Windows 11 - Microsoft's Walled Garden. (Dire Warning)

Operating Systems & Open Source Windows
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To its credit Apple does allow other operating systems to boot on its M1 machines, see the Avahi Linux project, but there is no guarantee that future chips or maybe even future firmware releases, will maintain this.

Remember that the PS3 originally had an OtherOS mode that was subsequently removed.

That is all well and good until the Monsanto seeds begin landing on your own lawn.

With Microsoft’s near monopoly in x86 non-server computing, there are externalities to what Microsoft decides for its home and business desktop users. Unfortunately, what Microsoft decides to do does affect Linux users; especially those buying machines without coreboot. Outside of server equipment, it could become very expensive to ask AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix for Linux-friendly features.

It will likely always be possible to buy hardware that runs Linux, but if you are pushed out of sharing the high-volume home and business desktop market with Windows, things can become expensive, prohibitively so. Not everyone can afford a Talos.

Strictly speaking, no, but we are increasingly in a precarious position. I think the original post’s video (despite its errors) is correct in that owner control of secure boot now is highly dependant on Microsofts whims.

If Microsoft does not require an off switch, what motivation is there for vendors to include such a thing? If it is forced on, then there really is not a way to set your own platform key, and you are potentially locked into Microsoft’s UEFI CA.

That is a solution, unless the the option is removed, and if your CPU has been fused with something like Intel Boot Guard, even manually flashing the boot ROM, such as with coreboot, will be unavailable to give you control.

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If hardware ships locked that way, buy something else.

There are plenty of options.

/aside (mostly for the OP)

I mean, i get it.

Don’t get too dependent on Microsoft in case they turn evil(er), etc.

But if you want to run windows, run it. I don’t get the “i’m ditching Windows because i’m now locked into Windows via TPM” crowd.

  • If you’re building/coding stuff exclusively for Windows today you’re making a mistake.
  • If you’re just an end user, try focus on cross platform apps. The apps/data is where the concern is, the OS is irrelevant really (take it from someone who has switched away for 90% of my daily compute). All the OS does is run apps. They are what you need.
  • learn how secure boot and code signing in general works. it isn’t going away
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A lot of things drove me away from Windows, but this is the thing that really dove me towards Linux. It hit me one day that everything I used was multilatform, and a lot of it was open source. OBS, DaVinci Resolve, Steam, Games via Proton, discord, Windows’s big advantage was software compatibility and it just struck me how none of the software or hardware I relied on required it.

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That’s it.

Linux isn’t the problem here, the apps are.

It’s a LOT better now that it was. I switched my Windows workload to Mac about 12 years ago and there wasn’t much i missed on the app side. In fact a bunch of cheap app store apps were better than paid windows equivalents.

I’ve also run Linux (since the mid 90s - and still do on about 2/3 of my personal machines). For a lot of people doing basic email/web/office productivity, linux works fine now.

The one thing linux is missing imho is better/official support for onedrive sync, but again, alternatives exist.

Focus on the apps, as those are what will make or break any transition. If you’re on the edge with Windows, start migrating your apps to cross-platform alternatives as a priority and then the leap is so much easier when or if it happens or is forced.

:+1:

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Chances are, five years from now you can get a decent Windows laptop for $1000 and the same laptop unlocked for $1500. Is the $500 premium worth it? If Dell, Lenovo, Acer, HP and Asus collectively decide to lock the gate, then the gate will be locked and economies of scale will within 10 years make everthing locked, except for niche shops. Same thing if the motherboard vendors do it for the DYI crowd. Most people will be stupid enough to buy these new locked motherboards. Openness is unfortunately not a major selling point in the current market.

So, yes, I can see it as a distinct possibility, that we will have a locked ecosystem even in the DIY market. Will it happen tomorrow? No. Maybe by 2030 60%-70% of all PC desktops will have this.

All very true. If you are a Windows user this is mostly good news.

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Here is a video that shows how one fairly large company is actively working to offer a solution to “The Windows Problem”.
And so far it looks like it’s going very well.

(I will also add this video to the first post for those searching for more information)

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Why is nobody talking about the elephant in the room: the pretty much already decided upon Digital Markets Act of the EU will effectively outlaw the creation of a unreplaceable walled gardens.

