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Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

scottrlarson.com

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Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#31

Post by trinsic2 »

Loughla wrote: post #19
trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

Choose the right distro and automate updates of possible. Mint is the softest landing for Windows users. But they never ever ever ever update anything on their own. Ever. Forever.

Yea I need to think of a good way to automate updates..

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#32

Post by cyberax »

Terr_ wrote: post #11

I know this isn't Stackoverflow, but... Does anyone have a good mental model for disentangling the issues of full-disk encryption versus secure-boot? I've been badly procrastinating with my desktop's new SSD because of it. Use-case is: * Dual-boot where I choose in BIOS/UEFI to go to either the existing Win10 drive or new Linux drive. * I don't need unattended boot at all, I'd rather enter a passphrase every time. *…

You can turn the secure boot on/off at any time. The only effect from this is the loss of encryption keys that you might have bound to the measured values.

So for it to be effective against the evil maid, you really need to bind the LUKS key to it. But you can do that _and_ set a strong PIN for your LUKS key.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#33

Post by gerdesj »

PostOnce wrote: post #22
trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

Make sure libreoffice is included, and ublock origin. Show them how much faster it is, with fewer ads, and no subscription to Microsoft required just to write a document. The business customers might want to know that databases are a lot cheaper on Linux, especially for small business. Literally spoke to an automation company the other week that told me "we have to delete a bunch of stuff every time the database gets…

You have sqlite, mariadb/mysql, postgres and more just for mostly traditional SQL. Then you have the others ... 8)

It's time for change. VMware have tossed themselves off into limbo and MS seem hell bent on alienating a vast swathe of humanity with W11's requirements - weirdest A/B test ever.

I'm working on some bigger clients ...

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#34

Post by trinsic2 »

rolph wrote: post #16
trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

you should look into the idea that you are a business, using linux installs in a way that may be subject to license. if you promote, facillitate, provide resources for installation free of charge, thats probably fine. providing a system for sale, with linux pre-installed, may require, at least some attribution.

Ok thanks for that reminder. I'll look into that.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#35

Post by pizlonator »

I've been living on an Unbuntu variant (Pop_OS) for over a year now and it's surprisingly good. Note that I had been a Mac-and-some-Windows user as far as desktops go for about 10 years prior to that, and had lots of Linux experience before that - so I'm experiencing a 10 year before-and-after.

Things that intrigue me:

- For photos, darktable is surprisingly good. I think this was my biggest single surprise, being a Lightroom user.

- GIMP was always great and now it's even better.

- LibreOffice is good enough that I can live on it just fine. I do miss Keynote, but it's not a showstopper.

- Dia is good enough for diagrams, though I miss OmniGraffle.

- Notice how there aren't any Windows apps I miss. There are Mac apps I miss (Keynote and OmniGraffle).

- Anything involving the web just works.

- Suspend/resume on my Linux laptop works better than suspend/resume on Windows, but not as good as what you get on Apple M hardware.

- Battery life on my Linux laptop is better than on Windows, almost entirely because Windows wakes the laptop up while it's suspended, so if you close the Windows laptop and carry it around unplugged, you'll find that the battery is totally drained after some number of hours. Linux doesn't have this problem.

- Development workflow is amazing. I'd rather program on Linux than anything else.

- The lack of crapware and nagware is so amazing.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#36

Post by trinsic2 »

taspeotis wrote: post #21

> I'm recomming my customers switch to Linux rather that Upgrade to Windows 11 (scottrlarson.com) But of a bait and switch from that to the actual article title… > Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state If nothing else adhering to HN’s guideline on titles would have saved me having to suffer through reading “recomming.”

sorry about that. was trying to clarify the reason for the switch for hacker-news audience.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#37

Post by zrobotics »

IT & software dev for a small-midsize company. I wasn't able to finish migrating last month due to a pressing project, but we're migrating almost all of our systems at work to Linux. 90% of our user's work is done in a browser, and the other 10% is in an in-house application I wrote. That app works on Linux, since my work machine has been on Linux for years.

We'll have a few macs and 2 win11 machines, but the rest are getting migrated.

We're in the Google ecosystem for email, docs, and drive so I'll just deploy Chrome instead of a Libre chromium. I'd rather not troubleshoot user profile issues, and they have access to all our data anyway. Honestly, I fully expect I'll have more than a few users that don't even notice the OS change.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#38

Post by thevillagechief »

Funny seeing this here at the exact moment my frustration has boiled over with windows. I'm just completely baffled at the hostility and disdain Microsoft is showing it's customers. These issues are on top of just the disregard that people actually use these products for work and business so force-updating and breaking them so often, just so they can re-force you to accept their surveillance bloatware. My feeling today has been that we're going to look back at this moment as the straw that broke the camel's back.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#39

Post by slicktux »

Terr_ wrote: post #11

I know this isn't Stackoverflow, but... Does anyone have a good mental model for disentangling the issues of full-disk encryption versus secure-boot? I've been badly procrastinating with my desktop's new SSD because of it. Use-case is: * Dual-boot where I choose in BIOS/UEFI to go to either the existing Win10 drive or new Linux drive. * I don't need unattended boot at all, I'd rather enter a passphrase every time. *…

Being that it’s an SSD it’s already encrypting by default. You just have to set the User and Admin password and you’ll have full disk encryption!

You can set HDD/SSD password via the BIOS/UEFI or (my preferred method) using HDPARM —SECURITY commands.

Then if you take the drive out you can unlock it from another computer so as long as you plug it in directly and the UEFI supports HDD/SSD unlocking during post; if not you can install a Pre-Boot authentication on the drive that runs Linux to unlock the drive and then once unlocked it with the PBA it re-boots and it works as a normal un-encrypted drive.

Look into HDPARM and OPAL standard for full disk encryption.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#40

Post by elevation »

A number of customers are leaving Windows for Linux ahead of Windows 11. To support them, we had to offer a linux equivalent for a bunch of C# .NET desktop apps.

After evaluating a lot of options, pyQT + nuitka gave a reliable cross-platform result (can target distros based on Debian and Enterprise Linux easily.) And we are still able to target Windows for the customers that remain there.

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