Private Computing

Take Your Privacy Back Today With Linux – Tackling The Weakest Link

Let’s be frank here, this is all about transitioning your computing experience to using Linux on your desktop computer. Linux is currently the only, readily available, solution to escape the clutches of the corporate leeches that are constantly working out ways to “get information about you” in return for “giving you a more personal experience”. If you are not already aware that this is happening, watch this video.

The Linux Experiment – Testing Privacy of popular operating systems.

The following eBook is a step-by-step guide to replacing MS Windows with Linux on your PC. It is free to use and share. The instructions contained within, are used by the author, on a daily basis, for migrating both new and older computer hardware to Linux. With the recent release of Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40, your PC will shine. Take ownership of your computing back and be ready for some “Private Computing”.

Linux Unveiled: A Novice’s Guide to a Fresh Start on Your New PC with Ubuntu Linux

(Third Edition – Ubuntu 24LTS)

Get your FREE eBook

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A second book is currently underway, detailing how to set up a full recording/broadcasting studio using a Linux workstation. Look out for this in early 2025.

Internet Browsing – The Second Weakest Link

Even on a Linux powered PC, your risk of exposure to tracking, privacy and malware is via your web browser. The #2 step to building your private computing PC, is to install one of the browsers listed below, rather than using the default Firefox (which is not bad). I install both of these browsers on all machines that I set up in our offices and on home computers.

• Librewolf – 100% compatible with websites that support “Firefox browsers”. (this even pretends to be a Windows 10 browser by default!)
• Brave – 100% compatible with websites that support “Chrome browsers”.

Note that not all websites have good designs and so having both browsers installed, gives you the option to pick another browser, on the odd occasion where a website does not appear to respond as expected. In my experience, this usually solves the problem and indicates that there is probably a programming error on that website.

Internet Searching – The Third Weakest Link

The final step to nail down our privacy is to make sure that any search you do on the Internet is not monitored, or aggregated and that the results you get are as uncensored as possible. For that we need to pick a good search engine. Fortunately, most modern browsers, including the two ones recommended above, allow you to configure a different search engine. Consider this the #3 step to building your private computing PC.

Most browsers have a choice of search engine within the “Settings” area. Your choice of search engine may change over time, but I have personally verified the following and would use these. They are listed in order of my favourite research tool. (This list has been updated in February 2024 to reflect current privacy and data sources used by privacy respecting search engine providers).

1. DuckDuckGo
2. Brave

Providing Your Own On-Site Services

In addition to using Linux for your normal everyday computing, it is also possible to use the same computer to provide some “services” to your friends and family, like cloud storage, VOIP audio and video communication or just photo sharing. Alternatively, putting in a small dedicated home server, is also a practical proposition in 2023, given the low cost and prevalence of small low power headless computers. So I propose to add tips and tricks and issues relating to Linux used for a home server as well.

Simple Definition of a “Service” in Linux:
A service is a long-running executable that performs specific functions and which is designed not to require user intervention. Services usually provide an interface to start, stop, pause and restart the executable that is running in the background on the computer.

Elite Privacy – When The Highest Level Is Required

Using Linux as a general purpose operating system, coupled with a privacy respecting browser and search engine as described above will give most people a happy new computing experience and will be a major improvement over what they have at the moment.

However, for people who live in tyrannical countries, or who are considering high level whistle-blowing, or are just travelling overseas, there is a specialised version of Linux called “Tails“. This custom operating system is built with the primary purpose of using the Tor network for all applications to access the Internet. Setting this up is extremely easy and full instructions are on the Tails website. It runs fully off a single portable USB memory stick. The USB memory stick contains, the operating system, applications and all of your data in encrypted format.

I use this from time-to-time, for special projects and can highly recommend it.

Remember that you are never truly anonymous and the Tails website clearly states the limitations, however, this is the best-in-class in technology to access the Internet in all countries to access almost all other countries without bounds, or restrictions.

Testing Your Private Computing Installation

Once you have implemented your private computing system, it is always a good idea to confirm that everything is working as expected, in a real-world test, by visiting a test site created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocacy organisation. The site is coveryourtracks.eff.org. There are many other sites that give you a view of what a website can see, however, this one does do the test a number of times to see if you present the same digital footprint each time.

RSS News – follow me!

Now its time to set up a RSS news feed to this site for the latest Linux/Privacy developments. To do this, simply install any RSS News application and add this link https://clickformoreinfo.com/feed/