Weekly Megathread 3: Privacy, or why I wear a tinfoil hat :foucault-madness:
This week's question/topic is why does privacy matter to you as a leftist?
Please use this as a place for general discussion about free software, as well as a place to ask for help or tech support with FOSS.
:curious-marx: What is free software?
Free or "libre" software is defined as software that gives you, the user, the freedom to share, study, and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free.
:volcel-judge: Stop using proprietary software!
With proprietary software nobody knows what's going on under the hood.
:cia: and friends have a much easier time sneaking :sus-deep: garbage in. Consider the following replacements for non-free software:
- Firefox instead of Chrome
- Free software for your phone!
- Free software on Windows (which you should ditch as soon as possible)
- Linux instead of Windows
:LIB:erate your life, :LIB:!
Tell use which software you can't find a libre alternative to, and we'll help you out.
Other resources
- Awesome free software: a comprehensive categorized list of libre software
- Free Software Foundation
Prior to being a leftist, I had the usual anti-authoritatian anti-establisment reactionary politics via punk rock and Occupy. You know the kind, being against "the government" and "corporations" but not really anything beyond that. Part of that led me to using free software where possible thanks in part to efforts from the FSF and EFF in the 2000s to keep the internet DRM free and net neutrality respectively. I didn't really think about privacy (or security for that matter) until the Snowden disclosures. I panicked, as I was working for a large company at the time that was named in his initial PRISM disclosures, and started severing ties to any proprietary service I could and tried to get my ex to use free software tools like TextSecure and RedPhone (the precursors to Signal) for when we would text and call each other on the phone.
It wasn't until our breakup (for unrelated reasons!) and the following CCC, 30c3, that I really started taking it more seriously as part of my political ideology, and realizing that free software has its place in our better tomorrow giving us the tools to help us start freeing ourselves from the state and freeing ourselves from corporations. I started reading anarchist theory thanks to the "anarchism" package in Debian which as an intro, and thanks to this it in part led me to other leftist theories and actual concrete things to grasp on and not just lash out at something because it's "in power".
the anarchism package in debian
I love this. Also same, one of the things that helped me become a leftist was applying my beliefs for free software and seeing how a lot of leftist theory was similar but applied politically.
Exactly! It's just the same idea of community, sharing, building a better tomorrow and applying it from there. Helped my "tech only" brain when I was in college to think beyond computers
the raspberry pi 400 seems like it would fit your needs pretty well. if you're looking for a bit more horsepower than a pi has there are a lot of other SBC options, like the Rock64, LattePanda (they advertise Win10 but you can put Linux on them like any other computer), and others. i only have experience with the pi's though.
note that you wouldn't get the same UI or experience on any of these as you would on a chromebook, but you can do the same things (web browsing, document editing, etc.)
Well, I guess I'm going to take another stab at setting up Postfix+Dovecot+PostgreSQL+RoundCube tonight. I think I actually understand what I'm doing now.
