 I have always used and advocated for the use of a hundred percent free and open source software on my channel. It's been a recurring theme. I don't even talk about it that much more because I just expect everyone abides by it. But one question is is this is the search for using an entirely free pro-privacy operating system? You know, how far do you go with that? How much are you gonna purity spiral on that? What is the actual borderline of how far you should go? You know, let's find out. I actually have an email here today which of course I printed out because I don't like reading things on a computer screen. And it goes something like this. Hey Luke, first of all, I want to say I really enjoy your work. I'm an avid user of larbs, fan of your rants, etc. I wanted to ask you a question. I've been roasted. I've been roasted for using Artix because it's not FSF approved. That is, it's not approved by the free software foundation which has the highest standard of free software usage. And this guy, once again, is being bullied by evil Linux nerds, so we have to do something about it. I totally agree that free software is important, but at the same time I want to be pragmatic and not use a poop tier OS. We don't say that word on this channel. Just, you know, like Geeks, that is GUIX, which is a fine distribution. But anyway, in your opinion, is it morally wrong to not go 100% Stallman, that is, to use only free software and stuff like that? Or do you draw the line at a certain place? Like I do, i.e. following the spirit of the law in instead of the letter of the law, I will never install a non-free software on purpose or run Windows slash Mac, but I will use a base install of Artix, lol. Now, first off, the things that he's saying about Artix Linux, they applied at 99% of Linux distributions. There are only like six or seven distributions that are approved by the FSF, okay? There are two things that are really important. I'm going to finish this email first. Or do you just go ahead with something like Artix and try to identify and remove non-free packages? Yes, I know Parabola exists, but I am sick of distro hopping. What are your thoughts, Richard? So, Richard, well, first off, what the two things that the FSF usually looks for, or the things that I guess most Linux distributions, the reason they're not approved by the FSF is, one, the distribution has to only allow free software within its repositories. It can't do something like, you know, have some kind of non-free package or even a non-free font in their repositories. They have to be 100% clean, even in the case of Debian. Debian separates free and non-free programs, but that is not enough for the FSF. They have to not even be compatible with non-free programs. Now, of course, theoretically, you could install non-free programs on any of the FSF approved distros. They're just not officially supported in any way. So that's the one thing. The other thing is for to be approved by the FSF, you have to use the Linux Libre kernel or some kind of equivalent. And that means you have to use a version of the Linux kernel that does not allow any proprietary blobs. So that means if you put, if you put that a FSF distro on most computers, it is just not going to work. It might, well, usually the Wi-Fi will not work. You'll have to replace the Wi-Fi card. And you might not be able to do that without, you know, changing the BIOS, the core boot or something like that. So it's a big, it's a big rigmarole. Now, I have two computers that are entirely Libre booted. I've run Parabla on those, which is the fully free software version of Arch Linux, which also has a OpenRC variant. But the thing is here's here's my vision of free software. First off, yes, you should always try and use it. And if you are using Linux, you are nearly certainly already using basically all free software except for, you know, firmware blobs on the kernel. That is, you can actually get a program right now called VRMS, virtual RMS, Richard Stallman, and it will search for non-free programs on your computer. And if you run it, you'll probably find that maybe you have one or two, or it really brings up programs that are really free, but it can't identity aren't like GPL or whatever. Like it'll bring up a public domain software, which is free software, but you know, doesn't have the the GPL license. Or like, I think it brings up like BSD. I mean, all of those are free software. But anyway, you can get that program and you'll probably see that on Linux, you're basically already running free software, except for the firmware blobs. Okay. Now anyway, here is here is what I actually think about this. Okay, free software is very important. You should always strive to use it. You should all you should even make your decisions on what computer to buy and use based on free software. I absolutely think that. But you have to be a little realistic about the real world out there because you know, this is the same reason that I I'm very skeptical about using free software cell phones. Okay, because if you get a free software cell phone, oh, it has all free software, it's not sending everything to Google. I mean, that's that's nice. But then you have this phone that is connected