Author: chuck

Using Linux Full-Time for Work & Play

I’ve been using Linux off and on for the better part of 16 years. When I was 18, I volunteered (and later became an intern) at a local computer recycling non-profit called Free Geek that operates in my hometown Portland OR. Free Geek’s goal is to divert technology that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away, refurbish it, and give it back to our community at no or low cost. Hardware that cannot be reused is recycled in a responsible and ethical manner. Volunteering here gave me valuable exposure working at a non-profit, repairing computers, teaching other volunteers, and also working with Linux.

I’ve dual-booted Linux and Windows throughout college, coming back to Windows in order to play video games. Later on in my professional life I would use Linux for personal stuff, and used Windows and MacOS when it came to “actual” work. I had this impression that Linux was for personal use and tinkering, while Windows and MacOS were for work. My work at this time was either social media management (done entirely through a web browser) or general office stuff (editing documents, sending emails, researching county code, etc). However, one day out of curiosity I decided to use Linux exclusively for a day for work. Then a week. Then a month. As it stands currently, I’ve been using Linux exclusively for both work and personal use for more than a year and a half, and between two separate jobs in wireless and digital marketing.

Let me talk about the reasons why I made this switch. Today, I avoid using Windows at all cost (with the occasional exception of running it in a virtual machine for specific uses) due to the sheer amount of garbage that comes bundled with the operating system. On a typical Windows 10 install, there are dark patterns cramming Microsoft Edge down your throat and forcing you into creating a Microsoft account at install in order to use your computer. There are advertisements literally baked into the operating system which I paid for, telemetry (ie data collection) everywhere – even within calculator. With each update, some part of the OS UX changes so that some manager at Microsoft can say that they did something rather than improving functionality. Not to mention forced rebooting and the fact the system settings are a complete mess (Settings vs Control Panel).

Windows 10 Home (and Professional for that matter) is incredibly bloated with nonsense applications, most of which can’t removed directly. Certainly there are ways around this by using Windows LTSC, but from my own experience it’s quite difficult to find an actual key since they’re sold in bulk by Microsoft.

As privacy, it is possible to dive into settings and switching off at least some of the telemetry, but there’s still nonetheless still a lot of data collection occurring. Even if you do this, once there’s a new software update, these switches are magically turned back on. Of course, the “all your data are belong to us” mentality doesn’t only infect Microsoft products, but sadly the same can be said for any modern smartphone and other devices available today. The primary reason I won’t use Windows 10 is due to the complete lack of trust that the OS will respect my privacy.

As for MacOS, it’s a bit of a different story. There is some tracking that can’t be turned off, yes, but this is minuscule compared to what’s found in a stock Windows OS install. MacOS UX also isn’t the clusterfuck that Windows is. Software comes from a package manager, which is a big plus for security over Windows. The reasons why I don’t use MacOS (outside of some mandatory work tasks) is that 1) Apple devices are stupidly expensive, 2) I don’t want to buy into using the Apple ecosystem, 3) the OS is locked down with little to no room for customization. It’s also not free and open source, so again I have an issue with trust.

So after years of frustration with Windows, enter Linux. As it turns out, Linux has worked out just fine for me over the last year and a half. This of course entirely depends on the line of work you’re in. My current role is done almost entirely through a web browser. My previous line of work in wireless did unfortunately require me to occasionally run a virtual machine of Windows 10 so that I could use Adobe Reader Pro for forms and signatures, and sometimes MS Word since client documents wouldn’t render correctly in LibreOffice. Other than that, Linux is supported quite well for the vast majority of software. Hell, even MS Teams runs on Linux (which I reluctantly have to use). If I were to guess, the reason why Microsoft doesn’t port MS Office to Linux is is order to keep people (and Enterprise) on the Windows platform.

I think that my experience shows that even people with non-developer/programmer jobs can use Linux full-time. There is a bit learning curve, of course, but it’s an OS that respects it’s users. And hell, most stuff is done through a web browser these days anyways.

What are Dark Patterns?

Dark Patterns are user interface elements that essentially trick you into a performing an action or behavior. This especially occurs on social media and shopping websites where companies are using deceptive UX design to trick users into giving away data, installing unnecessary software (which is primarily adware or spyware in nature), or adding their email address to their mailing list where we’ll be spammed for eternity (because even though we may be lucky to find that opt-out link buried at the bottom of the email, the company’s customer email database will likely be sold to marketers). Needless to say, this is an unethical practice and by definition asshole design.

Learning to identify dark patterns will help not only help you avoid being bamboozled yourself, but if you work in the industry it will also help you push back on clients that may ask you to implement one. Note: I am not a UX designer.

To give you some background, the term “dark pattern” was coined by the UX designer Harry Brignull in 2010 where he started the website darkpatterns.org with the goal of “naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces”. On this site, a list of known patterns are identified but I’d like to focus on just a few that I’ve had this personal misfortune of dealing with.

The Roach Motel
Last year I deleted my Amazon account. I won’t get into the reasons why, but I will say that it was absolutely not a straight forward process. With most online accounts, deleting or deactivating your account is a pretty straight forward process, but with Amazon I spent time navigating their settings page which more or less resembles a rat maze. In fact, I had to send them a message to Amazon Support in order to delete my account. This dark pattern is called “Roach Motel“. The design makes it easy for someone to get into a situation (such as signing up for an Amazon account), but makes it very difficult to get out.

