8 ms·
As a kid, the only OS I was aware of was Windows. Once, my computer was infected to the point where it was almost unusable. A more experienced friend suggested
by happy-go-lucky 9y ago
As a kid, the only OS I was aware of was Windows. Once, my computer was infected to the point where it was almost unusable. A more experienced friend suggested a non-free antivirus and the CCleaner. After a lot of effort, I could get my machine back to working, but it became so slow that it led me to discover Linux. Now, on a Windows 10 machine, I’ve nothing but Defender, and since the aforementioned experience I’ve never had to use any other antivirus, a ‘junk’ cleaner, etc. Once bitten, twice shy :)
Edit: I hated investing in anti-stuff.
- exhilaration 9y agoI rescued my neighbor's Mac from an adware invasion using Malwarebytes so I I would argue that not all these tools are created equal.
- sundvor 9y agoMalwarebytes is great. However, what if it was their installer that was attacked in such fashion? Trusting old memories of what's good or not can be dangerous. I remember getting caught out once by CoreTemp which suddenly packed a load of dung in its default installer. :(
- kbutler 9y agoSourceforge revolutionizes open source by providing free hosting for projects! [later] Sourceforge - You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. [still later] Sourceforge is respectable again! (hopefully?)
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago> Sourceforge is respectable again! (hopefully?) When pigs fly. I cringe every time I encounter a project hosted on SF and have to play their stupid find the download link game.
- PenguinCoder 9y agoUh have you been there recently? Like in the past year? The company is under new management, and cleaned up their act and download pages a lot. Sourceforge is headed in a better direction again.
- lightedman 9y agoYet while SourceForge improved, Slashdot became a clone of HN's front page and is a cesspool of horrid editing staff, now. So take that as you will. That tells me that SourceForge is probably bound to degrade some time soon.
- foobarchu 9y agoFor apps it supports, Ninite is a good way to avoid that kind of thing, although it may not have stopped the CCleaner issue. They package their installer with extraneous bundles removed.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoI hope Ninite reads this and pulls them off their list of installers. It should be automatically removed from end users by Ninite as a direct response to this.
- foobarchu 9y agoWell, it's not on the list currently, so either they never had it or they did indeed remove it.
- voltagex_ 9y agoBoxStarter is looking promising - http://boxstarter.org/ http://boxstarter.org/
- c12 9y agoYears ago I used to use CCleaner and their disk defragmentor tool. Now I too am on Windows 10 and use neither, still it's sad to see this sort of thing happen to what I remember being decent free software.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoIIRC, CCleaner used to come with some unnecessary stuff that caught users unawares.
- andrewjw 9y agoIf you have an SSD then defragmentation does nothing
- superasn 9y ago> it led me to discover Linux As someone who is the same boat but hasn't discovered Linux yet, how hard would you say it would be to install a version of Linux that support 3 monitors (using an onboard ATI card and a PCIe card)? Last time I tried installing it this is the part I gave up at. Also as a person always been aware of Window I find the graphics in Ubuntu lacking some finesse, i.e. the scrollbars, window panes look like that created using Java applets (granted it is a matter of taste and personal choice) but what is the most professional looking desktop to try right now? Sorry i know this is off-topic but I too really want to switch from windows and don't want to waste money in Macbooks so any advice would be appreciated.
- baldfat 9y agoUm what did you install? Personally I have been an OpenSUSE guy for almost 10 years now. I would be surprised that you would have a problem. Ubuntu should also be found. Stay away from Fedora and Arch unless you don't mind getting into some set up files. Personally it is fun getting things setup for me and so I enjoy Arch and Fedora and sometimes it they are just as quick and simple as OpenSUSE and Ubuntu.
- superasn 9y agoI tried Ubuntu only. Couldn't get the third monitor to work. As per another comment I will give it another try and see if things have changed now.
- gigatexal 9y agoUbuntu makes this pretty easy. Also solus 3 would be a good choice. And there are a number of resources and tutorials for this very thing. You can also customize your desktop environment so the critique of scroll bars and such can be resolved.
- dijit 9y agoI recommend KDE, it feels a bit more well put together for a desktop these days. With regards to your question about triple monitors. I mean, I managed to get triple monitors working on FreeBSD without much fuss so I am not sure of how much help I can be when I say "it should just work". I am obviously biased. But, it's likely that it will just work, the open source drivers for AMD are significantly superior to the open source drivers for nVidia. Although I only have nVidia cards running and I have 2 setups with triple monitors.
