Windows is Spyware!

[kilésengati]

Even with spyware removed:

https://www.techspot.com/news/97535-windows-11-spyware-machine-out-users-control.html

Friendly reminder that Windows is still spyware, even collecting data when debloated. Its newest version, Windows 11 being the greatest offender.

But just sticking to Windows 10 won't keep your data safe. Microsoft started embracing data-mining in the late Windows 7 life-cycle.

If you want to use an up-to-date operating system that puts you in control of your machine, Windows certainly isn't a good option.

Blue pill or red pill. Your choice.

[tyl0413]

Bitlocker is literally useless with it's default options where it autounlocks as long as it's in the same machine with the TPM it was set up on. Literally what's the point of encrypting the disk if the attacker can access the whole machine without additional authentication? Second thing ofc is locking you out when you move the drive to another machine.
Why is the option to require a password hidden in the group policy so that it actually doesn't hand your data over to whoever turns on the machine? Oh right if they did it properly they couldn't justify artificially raising the system requirements. If you're not using an NVMe use Veracrypt, it's far superior.

[kilésengati]

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

I hate microsoft.

At work I have to get an imaging solution set up for Windows 11 so we can put 11 on all our new machines.

First off you can't sysprep if bitlocker is on, so I had to learn a bit of powershell to turn bitlocker off. Why encrypt the entire C drive by default? Why? What happens if your rig fails and you try to move your drive to a new rig? If bitlocker is on you're farked.

Second you can't sysprep if any user-specific applications are installed. WHY? This makes even less sense than the bitlocker thing. (I can understand bitlocker as an option but not as default) but this? Failing sysprep because of an installed app? Microsoft is just torturing support technicians at this point.

And then - after finally completing a sysprep and uploading the image to my WDS server, I find out I can't drop said image onto a machine. Windows 11 boot will flat out refuse to install Windows 11 from WDS. Microsoft deprecated it. Apparently the year is 2023 and planned obsolescence is a valid strategy for making profit now.

F*** you Microsoft.

So now I have to learn their newest thing - MDT. It is the ugliest most god-awful complicated pile of ♥♥♥♥ I've ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon. It has a bajillion options and I only need two. Capture the image and deploy the image. WDS did this just fine with none of the complexity. Simple wasn't good enough for Microsoft. They had to make everyone's life complicated.

I said years ago I wanted to drag Microsoft engineers into the street and shoot them. That feeling has only intensified over time.

Bitlocker is heckin' glowing.

Idk about Bitlocker, but LUKS can be accessed through a Live CD and remotely. It requires use of the terminal and isn't necessarily beginner-friendly, but there are pretty decent tutorials on the web. Not sure about Bitlocker, but with LUKS, at the very least you can secure your data before re-installing or even fix the system.

As far as I'm aware, LUKS also doesn't glow.

Shame you are forced to use Windows at work.

[tyl0413]

Originally posted by kilésengati:

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

I hate microsoft.

At work I have to get an imaging solution set up for Windows 11 so we can put 11 on all our new machines.

First off you can't sysprep if bitlocker is on, so I had to learn a bit of powershell to turn bitlocker off. Why encrypt the entire C drive by default? Why? What happens if your rig fails and you try to move your drive to a new rig? If bitlocker is on you're farked.

Second you can't sysprep if any user-specific applications are installed. WHY? This makes even less sense than the bitlocker thing. (I can understand bitlocker as an option but not as default) but this? Failing sysprep because of an installed app? Microsoft is just torturing support technicians at this point.

And then - after finally completing a sysprep and uploading the image to my WDS server, I find out I can't drop said image onto a machine. Windows 11 boot will flat out refuse to install Windows 11 from WDS. Microsoft deprecated it. Apparently the year is 2023 and planned obsolescence is a valid strategy for making profit now.

F*** you Microsoft.

So now I have to learn their newest thing - MDT. It is the ugliest most god-awful complicated pile of ♥♥♥♥ I've ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon. It has a bajillion options and I only need two. Capture the image and deploy the image. WDS did this just fine with none of the complexity. Simple wasn't good enough for Microsoft. They had to make everyone's life complicated.

I said years ago I wanted to drag Microsoft engineers into the street and shoot them. That feeling has only intensified over time.

Bitlocker is heckin' glowing.

Idk about Bitlocker, but LUKS can be accessed through a Live CD and remotely. It requires use of the terminal and isn't necessarily beginner-friendly, but there are pretty decent tutorials on the web. Not sure about Bitlocker, but with LUKS, at the very least you can secure your data before re-installing or even fix the system.

As far as I'm aware, LUKS also doesn't glow.

Shame you are forced to use Windows at work.

LUKS can be managed through GUI with the GNOME Disk Utility and you can open it normally in Dolphin like you would any other drive, it's as easy as Bitlocker, i love it.
Wish Veracrypt wasn't bugged on fast SSDs otherwise I'd use it over Bitlocker on Windows (obviously no LUKS on Win).

[kilésengati]

Originally posted by tyl0413:

Originally posted by kilésengati:

Bitlocker is heckin' glowing.

Idk about Bitlocker, but LUKS can be accessed through a Live CD and remotely. It requires use of the terminal and isn't necessarily beginner-friendly, but there are pretty decent tutorials on the web. Not sure about Bitlocker, but with LUKS, at the very least you can secure your data before re-installing or even fix the system.

As far as I'm aware, LUKS also doesn't glow.

Shame you are forced to use Windows at work.

LUKS can be managed through GUI with the GNOME Disk Utility and you can open it normally in Dolphin like you would any other drive, it's as easy as Bitlocker, i love it.
Wish Veracrypt wasn't bugged on fast SSDs otherwise I'd use it over Bitlocker on Windows (obviously no LUKS on Win).

