Click Here for a better view

The image above is a scrot (screencapture) from my 2nd monitor which i tend to use for CLI apps, in this post i aim to show you what apps im using and share some of my dotfiles, even though this is on an Archlinux OS, there is no reason why it cannot be replicated on any GNU/Linux system.

Now from the top, the terminal emulator im using is named ’tilda’ and in the prefs of the emulator i have it execute the ‘tmux’ command on startup, tmux is what allows us to split the terminal up into individual panes, here is a link to my .tmux.conf  which you should create in your home dir.,  after installing tmux of course, so install tmux and paste contents of this into a file named .tmux.conf  in your home dir.  .tmux.conf  (now do  source ~/.tmux.conf   so the new conf wil be seen) then     browse to your repo for the emulator named tilda (tilda is a GTK dropdown terminal emulator)  once installed right click for its prefs and edit to suit, then add the word ‘ tmux ‘ in the title command tab in the custom command field, now when you start tilda tmux will execute , using ctrl+a+” or % (Ctrl+a+shift 2/5) will split the panes accordingly.

Now that we have the blank canvas, lets get painting   OK in the top left pane is my IRC client of choice named weechat, being a Scot i was drawn to the name, turns out its an amazing highly configurable IRC client,  it has a very large selection of scripts so you can tweak it till your hearts content, weechat too will be in all good repo’s  (also runs on Mac OSX)  once installed have a look at my weechat cheat sheet it shows how to set up weechat so we can connect to our favourite servers & #chatrooms weechat.txt  you should also check out my buddy FiXato’s guide Here

Directly below weechat to the left is ncmpcc which is a media player for MPD (music player daemon) i use it to stream my music over http and to annoy the neighbours. MPD can be difficult to set up for the novice so if you are a new linux user id suggest replacing MPD/ncmpcc with ‘ mp3blaster ‘ which as you see is just an ncurses media player, however if you want to stick with MPD/ncmpcpp then check out MPD  Once installed and configged , install ncmpcc and here is my modified config which belongs in /home/USER/.ncmpcpp/config.

  Beside ncmpcc to the right is simply the links browser which as you might have guessed is a browser which again can be installed from any good repo.

If we keep going right this is youtube-viewer which i love, it enables us to watch you tube video without using the much despised flash plugin, the mplayer config file doesn’t  require much editing, below ill show you how to use it ..

             youtube-viewer -C                           #start youtube-player with colour output

youtube-viewer -d [URL]                #download said you tube video

youtube-viewer -login                                         # Login to your account

             youtube-viewer -C -S               # colour output & option to access your subscriptions

The chosen you tube video will open in an application named mplayer, to have mplayer maintain its size add xy=600 to ~/.mplayer/config file. Your distro will most probably come with mplayer installed if not simply install it from your favourite repo.

If You use an Nvidia GPU listed here

then  enable VDPAU by adding these two lines to ~/.mplayer/config file

vo=vdpau,

vc=ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffodivxvdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau

If you use another GPU, for best results i suggest you read the mplayer section in the tremendous

Archlinux Wiki

Last but by no means least is an excellent RSS reader named newsbeuter this runs too on Mac OSX systems, simply install it and add URLs of feeds to  /home/USER/.newsbeuter/urls  here is a list of some of my chosen feeds, edit to suit.  RSS URL’s

As you can see i prefer to use the terminal for things as its more stable/faster than any GUI equivalent  , It might not have lots of big shiny buttons but it gets  the job done and done well, (this is what the shiny buttons are doing under the surface).  I hope you found something of interest. Who knows it might even urge an OSX user to use his terminal, If you get stuck or have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Regards

Cirrus

I came across a nice tool for keeping your droid anonymous online,  excellent work from the folks over at The Guardian Project and i have to say this is without doubt the fastest tor  network ive ever used.

Welcome to Orbot, one of the many great features is that you can choose what droid apps will use tor, or you can have everything connect via tor.  I spent a good few hours playing with this with both the Orweb Privacy Browser and the Firefox ProxyMob Add-On  and i was impressed. They also have an app named Giggerbot (Secure Instant Messaging XMPP) which works for Google talk. I would urge anyone who is concerned about their online privacy to give this a go. Its free and is available from the Google play store.

Recently there was a poll on G+ as to which twitter client for Android people used and recommended, this won hands down.

Falcon PRO – The Ultimate Twitter Experience on Android

Falcon Pro brings the Ultimate Twitter Experience to your Android Phone and Tablet.

