I’ve been into privacy since my teens and when everyone was using firefox with a million extensions. I have fluctuated between setups over the years but happy to say I’ve refined my setup in almost every aspect
My current setup is
Brave as my primary browser with Chromium for PWAs
GOS and iOS on mobile
NextDNS
Mullvad VPN
KeePass as password manager
SimpleLogin/Tutanota for email
1 Windows Desktop for Gaming and Productivity
1 Fedora Silverblue Laptop for general tasks
What do you want advice about?
I want to settle on a desktop OS and then not have to think about it too much while it remaining usable and secure I cannot stop thinking about the various flaws in my setup tho. For instance I run Silverblue on my laptop because Im in love with the stability of immutability however that often means you have to settle for flatpaks. The issue? Essential apps arent available as a flatpak officially. I’m not comfortable downloading Signal or Brave from some unknown entity especially since its not endorsed in anyway by those who make it. Its another party to trust and so now I have to find hacky ass workaround like Distrobox just for peace of mind and its stuff like this that has made me jumping back to Windows entirely. But everytime i use Windows on my desktop Im reminded how much Im not a fan of it and feels like it takes way more configuration than I want to do just to get it stop spying on me.
What have you considered or looked at already?
I have jumped between standard Fedora, Silverblue and Windows 11 and have considered OpenSuse and MacOS but decided against it.
I’ve looked in various forums and youtube and while Fedora is the recommended option, I didnt see anything addressing the glaring issues I see and simply put its frustratingly draining
In brief, tell us about your privacy threat model?
My threat model is relatively simple I want to be safe against potential attacks from hackers an average user may face and mitigate corporate surveillance where i can while still maintaining a reasonably usable system
Honestly, I think standard Fedora is a solid middleground between Silverblue and Windows. You get all the privacy and security of Fedora without having to stick to Flathub as your repo.
It would make your system less secure, but do you need that extra security at the moment?
For most people, default fedora should be fine. Of course, don’t click on anything shady, but remember that at the moment very few hackers want to target linux based operating systems (except maybe chromeOS and android?).
Been there, done that. In the end there’s no middle ground for my case, and I’m always in a kind of purgatory.
My case is about productivity, (tools, gaming, self hosting and everything else is already ok) I simply can’t leave Visual Studio because VSCode is such a crap experience in comparison, I just want to develop and run the projects, not deal with the damn tasks creation and troubleshooting why they don’t work
For my laptop probably not so much need because after looking through it most of things i do are web based and then minor programs like GIMP. I could get away with standard Fedora. Im questioning this for my desktop whether i keep it on Windows or switch to Fedora
Privacy begins at the operating system. If you can do entirely without Windows, just get rid of it. If you need windows (eg for games), consider running it in a VM.
My main personal windows PC is required for one program, which is a portable NAS by Synology. I could run the program in a virtual machine. Unsuccessfully I tried Wine. Occasionally it would be faster to use a Windows machine then taking the time to learn how to use different software on another OS. So I have a Windows PC for the first time in years.
Here is my experience and possibly a guide on how I set up this windows machine.
The experience I have is limited but it has not been bad. Perhaps you can improve and tweak your windows system. Isolate what you do on that machine.
You sound kinda stable in your choices of operating systems, I offer a solution to overall windows use. Perhaps you could be more specific to what your concerns are and we can drill down to solution.
I think I just had a breakthrough with my threat modeling. I get so obsessed with trying to re-create every set up the exact same way on every device In fear of data loss instead of compartmentalizing and just backing up to the cloud.
