 Welcome to another edition of Unfettered Freedom, your weekly GNU slash Linux news video podcast. Packing so much freedom into each episode, it ought to be illegal. There's so much freedom packed into this podcast that simply by listening to this podcast, your neck beard will grow long, and your social interactions will become difficult. On this episode of Unfettered Freedom, Eric Raymond has made a bold prediction regarding Windows 10 and Linux. He thinks that Linux will ultimately win the battle against Windows. Also, the Respondus Lockdown Browser. This was something I was not aware of, but apparently Respondus is another one of these pieces of spyware that schools and universities are forcing their students to install in their own machines. DRM, we're going to discuss DRM, which is Digital Rights Management, although that name is not very accurate because DRM is designed to limit your rights, your freedoms. Also, are there any free, as in freedom, email providers out there? There's a few, we'll discuss that. Also, every Linux distribution is awesome. That's what some people say. Every GNU slash Linux distribution out there is good. There's no bad distributions out there. Do I agree? Well, we'll discuss that as well. All on episode 8 of Unfettered Freedom. Now, I am your host, Derek Taylor, also known as DT or DistroTube over on Library and on YouTube. This podcast, as well as all of the video content on the DistroTube channel, is community sponsored. I have no corporate sponsorships of any kind. Because of the community support that I receive, I can say what I want. There's no product shilling in these episodes. And if you like that and if you like my work, please consider supporting my work. I'd greatly appreciate it. Please consider subscribing to DistroTube over on Patreon. And the first story to discuss is Eric S. Raymond's bold prediction that Windows 10 will eventually just be an emulation layer sitting on top of the Linux kernel is basically what he's predicting here. And for those of you that are not familiar with who Eric S. Raymond is and why he makes this prediction and people are going to listen to it, is because Eric S. Raymond is one of the most important figures within the open source community. He helped found the open source movement. He was one of the original people that coined that term open source. He helped found the open source initiative, the OSI. He wrote a very important book called The Cathedral and the Bazaar. And I suggest every single one of you listening to this podcast, check out The Cathedral and the Bazaar, especially if you're interested at all in software development and particularly open source software development. And I came across this story from over at ZDNet, an article written by Liam Tong and it posits this question, hey, will Windows lose the last phase of the desktop wars to Linux? Well, according to ESR, yes. Windows is in decline basically on the desktop and Linux is on an uptick. And of course there is some evidence to this, but really I think part of the problem with Windows, people see it as declining, it's just desktop computing in general is in decline. So Microsoft isn't as invested necessarily in Windows as it was in years past. Microsoft makes most of its profits on non-Windows things these days. So Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. So that money they are making these days has nothing to do with the Windows operating system. So Eric S. Raymond is making a point that Windows isn't really a viable profit engine anymore for Microsoft. And he says that now that PC prices are falling and once they fall below the level, well he says $350, once it falls below that level, then the Microsoft tax doesn't make any sense for OEMs to put up with anymore. Why pay that Microsoft tax to have Windows installed on your OEM devices when of course Linux is free? Mr. Raymond points to certain signs that he's seeing that lead him to conclude that Microsoft is eventually leading in this direction such as the Windows subsystem for Linux. Microsoft is making big investments in that particular technology. He also has noted that Microsoft is starting to release more software for Linux such as the upcoming Edge browser. The Edge browser will start shipping on Linux in October. Also running on Linux just off the top of my head. Microsoft Teams runs on Linux. It's got a native client. VS Code of course runs on Linux. Skype runs on Linux although to be fair Skype has had a Linux client for many, many years long before Microsoft was really interested in open source and Linux anyway. So forget about Skype but Teams VS Code and Edge are all kind of recent things that we're just now getting on Linux in the last few months or the last year or two. Mr. Raymond points out that Microsoft developers are actually contributing to the Linux kernel and apparently the Microsoft employees are working well with the kernel team. Of course Microsoft is a platinum member of the Linux foundation. Of course a lot of that work that goes into the Linux kernel as far as the commits from the Microsoft development team. Those are of course to help improve the Windows subsystem for Linux. Eventually Microsoft wants to be able to use the Windows subsystem for Linux to run Linux graphical applications, GUI applications. And it's also very important things like Proton and Wine as far as gaming. So many Windows games actually run in this emulation layer if you will on top of Linux running things like Wine, Wine containers and Proton. And it's becoming almost to the point where very soon it could be possible to run any Windows program on Linux where no longer does Microsoft even need its operating system. It can just make the software it needs