Looking for a Twitter app with an Innovative UI, Buttery animations, Extra fast loading times and Unique Features ? Look no further, Falcon Pro is what you need.

::::: Falcon Pro Features :::::

* Double Sliding Menu UI like you’ve never seen before
* Beautiful Phone and Tablet UI
* Extra smooth scrolling
* Real Time, Expandable notifications
* Super fast internal browser with Instapaper integration
* Offline favoriting
* Tweet Drafts
* Inline preview of Photos and Videos
* TweetMarker support to use on multiple devices
* In-app preview of Play Store links
* Zoomable pics
* See your most popular tweets
* Fast access to Saved Searches and Lists

+ All core features you would expect from a mobile Twitter client.

Falcon Pro is fast and smooth on phones and tablets running Android 2.2 and above.

Click above image to Download the .apk

If you like it please purchase it from the play store, it’s well worth the price tag of £ 0.64p

Click on one of the images  ..

Google chrome browser isnt included in sabayon/gentoo ‘s entropy , heres how we install it ..

first off grab chrome here , now we install the package to handle .rpm wrappers

so we open package manager (rigo in sabayon) and install package named rpm or use terminal to install it with

emerge rpm

then in terminal cd to folder where you saved the newly downloaded google-chrome .rpm  and type

rpm -i xxx.rpm

(xxx being name of package)

It will probably tell you that you cannot install the package because of some dependencies. If you think you meet these dependencies, then

rpm -i --nodeps xxx.rpm 

(again xxx being name of package)

Now you can enjoy chrome and say goodbye to chromium with its broken hardware acceleration

see here for how to get the most out of google chrome

enter this in URL bar or click hyperlink if you are currently using chrome or chromium and tweak till your hearts content

chrome://chrome-urls/

This is how we want chrome://gpu-internals/ to look afterwards

The BusyBox slash forked Linux-based Android operating system is more popular than ever nowadays. Even though large parts of it are released under the Apache license, Android is far from completely free software.

Those who know me, will know about my skeptical opinion about proprietary binary blobs. I simply do not trust proprietary software to be safe, so I try as hard as I can to live a completely proprietary software-free life. I simply refuse to believe that proprietary software vendors do not have any bad intentions, and would not hurt my privacy if they could make bigger profits by doing so. You can call me paranoid; I just call it realistic.

On my computers, I am almost there. I primarily run Debian, and the only non-free parts I have installed are the Adobe Flash Player and unrar. Flash alternatives like Gnash and Lightspark just aren’t up to par with the “real” Flash Player, and the adoption of HTML5 video isn’t going as fast as I’d like it to go. Also, the last time I checked the open source edition of unrar, it wasn’t able to properly open many archives, although I haven’t looked into it recently; so things might have changed. Either way, in both cases I want to get rid of (the need for) the programs, so I really hope that it will become possible to do so in the near future.

Android, however, clearly shows a different mentality than ‘regular’ GNU/Linux. Even though the Android project itself is completely open source and released under the Apache license; many (if not all) Android developers could not care less about freedom. 90% of the Play Store is proprietary software, and after all those years, it still doesn’t offer an option to filter applications by license.

Instead of requiring developers to be clear about the license their software is released under, they simply regard it either as “free”, because the users do not have to pay any money for it; or as “paid”, because they do. Developers don’t even have to say a word about the license they chose, and I don’t like using the word “free” to merely indicate that something does not cost any money. I would call that “free of charge”; but by not having to pay any money, chances are that you are in fact the product being sold. I mean; animals to be slaughtered got “free” food and housing for their entire lives as well, and look how well that turned out for them.

Even most of Google’s own applications are not free software. In fact, there is not a single Android phone out there that is really open. Every hardware vendor adds its own proprietary frameworks (HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz, and so on), and Google applications like Gmail, Maps, Talk, Drive, Goggles, Translate, YouTube, and even the Play Store itself are all binary blobs, but are shipped with every phone and tablet (including the Nexus ones) regardless.

So it’s safe to assume that proprietary software has infiltrated even the core of the Android open source project. But what if we’d want to have our phones and tablets as “clean” as possible? Well, don’t get your hopes up. It is not possible to have a decent Android device without some proprietary parts. But it can be a whole lot less than how they come out of the box. It just takes some time and commitment; and you’ll only be able to install very few applications afterwards.

