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Running a business using linux

I’ve run a small business for over 10 yeas. I use linux. I’m grateful to the community and I use FOSS where possible.

I have had some issues over the years, but have always been able to get around them (except CAD in 2013), but recently I’ve had issues with my government (UK). First they introduced ‘making tax digital’ and told me for years that I would have to buy windows only software (there was no legal option on linux until a few weeks before the deadline (www.comsci.co.uk/100PcVatFreeBridge saved the day). The UK Government didn’t create a free solution or any route to that as they don’t want the source to be open for making tax digital so accounting software companies have made a killing!

This week my internet banking stopped allowing payments, it no longer works in firefox (I’m guessing). On the telephone they asked me ‘what search engine I was using’^+^ and advised to use google.

What is the best UK business bank to use if you use linux to run a small business? Do I have to use Chrom(e)ium? Does anyone else use linux for business admin? Is anyone (Freesoftware foundation, etc) thinking about the creeping legislative changes that make it literally illegal to use FOSS and linux?

I wanna be an ally, but its so tiring.

^+^ browser ≠ search engine. Yes, I’m pedantic, at least I didn’t confuse them by saying ‘quant’ or ‘duck duck go’, OK!?

bloodfart ,

Damn, you got a lot of replies and no one said to just use paper forms.

Idk if the uk allows it still, it’d be surprising if it didn’t though.

practisevoodoo ,

When you say it doesn’t work in Firefox, does it not work in Firefox or does it say it doesn’t work in Firefox? In the later case and sometimes in both, I have found that just changing the user agent string to something chrome based is sufficient to get it working again.

0x0 ,

The UK Government didn’t create a free solution

You mean you must use their software to do taxes or what?

Back in my neck of the woods you either do them on paper (almost no one) or you submit online… They have well-defined APIs and you can use whatever you want (the IRS submission does use some java crap underneath but it’s fluid and you can save your progress in an XML file).

Although for most people it’s just a matter of logging in, checking that everything is in order, and clicking submit.

refalo ,

I’m grateful to the community and I use FOSS where possible.

Ok, but do you give anything back?

lazynooblet ,
@lazynooblet@lazysoci.al avatar

If you use Mettle, the phone based bank, you get FreeAgent for free. FreeAgent is a really good web based accounting package that works in Firefox. They gave a useful accompanying API and can do payroll, VAT, end of year and director self assessment. It’s great.

7dev7random7 ,

Maybe you can use some German bank. They allow one to interact with their API for free. I use GNU cash for it. Though I doubt that you can file your taxes via GNU cash and be aligned with current UK law. You would need to check it for your own.

EtzBetz ,

Is the free API part actually true for Sparkasse? I was not able to find an API solution for them. I did find something, but beyond a certain step, there wasn’t an actual API.

7dev7random7 ,

www.aquamaniac.de/rdm/

Gives you an adapter and an standalone tool. All banks should use the same API, apparently.

EtzBetz ,

I’ll take a look, thank you

Tja ,

Should be everywhere. I’ve only tried it with DKB.

www.bundesbank.de/en/tasks/…/psd2-775954

EtzBetz ,

So you can actually get transaction information of your own account via an API via psd2?

Tja ,

Yes. I tried it once with Gnu cash and my dkb account, got 12 months of transactions or so.

KarnaSubarna ,
@KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml avatar

Always use a separate Firefox profile for banking needs.

s08nlql9 ,

Or Firefox Containers?

KarnaSubarna ,
@KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml avatar

Firefox Containers are for Cookies and Storage separation. Profile, on the other hand, is a COMPLETE separation in all aspects of Firefox’s user data, setup , add-ons.

notabot ,

I’ve found HSBC to be ok using Firefox on Linux. I don’t know if they have integrations with any accounting software, but the web access works well, and you can export your transactions for processing locally.

