Switch to Linux? The Real Privacy OS

i've made many linux videos in this channel but i've never actually explained why linux is different and why it is considered the most privacy focused os bar none linux is not for everyone but it would be good to understand how it is built who the players are and the entire process for building an os that we call linux and then you may realize it is suited for you in reality linux os is not even a correct term as you will find out when you really understand the big picture of how linux works you will appreciate why many people will choose to make the jump from windows or mac os and it will be an appropriate choice in fact it's even possible to use linux in part while remaining on mac os or windows and i'll explain that too so stay right there and you'll learn a few things [Music] when you need better search results like those from google but don't want the google tracking check out privacy search engine startpage.com does not collect or share any of your personal data so you can search anonymously my company offers a vpn service bytes vpn d google phones vpn routers and now we offer a brexmail email service these products are made to protect you from big tech and their tricks to profile us and all the cloud services i offer are running on linux if you're interested in them they are on my app brax me the link is in the description before the linux police enter the discussion we better make it clear that what we all think of as the linux os is actually more correctly called gnu linux now explain this distinction in a moment but just understand that what we call linux is in fact made up of a linux kernel and package with the operating system itself which is called gnu back in the 80s gnu would be equivalent to dos the kernel in your computer is the portion of the software that connects to all the devices it handles the memory the disk drives the displays the keyboard the mouse and so on all operating systems have a kernel but linux is unusual in that the kernel is separate from the os itself usually a microsoft windows os will have everything same with mac os though even mac os has two parts the bsd unix kernel and the rest of the mac os both however are controlled by apple and not separate like in linux the linux kernel was originally invented by linus torvalds and up to today those who submit changes to the linux kernel have to go through linus he approves every single thing before it becomes part of the next linux release with the help of volunteers and this is what's unique about the linux community linus torvalds doesn't write everything that's in the linux kernel instead there's third parties that want their hardware integrated into linux have to write the device driver code and then send it to the linux volunteers who review the code and this alone is a very interesting process and it's different from those making devices for apple and microsoft in linux all requests to include a device must be accompanied by the source code so the whole program is exposed they're still hiding what is in it in fact if you submit code to be included in linux it becomes part of the public source code for linux so everything in linux is completely open with visible source code in contrast when a manufacturer of a device wants inclusion in windows they never have to show the source code to anyone they just give microsoft the executable directly or the end user downloads it directly no one sees the source code now this philosophy of everything open applies to everything in linux the process of creating the final binaries are done by those assembling a linux version or distro everything actually starts from the open and published source code now this is one of the main reasons why linux has to be private the entirety of the operating system is completely open sourced and exposed no one can hide any spyware or little tricks since it will be found and exposed as i said earlier though gnu linux which is the more appropriate generic name for linux is actually made up of a second part and that is the gnu part most of the main parts that a typical user interacts with on an operating system are actually done through gnu utilities gnu is a completely separate entity from the linux kernel which is commonly referred to as mainline linux gnu was created by richard stallman and richard stallman was a big promoter of the concept of free software or more specifically today he pushes fos or free open source software as richard stallman would frequently say about free software think free speech and not free beer to put into practical terms all software in gnu is also open source and freely modifiable so the current construct of a standard linux distribution is actually mainline linux plus gnu utilities and then modified freely by some community into a linux distribution or what we fondly call a linux distro because of the licensing of gnu and the linux kernel no one is allowed to make hidden code in any modification of the original programs that were in mainline linux or gnu although anyone is free to modify anything the entity just has to publish the modification a couple of interesting details here first a distro doesn't always have everything in open source for example some aspects of an ubuntu are not open source although the majority of the distro is but if they added their own programs to make the os distinctive they would not be obligated to publish that source code if they don't want as a general rule most of the code in a distro is open source one of the biggest distributions of the linux kernel is actually android so android is bound by the linux license to also be open source and it is but android only uses the linux kernel and then heavily modified it it does not use the gnu side because it went its own way the linux kernel android is based on is an older version of the kernel android independently modifies the linux portion of its code base to keep it as close as possible to newer versions of mainline linux and all the graphical user interfaces and operation of android was made by android which was purchased by google so linux is a small part of android the primary reason linux is the safest os is because the main os is itself open source many applications and linux are also open source and provided by various developers that are not associated with linux or with gnu and what most people find interesting and certainly compelling about this os is that linux applications just like the os are mostly free in general the style of money making on linux is different typically software and applications are free and money is made via tech services and support so this allows various distros to make money in the corporate world while typically offering free software to others as i said earlier linux and gnu are offered as open source