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

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

#191

Post by beeflet »

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. *…

they are not incompatible. You can have secure boot and FDE for both linux and windows on the same system.

Just put linux's boot drive on a removable USB that has boot priority over the builtin drive. Then configure UEFI secure boot so that it works for both windows and your custom keys.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Sakaki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Inst...

This setup has the added benefit of making it so that windows can't overwrite your linux boot drive, but from linux you can still access your disk from disklocker

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

#192

Post by DarkCrusader2 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #63

I may recommended the same for my parents. 20 years ago Ubuntu was the go-to for baby's first Linux. Is that still the case?

Would highly recommend Mint. Very stable, sensible defaults. Updates never broke anything in the past several years I have been using it on desktop and laptop. Just install the latest LTS version, turn on automatic updates and forget about it.

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

#193

Post by morshu9001 »

Aurornis wrote: post #57
PostOnce wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Make sure libreoffice is included Probably an unpopular thing to say here, but in my experience pushing non-tech people to use libreoffice as part of a Linux transition is a fast track to getting them to hate Linux. Using Google Docs has been much more welcoming in my experience. Something about libreoffice doesn’t resonate with a lot of non-tech people.

GDocs is so nice, haven't even thought about Office or similar software in years.

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

#194

Post by repiret »

beeflet wrote: post #182
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important part in the parent is "that don't need a user password". You just said you had to supply a (user) password. With a TPM you can set it up that your disk is unlocked automatically, but only if no-one changed anything in the signed boot chain. This is the default with Bitlocker on Windows and is also possible on Linux, though somewhat more finicky.

but why bother? I can fit enough entropy in my head to make my hard drive uncrackable, and I can back up my data even if some chip breaks. It's just added complexity and corporate control so people can use worse passwords

But most people don't want to enter a password, and if you make people enter a password too much, they'll choose terrible passwords and put them on a sticky note. Windows Hello can only be done securely with a TPM. A server that I want to turn back on all by itself after a power outage can only be done securely with a TPM.

I want a TPM in my computer so I can have the security and convenience. Yes, it's another point of failure. But I need backups in case the hard drive fails anyway. And besides, the OS can be designed so I can enter a password if I need to use the drive without the TPM.

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

#195

Post by beeflet »

1over137 wrote: post #42

Where I work, I'd love to move our remaining Windows boxes to linux, but there's often software that only works on Windows. How well does Wine work these days? Can they run CAD software for example?

Not really.

On linux, you have OpenSCAD (which is okay for some applications) and you have FreeCAD (which sucks imo). Right now, I just use OnShape which works in my web browser and is similar to SOLIDWORKS (and it's $0 for students).

In the future I will try running windows CAD under linux using kvm and this: https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary

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

#196

Post by beeflet »

repiret wrote: post #194
beeflet wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but why bother? I can fit enough entropy in my head to make my hard drive uncrackable, and I can back up my data even if some chip breaks. It's just added complexity and corporate control so people can use worse passwords

But most people don't want to enter a password, and if you make people enter a password too much, they'll choose terrible passwords and put them on a sticky note. Windows Hello can only be done securely with a TPM. A server that I want to turn back on all by itself after a power outage can only be done securely with a TPM. I want a TPM in my computer so I can have the security and convenience. Yes, it's another point…

>Windows Hello can only be done securely with a TPM

I think in general biometrics are in the same ballpark as low-entropy passwords. IDK, I personally have no faith in trusted computing hardware because it can be broken with the right equipment. You're right that it can be used alongside ordinary security measures, but I just think it encourages putting your eggs into a cryptographicially-weak hardware-strong basket (which represents a downgrade because crypto is stronger than hw).

>A server that I want to turn back on all by itself after a power outage can only be done securely with a TPM.

Can you describe how this prevents a MITM attack? I assume you mean a remote server? I've heard of colocation setups like this, but I think they rely on a couple of unstated assumptions.

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

#197

Post by Arnavion »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #121
p_ing wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft abandoned OPAL/SED support due to vendor's just f-ing it up making the encryption worthless. YMMV.

?? OPAL is transparent to the OS, Microsoft doesn't need to see/care about it. I'm multi-booting Win11, Linux and GhostBSD on my OPAL2 encrypted drive (on a ThinkPad Z13) and I've got zero issues.

They're talking about Windows Bitlocker. It used to be able to use hardware encryption if the drive supported it, then there were sufficient vulnerabilities in implementations that it now always does software encryption.

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

#199

Post by throwaway2037 »

glaucon wrote: post #126

It seems to me that he's missed Teams off his list of "where this might not work for you" situations. A lot more than half my money comes from clients who know of nothing else. I'm not pleased about this, but it's another part of their grip on their more-or-less monopoly.

I would also say that the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook is much better than the web app. Can you even drag and drop emails to attach them from the web app? I never tried it. (It always bothers me that I cannot do it in Gmail. Attached emails are so common in the business world.)

Also: Almost all replacements for Excel are much worse, and incompatible with existing VBA macros that run a lot of HR, accounting, budgets, and other support functions.

Regarding Teams desktop app vs web app: Is there a big difference? I don't have experience with the web app.

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

#200

Post by throwaway2037 »

lutusp wrote: post #105

This is an excellent article as well as a sign of the times. I wish the list of Linux choices had included Mint, which is essentially Ubuntu without Snaps. Snaps are a partly closed-source Ubuntu project that contradicts the open nature of Linux. Linux users can install the free software suite LibreOffice, which not only replaces Office but reads and writes the same file formats. Many similar choices exist, this is j…

    > contradicts the open nature of Linux
How do you feel about binary blobs required to run most WiFi cards in Linux? And, I am pretty sure that both NVidia and AMD have similar (binary blobs).
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