First off, you’ll need the hardware to be as open as possible. So, in short, you’ll need a Nexus device. If you care about freedom, Nexus devices really are your best option; both because you’ll obviously need to flash an aftermarket ROM, but also because most of the hardware drivers are free. As far as I’m aware, the only non-free driver on my Galaxy Nexus is the one for the PowerVR GPU. And we all hate PowerVR, don’t we? * cough * Intel Cedar View * cough *

I assume that most people know how to unlock the bootloader of a Nexus device and how to flash ClockworkMod through fastboot. If you don’t, check the internet. It’s really easy, and you do not need a proprietary operating system to do it.

Anyway, first things first: You’ll need to find an aftermarket ROM for your phone that consists solely of open source software. In my case, I chose CyanogenMod 10. You can get it by visiting http://get.cm and downloading the zip archive for your specific model.

After downloading the zip, you can basically flash it right away. As far as I’m aware, all parts are released under the Apache license (although I can’t confirm it for a few driver binaries), and the kernel should (obviously) be GPLv2. Even third-party parts like the T-mobile theming engine are in fact free software, as you can see here: https://github.com/tmobile.

There are some applications I tend to remove from /system/app prior to flashing the zip, but that is merely because I do not see the need for them. It’s not because they wouldn’t be safe to run. Still, if you’re interested, here they are:

- Browser.apk – I do not use the stock browser, so I have no need for this package.
- CMWallpapers.apk – This is a set of wallpapers by the CyanogenMod project. I don’t use them, and it only adds to the total ROM size. Then again, there is no harm in keeping them.
- Email.apk – I do not use any POP3 or IMAP e-mail accounts, so I have no need for an e-mail client.
- Exchange.apk – Yeah, you think someone like me would use Exchange?
- Galaxy4.apk – Live wallpaper; not my cup of tea.
- HTMLViewer.apk – Seems to be useless if you use an aftermarket browser.
- HoloSpiralWallpaper.apk – Live wallpaper; not my cup of tea.
- LiveWallpapers.apk – Live wallpapers; not my cup of tea. The LiveWallpapersPicker.apk might be useful to keep though, but that does not contain any wallpapers itself.
- MagicSmokeWallpapers.apk – Live wallpapers; not my cup of tea.
- NoiseField.apk – Live wallpaper; not my cup of tea.
- PhaseBeam.apk – Live wallpaper; not my cup of tea.
- Provision.apk – This is automatically removed by SetupWizard.apk anyway, so you might as well do it yourself.
- QuickSearchBox.apk – I personally never saw the need for a system-wide search client. Nearly every application just has its own searching functionality, and I do not keep enough stuff on my phone to need “one application to rule them all”.
- SoundRecorder.apk – This seems to have been broken for ages now.
- SpareParts.apk – Just a wrapper around the secret menus.
- Tag.apk – I don’t use NFC tags, and I haven’t been able to get this to work since Gingerbread anyway.
- Term.apk – This can also be downloaded from the Play Store, which is probably more up to date.
- VideoEditor.apk – I know better ways to edit videos than on an ARM-driven handheld device.
- VisualizationWallpapers.apk- Live wallpapers; not my cup of tea.
- VoiceDialer.apk – In my opinion, talking to electronic devices is very silly; unless you are blind or have no fingers.
- WAPPushManager.apk – I don’t use push messages, and I don’t like the amount of system access this application is given either.

However, there are also some rather useful parts missing from CyanogenMod, such as the Google Talk client, the ability to synchronize your Google contacts and calendar events, the network location service, and even the Play Store itself.

So, there is a separate zip which includes all of the Google-specific parts of Android, which can be downloaded from http://goo.im/gapps. One of these applications, you actually need; being SetupWizard.apk. If you do not install this package, the home button will not work; nor will the settings button in the dropdown menu, and many other bugs will show up because the device will never be properly configured. I am not completely sure whether it is non-free though; but I can’t seem to find any clarity about its license. It might be Apache-licensed after all, although some people claim the source code is not provided. I’m not an Android developer, so I don’t know for sure.

The majority of this archive however, is proprietary software. Most of the apks and libs are non-free, and I am not willing to take the time to investigate each and every one of them. So, I’m just going to find out how many of them we need in order to get a decently working Android system. And I can assure you, it isn’t much.

First of all, there’s the optional folder and the install-optional.sh script. These contain the proprietary Face Unlock packages and libraries. I find this to be a rather useless feature, and I don’t think it’s worth running proprietary software for it, so my advise is to remove them both.

