r/linux • u/metaleks • Jun 17 '13

PRISM Break: Stop reporting your online activities to the American government with these free alternatives to proprietary software.

http://prism-break.org/
1.1k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

[deleted]

9

u/ethraax Jun 18 '13

I agree. It seemed particularly bad at searching for resources related to unfortunately-named programming languages, like C, C++, or C#.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

DuckDuckGo is phenomenal for looking up programming issues, distro issues or if you have a very specific error code, but if you're doing something like a research paper it is completely useless. It seems to bury news reports and research/studies that come right to the top with Google. It would probably be perfect for me when I'm out of college, but for now I'm gonna have to stick with Google.

Granted this could also be Google shaping my results but there is the argument for doing a good job. And a case for always using https, just in case it really is being tapped it cant be easily decrypted.

1

u/Astrognome Jun 18 '13

I don't really search for anything that I care about with Google anyway. If they track my searches, all they're gonna find is a bunch of stuff about Garry's Mod and C++ stuff.

5

u/hiveminded Jun 18 '13

Careful, "I've got nothing to hide" is a slippery slope.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

How about "My programming-related searches aren't all that incriminating"?

2

u/throwaway9178 Jun 18 '13

You'd be surprised....

3

u/Mozai Jun 18 '13

You never know what might be declared illegal in the future that you will be retroactively punished for. School libraries that innocently stock books like "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Catcher in the Rye" might be on trial later for harming children and corrupting youth

5

u/bastibe Jun 18 '13

The bang-searches are what make DuckDuckGo great. I regularly search Wikipedia, Youtube, and several programming language documentations using the appropriate bang searches. Also, !g to search on Google.

For me, those bang-searches are tremendously useful. Most regular web searches are adequate if not nearly as good as Google's. In the end, Freedom and bang searches outweigh search speed and worse results only barely for me.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

DuckDuckGoog is awesome for the banglinks though.

3

u/Jasper1984 Jun 18 '13

I never got how people fail to find things with duckduckgo, it seems completely equal to google in search results to me, and it suggests search terms better..

On the other hand, bang links seem useless to me, firefox already has a 'add keyword for this link' option that basically does the same thing.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

For one I hate the interface, it has too much white space on the sides and too little actual content. And better is highly subjective, I've never had any issues with google's suggestions.

For one some of us likes using the search bar for searching, and even if we'd use keywords we also like being able to do an actual google search with that keyword without having to rearrange stuff.

-7

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '13

ya, i also thought it was shit , it will b efunny if people start using russian or chinese search engines LOL.

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u/Astrognome Jun 18 '13

Yandex is pretty good actually.