Random News not worthy of own thread

[Vertigo 7]

I really see no reason (except for the hardcore gamers) not to switch to Linux at least on a private PC. With all the documentation, different desktops, free development environment, all of a sudden, the machine is much more transparent, responsive, controllable and will make fun again

May I suggest to newcomers to try out Debian stable and the XFCE desktop. With a bit of reason during partitioning (separate home and root, and keep your work in separate directory structures so you can easily backup without having to care for specific configuration files), installing another flavour or desktop is just a lunch brake.

Maybe try linux in a VM before you blow away your desktop. Most end users moving from Windows to Linux will face a steep learning curve with limited support that makes the complaints of something moving from the taskbar a minor gripe by comparison. Not to mention the majority of the software they'll be used to won't likely be available for Linux without some whackydo work around that they'll not likely be able to just make work.

[BaronVerde]

Na, don't bother with VMs. You can do later if you wish and your work makes necessary, e.g. development in a safe environment.

To start over with Linux just grab a used PC and install it with a simple desktop, no dual boot or such nonsense (though it works technically), no flashy KDE or Gnome and there won't be much of a learning curve except from the usual 'does my software run or is there an equivalent'. Of course, depends a bit on the personal attitude, but the curve is much flatter than what I read happens between windows versions.

A bit of learning would be necessary for the command line, if one wishes to go there (which can happen sooner or later), but not initially. (A dummy introduction to the CL: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Li ... 463&sr=8-1)

I mean, I am not talking about mere gaming and mouse shifting. That's not where Linux shines. Well, it does performance wise, but depending on the desktop it doesn't hide as much as windows does. The Linux family of OSes are not per se graphical, a server runs perfectly without or with just a simple window manager. The desktops can be seen as wrappers around the underlying functionality, which is well documented including the source code. Windows users tend to judge an OS by its graphical appearance because they were so told, but it is probably best to resist the urge of learning a specific desktop, after a few tries here and there, which may include the one or other curse or ink stain upon the wall , one chooses the desktop that fits best the personal preferences.

Edit: I just realized that I shamelessly hijacked the news item to lure people away from windows

[Vertigo 7]

Na, don't bother with VMs. You can do later if you wish and your work makes necessary, e.g. development in a safe environment.

To start over with Linux just grab a used PC and install it with a simple desktop, no dual boot or such nonsense (though it works technically), no flashy KDE or Gnome and there won't be much of a learning curve except from the usual 'runs my software or is there an equivalent'. Of course, depends a bit on the personal attitude, but the curve is much flatter than what I read happens between windows versions.

Yeah, cause everyone just has old computers laying around Windows 10 pro/enterprise/education all have the ability to install hyper-v for free and anyone can spin up VMs to install whatever flavor of linux they like to see if they even wanna use it without having to make space for another computer or risk the data on their primary machine. There's also 3rd party hypervisors available on the web. Or, even simpler, live linux discs can give them a hands on opportunity with little effort.

And what makes you think the shifting of things around in the start menu is a steeper learning curve than going to a completely different OS that can emulate the windows desktop, at best?

A bit of learning would be necessary for the command line, if one wishes to go there (which will happen sonner or later), but not initially. (A dummy introduction to the CL: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Li ... 463&sr=8-1)

I mean, I am not talking about mere gaming and mouse shifting. That's not where Linux shines. Well, it does performance wise, but depending on the desktop it doesn't hide as much as windows does. The Linux family of OSes are not per se graphical, a server runs perfectly without or with just a simple window manager. The desktops can be seen as wrappers around the underlying functionality, which is well documented including the source code. Windows users tend to judge an OS by its graphical appearance because they were so told, but it is probably best to resist the urge of learning a specific desktop, after a few tries here and there, which may include the one or other curse or ink stain at the wall , one chooses the one that fits best the personal preferences.

Edit: I just realized that I shamelessly hijacked the news item to lure people away from windows

Cosmetic improvements were never the point of new versions of windows, and I'm pretty sure you know that.

Lemme ask you this... if learning where things have been moved to in the newer version of Windows is sooooooo hard for folks, how do you think they're going to cope with a Linux desktop that isn't even remotely close to the way Windows is currently laid out? What makes you believe that's going to be easier for them to deal with?

[pjknibbs]

I'm afraid I'm on Vertigo 7's side here. I have no particular axe to grind--I've been experimenting with Linux, on and off, since I first bought a Debian CD via mail order in 1995. And what it always comes back to is, no matter how much friendlier or nicer or prettier the particular variant of Linux I'm using might be, there will come a point where I want to do something that I know would be simple in Windows and it proves to be an absolute nightmare in Linux. What I want from my OS is to run the programs I want to run and stay out of the way at all other times, and even now, Linux isn't quite there on that front.