to make but it can just be run on Linux. And that could be the direction that Microsoft will eventually hit. I don't know. I don't know if Microsoft would be willing to give up that control because having your own operating system, having control of your own kernel, you know, obviously Microsoft is a different Microsoft as far as they are contributing to open source software a lot more these days. But there's probably stuff in the NT kernel, the Windows kernel that Microsoft wants there. It's not freedom respecting. It's not privacy respecting stuff. And I'm not sure they would ever want to get away from that and just move to something based on the Linux kernel. I don't see that happening, at least not right now. Maybe 10 years down the road. Maybe they will eventually arrive to that decision. But right now, I don't know. The Microsoft guys have to convince me a lot more that they're actually interested in open source as far as the principles of open source. Not just the fact that open source can make them some money. Speaking of money, Eric S. Raymond does mention that it would save Microsoft so much money if they would quit working on their own kernel and their own operating system. Why spend billions developing your own thing when you can just freeload off of the community? Let the community that's already working on the Linux kernel do their thing. You contribute what you need to contribute to the Linux kernel and just use Linux. Now, whether Eric is right about his predictions or not, one of the things that bothers me about the possibility that this could happen is that if we ever get to that point where Microsoft is using the Linux kernel for all of its stuff and Microsoft already has a large role in the Linux foundation and Microsoft, if they go in this direction, will have their hands even more just all over Linux and they potentially corrupt what up until now, I think has been a rather pure and noble thing, the Linux kernel and of course our GNU slash Linux distributions. How will that affect Linux going forward if Microsoft, which is the dominant operating system with Windows and now all of those Windows programs which are mostly proprietary programs, now they're all running on top of the kernel, the Linux kernel. How will that affect, again, our ecosystem, the Linux ecosystem? I don't know if it would be a positive or a negative, but it is something that concerns me. And the second story I want to discuss, it's not really a news story necessarily, but I was contacted by a viewer of my channel and he asked me to take a look at the Respondus lockdown browser because he's been forced to use it at his school or university and it's really disturbing because Respondus is yet another one of these programs that is designed to combat cheating. So so many people now have to go to school remotely and it's one of these pieces of software that tracks everything you do, all your key presses and it's listening through the microphone and watching you through the camera and all of this is designed to combat cheating, but okay, I agree, you don't want students to cheat but at the end of the day, if the choice is between letting some of your students that want to cheat, cheat or invading all of your students' privacy, let the students that cheat, cheat. I mean, it seems like an easy decision. I can't believe, especially at the university level, which all of these university professors, most of them are going to have a master's degree, at least usually a doctorate. They should be well educated people. I don't understand how they can, in good faith, tell the students of their classes to install this proprietary garbage spyware on their machines, forcing them to install this spyware on their home computers and their home laptops. So obviously I've never used this particular piece of software, I would never install it on any of my machines and typically these pieces of spyware don't have Linux versions. That's another thing with things like ProctorU and Respondus, it's typically you have to install these on a Windows machine, maybe Windows or Mac, but Linux is never an option. So that's another thing. If I have no machine that runs the operating systems that support Respondus, now I have to go install something like Microsoft Windows, something that maybe I object to morally or maybe financially I just can't afford a copy of Microsoft Windows. I damn sure can't go afford a new Mac bloke, you know, typically if I'm a broke college student, just to install the Respondus spyware. So just briefly looking at the Respondus homepage, how lockdown works, the Respondus lockdown browser. It works by displaying everything full screen, nothing can be minimized and that's because it's monitoring what's going on on the screen. Everything on the screen, I guess, probably has to be able to be viewed remotely in some way. It looks like it prevents access to certain kinds of applications. So instant messaging, you know, chat applications, virtual machines, also you can't use a VM. That's another reason why a Linux user can't use this because even if I wanted to, I couldn't install Windows in a VM and then run Respondus in a VM, it will detect the VM and assume you're cheating. You can't use remote desktops. Printing and screen capture are disabled. Copying and pasting, it looks like, is also disabled, right-click menu options. You know, typically on most desktop environments, you know, including the desktop environments and Windows and Mac, you know, you have a right-click menu usually that gives you some options. If you're disabled, any of the ones that you could use potentially for cheating, probably things like copy, paste, print, things like that. Now, thankfully, a lot of students are