I appreciate that the machine I regularly use to conduct business and entertain myself was created and sold to me through what is essentially contempt for me and the freedom of my mind, and I would like to make a change. However, this machine is already in my possession, and since it is full of toxic materials, and the hardware seems to function just fine, I don't have the motivation to dispose of it in favor of a chromebook.

Therefore I am requesting assistance on how to transform my machine into one that protects me. My computer skills are not what they once were. Currently, I block all ads, deny scripts, use Privacy Badger, use Mozilla tools, and tunnel all of traffic through a proxy. When a proxy is unavailable, I use onion routing.

What other changes can I make? What proprietary software exists on my machine, including those I probably don't know about, that I should remove, and how do I remove it entirely? Is there a way to shed the proprietary skin on my operating system and liberate the originally free code beneath? I want to do all of this.

My hope is that this topic will generate an accessible guide for all those interested who likewise purchased tools conceived of by the KotUnD? , yet were only made aware of his contempt years later.

Excelsior.

-- GreggBadichek - 07 Oct 2015