- ryan-allen 9y agoI downloaded a GTA 5 mod that had malware bundled and Windows Defender didn't catch it. I run Malwarebytes as well these days, but that's it.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoI’m not a gamer. Also, I can’t recommend using or not using Defender. For aimless browsing I use my Linux box, and one of my favorite browser extensions is uBlock Origin. Nowadays I don’t have to carry flash drives or other storage devices and never plug in things that belong to others :)
- turtlebits 9y agoDo you never run software you haven't written/audited?
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoI do, but I try to see if it's from a trustworthy source.
- jszymborski 9y agoPirform has been around for ages and has always been as "trustworthy" a software publisher as one could hope for. Supply-chain compromises are hard to completely mitigate, particularly with bundled windows installers.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoAdvertising never works for me. Linux and Windows are worlds apart.
- josefresco 9y agoCCleaner is not an Anti-Virus. It does not run in the background (at least the free version) and will not slow your PC. It helps users locate and remove temporary/cache files buried in the OS to free up disk space. It is very useful - even for pros. Defender will not do this.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoCCleaner does sell a bit of FUD though - "your computer is slow, use us so it goes faster". I don't think "crap" is causing significant slowdowns anymore, maybe frees up some disk space but nothing that the OS can't do itself either.
- Moter8 9y agoDeactivating that programs start on boot, maybe?
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoThe culprit was the non-free AV. Gone are the days of simple passive signature scanners. Now they all sink their claws deeply into the OS intercepting filesystem operations, network packets, and any other privileged activity. Performance be damned.
- emodendroket 9y agoTo be fair, they're responding to more sophisticated virus distribution.
- happy-go-lucky 9y ago> The culprit was the non-free AV. Yes it was. After using it a couple years, when I decided to get it off my system, it was far from easy. It simply didn't go. Because of the trouble it was giving me, I thought I had no choice but to renew my subscription. It was at this point I started looking for an OS alternative.
- danieldk 9y agoGone are the days of simple passive signature scanners. Now they all sink their claws deeply into the OS intercepting filesystem operations, network packets, and any other privileged activity. Well, things have been like that for a long time already. E.g. Thunderbyte used an ISA card in the early 90ies to insert itself before and outside the operating system [1]. Old anti-virus programs also used Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderByte_Antivirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderByte_Antivirus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSAV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSAV
- digi_owl 9y agoOn the note of ISA cards, i once helped install a card on some school computers that inserted itself before the OS loaded and split the HDD in half. This so that on certain conditions a clean version of the OS etc could be loaded from the half that was hidden during normal use.
- 9y ago
- ComodoHacker 9y agoFeels like you've vaccinated you brain and developed antibodies of security-conscious computer usage patterns.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoYes, because it was a lesson learned the hard way :)
- jmkni 9y agoI pay for MalwareBytes, I think it's worth it. Apart from that, I just use Defender.
- busterarm 9y agoDitched when they started pushing FUD 5-6 years ago. I worked in the anti-malware industry for 5 years. Pretty much across the board, this kind of software does more harm than good. AV on corporate email servers or your email provider makes sense. Rooting your own computer and leaving it vulnerable to shitty AV/AM vendor's software doesn't. Literally saw malware in the wild that exploited AV software.
- criddell 9y agoDefinitely test drive a couple of Linux distributions. I do so periodically and love seeing the progress. There are really only two things keeping me on Windows. 1. I run some Windows-only applications that don't work with Wine. 2. A lot of Linux software often doesn't work well on a hi-dpi monitors. Aside from that, since Windows 7 (and later versions of Vista), Windows is fine. IMHO, operating systems aren't terribly interesting these days. Everything interesting is in applications on top of the operating system. Windows, macOS, Linux? Whatever. If the application I need runs on that operating system, then I can be productive.
- Skunkleton 9y agohi-dpi is in a sad state right now. Fortunatly, there is good support for hidpi in wayland, and as things migrate that way it will get better. As for running windows apps....how much time do you want to waste? The only windows stuff I really run is games, and the way I do that is by running windows in a VM with the graphics card direct assigned. It works really well, and is super neat, but it was a huge pain in the ass to set up on consumer grade hardware.
- zachruss92 9y agoExciting to hear about HighDPI support in Wayland. I had to switch back to windows after getting a 4k display because it's basically unusable for a 3 monitor setup on Ubuntu (1 4k + 2 1080s). We'll see in a month :)
- Skunkleton 9y agoIf you give it another shot, make sure you are running Xwayland and that you aren't manually setting the scaling factor. In the current version, it will guess a scaling factor based on the DPI of each display, but if you manually set it it will be applied globally and you will be right back where you are now.
- voltagex_ 9y agoI will buy a Chuwi HiBook for any developer who wants to make Linux and HiDPI not suck.