smarter than their professors at the college level. Let's just be real here because the students are saying, hey, we don't want this. We're not going to use this. Many of them are starting petitions and, you know, creating a fuss. It didn't take me long doing a quick search to find instances of universities where students were rebelling against things. And, you know, in this one article I read from students complaining, you know, students were complaining that their computers were running slower after installing Respondus or Respondus. The installation might be broke their computer. I don't know, you know, what is involved in that. But there's also concerns as far as privacy, of course, and students are like, hey, we're giving these pieces of spyware, such as Respondus and ProctorU, access to everything on our computer. Every piece of data on our computer, all user data and everything, you know, there's personal stuff on my personal computer that nobody should have access to, not Respondus, the makers of that software, and not the system administrators and not your school administrators as well. And they're absolutely right. This is a complete violation of your right to privacy. For one thing, I know not everybody, of course, has a right to privacy, you know, depending on the laws of your nation. But certainly here in the U.S., and this is widespread, almost every university in the U.S. is using things like this, these anti-cheating spyware things, like Respondus and ProctorU and other programs like that. You know, in response to this, I would say, you know, I don't want to be controversial with this statement, but I am 100% serious. I would tell students right now, especially because of the COVID pandemic, if you can't go and have an in-person lecture, you know, at your university, if you can't actually be in a classroom and get one-on-one training from a professor, just don't go to university this semester or take a year off, you know, or maybe don't go back at all because college degrees, quite frankly, aren't what they used to be. You're not likely to get the job you want and typically you're going to come out of it tens of thousands of dollars in debt anyway. And at the same time now, you're having to give up so much freedom, you know, morally, I would be against a lot of this stuff. It's just not worth it anymore to attend university, maybe in a few years, once the world kind of corrects itself. A lot of times, you know, these kinds of things, they're in one direction, but they'll eventually correct themselves at some point. But right now, if I were a student, if I were a college student right now, unless I was very close to graduating, if I was a first or second-year student, yeah, I'd probably just take some time off, take a semester or two off and, you know, see where things are, maybe in 2022. And our third story is about DRM. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, but that is really a horrible name. It's not about defending anybody's rights. It's actually designed to limit you, the user, your rights. And one of the things that I came across the other day was a post over on Reddit, and that Reddit post is titled A False Way to View DRM Protected Netflix Streams Question Mark. They're asking, hey, is there a free and open source way to view DRM Protected streams on Netflix? So I'm assuming he has a Netflix account, but he doesn't like DRM. He doesn't want to necessarily watch that content by having to log in with his user credentials and all of that on a Netflix account. Hey, can he just stream it and something like MPV? And the short answer to that is, no, you can't. You can't really get around DRM. There's no way to circumvent the DRM protections on things like Netflix and Hulu and all of that. Unfortunately, you really only have two options with the DRM streams. What I would suggest doing is don't sign up for a Netflix account and maybe look for alternative ways of getting that content. Now, I don't want to suggest anything that could be illegal in your locality, but obviously there's websites out there where you can go and find those TV shows and movies and music that you like and you can circumvent anything to use, services like Netflix and Hulu and things like that. Now, I don't want to promote piracy because piracy, again, is illegal in a lot of places in the world, but from a moral perspective. If you think that DRM is a moral and you also think that piracy is a moral, then you kind of have to figure out, hey, what's the lesser of two evils and make your own choices on that? Now, this Reddit post did get me to thinking about the Free Software Foundation and their stance against DRM and the Free Software Foundation one of their biggest fights, of course, is the fight against DRM. They even have a separate website designed to spread awareness about DRM. defectivebydesign.org is a piece of property, web property that is owned by the Free Software Foundation. It's part of the Free Software Foundation and this webpage is designed to let people know what is DRM, why is it illegal, how you can take action donate to the Free Software Foundation become a member and they also talk about some of the large companies that take advantage of their users. On their homepage, they have a list of what they call repeat offenders quote, these companies don't want a free web. They think they make money by limiting your freedom. So, these are the gigantic companies that make all of their money or most of their money by limiting people's freedoms with things like DRM. And that list of companies includes Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, they even have the W3C in here. That's interesting as well, but the W3C of course went along with all