and free in various communities some commercial enterprises and some just volunteers then take that and make their own assembly of the pieces and call it a distro and this begins the fragmentation that is really hard to follow which distro should you use this is the problem actually with linux being used by grandma there are so many variations of gnu linux and some are made for specific tasks it's like the wild wild west because it's all free and anyone can do it that's exactly what happened everyone made their own distros and some just make minor modifications and some make more major modifications but before we get into that we have to group the distros together in some way if anything one of the most distinctive differences between different distros is the way the different software is distributed through the use of what are called repositories you can think of repositories as the app store though they're free the process of distributing software in a centralized way is handled often by one of the main distros fortunately most distros are based on just three main ones and that is debian arch and red hat almost all popular distros are forks or basically modifications of these original distros the main difference between how distros work will often start first from the different package management systems or which app store application they use if you want to use a more modern analogy debian uses a system called apt arch uses pac-man and red hat uses yum in rpm the popular distros based on debian such as ubuntu mint and zoram are all using apt as their package manager same as debian in fact mint and zoram themselves are based off ubuntu a popular one in the arch linux side is manjaro and this uses pacman ubuntu itself made their own app store repository which is called snap so in ubuntu you can use both apt and snap snap works on other distros but there's not necessarily a store you get the point and this is part of the fragmentation problem of linux since this rows can be different then they are in fact different with different command line instructions of installing software and different repositories often with different versions of the same software the differences grow exponentially as you discuss the desktop version of linux and this has to be discussed as a difference between people who use linux on a desktop versus those who set up linux as a server in the cloud somewhere the majority of cloud servers in the world are running on linux so facebook google youtube and so on are running on linux i'm personally more of a linux server expert all my apps run on a linux server running cloud services and they can be used on any browser using any type of computer beat windows mac os android ios or linux but a desktop linux is trying to be another version of windows or mac os and specifically what is different is the gui or the graphical user interface gnu itself provides a library of a graphical interface that we call gnome and since this is linux someone will always create something different and there is another popular graphical user interface called qt or cute to make things more confusing those who write software with a gui for desktop use will have to choose to write for one of these gui's and it gets more confusing because the graphical drivers could also differ quite a bit between different implementations of a distro in fact ubuntu itself which is likely the most well-known and perhaps the most popular distro switched between using qt or qt in older versions and then settling on gnome since version 17 which is around four to five versions ago let's follow the path of a particular distro let's say we're talking about mint mint is based on ubuntu you might say a window that is made to look more like windows maybe that's why i'm not fond of mint it looks too much like windows so mint is the most downstream version i will teach you this term downstream versus upstream which is common in linux now we will go upstream from mint the next upstream point is ubuntu mint is a fork of ubuntu upstream of ubuntu is debian ubuntu is a fork of debian upstream of debian is gnu and mainline linux this is important to understand because sometimes versions of drivers and applications are propagated consistently over all disk rows from the same upstream source so mainline linux changes affect all distros some linux distros like ubuntu are supported by corporations ubuntu is created by canonical which is based in the uk because ubuntu has a lot of programmers sometimes they will find bugs in software that come from an upstream source like bluetooth drivers from mainline linux and they might make the correction to the software directly in their linux distribution if it will take time for the change to come down from an upstream source like mainline linux so this will also sound terribly complicated but that's the linux world you might say that there's a bureaucracy when dealing with so many communities this is why changes don't happen very fast in linux especially when adapting to new hardware as i already mentioned linux is very private by default just by the nature of not being able to hide anything in most of the major software secondly because most of the software is free there is no financial incentive to do things like centralized spying in fact in most cases there is no dominant entity in linux just the support of many linux users many of whom contribute to the projects so if privacy is key then of course linux has a head up however not every piece of software you can install in linux need to necessarily be open source it would be possible to download and run an executable that is not open source nor private nor even secure the reasoning for the safety of linux is that as a rule most apps are free and open source that is not necessarily a given so you have to check each app individually and their source general rule all apps and software that come from a package management utility like apt yum or pacman have to be open source since they are compiled by the repository sometimes you will find that versions of software are out of date and you'll be forced to compile an application yourself on your local computer using the original source code this is very confusing for a new user of course but typically i encounter this mostly in server applications and not so much in desktop environments in fact unless you're a programmer you may not even understand the term compile or that the original code in linux is often written in c programming language to compile code is to take the human readable source code and to turn it into machine language that can be directly executed by the machine we call that machine language version a binary or an executable or many people will just call it an app now having put the fear in you about all these complications