reasons to hold off on Windows.

[Maitland Bottoms]

Time for me to chime in on this thread....

Life is too short to run non-free software.

You have choice in OS: Linux, Hurd, FreeBSD, ReactOS, AltOS, ...

You have a choice in distributions: Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives...,
 TAILS, openSUSE, Arch, Gentoo, Pentoo, kali...,
 Red Hat, CentOS, Scientific Linux....,
 Android/CyanogenMod/Replicant
 OpenWrt, OpenEmbedded/Yocto, Angstrom,...

It turns out there are reasons for the multitude of choices,
some technical, most social, driven by optimizing for a variety
of specialized uses.

I, of course, suggest you use Debian - The Universal Operating System,
for all your general-purpose computing needs.

=====

If you are really not all about leaking private data on the
Internet, or only very specific data, then I suggest you stick with TAILS.

=====

Software is bad. Often because it is written in programming languages.

C - the source of many of our favorite buffer-overflow exploitations.

C++ - Yeah, having just gone through the latest GCC-5 libstdc++6 ABI changes.

Python - Python2 or Python3? Oh, and which distribution tool is current?

Java - write once, run anywhere
 Burned user: Uh, could you send us a new .jar Java library without the security bug?
 Java Developer: No. What part of "Write Once" didn't you understand?

=====

Gnu Radio - certainly a moving target. But rather than give up I've
forged ahead to make Debian's Gnu Radio ecosystem more useful.
Debian 8.x Jessie will quickly work with your rtl-sdr, FunCube Dongle,
Ettus uhd, miricom, hackrf, bladerf, rfspace, and airspy devices.

David W2LNX is preparing to help me add openhpsdr hardware support.

I could use help with updated softrock and iquadlabs sdrstick support
too. Patches welcome.

Nice to see under the AMRAD SDR web pages that the Ubuntu packages
of quisk support the Charleston board. There is a reason for that.
You are welcome.

=====

....Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the flamewars

vi/emacs
sysvint/systemd
gnome/KDE/unity/MATE/awesome/...
mysql/mariadb/postgresql
Linux/BSD
ext4/ZFS
CW/Phone/PSK31/WSPR/APRS
Icom/Yaesu/Kenwood/Motorola/Elecraft/FlexRadio
AllStar/Echolink/IRLP

YKINMKBYKIOK: Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay.


73 de aa4hs,
-Maitland