of this digital rights crap, too. So, you might as well throw them in the list as well. And, you know, one of the dirty truths about DRM is the fact that the executives of these companies, these companies don't want the public to know anything about DRM. They don't want you to know how you are being used by these companies. This website, defectivebydesign.org, they have this quote from Peter Lee who was a Disney executive. He was quoted back in 2005 as saying the following quote, if consumers even know there's a DRM what it is or how it works, we've already failed, unquote. So, he's basically saying the public doesn't need to know about DRM. They don't even need to know it's there. It's there, but if they ever become aware that it's there, then they might want to know what it does and once they know what it does they are going to resist it. And he's absolutely right. That's an executive of a company that uses DRM. Now, our fourth story is of a similar vein. It was another one of these Reddit posts that I came across and they were asking another free and open source software kind of question and that question was about email providers. This Reddit post is titled are there any free email service providers? Are there any recommendations you would all give me for free email service providers that are both free of charge and respect my privacy? So, this person wants something that is free, as in beer, free of charge. They also want something free as in freedom, something that respects their privacy. And the Free Software Foundation does have a page over at fsf.org. They have a page titled Free Software Webmail Systems and they list out a bunch of Webmail services and they have a we have three lists here. They have a recommended list. They have a under review list. So these are services that might be okay but they're still under some scrutiny by the FSF. They're not really sure about them just yet. And then of course they have the not recommended list. Very briefly, I will cover some of the highlights from these lists. The not recommended list is all of your usual subjects. Gmail. Everybody knows that probably shouldn't be using Gmail. Google is spying on you by using that service. So it is what it is. Yahoo Mail although Yahoo Mail is not very popular these days. It's kind of waned in popularity. Yandex Mail, Microsoft Outlook of course, Apple's iCloud, Mail.ru and Fastmail. Though Fastmail is another one I haven't heard about in a long time. I don't know how many users of Fastmail have but that's the not recommended list. If you are using those services, the companies behind those services are using you. Now let's talk about the under review list. So these are services that the FSF doesn't just come out and recommend but they're not saying, hey stay away from these either. These are just under review services. And there are two big names on this list. And these are probably the two Webmail services that most people recommend when people ask about free as in freedom Webmail services Proton Mail and Tutanota. Now the reason that they're still under review I guess from the FSF is because of JavaScript. A lot of the mail services listed under the under review section they're under that section because those sites still require JavaScript. They either require JavaScript for you to register and use the system or they require JavaScript period. The site won't even load without JavaScript. And it looks like that's the case with Proton Mail. They have a note here. Proton Mail, the JavaScript is needed to register and use the system so that's a no go from a freedom standpoint. But yeah, I mean JavaScript on the web is kind of hard to get away from. Tutanota same thing. They have a note under it. Looks promising and they're working on becoming LibreJS compliant. But of course right now they're still using free JavaScript. Now as far as a 100% free as in freedom web mail service, there is a recommended list here. I have never heard of any of these services. But I will just quickly read them. They are Posteo, RiseUp, Colab Now, Melnesia, SafeMail.Net, VF Email, 10 minute email, Gorilla Mail and Spam Gourmet. I don't know anything about those services. But if you want more information, look for this page over at the fsf.org it's titled Free Software Web Mail Systems. And our final topic is the topic of is every GNU slash Linux distribution good? Are all of them good? Because that's kind of a sentiment you do hear from people in the community. You hear the fact that there are no bad distros out there. Yeah, you may not like one. It may not be right for you. But all of them are awesome in their own way. So this comes from another Reddit post here. And this was over at the r slash Linux sub Reddit. And this is titled Every Distro is Awesome. And this thing got like 2000 upvotes. So a lot of people really love this post. And I'll briefly read it. This guy writes every distro is awesome quote. Ubuntu is awesome because it provides an easy and well-known entry point to people to use Linux and helps bring Linux into business. Sentos and real are big driving forces behind the Linux use and servers and sports the secure and stable internet we have today. Manjaro and Papa West provide good platforms for the first time Linux user at home and helped Linux gaming adoption and support. Arch provides incredible community resources like the Arch Wiki and allows people to start tinkering with Linux in deeper ways without having a huge barrier to entry. Gen 2 provides an incredible platform on which users can build what they want from the ground up and provides fantastic in-depth community resources in the process and all the other distros that I can't sit here and spend two hours naming are all awesome and collective communities that do amazing work use the distro you want and have fun. All right. So that's a nice post. I can see why they got 2000 upvotes. It's a very utopian look at the Linux ecosystem out there as far as all the distributions we have. They're all amazing. They all do their own thing. Now do I agree with that? I agree with what he put in this post. He or she I'm not exactly sure but Ubuntu is awesome because it does this. It's easy it helps bring new people to Linux. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Absolutely agree. CentOS and real are big and servers and business and okay great. Manjaro and Papa West they're great because gaming adoption and all the stuff they do for steam integration and things I agree Arch. Arch has the wiki. Yeah. You're right. I guess that's Arch's contribution. I might have went into a little more detail with Arch other than hey Arch has the wiki and then Gen 2 you build it from the ground up. Yeah. I agree and they're all awesome because of that but the one thing I will say about his list is these are all big distributions and like main distributions like if you're building a tree of Linux distributions these are some of the major major branches off of that tree. So things like Ubuntu and Red Hat and Arch and Gen 2 especially their major branches of the Linux tree. Now CentOS is based on real Manjaro is based on Arch but even those I mean Manjaro does a lot of things differently than Arch. It's you know based on Arch it uses the same repositories but it does a lot of things differently than Arch. So they're doing their own thing and I think that's what he's getting at with the distributions he just named here. Not every Linux distribution is like that though. There are a lot of distributions out there that are not unique in any way they are simply I forked a distribution I changed the GTK theme icon theme you know put a nice wallpaper on it but they're not necessarily doing anything unique and that's always been my complaint. I agree most Linux distributions are awesome as far as I can get all of them installed and I can pretty much run any Linux distribution I want to run if I'm being honest they're all pretty good. It's rare I come across one that doesn't install correctly or after you get it installed correctly it just doesn't work right. That's rare it's rare you find one of those that's just broken. I can think about the early days of my YouTube channel I remember doing so many distro reviews especially in that first year I probably reviewed like 200 different Linux distributions over the history of my YouTube channel and it's very very rare that I found a bad one. If you go back and look at my distro reviews I can only think of a handful that like I said hey this is bad like this doesn't work it's trash because I typically I'm not one of those people that get angry and trash somebody's work but of the 200 or so that I've ever taken a look at they're really just a handful that I thought this isn't good but there's another argument to be had too so say I reviewed 200 distributions in the history of the YouTube channel 5 were bad but what I also sometimes don't point out to you is a lot of those other 195 distros that weren't bad you know they installed fine and I could use them but a lot of those 195 distributions are not unique in any way they don't really serve a purpose and there's a lot of duplication of effort out there from a free as in freedom perspective I can also say that not all GNU slash Linux distributions are the same as far as their take on proprietary software some of them most GNU slash Linux distributions of course have some proprietary software in them you can't get around some of that because of the drivers and multimedia codecs and things like that but some of them install unnecessary proprietary software they go out of their way to install proprietary garbage on their systems no proprietary web browsers proprietary text editors proprietary office suites I don't like that I have never thought that was a good idea by default all of your user applications should be free and open source software if you're maintaining a GNU slash Linux distribution I know not everybody supports the free software movement or the open source software movement but think about it if you're maintaining a GNU slash Linux distribution and you don't support the free software movement it's a contradiction it's a oxymoron I don't understand why some people that maintain Linux distributions can't see that but overall without me running too much I agree with most of the sentiment this was just designed to be a wholesome Reddit post this guy's every distro is awesome post it was nice it was friendly you know and you know what I'll up vote it to give him a vote right here on camera because for the most part he's right they're all pretty much awesome and that is it for this edition of unfettered freedom unfettered freedom is now a bi-weekly podcast so we release every two weeks now before I go I need to thank the producers of this episode I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinian, Mitchell, Devin, Fran, Arch 5530, Akami Channel Chuck, Claudio, Donny, Dylan, George, Caleb, Devils, Lewis, Paul, Scott, and Willy these guys they are my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys episode 8 of unfettered freedom impossible I also want to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen those of you watching the video podcast are seeing a lengthy list of names on the screen these are all my supporters over on Patreon because again this channel is supported by you guys the community if you'd like to support my work please look for DistroTube over on Patreon alright guys peace