30 years ago, since then working for myself I have never had a client in with an apple virus issues.
But microsoftā¦. every week a different issue.
I think thatās the key. Take the most popular platform and attack it. No sense trying to get the one with less than 2% market share.
Hopefully Linux can stand up to the increased attacks that will come with increased popularity. The good news is the server side of Linux has been pretty good so far.
The one and only malware Iāve ever had to deal with was a virus I downloaded with a program I got from a BBS, back when I used MS-DOS 3.1, in the early 1990s. It was then that I learned the value of what was then called antivirus apps I could use to scan whatever I downloaded from BBSes, and remove anything that wasnāt found, because these apps have never been perfect, and they never will. The trouble is that miscreants work very hard, all the time, to find and develop new ways to invade our computers to get our information, money, and/or assets.
Iāve found that the most effective weapon against malware is to remain vigilant, and skeptical about everyone and everything on the Internet. The reality is that we cannot trust strangers, because we cannot know their intentions. My Mom taught me that back in the 1950s, when I was young. I taught this same lesson to my own children (but then it was called stranger danger), when they were young. Today this is a lesson we all must learn, because until we can properly confirm their identities, by contacting them by other means, even those who purport themselves to be friends or family must be treated as strangers, or we may have to suffer the consequences. Everything we encounter on the Internet has been developed by strangers, and we cannot know their intentions either. I view every hyperlink I encounter on the Internet or in email messages with skepticism, and even suspicion. I check that the URL it will take me to is legitimate, and that it matches the content of the label. In my experience, I can see the URL by hovering my mouse over a hyperlink. It will be displayed either at the bottom of the window, or in a pop-up dialogue. If I canāt recognize the destination from the URL, or especially if itās obfuscated, I DONāT CLICK! Even if it doesnāt match the purported destination displayed on the label, I DONāT CLICK! When I receive an email message from a sender I donāt know, or if it addresses a name other than mine, I delete it immediately, without going any further. If I want to follow go where the hyperlink purported itself to take me, I navigate there by other means, often from Internet search results. My name for all this is Cognitive Security. Itās an evolving concept that changes with the evolution of the threats we encounter on the Internet or anything that comes from it.
All this has served me well over the many years Iāve used the Internet, since the advent of Windows 95, and even before then, when I used MS-DOS to load the content of BBS servers by dialing up their phone numbers.
Ernie
This is a big question and I think you should start a new thread about it? Iāve done it few times just to learn how to do it. Itās few years I did it last time so canāt say anything about it without reading/testing..
Last time (appr. 6 years ago) I just bite the bullet and paid for a webhotel to arrange anything. It costs appr 150ā¬ per year to have a business webhotel account with a .fi domain here. I think itās worth it because uptime is guaranteed to almost 100% and I donāt need to run a server and read the logs.
I donāt know how many of our members create or manage sites, quite spĆ©cialiste knowledge stuff and outside of linux based parts.
Really I should just pay the hosts and get them to do it, think they were only asking 25 uk pound with the last offer. For our association the former prƩsident son worked at the host we chose, so he just did it for us, he has now moved on to another host but could ask him.
Are you in Finland ?
Or were you just working on a project there ?
So is english your main language or do you use a translation tool
I am always amazed how diverse our membership is in knowledge, experiance and geographical location. Guess thats why we are able to continue to grow and answer so many different things.
Yes. And sorry, I just write bad English without any translator. Earlier I needed to use English on daily basis at work but itās not fluent. Basic stuff really.
Me too! We are global 
You do much better than me, although english is my origin. Except for this site its very rare i write or speak it, 20 years in france plus i am dyslexic does not help.
Outside of the internet, in the normal world, we are able to make judgements about people we contact, because there are so many clues available. On the internet, there are very few cluesā¦ we are flying blind. We could improve the internet by forcing it to provide more clues ā¦ like a hyperlink should come with identity checks, an email should identify the sender against an independent database, like the phone does if you set it up.
And then weād have privacy concerns, because the majority of the Internet backbone is owned, managed, and maintained by various corporations, ISPs, etc., and I donāt know if Iād want all that information stored in even any group of locations or servers, because of crackers and other miscreants. What an enticing target something like that would be for them.
If you ask me, what we really need is a central source of information about what types of threats are most prevalent at any given time, and how to avoid them, in human understandable terms so the average Joe can understand and use what theyāre being given. This, and a vigorously ongoing campaign to get people to pay attention to these threats, so they can have a better chance of avoiding them is whatās needed, but while I know this is a lot to ask of everyone, including whatever organization takes on the task of implementing such a project, if we donāt get it done, more and more people will become victims, perhaps losing everything, and I think that would be worse enough that whatever the cost of such an endeavor might be, it would be worth the effort and cost, donāt you think?
Ernie
Indeed.
We either hsve to make the internet like the real world ( which you say has bad side effects) or we need an entirely new set of laws and actions to govern it properly. At the moment it is like the Wild Westā¦ lawless and dangerous.