Friend Spam
Friend Spam is one that I’m sure many people have had to deal with in the early 2010’s. LinkedIn requested my email address under the pretense it would be used to find people I know on LinkedIn, with the innocent-sounding button “Add to network”. The reality was that they spammed ALL of my email contacts with an invite to LinkedIn while claiming to be a message from me. The result of this shady practice resulted in resulted in a $13 million dollar lawsuit.

Misdirection
This is one that’s very common and that I despise. Misdirection is a dark pattern designed to focus your attention on one thing in order to distract your attention from another. The most common example of this comes in the form of automatic opt-in of email spam. When signing up for an account or service, prominent marketing come-ons distract users from seeing check boxes that by default sign them up for a “updates and offers” disguised as “newsletters”, memberships, or software add-ons like a browser extension. I recently encountered this when I had to install Adobe Reader on Windows 10 for work and not only got an annoying little browser add-on collecting data of who-knows-what, but also a trial for McAfee antivirus which comes with continual pop-up advertisements. Granted, I caught this right away and reinstalled, but these check-boxes were automatically ticked and fools the user into thinking they’re required since they’re right below the terms of service agreement.

There are several others that have been identified that I (like most) have experienced such a Privacy Zuckering which tricks you into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you intended to, or the Bait and Switch when you set up to do one thing such as purchasing a product or service that’s advertised as free (or reduced price) but that it’s no longer available and the page presents similar or products of higher price or less quality.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been highlighting this issue recently (which is how I became aware of it) and has partnered with Access Now, Consumer Reports, Pen America, and Harry Brignull to set up a tip line to report dark patterns.

Read A Fucking Book (on Your Phone)

“I don’t have time to read” is the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard for not reading. It’s almost as bad as “I don’t read books, I read articles”. These excuses come from people who could easily find the time to read if they simply spent less time playing video games, watching Netflix, or doom-scrolling their social media feeds. I am a big advocate of reading books on your phone. I’ve read quite a few books on my phone and just recently finished reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novel and currently reading the sequel. It’s my view that it has never been easier to read books than it is now.

They say the best camera is the one you always carry with you (ie your smartphone), but this reasoning can also be applied to reading books as well. As modern humans, we routinely find ourselves in situations where we have to wait on things, whether that’s a doctor’s office visit, our takeout, riding public transit, or waiting for someone to arrive for a meeting. Convenience is a big factor.

The other big advantage is that you can carry your entire library with you and you can read at any time. Currently, I have 158 books on my phone – physically what would take up a bookshelf is conveniently shrunk down to something that fits in my pocket. Any typical smartphone from the last decade could hold tens of thousand of eBooks right on your device.

Of course there are drawbacks. Aside from the fact you need electricity to charge your mobile device, there’s no doubt that smartphones are a huge source of distraction. As someone that has challenges with self control (sugar addiction), the key to reading effectively on your phone is to not have any apps installed that could potentially distract you, either from temptation or a from a pesky notification that breaks concentration. Removing social media apps from your device is a good first step (also think of the mental health benefits!), but also turning off non-essential notifications like email and messages is a good deterrent from distraction.

Many people also say that they can’t read on a bright screen or that reading on their phone hurts their eyes. I think the obvious trick is to tone down the brightness on your phone or turn on night mode which inverts the colors so it’s white text on a black background. There’s also the ability to adjust the font and font size. There’s also actual e-ink eReaders like the Kindle or Nook that simulates physical paper the reduces eye strain, but it kind of defeats the purpose of carrying your library with you everywhere.

Another drawback, albeit a totally egotistical one, is that you can’t show off your library to show the world how well-read you are. How will your friends or colleagues during a Zoom call know that you’re not a total dolt?

In order to actually read books, there are apps for normies™ like Google Play Books and Amazon Kindle, but I prefer to use the app Librera with my own collection of eBooks (although there’s certainly the benefit of syncing between devices so you can pick up where you left off on your Kindle eReader). In terms of how to obtain eBooks, there is a huge library of books available in the public domain and Project Gutenberg is a fantastic resource to obtain them (and they’re free of DRM). There’s also websites you can obtain almost any eBook for free, though legally it’s in a gray area. There’s also legitimate websites that works with the publisher to sell a DRM-free ePub version of the book.

For me, I try to avoid platforms like Google Play or Amazon since you don’t really own the book (or file), you just have rights to access the content which could be revoked at any time and for any reason (I’m reminded of that time when Amazon ironically remotely purged a version of Orwell’s 1984 from their customer’s eReaders). Using these services not only forces you, the end user, into that company’s digital ecosystem (you can’t take your books with you if you leave Amazon), they’re terrible from a privacy perspective as well. Data like every note, every book download/purchased, every time you turn a page, and even how long you’re on a page is recorded and stored to the company’s servers. Most public libraries have eBooks available and have partnered with services such as OverDrive. Not only does this significantly expand the availability of books to read, it’s also free and completely legal. The drawback here is that your have to wait to read the book if another borrower is reading it. That said, check in with your local library.

Ultimately, I think everyone should be reading more books period. So whether it’s on your phone, eReader, or a physical copy, go read a fucking book!