ETA: I’ve run small business accounting on Gnucash, I found the learning curve a bit steep, but once you ‘get it’ it’s handy.

fellowmortal OP ,

This is interesting, and meets my needs. I tried Gnucash, but the double entry bookkeeping was a bit to advanced for my small-business’/smooth-brain needs (amortising my stock of utility bills seemed a bit excessive! - though I am sure I was doing it wrong)

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been Linux in the desktop for years. You really don’t have any choice other than to be a little bit flexible.

More times than not it turns out to be a plugin that screws over the site. Here’s my general path:

Won’t load in Firefox? Disable privacy badger and ublock origin

Still won’t load? Try it in a private window with no extensions loaded

Still won’t load? Move over to brave.

Still won’t work? Disable Shields

Still won’t work? Straight to a vanilla copy of edge, (a vanilla copy of Vivaldi would also be reasonable)

Just last night I ran into a problem with my ADP work portal. Things worked fine for ages, All of a sudden my password wouldn’t work. I went into private mode My password now works but loading the actual page netted me a blank page

I opened it up in brave and it just worked outright.

Tja ,

Fuck ADP, same problem here. My company has moved away starting this month, good riddance.

possiblylinux127 , (edited )

Governments should not require the use of proprietary software. I personally would refuse to use it. I don’t live in the UK but in the US I think you could easily make the case.

olafurp ,

I think in that case they would say they accept paper.

fruitycoder ,

The US has a couple of laws and executive orders that is supposed have government stuff (development and purchases) default to opensource but overal enforcement sucks on it and there it little carrot or stick

fine_sandy_bottom ,

refuse.

That’s just not practically possible.

OP said they’re running a small business. It’s great that they want to fly the flag for FOSS, but they’re not in the business of promoting and advocating for FOSS. They still need to do the things they need to do.

Refusing to file your taxes on the grounds that the software provided is not open source is a great way to no longer be in business.

Vilian ,

try winapps

haui_lemmy ,

Tangential:

I‘m running my own IT company since recently and am transitioning to exclusively using FOSS. I still have some things I need to work around like my iOS phone. It already has a linux successor but its not finished yet. Pretty promising though. My plan is to put a fixed percentage of profits to open source projects.

xilliah ,

What is the Linux successor?

haui_lemmy ,

Its a oneplus 6 with postmarketOS.

xilliah ,

Sweet

xilliah ,

Oh I have another question. How do you deal with those elevated Java apps on the sim? If you’re privacy focused I mean.

haui_lemmy ,

Sorry, no idea what you mean. I use the phone the same way I use my computer. I’m sticking to stuff that would probably pop up if it were to get compromised, otherwise I dont bother.

xilliah ,

Ah I mean when you buy for example an Intel CPU it has IME enabled. Some vendors turn this off for you, because doing it at home can brick it. For phones you have some kind of micro Java running on the sim chip and it has full system access and can be patched remotely. I haven’t looked into a real solution yet, but you can also use a solution where the sim is connected via USB. Or don’t use one. There might be other hardware vulnerabilities, but that’s one I know of.

fellowmortal OP ,

This is not tangental - I am heartened, my hope is that this would become normal. Despite my moan, it isn’t that bad and I’m sure I would have had different IT headaches on windows - security comes to mind.

I still use proprietary android software on my phone, but I try not to do anything secure on my phone (this is also getting harder as banks are insisting that I convert to apps)

haui_lemmy ,

Thanks! I‘m currently working with a customer who uses microsoft cloud stuff and windows. Honestly, I would have been done with my work after 20 minutes if he were on linux. Instead I‘m at 8 hrs and a full blown storage solution just because his hardware is incompatible with each other die to windows/microsoft BS.

I can not stress this enough: there are lots of issues on windows which require costly support while the issues on linux usually require a search engine or a friend with some linux experience.

