Which OS are you using?

7upMan wrote: I predict that there will be an arm's race between Micro$oft and spykiller developers.

That's not even neccessary. We already had incidents with spykiller developers copying other spykiller apps and putting their own spy software into their clones

They're destroying themselves. DWS looks pretty solid, though. It uses the Windows firewall to block Microsoft itself - which is really working, because if you sniff the network, nothing gets out anymore.

If you want to try Linux - just one advice: Stay away from Ubuntu. I recommend Arch Linux or Slackware (if you're not afraid of reading manuals).

The German computer magazine c't quite recently had an article that compared the various distros. Since I don't trust American companies for obvious reasons, I'll limit myself to a European one. And that doesn't leave many.

I don't understand. Linux is developed collaborately.

Slackware's head is Pat Volkerding, I believe he's an American, too. But most of the development comes from users all around the world, there's nothing not to trust than hundreds of eyes.

There are not a lot of commercial distributions. I only remember RedHat or Oracle Linux for being very commercial.

Other distros like Ubuntu tried to sneak Amazon ads into their distro or had other privacy issues, but whenever this happens they lose a lot of credibility.

The thing is that since Edward Snowden, we know that government agencies (as in secret services) can pressure American companies to do almost anything. I am not willing to take that risk. Granted, there is no guarantee that companies in the EU can't be bullied the same way by the secret services in their own countries, but the laws allow for much more protection from the government.

I have my eyes on a distro that is being developed in the EU and seems to have no ties to American companies (which is the case with once-German SUSE, for example).

That sounds really paranoid. I mean, most distributions have a very transparent build system where you can see exactly how software is built.

They all take the same sources and build their programs off of it. No companies mixing stuff in there.

I'm more concerned about Android phones with closed source modem firmware than about Slackware which just builds software, puts it conveniently together with an installer and calls it a distribution

If you worked in the security sector, you'd be paranoid, too. For example, I never use my Android phone for work-related stuff. My Windows system is also locked up quite well, or so I hope. Anyway, there *are* European distros, and I fully intend to explore them once the need is pressing enough.

By the way, what software do you use for playing Windows games on Linux? What other Windows games do you play on Linux beside I-War (2)?