the reality is that distros like ubuntu and those based on ubuntu are pretty much ready to go as they are for basic computer use like web browsing play music using word processing spreadsheet and email or what we consider to be basic tasks then any of the popular distros will be fine for your use again the most popular ones and i believe the ones with the best support for the most computers are ubuntu and those based on ubuntu one that is fairly liked also that is not based on ubuntu is manjaro this one is based on arch linux and can be configured to use pretty much the same gui elements as ubuntu still i would recommend that beginner users stick to ubuntu and its forks primarily because canonical has programmers that make sure the most devices are supported there's a bit of a controversy with ubuntu by the way some of the proprietary code is apparently sending telemetry information to canonical and that has the linux police up in arms so for this reason many are pushing the other four distros instead but for desktop use with a gui i'd likely focus on ubuntu and its forks and manjaro one of the biggest fears with the use of linux is that typically the fastest way to install software is through the command line fortunately all the debian variants including ubuntu and its forks all use apt commands so although there is some learning to find the appropriate command line instruction somewhere it is usually achieved with an easy cut and paste of a command in my experience it is easy to find instructions for running linux for casual users if it's based on the latest long-term release of ubuntu which is currently ubuntu 20.04 lts so for beginners this is the safest place to start not all computers can run linux although historically i found that ubuntu is the most compatible some distros are notoriously picky a good example is the secure os called cubes this works on so few computers that i personally have never found a compatible one among the computers that i've had so i stopped trying to use it so should you all switch to linux unfortunately as i already described linux though the safest platform for your privacy does require some learning maybe not so much of the very basic stuff but as you tweak it and you personalize it then that's when you have to invest in some learning time there are also hardware issues i would recommend buying new computers that are specifically tested and configured for linux i would recommend two companies system 76 and the more budget option star laptops linux works well also on older computers what the main problem is is that linux drivers have to be written with open source code and sent to mainline linux so if a company like dell for example makes a new computer with a higher resolution display but non-standard or a touch screen someone has to write a device driver for it and send it to mainline linux that process could take years and there lies the problem there's no incentive for commercial manufacturers of devices to necessarily support a linux version so it often becomes a low priority bluetooth bug for example can go unfixed for years the more unusual or specialized device the chances of getting support are less this is why the bigger companies like ubuntu are good because someone is investing in making more things work for most of my kind of programming work i usually program cloud apps so i could do that on any platform and linux was just as easy as anything else for me where i got a roadblock in my own linux desktop world was when i needed to use adobe premiere pro since i'm heavily involved in editing every week i'm forced to spend most of my desktop time on windows which is now windows 11. so the application we need to use often dictates our moves some people who prefer to use final cut pro for video editing have to stick with macs those into gaming typically find better results by using windows on pcs with nvidia card nvidia card support on linux is spotty there's a famous video of linus torvalds giving nvidia the middle finger nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spot we've had with hardware manufacturers and that is really sad because nvidia tries to sell chips a lot of chips into the android market and nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with so nvidia now i work with linux servers daily all the brexit or linux installs and programmed in linux i run all kinds of servers daily in the cloud and every single one is running linux what you will find after you invest a little time into linux is that within that extra complexity is actually a consistency you start to understand that linux is actually much simpler to understand internally than a windows or a mac there are less mysteries you will find the beauty of doing simple things with the terminal command line where you don't have to look beneath 50 windows to look for things though it probably helps to have a cheat sheet as a beginner since many new computers cannot run linux for example my nvidia equipped intel machine there's still a way to learn how to use linux on a windows or mac os machine and that is to load a virtual machine there's software that's available for both platforms and that is virtualbox which is owned by oracle in virtualbox you can download all kinds of linux distros and you can try it out and learn in fact if you do your basic computer activities from inside a linux virtual machine even if the machine is hosted by windows you will get a lot of privacy benefits i will link an older video on how to use virtualbox up top and in the description in windows you can also run linux natively using the windows subsystem for linux which you can download and install from the microsoft store and they have a version for ubuntu for example however this linux integration is much more limited a full linux experience is better on a virtual machine depending on the interest level in this video i can make more videos digging in a little deeper into how linux works so let me know in the comments below if you are interested hope you enjoyed this little introduction i'm on the platform odyssey.com i'm now one of the top creators on there just for insurance in case i get the platform please follow me there using the link in the description your engagement with this channel in the form of comments likes and especially subscriptions is very important to me so i hope you hit that subscribe button and i truly appreciate it thank you for watching and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Rob Braxman Tech

Views: 16,746

Rating: 4.9736843 out of 5

Keywords: internet privacy guy, internet privacy, tech privacy, privacy, linux privacy, linux structure, linux organization, linux distros, linux vs windows, linux vs macos, linux in android

Id: 3Dg4WIfvwWk

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021