On 10/17/2015 7:57 PM, Mayayana wrote:

All I want is a decent computer that I control myself.
I'd be less bothered by people who choose shopping TV,
frankly, if a straight computer was also still an easy option.
But that's becoming an increasingly complex challenge.
The AOL walled garden is not an offering. It's a sneaky
strategy. The complexity of settings and actions required
just to prevent Win7 being overwritten by Win10 is a good
example.

Run whateverOS in a VM under whateverOTHERos.
But, aren't you trading one "walled garden" for another
in the process? How much are you willing to pay
(in lack of convenience) for that?

E.g., none of my machines talks to the outside world
(save this one). This means I don't have to worry about
"security flaws", proprietary/private data leaking out,
hostile interactions (even failed actions can be costly;
e.g., DoS).

But, it also means that when I want to send/receive email,
I must get my *ss out of one chair and find my way to
*this* chair. When I want to upgrade the MS machines,
I must "manually" download those updates -- then sneakernet
them over to the appropriate machines.

I can't video conference with clients -- OTOH, I *can't*
video conference with clients! : And, never have to worry
about whether the lens cap is on the camera, or not!

When doing research, if I find an interesting object, I can't
just query my reference archive to see if I already *have*
a copy of the item; instead, I have to jot down the name
of the item and move to another "internal" machine to
perform that check. Then, come back, here, to actually
*get* the item (if I don't already have it) and, once again,
sneakernet it back to insert it into the archive.

We do our banking and online purchases on an "immutable" laptop;
one that essentially has a "write protected" hard disk. So, never
any fear of a "persistent" infection. But, that means we can't
(easily) *save* anything on that machine, either!

So, my machines *are* (and will remain) "under my control".
It's just that I now *have* to control them! :-/