The downside of postmarketOS at this point is the camera functionality. We need to get that working and we‘re golden. On the oneplus 6 I‘m working, its the only major thing that doesnt work. Otherwise the phone is pretty ready.

jawa21 ,
@jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I am not in the UK, but wound up biting the bullet and using QubesOS for my business machine. It’s kind of like a more straightforward to use everyday set of VMs. I have the windows qube there for running CAD/CAM and the sadly sometimes necessary Chrome install. I know this isn’t an ideal solution, but it is the best that I personally have been able to come up with without going through the headache of dual booting, especially when dealing with either govt stuff, need Chrome for crappy websites my clients sometimes force me to use, or actually needing proprietary software that I have licensed for my business (MasterCam in my case).

ashaman2007 ,

I think the key part here is that it’s a guess on your part whether using Firefox is the cause. Do you get any specific error when using the website? Or does something just “not work”, such as you click a button and it does nothing?

Also, I’ve run into stuff like this before, and my best bet has been to be flexible about using other browsers to work around issues. I would suggest testing the banking website with Chromium (or even Chrome). If it works, file a bug with Mozilla (…mozilla.org/…/file-bug-report-or-feature-request…) and just use Chromium/Chrome for only that website until the bug is fixed.

This will allow you to still do business, while still participating in open source via a helpful bug report that could end up benefitting others as well.

fellowmortal OP ,

It works on chromium, not firefox. I guess I should be more flexible. It is likely that the bug is in the bank’s site, so I wasn’t sure about putting in a bug report. The website pauses on the ‘loading’ animated icon, when you try to navigate away, it tells you ‘Your session has expired’. It hasn’t been fixed by changing the user-agent (assuming I got it right). I don’t know if the bank would give them a dummy account for testing, but I’ll file a report anyway.

ashaman2007 ,

If it works on chromium I’d consider that even if it is a quirk on the bank website, chromium is handling it cleanly and allowing you to use the site. That’s something we probably want incorporated in Firefox. I’d encourage submitting the bug report to Mozilla, and don’t assume too much about what they can/cannot do!

mumblerfish ,

My bank blocked “firefox” at some point on debian. Then it was because the version of firefox presented it self to be too old (because debian) to the bank so they blocked me. Firefox was up to date on security pathes, but the bank did not understand that and blocked.

borari ,

Slam an Edge user agent up in there.

xavier666 ,

I remember the good old times when testers has to check if their sites work on Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari/Edge.

LesserAbe ,

Do you use an ad blocker or privacy extension? I’ll just throw out there I don’t think it’s right, but I’ve had to disable adblock to get some banking site stuff to work

Aggravationstation ,

I’m also based in the UK. I don’t run a business but have occasionally encountered problems trying to use Librewolf on the web, especially with Noscript on.

I tried to use Qubes to separate my activities into VMs but I found it difficult. So I did my own, less extreme, approach using KVM.

I created a virtual machine which only has Chrome on it. This is what I use for accessing my bank, Paypal and doing online shopping.

I have a second machine I use for Whatsapp and email and finally a third with Librewolf for general web browsing.

Each uses the same VPN service but different servers.

I only use Freetube and Retroarch on my main machine.

This is on a very beefy Thinkpad I essentially use as a desktop in my office. I use a smaller machine downstairs with VNC on it as a remote when I’m sat on my sofa.

fellowmortal OP ,

This sounds smart

atzanteol ,

This sounds ridiculous. So much work and overhead just to usea web browser?

Cyber ,

It’s not just browsing discussed there. Re-read that again with cybersecurity in mind… online banking shouldn’t be done whilst you’re sharing a browser with tiktok (as an example)

Yep, there’s private / incognito modes, but they just drop all the local session data, they’re not any more secure.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

This is what Firefox containers are for. Put the predatory sites in a container so they can’t see out of it.

atzanteol ,

They can’t “see out” of their own tab either. Websites can only access data in the browser that they create.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

Sure they can, with cookies or tracking pixels for example.

atzanteol ,

What? No. Just… No. My god - the misunderstanding around cookies is ridiculous. I blame the EU - they put a ‘warning label’ on them an now eveyone thinks they’re just evil.