Then we enter the /system folder, where we can essentially delete everything but the app and lib directories. None of the other parts seem to be required; I have a perfectly running system without any of them. I haven’t tested everything yet, but I believe it’s safe to say that all of this proprietary stuff is obsolete; or at least not required for anything I do. So you can remove addon.d, etc, framework, tts, and usr. Essentially, all the root of the zip should contain are the META-INF and system folders, and all /system should contain is the app and lib folders.

The contents of the /system/app folder are primarily a matter of personal choice. It really comes down to what you use and what you think is “worth the risk”.

I’ll start out with a list of things most people would want to delete:

- GenieWidget.apk – This is probably the single worst Android application ever made. I’m not even going to start about how much I dislike it.
- GoogleEars.apk – Seems to be some mechanism of recognizing pieces of music. I simply know what I’m listening to, so I don’t see why I would need this proprietary program on my system partition, having access to my microphone.
- GooglePartnerSetup.apk – The name alone is dodgy enough to get rid of it.
- GoogleTTS.apk – The CyanogenMod ROM already contains Pico TTS; whereas this application is for some reason not allowed to ship with it. I’m not sure about the license, but it seems to be restricted nonetheless.
- MediaUploader.apk – I have no idea what this does, but nothing seems to break when you remove it.
- Microbes.apk – Live wallpaper; not my cup of tea.
- OneTimeInitializer.apk – Pretty much the same as with MediaUploader.apk. I don’t know what it does, but it doesn’t really seem to be useful for anything either.
- QuickSearchBox.apk – This can also be downloaded from the Play Store, and will be equally functional. I don’t see the need of turning it into a system application if you don’t have to.
- Thinkfree.apk – Seems to be some kind of proprietary office suite. I’d rather wait for LibreOffice, and simply use my computers for office tasks in the meanwhile.
- VoiceSearchStub.apk – Seems to be useless with the current incarnation of the Google Search / Google Now application.

These applications are not always required, depending on your personal preferences:

- ChromeBookmarksSyncAdatper.apk – This is only useful when you use the stock browser. If you don’t, you might as well leave it out.
- GoogleBackupTransport.apk – If you want to backup your application settings to Google’s servers, you will need this package. I personally don’t like the idea of a proprietary program accessing all my data and sending it to servers overseas, so I do not use it.
- GoogleFeedback.apk – This sends crash reports to the Play Store in case something goes wrong. Sending system data through a proprietary package is not something I’d be willing to do.
- Talkback.apk – Seems to be a screen reader. I am not visually impaired, nor do I know anyone who is, so I have no need for it.

Finally, a list of packages you probably shouldn’t remove:

- GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter – This synchronizes your Google Calendar events with the local calendar application.
- GoogleContactsSyncAdapter – This synchronizes your Gmail address book with the local address book.
- GoogleLoginService.apk – Seems to be required to use any Google account functionality and synchronization features.
- GoogleServicesFramework.apk – Same as the above.
- NetworkLocation.apk – Let’s face it; proprietary as it may be, this is really useful.
- Phonesky.apk – This is the Play Store. Even if we use a system made entirely of free software, we still need this proprietary client to keep everything up to date. Ironic, huh?
- SetupWizard.apk – Everything breaks if you don’t have this installed after the initial boot. You can delete it afterwards, but don’t wipe your /data partition without putting it back first. Some say the Provision.apk from the ROM can take its place, but my experiences are different.
- Talk.apk – I personally find Google Talk to be really useful. In fact, it’s probably my second-most used application. Also, this used to be required in order for the Market / Play Store to work; although I’m not sure if that is still the case.

The contents of the /system/lib folder are as follows:

