Freedom Means Knowing What’s Installed

The Upgrade to Freedom campaign exists to remind users that better, community-driven operating systems to Microsoft Windows do exist and that there are alternatives that don’t compromise transparency, security or user trust.

As headlines highlight Windows missteps and questionable design decisions, now is the perfect time to explore what Linux distributions like openSUSE’s have to offer.

Users on most Linux distributions won’t wake up one day to find an unexplained system folder quietly added to their hard drive.

People won’t be told after the fact that deleting an empty folder called inetpub somehow exposed their system to attackers. And they won’t be left scrambling through news articles, forum threads, and vague documentation just to understand how a simple action led to a security risk and is now their problem to solve.

That’s because openSUSE is built differently. Its changes are transparent and trackable.

When a system changes, the user will know it. Updates are logged. Packages are versioned. Every file is traceable to the package it came from. If something gets added to the filesystem, users can see exactly why it was added.

System security with openSUSE is built on principle; not on secret folders. People won’t find out after deleting an unused directory that their system became vulnerable. In the openSUSE world, if something is essential, you’ll know it upfront, and it’ll be tied to a clearly installed package like apache2 or nginx.

Release teams don’t assume people want a web server or developer tools unless they explicitly install them. For people who want them, they will be prompted, informed, and given configuration options. They won’t get system directories or services that are unrelated to the actual needs of their system.

Why does this work a newcomer to Linux might ask? Because the community has oversight and keeps the system designers accountable. Every package, every change, and every system behavior in openSUSE is subject to community review and open discussion. This is why software release life cycles and testing are the norm and not the exception. If something odd shows up in an update, someone will notice and ask why before it lands on their machine.

There has never been a more optimal time to switch your system to a Linux distribution like openSUSE than now. It saves users money, extends e-waste from going to landfills and recycling centers, empowers creative professionals, gamers and more.

Download openSUSE Leap, Slowroll, Tumbleweed, Kalpa or Aeon and see what you’ve been missing. What are you waiting for? Make the switch today.

This is part of a series on Upgrade to Freedom where we offer reasons to transition from Windows to Linux.