to the to your wireless provider, they see all the connections you're making, even if you pay for a VPN, they're going to see all the connections you make, you're going to be using MS or texting protocol as SMS protocol, which is not secure, not not pro privacy or anything like that. Or a lot of these people will use something like telegram where they just have their unencrypted message messages in the cloud that telegram can read literally at any point. Okay, so a lot of people who, you know, free software is important. But realistically, in the real world, there are a lot of people who don't have the operation security to actually get the best out of free software. That is not me saying that you shouldn't try and use all free software, you absolutely should, especially because, you know, free software is usually just freaking better. I mean, that's just a fact of life. But you don't need to be like too autistic about or at least you should target your autism towards other things first. Like if you live in a big city, let's say you have, you know, a Libra booted think pad, and, you know, maybe it has an encrypted hard drive and, you know, you you're all free software and stuff like that. Well, okay, that's nice. But then you go outside in the city and you get monitored by a bunch of cameras. You have to use a Gmail account for work. Everything else you do is monitored. You know, your cell phone makes connections to the nearby towers whenever it to get some kind of message or pings a tower. So, you know, just but even if you have all free software, you can still be totally monitored. And so this is why, you know, if you're going to focus your autism at something, if you if you want to be like super privacy oriented, yes, you eventually want to be 100% free software, but there are other things you can do that are probably a better use of your time, right? So again, get get a think pad, Libra boot it if you can figure out how to, or I mean, really, you know, privacy on the digital privacy, what a stupid word, what a stupid concept because when it comes down to it, you know, if you actually want to do something securely, do it offline. That's the thing that's most important. You know, living where I live, right? It's not like when I live in a city, like, I don't take my cell phone around, I keep it usually turned off in my desk or, you know, in my office or something like that. You know, so I drive around in places that don't have security cameras. No one knows where I am. I pay cash unless I'm exploiting a credit card as I did a video on a couple days ago. But, you know, living out here is much better for your privacy than like if you're trying your hardest to use free software and you're in a city being monitored all the time. You know, you have facial recognition technology that's always putting your face in the system or something like that. So just be realistic about it. So I agree, if you're being bullied for not using a totally FSF distro, it's not that I disagree with your bullying. I think that you have to, or the fact that people are bullying you, but you have to, you have to put it in perspective. You have to be realistic about, you know, how actual privacy works. Try to think if there's anything else I was going to say here. And I will say one more thing. Okay, this is important. I've meant to talk about this in some separate video, but I'll go ahead and say it here. And it'll be a preview for when I do a boomeranta about it later. But one thing that a lot of people misunderstand or misinterpret is, you know, let's say someone like Richard Stallman is roasting proprietary software, how you're a slave for using it or something like that. A lot of people take it as if it stepped on a cactus. A lot of people take it like it's like an assault against them. Okay, if I say something like Google Chrome is a monitoring device and it enslaves the people who use it, that's not my language, that's his kind of language, but if he said something like that, you know, that makes the people who are slaves feel bad about themselves, but that is not his objective. Like, you know, the people who advocate for free software, ultimately they're interested in the the privacy of all these people who are using software and their freedoms. But a lot of people take that as like an assault against their character. Like, if you say something like, you know, Windows or Mac is bad, the people who use Windows and Mac sometimes get insulted by that. You know, not always. I think Windows fans are at least better on that. I think they sort of know that Windows is a terrible, oppressive operating system. But, you know, I think it's important when people, and this is the same thing on my channel, if I give people a recommendation, you know, it's the Soydev tendency to identify with the program you use. So if you hear anyone talking about something else or talking about how, you know, a deficiency in the thing that you personally identify with, you just get like insulted by it. Oh, no, I'm being insulted. Oh, no. So it's just a stupid tendency. So don't feel like that, even if your friends are roasting you. Yeah, that's just the thing to say. So that's about it. See you guys next time.