Windows 10 and privacy

[Dave Yeo]

I don't see why you couldn't install the base eCS on a FAT partition. The FAT driver is in the kernel, I do see that sysinstx.com is missing but could be added. Looking quickly there is some documentation that uses long names, some *nix utilities and some drivers that could be renamed. Of course you'd have to install applications on a drive that supports long names or be very limited in the programs you use.
As you point out, FAT is a horrible file system to use as your main boot partition. I did have a bootos2 install on FAT for maintenance for a long time, updated to 4.5+ level (including LVM and JFS support) and it worked fine for what I needed it for.

[Alex Taylor]

FAT installation of eCS was not officially supported (except possibly in version 1.1).  However, it does work, at least as recently as (IIRC) version 2.0.  I'm not sure about 2.1; ISTR it will no longer work in 2.2 because some required components with long filenames are now installed on the boot drive.

(FWIW, I wrote the relevant parts of the eCS installer and I put considerable care into making sure that FAT installation was still possible up until the last version or two; it just got too hard to do eventually.)

The eCS installer will not let you format the boot volume as FAT. However, if it's already formatted as FAT then it will still let you install to it (at least pre 2.2).

[ivan]

it will no longer work in 2.2 because some required components with long filenames are now installed on the boot drive

Alex, are you saying that there is now a move away from the idea of a small boot partition that can be easily imaged and restored should a problem arise to the windows idea of 'put everything on the boot partition and hope'?

I have always used the small boot partition idea with separate partitions for programs and data which makes backing up data easy.

[Alex Taylor]

it will no longer work in 2.2 because some required components with long filenames are now installed on the boot drive

Alex, are you saying that there is now a move away from the idea of a small boot partition that can be easily imaged and restored should a problem arise to the windows idea of 'put everything on the boot partition and hope'?

No, I'm not.

[Pete]

Hi Andi

Some eCS with most updates available. Base was eCS1.2DE or 2.1DE but don't know anymore. How to find out?

Very simple: Open [BootDrive]:\ecs\ECS_INST.FLG in a text editor. It should contain (only) 1 line like this:-

eComStation 2.1 EN_US Thu May 12 07:09:48 pm 2011


Regards

Pete

[ivan]

Thanks Alex.  One less item to worry about.

[eirik]

The Financial Times has yet another story on privacy in Win10: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fdaddc18-39bc-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c.html.  I will not comment on this, but leave it for your own judgement.

Otherwise, on privacy in FireFox I keep tracking cookies to a minimum (no automatic acceptance), occasionally manually clean my cookies, and have ticked off for not providing sites info on my tracking preferences.

On the other strand of info. under this topic: Partitioning  of the disks (a bit on the side from the title, but given the existing posts).  I have a small JFS partition for the operating system (on D:) and separate JFS partitions for programs and user files.  That way, making clean upgrades or reinstalls (formatting the partition to get rid of old stuff that may mess up the system) become easier and faster.  With the amount of disk space I have, three eCS partitions + a Win7 partition (can't escape Win completely) and AirBot boot manager, this works fine for me.

[ivan]

Just to add fuel to the fire there is this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/03/windows_10_privacy_defaults/ from the Register.

[Martin Iturbide]

Similar one at Ars Technica :Windows 10 doesn’t offer much privacy by default: Here’s how to fix it 

Regards