- libfilterpack_facedetect.so – Required for Face Unlock. If you don’t use that, you can remove this as well.
- libflint_engine_jni_api.so – Seems to be part of Google TTS. If you use Pico TTS, you do not need this.
- libfrsdk.so – Required for Face Unlock. If you don’t use that, you can remove this as well.
- libgcomm_jni.so – Obsolete. This is required for the Google+ application, but it is simply installed in /data/data/com.google.android.apps.plus/lib in case you download the application from the Play Store; so it’s useless to have it on your /system partition.
- libgoogle_recognizer_jni.so – Required for the Google Now hotword detection, although I’m pretty sure this will also just install in /data/data if you download the Google Search application from the Play Store. (I haven’t tested that.)
- libmicrobes_jni.so – Required for the Microbes live wallpaper. You should only keep this if you keep Microbes.apk in /app.
- libpatts_engine_jni_api.so – Required for spoken navigation in Google Maps.
- libpicowrapper.so – Seems to be part of Google TTS. If you use Pico TTS, you do not need this.
- libspeexwrapper.so – Same as the above.
- libvideochat_jni.so – Required for video chatting from the Talk client. If you do not have this library installed, attempting to make a video call will crash the application without further notice.
- libvideochat_stabilize.so – See the previous one.
- libvoicesearch.so – Required for Voice Search. Although I’m pretty sure it simply installs in /data/data if you download the Google Search application from the Play Store. (Haven’t tested that either.)
- libvorbisencoder.so – Encodes Vorbis files (duh). Required for the Google Ears application. In case you remove that, I don’t see another use for this library either.

I’ll also add a list of useful free/non-proprietary applications I’m currently using, with links to the Play Store and the source code.

AdAway – System-wide ad blocker
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.adaway
Source: https://code.google.com/p/ad-away
License: GNU GPL v3

Android Terminal Emulator – The name says it all
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm
Source: https://github.com/jackpal/Android-Terminal-Emulator
License: Apache 2.0

ConnectBot – SSH client
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.connectbot
Source: https://code.google.com/p/connectbot
License: Apache 2.0

OS Monitor – Useful system monitor; basically a GUI around top, networking tools, and dmesg/logcat
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eolwral.osmonitor
Source: https://code.google.com/p/android-os-monitor
License: GNU GPL v3

Obsqr – Very minimal and lightweight QR code scanner
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=trikita.obsqr
Source: https://bitbucket.org/trikita/obsqr/src
License: MIT

Superuser – A GUI around su; also part of pretty much every rooted ROM
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noshufou.android.su
Source: http://code.google.com/p/superuser
License: Apache 2.0

Ted – Text viewer and editor
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.xgouchet.texteditor
Source: https://github.com/xgouchet/Ted
License: MIT

You can check http://f-droid.org and http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki/ListOfKnownFreeSoftwareApps for lists of free as in freedom Android applications.

Personally, I have only flashed the applications from the last category, and kept only libpatts_engine_jni_api.so, libvideochat_jni.so, and libvideochat_stabilize.so in the lib folder; giving me a grand total of eight proprietary apks and three proprietary libs on my system partition. I’d say this is about 5% of what the average Android user has.

Still, I have to admit that I’m guilty of using a few more proprietary applications. From the Play Store I’ve downloaded the Chrome browser, the Gmail client, the Google+ application, and Google Maps with the Street View extension. The Play Store also seems to insist on installing “Google Play services”; leaving me with a total of fourteen proprietary applications.

Other software I use are AdAway (GPLv3), the Android Terminal Emulator (Apache), ConnectBot (Apache), Obsqr (MIT), OS Monitor (GPLv3), Superuser (Apache), and Ted (MIT). And that’s it. I do not generally install any more applications from the Play Store, due to its lack of being able to filter by license. All of the other things I do, I do with the Chrome browser; which sadly isn’t completely free either. I’m still hoping Chromium will ever be released for Android, although I doubt it.

So in the end, having a completely free Android system is hardly possible. Not all the drivers are open source, and some really useful parts of Android aren’t either. Then again, I think my current setup is a lot safer than what most people have in their pockets all day.

Regardless of that, I still do not want to have a 3G connection, and I usually leave my phone at home when I go somewhere I won’t be needing it, or I at least turn it off while I’m on the road.

No Big Brother for me!

Reproduced By Kind Permission

By Kevin Keijzer

I visited something one may call a family reunion today. Even though those who know me are likely aware of the fact that something like that is not really my style; I have nothing against the people personally, so I did my best to be friendly and polite, have some general conversations, and possibly end up getting one or two people interested in leaving the proprietary computing ecosystem and be liberated by GNU/Linux and other free software.

The usual people with whom I have such conversations about the importance of free software (and more importantly, digital freedom) do not know very much about the subject, but are usually surprisingly willing to listen to what I have to say, although I’ve come to believe that the reason for them doing so is more likely due to the fact that I offer to bring new life to their old computers free of charge, than that they are honestly interested in the potential dangers I try to protect them from. I don’t think I’ll ever know their true intentions, and I try not to think about it that much; merely to avoid another major disappointment in my life.

