Windows is such a complete pain in the ass to use anymore I’m not sure Linux is really all that more difficult.

I know people have really been slow-boiled on the windows side the past 15 years or so, and the frustrations you could encounter are unique to each platform, but I really do think we’re at a point that if you can competently admin your own windows system, you can admin a linux system.

And if you can’t be assed to admin either, then you have a few options:

• Hire a nerd to admin your computer
• Only use a work computer (and non-personal stuff)
• resign to using an iPad where Apple is your admin. 😂

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Basically the question comes down to: who do you trust and why?

If you didn’t code it yourself or validate every line of code, you’re trusting someone with your privacy. Most of us have no interest in and no capability to code our own operating systems, so at some point you must trust someone else. (And even if you code your own OS, do you manufacture your own hardware?)

Linux obviously is open-source so you can verify code yourself. But there are closed-source packages and even being open-source is no guarantee people will make good privacy decisions. Still, pretty good compared to alternatives.

Google is an ad company who wants your personal information to sell you stuff. I personally don’t trust that with my privacy.

Apple is … okay. They take privacy extremely seriously and have no interest in profiting from your personal data. But they are closed source so you are trusting their implementation.

Microsoft generally sucks and I think personally they would do practically anything for a buck. So, no trust from me.

I consequently run Linux and iOS. But you have to weigh the pros and cons yourself.

I’m not sure about mobile stuff, but Windows is very invasive. I remember people talking about how bad Windows 10 was, and it’s just gotten worse.

Some companies sell computers with Linux already on them, so if someone isn’t comfortable with changing their OS, they could try one of them (I think Lenovo does it, but they use Ubuntu so it’s not the best for privacy).

I decided to trust apple’s privacy campaign, happily locked into the ecosystem.

The amount of privacy you retain is directly proportional to the level of effort you expend.

They don’t record your every keystroke and such (that we know of), but they do log what app/program you open and when, how long you keep it open, if you’re using your keyboard or mouse, if you’re receiving notifications and from what applications.

On the phone, they know if you’re moving and where you are, can determine who are you with and such.

They are also trying to get you to use their web browsers, chat services, email, online documents… Why do you think they’re doing that?

Watching you wank isn’t super effective when it comes to targeting non-nsfw ads at you. They prefer to collect metadata (who, what, when, where) which is trivial, easier to collect en masse and analyse.

If it’s possible - you can limit the amount of data to some degree, but not entirely. Not just the OS is the problem, other people are. If some idiot uploads their entire phone book to every fucking service, you can’t help your phone number being among them and crosschecked to see who you know.

You can already do a lot!. Switch of all the invasive features from google. (Remove advertising ID, switch of any web and app history etc.) Install F-Droid and only use the “good” apps. Put the evil apps in a separate work profile (Shelter app). Look at the configurations of the apps and opt-out of tracking.
Configure your webbrowser to delete cookie and co. …

I certainly think so.

Even Windows or Chrome OS, provides quite a bit of “control” it’s just that a lot of it is “opt out”. Google does, for example record what YouTube videos you look at against a logged in account by default. Windows does have targeted advertising enabled by default.

I think privacy is really more about what you do on such platforms. If you use products (sites) that clearly have bad policies in regard to privacy then no OS is going to provide really all that much improvement.

It’s not full privacy or no privacy at all! Everyone has a different threat model which utilizes different practises. Yes, windows is no good for privacy, but limiting what windows can collect, and not using 3rd party software that collects even more info can be a pretty good start for most people. Also not advertising personal information on social media (or using privacy invasive social media at all)!

With just these you’ll have much better privacy than anyone around you and a pretty good level of privacy in general! You can do so much for privacy but you’ll have to face the comprimises the more private you go.

The think is do you need to go that deep for privacy or is something less private a better solution for you?

You may end up just sharing information broadly unless you use something like grapheneos or a Linux computer. Even with those OS choices the applications may also send data to different services or may share a lot on the web browsers. You may just want to try a few different systems to find out where your comfortable you are cutting yourself off from the services.

Depends where you buy your hardware…

I bought a laptop I could spec the way I want it, which included a choice of OS. I could choose for 32GB of ram and Windows 11 or 64 GB of ram and Ubuntu for the same prize. Ubunto has no clue how to fill all that memory. (I have, kvm is my friend)

To be honest, it’s totally worth it to spend time in messing about with custom OS on a device you can spare. Linux runs nicely on '12 hardware when you have enough memory. Even the '11 Samsung Tab S2 gets Android 13 via Lineage. Those are nice projects to start with, pick an old device and mess about. Worst that can happen is thag you have to throw it away, which you have to do anyway with the original software.

As somebody else already posted, when you don’t control your OS, somebody else will.

There are mitigations you can do, but its easier to resolve root causes by not touching risky software in the first place. I recommend people start with the easy stuff first. Messaging systems is probably the lowest hanging fruit. Mobile operating systems is a bit more messy, depending on your hardware. But installing Linux is easier than you think. Zorin is great if you’re super used to windows and don’t want to learn new paradigms at all. MX Linux has slightly more learning curve than other beginner friendly choices, but its still doable. It will also help you revive old hardware and avoid adding ewaste to the oceans. Debian is a bit more jumping into the deep end, but it still does a reasonable job of holding your hand as you get started. It will also give you a ton of flexibility to just install default programs and use those programs documentation to resolve issues rather than trying to figure out what strange customizations your chosen distro applied.

You have threat model to answer this question as privacy means different things to people and there are different privacy levels to every threat model. But to answer your question in a concise manner, any closed source operating system developed by commercial vendors is more likely to ship with/ introduce telemetry, user tracking and other kinds of spyware than an open one.