This feeds into the idea of the gossip networks I mentioned. That said, dont just rely on stars, read about the experience people have had in the issues section and across the web on other forums. Stars are a weak flattened metric that just tell you there’s been some eyeballs on this… I’m more interested in, what do the mouths and keyboards of those eyeballs have to say.
My comment wasn’t just about the star ratings. I’ve actually run all those scripts myself. It does mess with Windows components a bit, but that’s expected if you’re aiming for a total cleanup. Fixing it, though, is pretty easy.
I wish I could just switch. If there were tutorials available on how to make Linux as desktop OS more secure,it would help a lot. Unfortunately everything is geared towards pro users who have no trouble hardening themselves. But again, many Cyber security experts say that even with hardening, Linus desktop OS cannot reach the security of a Windows, MAC, and certainly not Graphene…so what can the average user do? He can only decide between privacy OR security, but not both ![]()
Oh yeah, sorry wasn’t saying you only look at stars but others reading this could misinterpret that stars are to be trusted alone.
I am no cybersecurity expert, but when we see how people actually get malware to run on your system, it’s rarely from lack of hardening. Hardening is a way for users to feel like enough industry level folks have put their stamp of approval to know there’s enough bumpers in an operating system to mitigate the user not having a good enough security model on their own and lack critical thinking to avoid clicking on sketchy email links from copycat or extortion mail.
That’s not to say that hardening isn’t valuable. Nobody has a perfect security model that predicts the future, but the overemphasis on hardening has become a way for large platforms like Microsoft and Apple monopolize on that sense of false relief that larger companies have more resources to combat these issues and make their systems impenetrable. Kick your legs up and we’ll take care of the rest. This might be true if it wasn’t for those pesky humans using and providing access to their information to end to end encrypted conversations.
I think this notion of a pro user that has epic level hacking skills you’ll never acheive is disappearing gradually through the use of gossip networks and communities like Privacy Guides aiming to make Privacy approachable to everyone. If you read at how some of the largest kingpins of drug and ransomware networks get caught, its almost never (maybe never?) because the government found a zero day exploit and traced down the logs or gained access to their system, its almost always because they like to talk and have bad Operational Security. My point being, the single greatest vulnerability in systems are the users rather than the systems themselves. Humans exist in every target system.
Do we need better guides for Linux hardening? Yes. One of the nice things abiut Microsoft or Apple is that there’s a single guide for each of their systems that are written by a fleet of employees. For Linux, we have e a fleet of volunteers, but given the flexibility, unless we’re talking about a standardized stack, it’s hard to get consensus on what is even worth writing if different variations introduce new variables. Very few times it does, but it can. So, there are some resources that try to shed light on general practices, but similar to trying to solve for privacy overnight will overwhelm you, become a full blown “hardcore" Linux user overnight will just burn you out. Linux is best approached from a playful mentality. Start with Ubuntu dual boot and maybe graduate to others depending on your needs. People may scream at me for suggesting Canonical over Microsoft and they both have e drawbacks. That said, Canonical unlike most Linux OSes has a fleet of employees writing guides and some of that missing security hardening in other systems. The community is a better example of what you can acheive with Linux gossip networks and gradual changes vs Microsoft’s unilateral rug pulling (admittedly better than Google). That enables time for people to start discussing breaking changes or even complain about them to the point of getting the core kernel developers to consider a different course. Also, Ubuntu has become one of the best and most documented Linux user experience. What’s even better is that you as an individual who is part of your own security model become far less of a threat to yourself and you don’t just need to trust Microsoft or Canonical hardening. You the user can level up in keeping yourself and friends safer. Gradual changes make huge differences. As @em says, you gotta eat that broccoli. No need to eat just broccoli for every meal, just add it slowly to your diet and you will gain privacy and autonomy.
Choose yourself and slowly tap into your potential to give yourself the proper knowledge to keep yourself and your loved ones safe and preserve your privacy. Outsourcing that to a company who invades your privacy and keeps you in a security model that coddles and limits your own growth is a losing strategy. Little steps and people here on PG can help along with the nicer Linux people. ![]()
Copilot is build in feature from W11 as I remember, so option is to change your OS to Linux or use older W10 version. There are some more sophisticated options, just not sure what your technical level here. Also depends from use case.
You can effortlessly get rid of the unnecessary stuff, as long as you get the Pro version.