Awesome! Now we can end the mass delusion and realize Git sucks and has been a monumental drag on developer productivity. Thak you Microsoft!
What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
201–210 of 228 posts
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see a benefit to lockdown, which is improved safety/security for non-technical end users. Security is a difficult topic, even for IT professionals, and it is easier to secure a locked down environment for non-technical users than an open one. If you look at mobile platforms as an example, the prevalence of malware on Android compared to iOS is significant. Now for many I'm sure that trade-off is worth it, but I als…
If a significant number of Android security breaches indeed happen through misleading a user into unlocking their bootloader, that would be a convincing statistic to me. But I'm under the impression that that is exceedingly rare and that Android has many way more pressing security concerns (e.g. the lack of driver security updates to even slightly old devices).
Access to root on the device is the pre-requisite of a lot of attacks, and this presents risks.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/android-root-faq/17135/
Also the control which allows users to install sofware from different sources, leads in many cases to them installing malware masquerading as "free games" or similar.
Android malware is a much larger problem than malware in the more controlled iOS world.
so to me that's a real trade off. you have control of your device and the ability to install software from more locations, however your security risks increase.
For some people that risk will be entirely justifiable, for others, it makes sense to have an option of a more locked down environment.
Personally I like Linux for servers (I have control/responsibility) but for my smartphone I use iOS as it's easier to secure and I don't really want to use that device for "proper" computing.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#203Microsoft is not a company that ever contributed my life as a Linux user and open source contributor for years. In fact, it always made life harder for me. Here is a recent example; because Microsoft made a deal with Lenovo, now new Thinkpads are designed for just Windows. If you're a Linux user, good luck in your new adventure. People say "isn't it like IOS or Android?"; it's not. We had this freedom of using Linux,…
>>We had this freedom of using Linux, and Microsoft has been taking it back.
The only thing taking your freedom back is the economics of selling Linux Desktops/Laptops. And the only thing stopping that is the Linux ecosystem fragmentation.
I'm sorry but no hardware vendor will lose sleep over some thousand developers wanting to run fragmented versions of Linux on their hardware.
>>Microsoft doesn't appreciate freedom
The purpose of companies is to maximize their profits.
>> this is why they used to fight open source and make open source communities look like bunch of marginalized geeks.
And they've by and large failed. The other part about open source's economics is beyond the scope of Microsoft's actions.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#204First step, Github Theme will go Fabric. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric
Second, More ms tools in github.
Third, atom is dead.
Bright enough I guess.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely curious as to what drives a developer to run Linux on Windows rather than just booting into a Linux environment. Is that software support? Is that hardware support that's not available on Linux?
Desktop linux has been much less reliable for me. I'm also using a surface device and like to use it for sketching.
Special input devices is a thing. I doubt the Cintiq would work with any of my Linux boxes in the same way it does on the Mac. This is how we end up with multiple computers...
In general, desktop Linux has been rock solid for me. I even keep my music collection on BtrFS and, yes, I know it's tempting fate.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a significant number of Android security breaches indeed happen through misleading a user into unlocking their bootloader, that would be a convincing statistic to me. But I'm under the impression that that is exceedingly rare and that Android has many way more pressing security concerns (e.g. the lack of driver security updates to even slightly old devices).
Access to root on the device is the pre-requisite of a lot of attacks, and this presents risks. https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/android-root-faq/17135/ Also the control which allows users to install sofware from different sources, leads in many cases to them installing malware masquerading as "free games" or similar. Android malware is a much larger problem than malware in the more controlled iOS world. so to me that'…
That's fair, and those numbers for rooting are a bit higher than I expected. There's the caveat that rooting and complete OS replacement are somewhat different topics, but those stats are still relevant.
So clearly there's a significant demand (some of which I'm inclined to believe is very legitimate), and clearly there are significant dangers.
I guess in the end it comes down to the eternal debate of freedom vs safety. I find it very hard to side with the stance of protecting people from their own stupidity, beyond giving stern warnings. It feels sort of like giving up on cultural progress in humanity :/
And I think we could still do much more to mitigate this attack vector (Big flashy red lights with "probably a bad idea" in all-caps? Adding more fine-grained permissions so root is needed less?) before ceding yet more control to powerful organizations who are already, somehow, in a position to tax 30% of all software and IAP sales on most devices and reject apps that don't align with their interests.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's openable it's not locked down. If I can't trust the kernel then every level above it is tainted (this is assuming you can trust the CPU and firmware, but at least ARM is better than Intel here).
OK, let me be more accurate: "user-openable" in the sense that the user is free to choose to trust any OS vendor they want. What's the unmitigatable harm?
A user that isn't the owner of the device - say a repair tech, but possibly a remote third party - installs an OS they trust, which scrapes all the device owners personal info and sends it to their server. The device owner may not ever become aware of this.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, let me be more accurate: "user-openable" in the sense that the user is free to choose to trust any OS vendor they want. What's the unmitigatable harm?
A user that isn't the owner of the device - say a repair tech, but possibly a remote third party - installs an OS they trust, which scrapes all the device owners personal info and sends it to their server. The device owner may not ever become aware of this.
For the remote third party case, the option to unlock should be isolated from the OS so that it needs physical access (boot to bios/recovery mode). AIUI that's how it's typically implemented in Androids and in Secure Boot.
The point about attackers with physical access is fair, though significantly mitigated on Androids (and Chromebooks I think) by a warning (of varying severity) that the OS has been modified. On my Nexus 5, it's a subtle "unlocked" icon, on my Moto G it's an unmissable red triangle on white background with "warranty void" and other scary words.
It's still vulnerable to the user getting a prebooted device and only seeing the warning on next boot, so not perfect, but also not the only imaginable defense. One could e.g. move initial authentication to the locked down "bios" phase so either (a) the warning is visible there and/or (b) the OS isn't replaceable in the first place without authentication.
And we should bear in mind that a malicious repair tech can probably convince a fair portion of the population to give away their password :/
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's… completely false. At least for me. You should really stop and think before accusing people to have noob workloads. Even cronjobs work… The performance is sometimes better than on native linux, as a few of the syscalls are better implemented on windows. The file performance is abysmal, but that only hurts if you're using npm (and there you're in a world of pain already anyways). The only thing lacking, is that…
Grep 150,000 source files on Linux and on WSL and come back to me. That's a pretty standard console load. It kills git operations, package managers, compilers, the lot. ALL the tools I use it for. Well USED it for. Real data: linux -> 1.3 seconds, all from buffer cache on a cranky old 10 year old HP desktop with 8 gig of RAM and bottom end SSD. wsl -> over a minute on a 12 core i7 with high end m2 SSD, every time. Th…
As the maintainer of ripgrep, I pay attention to these sort of things. I will say that I noticed a similar performance problem in my tests as well, but further investigation revealed that Window's antimalware process was severely throttling file reads. Once I disabled that, performance on Windows is nowhere near an order of magnitude worse than Linux.
Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub
#210Microsoft sucks .