Cool. Guess I'm deep enough into Linux to just default to the terminal solution.

Apparently, there is LibreCrypt for Windows. Not sure how good it is though.

[Ulfrinn]

I was like that once, when I first started to use Linux I wanted everything to be GUI as well, and for my desktop to look like Windows. Now I rarely use GUI for system management stuff and my desktop looks nothing like Windows, because at some point I realized these were merely things I was used to, not things that were better.

[Kamiyama]

Originally posted by Ulfrinn:

I was like that once, when I first started to use Linux I wanted everything to be GUI as well, and for my desktop to look like Windows. Now I rarely use GUI for system management stuff and my desktop looks nothing like Windows, because at some point I realized these were merely things I was used to, not things that were better.

Nah that's just morons using horrid software and pretending to be elitist.

"My lack of a GUI makes my OS better"

It's so hilariously dumb.

At work today I came to the horrifying realization that I would just have to learn MDT to image Windows 11. It's a rats nest of unnecessary complexity compared to WDS but it is what it is. Windows is proprietary software and Microsoft can deprecate WDS if they want.

I tried Theopenem but I had issues setting it up to PXE boot. I contacted the developer on its forum and he didn't seem to want to help.

I tried FOG Project and despite the fact that it claims to support Debian, I tried to install it on the latest LTS version of Ubuntu and the install failed. That's not me being bad at linux. I don't program the installers. The FOG Project developer isn't keeping his software up to date. There is no excuse not to support the latest LTS of Debian. If your software doesn't then it's not compatible with Debian.

Which brings us to another thing - I can install Windows 7 software and probably a fair amount of Windows XP software on my current Windows 10 box. For things that were made in DirectX, or .NET, or Flash, or Java, then I only need that framework installed to get the software to work.

Apparently Linux can't maintain this level of compatibility across its many versions. That's a failing of Linux. Microsoft Windows actually does this better.

I also checked out Clonezilla but they would have me editing a configuration file to get the PXE boot process to work. Why should I learn to program to make someone else's software to work?

The lack of a financial incentive makes all FOSS the same in this regard. Like Communism there is no desire on the part of these developers to give a damn. If there's a problem the end-user is expected to fix it.

So as bad as Windows is, it's the best bad option out of all the bad options I have.

I'm going to be spending the next week or two watching youtube videos and researching MDT, and experiencing a god-awful level of stress and frustration. I hate my life. But it is what it is.

[Kamiyama]

I"m thinking we're on course for the worst possible future.

Because these capitalist software companies like Apple and Microsoft change things on a whim and deprecate things so they can make money with new, more complicated, objectively worse versions of the old things.

And because the free alternatives like linux are broken ♥♥♥♥ that don't work most of the time...

And now cloud computing and cloud services are becoming so popular. In education chromebooks and google suite is so popular. Dropbox and cloud servers are popular. Streaming services like Netflix and centralized gaming services like Steam are popular.

The end result is in the future we won't own our data. We will buy a device that has a web browser and everything we use will be on the cloud.

Personal computing devices that run traditional OS that keep our data on local drives will fade away and everyone will have their stuff in the cloud somewhere.

And then we will all be spied upon, all our data will be subject to revision, we could be cut off on a whim. Nobody will own anything and the rich people who own the megacorporations will own everything.

Neofeudalism where fiefdoms exist in the cloud and peasants wear VR headsets. All the information that makes its way to your brain is propaganda, controlled by the state or a corporation.

And the only thing that could avert the course of history to a better future is an actually good OS that works for gaming, doesn't deprecate useful management tools, and respects the end-users privacy.

All of humanity was unable to do that.

8 billion people failed.

[tyl0413]

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Originally posted by Ulfrinn:

I was like that once, when I first started to use Linux I wanted everything to be GUI as well, and for my desktop to look like Windows. Now I rarely use GUI for system management stuff and my desktop looks nothing like Windows, because at some point I realized these were merely things I was used to, not things that were better.

Nah that's just morons using horrid software and pretending to be elitist.

"My lack of a GUI makes my OS better"

It's so hilariously dumb.

This, yeah for some things sure a terminal is better but on Linux without a doubt you'll be using it far more often not by choice if you want to do certain things and it sucks. I run Debian with KDE on a rack server bc I refuse to risk upping the chances overwriting or deleting the wrong data just in attempts to look cool on r/UnixPorn or smth. Cry about it. Linux is technically superior for many use cases, I don't mind learning new things, I really hate modern windows but id'd be lying if I said being forced to use terminal for certain things is acceptable or even superior, Linux is about choice until your choices go against those of the developer, back to square one we go..

[Ulfrinn]

Originally posted by tyl0413:

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Nah that's just morons using horrid software and pretending to be elitist.

"My lack of a GUI makes my OS better"

It's so hilariously dumb.

This, yeah for some things sure a terminal is better but on Linux without a doubt you'll be using it far more often not by choice if you want to do certain things and it sucks. I run Debian with KDE on a rack server bc I refuse to risk upping the chances overwriting or deleting the wrong data just in attempts to look cool on r/UnixPorn or smth. Cry about it. Linux is technically superior for many use cases, I don't mind learning new things, I really hate modern windows but id'd be lying if I said being forced to use terminal for certain things is acceptable or even superior, Linux is about choice until your choices go against those of the developer, back to square one we go..

It doesn't suck at all. There are few things you actually use a terminal for that doesn't have a GUI option. People using Linux prefer the terminal in most cases, and use it by choice. I can find, download, configure, and install any software I want with a single line of text in less than than it takes you to boot up the GUI and find the search box.

Whining about it just sounds like a sad excuse to make a case for Windows.