That's all very well but then I suspect you are entirely susceptible to "Mr. Tracker" in that case.

If you're not using phone calls and texts, then you're probably using VoIP and closed source messaging services on a Google or Apple phone that is tracking you 24x7 using wi-fi triangulation that knows exactly where you are at all times to within a distance of 2m - not to mention the additional tracking through apps from Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.

My Android phones and tablets are all de-Googled. Calls, texts and emails are my main communication methods, I have no social media on them at all, no apps with any trackers and don't even have a Google Play Services installation that lets Google track me - I don't even log into my Android devices with an identity.

As far as I am concerned, I am far more secure and anonymous than you are using all those closed and tracking-ridden services for your communications.

...secure in the knowledge that I've not wasted all of that hard-earned money on Apple's overpriced fashion accessories.

2FA exists for stupid people only - those who do not use strong and unique passwords for each account that they have and keep them very locked away and securely backed up in a good and Open Source password manager.

Because even a person that does the above, but does it online with a commercial and closed source password manager is a stupid person.

That is to third-party tracking only - e.g. Faecesbook and WhatsCrap.

Apple still track you 24x7 through wi-fi triangulation on a phone that knows exactly where you are at all times down to 2 metres of accuracy. You also log into that phone with an identity (as you do with a non-de-Googled Android phone) so everything about you is known at all times by either Apple or Google.

Please stop fooling yourself - if you like Apple devices, who am I to tell you otherwise. But please STOP believing that these evil corporations are your "friend", they are not. In both cases, you and your personal data are the product.

Yes it is. In Apple's case (and in Google's case on non-de-Googled phones), they can see every single thing on a phone that you log into with a known identity. They can also profile you through your browser configuration and by what apps you have installed.

In both cases, you are tracked 24x7, including through wi-fi triangulation where both companies know your exact location to within 2 metres based on the strengths of wi-fi network MAC address signals near to you - essentially because the wi-fi adapter on your phone is constantly working in a promiscuous mode which you cannot disable.

The only time you can disable it is to install an Android Open Source Project ROM on an Android phone and NOT install Google Apps that puts the Google Play Services layer onto the phone that provides all the tracking that Google needs. Without Google Play Services, an Android phone has nowhere to report any tracking information to.

If you use an Apple device, you can do nothing about it. By all means enjoy your Apple devices if they are what "float your boat", but don't make up some silly "Applesplaining" story about maintaining your privacy when it is simply not true.

I've locked myself out of it for months now.

I got rid of all my "fake friends" on Facebook as the New Year came and went, that left me with about 80 "real" friends and relatives. I PM'ed them all 7 days before closing my Facebook account, I gave them my mobile number and email address, and told them to come find me on Telegram if they want. (Yes, I know signal is better but more people seem to know Telegram so "small steps", as they say.) I got rid of WhatsApp at the same time.

I feel liberated and calmer as a result and have absolutely no need to go back to it after three months.

Get rid of that crap from your life, you won't regret it in the long term.

I only run Android on my mobile devices (three phones and one tablet) and all of them are now de-Googled and running LineageOS with no Google Apps.

I do still use Gmail and YouTube, on my mobile devices I use a third-party email app (either the one built in to LineageOS or one from the F-Droid store) and NewPipe for YouTube which allows me to view YouTube videos without logging in and hold local subscription lists.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect third-party apps to Google Accounts. Every time you do so, you have to log into the Google account and turn on the setting to allow "untrusted" apps, which then lets you connect them. However, the setting then reverts back by itself. I foresee a near future where they will turn it off completely.

Google want you to use their approved apps with their services because then you cannot avoid the advertising and tracking. Everybody should be taking control of their privacy and getting off of Google completely now - forcing 2FA just forces you to use their apps.

Who remembers when Google's slogan was "Don't be evil"?

...I didn't switch on my Linux PC whilst mulling over my first cup of the coffee of the day and say to myself:

"You know, I find BASH really restrictive. I wonder what alternative shells exist. Let me go visit microsoft.com to see what updates they have for me."

Microsoft solved the problem of "dual boot" for me - it released Windows 8 and beyond, and then I just went totally to Linux.

I'm in full agreement with you.

I've been using Gentoo since 2003, I did try systemd once and found it to offer me no real advantages over openrc. I have openrc working in parallel startup modes, all the machines I've built in around the past 5 years had SSDs for their root filesystems and I therefore never saw any noticeable speed differences between systemd and openrc.

What administration I have done in systemd (my day job is Linux server security on mostly Red Hat systems with systemd) seems both illogical and overly cumbersome - maybe I am missing something but, for example, there seems to be no easy way in systemd to tell if your, say, NTP daemon is called "ntpd" or "openntpd". In openrc, you just go to /etc/init.d and ls *ntp* to find out the name of it.

My attitude has always been "if it ain't broke then don't fix it". I can't remember the last time I had an issue specific to openrc. Likewise whilst I've also heard great things about ZFS, I still use ext4 because, again, it's always done its job for me.

It sounds to me like you're the one who woke up this morning and discovered only one of his two testicles had dropped into his scrotum.

It's like Berkeley Systems announcing the future releases of "After Dark II, III, IV and V", due to the success of their first two-hour long screensaver.

If I had mod points and could mod you up, I would do.

Thank you for a very interesting and reasoned response, I appreciate you taking the time to write it.

Surely you are aware that the ice-age/interglacial cycle is caused by periodic shifts in the earths orbit, that we are right in the middle of an interglacial and are not expecting ice-age conditions for something in the order of 10,000 years.

You've just defeated your own argument there and then, I need go no further. On the basis that an Ice Age is the coolest point of a interglacial cycle, then if we are in the middle of an interglacial, then we are presumably at, or nearing, the warmest point? And is warming not going on now?

And please don't use terms like "asinine". I don't claim to be a climatologist and I am happy to listen to reasoned discussion from people who know more about the subject than I do. But I am a systems engineer of some 30 years experience and reasoned logical deduction is a speciality of mine, you need it for fault-finding systems.

Like I said in my first post, I am prepared to be open-minded on the topic and accept actual proof when it arrives. But you certainly provided that here, you've actually strengthened my case that it's a natural cycle.

By your own argument, then, Linux does not need to have 90 percent of the market to be successful either.

And whilst this topic is specifically about desktop Linux, by the time you take into account all the Raspberry Pi, Android devices, Internet servers and embedded/car systems running Linux, I would say it just about beats the crap out of any other OS for sheer number of devices.

Nope, wrong. Never had to compile a Realtek driver in using Linux over two decades.

A couple of times I needed to do Broadcom ones for some Ethernet chipsets in laptops, but you can avoid ever having to compile a driver by just doing your research into the hardware before buying it.