It seems to me that companies are currently trying to use their left time (about 1 year) to promote their own services as much as possible.

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While you are correct, often it is just cheaper to do the GDPR crap for all regions than to have one code path for EU and one for the US. So GDPR fallout will still reach the U.S. in many cases, although it’s better to have it in law and GDPR is pretty much an annoying paper guard more than anything else as it stands now.

Basically, you are now required to click the “Yes, I agree that the soul of my firstborn son will belong to the devil” button now, instead of it happening automatically. Didn’t change much in practice.

Would it kill ya to have a small panel in the browser that allows you to control what cookies are allowed to track you, and not allowed to track, instead of this bullshit gentleman agreement?

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It did make the Internet orders of magnitude more annoying to use. The goal was clearly meant to stop the selling of the soul of the firstborn in the firstplace, but a lot of websites gate entry entirely unless you agree to do this, and even the ones that don’t add a minute of faff per site of scrolling through sometimes multiple pages of crap and often I need to do it multiple times since the UI is generally terrible for mobile. Often the “confirm my choices” button is hidden behind the browser UI. It’s terrible. On the other hand, we and our data are the currency of the Internet. If GDPR did function as intended it would break the Web overnight and that itself is a problem that needs to be addressed. The entire reason Android even exists is to get us to own and use a personal tracker at all times for the world’s biggest advertising company.

On PC a lot of the time I’ve just clicked the “allow all” button and used a third party browser plugin to block intrusive cookies.

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I use companies as buffet - I take what I like, and leave the rest aside. But I have no respect for them.

Most big tech companies are horrible, but actively avoiding anything made by them will prove to be difficult - take Microsoft for example: No Github, if you want to be hair-splitting - no running Windows games on Linux because you will still be using Windows runtimes, redistributables, frameworks, libraries and so on.

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Jokes on them- I expunged that sh!t, once able to successfully enter the BIOS
I feel pretty sure, the fast boot sequence, has been turned up several notches

My bigger gripe, was the forecasted interface fuccups, making W8 seem less bad
… Dare I say, an impressive feat

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Every time Windows users complain about Microsoft shafting them…

image

If Win11 is a non starter for you, Linux gaming works great.

You don’t even need to install it: www.system76.com

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Linux gaming is almost there.

Maybe by the time the desktop metaphor is finished and we are wearing AR glasses that look like spectacles Linux will be ready for the consumer desktop.

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lol Yes that’s probably about right if you’re waiting for a perfect experience (however that is defined).

But for many people Linux gaming is definitely “there” already, it depends on a lot of things.

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Yeah I know I’m just continuing the piss take from “is this the year of the Linux desktop” as seen on slash dot since 1997. :joy:

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Yep it’s been a long time waiting… :rofl:

At this point it is starting to get a little sketchy though, how stuck everyone is on an openly abusive software company.

Maybe it will never come for “regular” people and society will end up regressing back into some dark ages or some 1984 thing without ever cleaning up our act… but in the mean time, those who want to can free themselves from that evil at least, with a little bit of effort.

IMO Linux gaming is “there”, now.

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winTrash

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The unfortunate thing is that Microsoft deleting your porn folder or your rom collection is what people get scared of, but what they should be scared of is that microsoft gets to be the gate keeper of whether or not you can put that on your computer in the first place.
The real danger of the TPM is twofold.
One, microsoft gives the illusion of security because “well you need to buy a key from us, and criminals don’t buy keys from us!”, laughing their way to the bank while computers only end up less secure in the process, because the thing more insecure than a known vulnerability is an unknown vulnerability.
The second is that they now gatekeep what constitutes ethical software. They can decide what your computer is and isn’t allowed to do, before you even get your hands on it. Did you want to watch your old movie collection? Too bad, .mkv files are only used for PIRACY. Anything that plays back non-streamed video content is now against the windows TOS, and therefore will not run on your machine.

There is real danger here, and it’s been coming for you ever since EFI.

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I have daily driven linux for 3 going 4 years. It is not there in any regard. Ease of use is still not good. Worse off hdr is not capable in linux. So my htpc is still windows. Also dolby and dts codecs are not supported. But i have been running since 2019 popos and it is stable. Sometime network shares are worse off than windows. Eitherway i totslly disagree about it being the time for linux gaming.

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It’s worse than just deleting your files.

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