Baaron87

I used to use it years ago but I haven’t used it in quite a while. Kind of surprised it’s still around.

I do recall it needing access to quite a bit of permissions for tracking purposes. Outside of the camera and GPS though I don’t remember it all off the top of my head.

If you aren’t going to use it I would say it’s best to uninstall it.

As far as it being a risk; I don’t think it is? Hoping someone else will chime in on it

Edit: some of this was answered while I was typing this out. I’m not a fan of kernel level anything personally. And yeah, most devices already have a way to track it down if needed. Prey would be redundant.

I was starting to group together my older computers for potential recycling, but they’re now going to be repurposed after thorough testing. Not a fan of where big tech currently wants to go

What an absolute non-answer Moore provided.

Remember which companies are pulling this nonsense and boycott them going forward.

Ah, no I saw the comment but missed the part where Amazon is letting other companies use the sidewalk protocol. I’m fortunate enough to have neighbors who don’t use Amazon’s stuff, but if other companies are using their tech it’s a moot point.

I wonder if any of these appliances would stop functioning if the bluetooth and wifi module was suddenly disconnected? Not actually asking, just putting the thought out there. I miss “dumb” products.

Would be easier to create a “guest” network to connect those appliances to and make it a LAN (local area network) only. Can’t phone home. Can’t download updates.

You’re probably going to find that the terminal will come up at some point no matter what version of Linux you choose.

For most I would recommend Mint, but since you mentioned having a negative experience previously, perhaps Zorin OS would be a better alternative?

If you want a hardened OS that would be difficult to break, an immutable OS may be a better route for you. Here’s a link with some options to choose from. My recommendation would be Fedora Silverblue.

As someone else mentioned, you will still need to use a password when making changes to the system. You can set it to boot without a password if you prefer to. I use Bazzite (gaming focused immutable OS; based on Fedora Silverblue) and I want to say 90% of the time I only need my password at boot.

If you need office apps, LibreOffice and Open Office should do what you need. MS office can be a challenge to get running, but the online web versions will run out of the box.

Hope that helps!