Regardless of that, today I was talking with a relative who does know what he is talking about, and perhaps (or even likely) knows more about computer-related subjects than I do. But sadly, it did not take very long for me to find out that even though he was well informed about the subject – and wasn’t too shy about letting me know about that either – he still reasoned like an average computer user. He told me that he just couldn’t care less about how content is presented to him, as long as it “just works” (and we all know that slogan, don’t we?)

Even though American corporations like Microsoft and Apple will have full control over everything we do with our (not so very) “personal” computers, and are able to spy on us, steal our personal data, apply censorship to the applications we are allowed to run, add DRM to media content, and lock us in to proprietary file formats, it was considered all right by him, as long as working with his computer would take as little effort as possible. So basically, someone “smarter” than me is still part of the everyday ”OMG this Silverlight movie doesn’t work, so GNU/Linux sucks” crowd. As you can probably imagine, it was one of the most depressing thoughts I had in a long time; finding out that respect for two of the companies in ICT I consider to be the most evil of all time, is even present in this group of users.

Even though he acknowledged some of my very valid reasons to avoid proprietary software like the plague, he still did not consider them to weigh up to the convenience of ‘not caring about anything’, that proprietary operating systems have to offer. So what I would really like to know, is why people find convenience and making as little effort as possible so much more important than their own freedom and safety? Why would someone put their privacy and right to control something they own on the line, just so they don’t have to think as much? I mean, I would really not feel comfortable running some kind of executable on my machine, with root privileges, of which I do not at least have some clue of what it does. Even though I’m not the most talented programmer out there; I can tell whenever something really isn’t right, and I trust on the social control that free software has to offer, so that other people will warn those who can make a difference (such as the repository package maintainers) that something in the source code really needs review. Proprietary software offers no such possibility (other than reverse engineering for years), and is therefore, in my opinion, defective by design, as the Free Software Foundation so accurately describes DRM; one of my other nightmares.

Anyway, back to what I was saying: I find the lack of control over pretty much everything we do to be disturbing. I simply do not understand why people don’t want to at least try to have as much control as possible over the things they have to deal with in everyday life. I just don’t see how someone can be comfortable with CEO’s of huge overseas corporations to decide what they may or may not do. Why would you be fine with the FBI breaking into your house if you copy a DVD that you own for personal use, or install different software on a gaming console that you paid money for? I don’t see why anyone in their right mind would agree to an end-user license agreement that explicitly states that even though you went to the store and purchased something, you are still not allowed to do anything the vendor doesn’t want you to. Why would you agree that some software vendor is allowed to remove any feature they want to see disappear, even though you may rely on it, and even though you possibly even paid money for it? (Don’t make me bring up the PlayStation 3 OtherOS function.)

Giving up the ability to control any part of your life; and in the case of computers and other internet devices, an ever-growing part of your life, feels both incredibly stupid and also seriously dangerous to me. A man named George Orwell wrote a book about what could result from that, in case things go really bad. It might be worth a read sometime.

To me, a computer is not just a tool that makes my life easier. It’s also a potential harmful factor for my personal life, my privacy and even my safety, in case I don’t use it with care. It may take a bit more time to run as much free software as possible (even though the generally made assumptions are blown completely out of proportion), but it does seem worth the effort if it can prevent all kinds of bad things from happening. Why would I stand back and hope for the best? Why would I just wait until something came to bite me in the neck big time, and not just do something about it? The only reasons that I can think of are that I wouldn’t be aware of all the things I just said, or that I wasn’t capable of changing them myself. And that’s my exact point here: for the guy I’m referring to, neither was the case. He both knew about all of this, and was most likely capable of freeing himself from it, but he still chose not to, because it would take some of his time, his effort, and his ability to view Silverlight movies.

I’m not judging him, I’m not saying he’s stupid, and I really think that everyone has every right to do whatever they please. But I do think that it’s a shame. I feel like he’s letting himself down. I mean, if you really know a lot about a certain subject, and you like doing it; whatever it may be, why wouldn’t you try everything you can to help it move forward and keep it safe, clean, and accessible for everyone? Why wouldn’t you stand up and join the idealists and make a change, rather than be part of the general population which just does as ordered, and never gets itself anywhere? Why would you choose your own convenience over doing the right thing, and making the world a better place?

Reproduced by kind permission

By Kevin Keijzer

Archlinux using openbox WM for composition its compton-git, starring :tint2,firefox,dclock,conky,cairo-dock,tilda,tmux,weechat,cmatrix,mp3blaster,cclock,turpail