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Windows Sandbox

techcommunity.microsoft.com

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Re: Windows Sandbox

#52

Post by finchisko »

Nowadays it's almost impossible to uninstall an app completely, because most of them creating files willy nilly. And it's same on all known OSes. The side effect we see is system size growing in time.

IMO running an app in a sandbox should be the default option.

On Windows, I used to like sandboxie, which virtualized every write into single directory. Uninstall was easy as removing that dir.

This MS sandbox doesn't allow you to continually run an app in the sandbox, as all data get's destroyed on app close, so it's not sandboxie (or similar) replacement.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#53

Post by pjmlp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what Windows store apps and MSIX sandbox are for.

Except Windows store apps are strictly worse than being able to run regular Windows software in a sandbox.

One of MSIX purposes is to package old style Windows software, your regular Windows software into Windows Store sandbox, hence why I mentioned it.

It is an evolution of desktop bridge, appx and msi.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#54

Post by bfred_it »

finchisko wrote: post #52

Nowadays it's almost impossible to uninstall an app completely, because most of them creating files willy nilly. And it's same on all known OSes. The side effect we see is system size growing in time. IMO running an app in a sandbox should be the default option. On Windows, I used to like sandboxie, which virtualized every write into single directory. Uninstall was easy as removing that dir. This MS sandbox doesn't a…

Isn’t macOS doing that? The Mac App Store only allows sandboxed apps and macOS allows almost only apps from the store to be installed (+ certified developers) unless you change the system's settings.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#55

Post by Havoc »

PSA: Pro version and up. However if you stick an old win 7/8 Pro key into a win 10 home you can upgrade it to 10 Pro

Re: Windows Sandbox

#56

Post by lionpixel »

neotek wrote: post #38

Only Microsoft would come up with a new security feature and then intentionally and arbitrarily limit its availability to the most expensive version of their OS. This is the same company that thinks putting ads in the fucking file explorer is appropriate on an OS they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.

I paid 13€ for an Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM key. I thought everyone is doing this as well?

Re: Windows Sandbox

#57

Post by cm2187 »

ezoe wrote: post #45
dman wrote: post #2

Please do not make this a Pro / Enterprise feature. I do remote tech support for my parents and would love for them to browse / use apps in a sandbox.

Your problem can be solved by not let your parents use Windows.

Like get them to learn a lot of linux command lines?

Re: Windows Sandbox

#58

Post by revanx_ »

crummy wrote: post #40
revanx_ wrote: post #36

This is not a sandbox. All this does is launch windows in hyper-v virtual machine and configures the virtual environment automatically for you. You could achieve all of this yourself manually and you still wouldn't call it a sandbox, you would call it VM.

Can't you use a VM as a sandbox?

Sure, I just don't think they should advertise this as such because it's nothing more then a VM. It's not some new windows feature, you could do this same thing since Windows 8.1 using hyper-V or since windows XP using something like Virtualbox.

A proper sandbox would be if you could run a program in the same operating system with an isolated execution environment, similar to how sandboxie does it.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#59

Post by finchisko »

bfred_it wrote: post #54
finchisko wrote: post #52

Nowadays it's almost impossible to uninstall an app completely, because most of them creating files willy nilly. And it's same on all known OSes. The side effect we see is system size growing in time. IMO running an app in a sandbox should be the default option. On Windows, I used to like sandboxie, which virtualized every write into single directory. Uninstall was easy as removing that dir. This MS sandbox doesn't a…

Isn’t macOS doing that? The Mac App Store only allows sandboxed apps and macOS allows almost only apps from the store to be installed (+ certified developers) unless you change the system's settings.

On macOS some protection was added, so apps cannot write to system protected directories.

But I was talking about all files that app creates. Like files in home dir (eg. ~/Library). If you remove the app, those files stay there and occupy space.

The only way you can partly clean up the mess, is to delete home dir from time to time (but backup important files first). Even then, there might still be files in /usr/local etc.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#60

Post by setquk »

neotek wrote: post #38

Only Microsoft would come up with a new security feature and then intentionally and arbitrarily limit its availability to the most expensive version of their OS. This is the same company that thinks putting ads in the fucking file explorer is appropriate on an OS they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.

I wouldn’t worry because it won’t work anyway so you’re not losing anything. When they introduced Virtual Secure Mode in windows 10 with big fanfare, there was a CVE that followed almost immediately.

The case in point is it’s putting lipstick on a pig at this point. Every change that is made comes with another security or friction factor. Every problem solved creates two more.

They need to stop adding shit to it and fix what is already there.

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