Firstly - Cookies are only allowed to be read/written by the site you requested from. If they could read all cookies that would be a MASSIVE security problem and the internet would be fundamentally unusable for business.

Secondly - This has nothing to do with tabs. Nothing. … Nothing.

Thirdly - There are “third party” cookies which happen when a site coordinates with a third party for things like advertising and allows them to track hits when their ads are displayed. This requires both sites to cooperate. But also see “firstly” as it won’t allow that third party access to, say, your authentication information.

Lastly - This still has nothing to do with tabs.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

This requires both sites to cooperate. But also see “firstly” as it won’t allow that third party access to, say, your authentication information.

Nobody here said it would let them see your authentication details, so I’m not sure why you’re so vigorously fighting that straw man. Third-party cookies absolutely let them know which other sites you’ve visited. That’s their main purpose.

atzanteol , (edited )

Nobody here said it would let them see your authentication details, so I’m not sure why you’re so vigorously fighting that straw man.

Your session ID is stored in a cookie. That is what a website uses to know that you’re logged in. With a XSS attack one can steal your session and use the site as though they were you. So yes - it is “authentication details”.

Nobody here mentioned it because nobody here seems to know what they’re talking about…

Third-party cookies absolutely let them know which other sites you’ve visited. That’s their main purpose.

And they are not stopped by using a separate VM with a web browser. So…

atzanteol ,

online banking shouldn’t be done whilst you’re sharing a browser with tiktok (as an example)

Why? Be specific because unless something has gone horribly wrong sites can’t access data from other sites or tabs unless they’re cooperating. In which case they do so with session data.

And you could simply have a separate Firefox profile rather than spinning up an entire virtual machine.

brbposting ,

Neat, Mozilla’s VPN supports setting servers on a per-container basis.

Though gotta watch for DNS leaks apparently.

xavier666 ,

And you could simply have a separate Firefox profile rather than spinning up an entire virtual machine.

This is what I do. Even though there is nothing wrong with the Qubes approach, I think it’s overkill unless you are hiding from nation-state attackers.

0x0 ,

XSS springs to mind.

And spinning up a VM (or container) is not that hard nowadays.

atzanteol ,

This does absolutely nothing to defend against XSS.

This is the problem with paranoia-based security. You create needless overhead thinking you’re “more secure,” but you’re not. Not in any way that really matters, at least.

0x0 ,

So if i spin up a container to run just that browser for just that site i do nothing against XSS? Interesting.

atzanteol ,

I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not…

XSS is an attack within a site. For example - if I were to embed JavaScript in this post, and your lemmy website didn’t properly sanitize it, then it would be executed by your browser. This would let me run code on lemmy with your credentials. I could then rewrite posts, delete your account, maybe send your data to another site where I could capture your session or credentials.

It has nothing to do with any other tabs and it would be limited to lemmy and the page that executed the script. I couldn’t have that script read data from your bank on another tab, for example.

Aggravationstation ,

It’s not that much work. I created a VM which is running the same distro as the host. I removed all of the apps except for the terminal. Then I cloned it for each VM I need.

The Whatsapp/ email client VM and the Librewolf VM start with my OS so it’s like having them in separate windows. The others I only start if needs be.

atzanteol ,

It’s a lot of effort for the benefit you get, which is practically nothing. Especially considering there are even easier ways to get the same result

Aggravationstation ,

Such as?

atzanteol ,

Just use tabs they can’t access each other’s data. Or use a tab session manager. Or separate Firefox profiles.

Aggravationstation ,

I don’t trust Chrome, Zoom or Teams, but sometimes have to use them. I will keep them in a separate VM but will look into Firefox profiles.

atzanteol ,

So it’s just paranoia then… Which makes sense as it’s way over the top.

Heck, even just creating separate system accounts and doing ‘sudo -u social firefox’ would be easier than spinning and maintaining VMs…

Aggravationstation ,

So it’s just paranoia then…

Yea, not going to lie that is probably the primary motivator here.

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