[BaronVerde]

No fears or worries !

Yeah, Linux follows a different philosophy than Windows. I switched with the advent of Windows 7. Funny thing is, in my opinion Linux is much less in the way than windows. And let me stress that again, Linux, other than windows, is not defined or even characterized by the graphical desktop. I know this is hard to understand for someone used to windows. Linux is a family of OSs from all kinds of small and embedded devices over PCs up to mainframes and supercomputers (which all run Linux). The desktop surface (if one is needed or wanted) can be chosen from a huge variety of flavours, a computer can even run different window- or desktop managers and environments over different protocols to different users (the big computers do that ofc), or the same user on different monitors, or by switching workspaces on the same monitor, or no graphical inteface at all, or any permutation of these. This may sound somewhat theoretical and not of much use for daily work just on a PC, but for those who like some fun, there they go I think that points out the differences between the two approaches quite well.

Besides the already mentioned differences (source code open to anyone, fully documented, quick, responsive, doesn't block when doing background stuff like updates, doesn't lure or require users into registering anywhere or into a cloud or social network, etc.), there's another thing that motivated me using it: getting into programming. There is everything and much more one needs to get going with any reasonable programming language and API one has never heard of before. On debian it's a 'sudo apt-get install build-essential' to install the base for a variety of languages, C and C++ included.

Wouldn't that be a nice distraction ?

[pjknibbs]

Want to do programming on Windows?

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

Is that so much harder?

[Vertigo 7]

I've even dinked around in visual studio, primarily for building packages for SSIS, but I find visual studio super simple to use and developer edition is 100% free. I see no down side.

But there's plenty of command line driven stuff in windows. Why do you think they pushed out powershell? If you've never used that before, it's essentially bash for windows and even includes ssh. There's even a whole windows server OS flavor that doesn't include the desktop experience and is solely focused on powershell, minus some msc snapins.

As far as source code being open, who cares? Certainly not the people you're trying to convince to use Linux. If they had the ability to decipher the code and understand it themselves, chances are they'd already be using Linux if they wanted to. Instead they'll have to rely on you, or others like you, to tell them it's okay to use. And in that case, what makes it any different to the user if the code is open or closed source?

[jlehtone]

Yeah, cause everyone just has old computers laying around Windows 10 pro/enterprise/education all have the ability to install hyper-v for free and anyone can spin up VMs to install whatever flavor of linux they like to see if they even wanna use it without having to make space for another computer or risk the data on their primary machine.

This. VMs are nice for testing things. For example, learning. You can always spawn a new, fresh VM, rather than having to clean up a mess you have no idea how you got into.

Microsoft has offered WSL for quite a while now. With WSL you can have wide selection of (mostly GNU) command-line applications. There is no need to install Linux, if you just want to learn/use those tools. For example, digging into savefile from "on topic" game is relatively trivial in WSL.


Speaking of starting fresh, I saw a YT video on how to do initial setup and configure of a Mac in automated fashion with "Ansible playbook". The author has that "playbook" in GitHub or something. So, you can take the apple from shrinkwrap, run the script, and presto; you have almost usable "PC". The "Ansible", "Chef", "Puppet", etc are not limited to Macs. You definitely can do base install of GNU/Linux (to bare metal or VM) and finish with recipe. Maximum automation, minimum effort. Management of Windows ought to be possible too. These tools probably use powershell.


Windows 11 Pro ought to not require Microsoft account.

My motherboard has only a socket for TMP module. I bet that is common for off-the-shelf boards.

Windows 10 should last couple more years. No need to immediately despair.

[Vertigo 7]

Windows 11 Pro ought to not require Microsoft account.

My motherboard has only a socket for TMP module. I bet that is common for off-the-shelf boards.

Windows 10 should last couple more years. No need to immediately despair.

Thinger says the MS account is only required for initial setup, likely activation. Though, I'm sure in an enterprise, pro and enterprise editions would use KMS.

Do you know if your bios has 'PTT'? That's the acronym for Platform Trust Technology, which TPM is part of. On ASUS boards, likely other manufacturers, it's disabled by default and the TPM is part of the Intel chipset.

But yeah, EOL for 10 is 2025.

[Vertigo 7]

In other news, Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22 years in prison. I hope this brings some form of closure to the Floyd family.

[BaronVerde]

Yep, but guys, to the linux thing, my perfidious plan was to distract a colleague from their current state with something new and fancy. That was a fail, didn't expect such a vigorous defence

But two things I wanted to add: First there's some confusion between an IDE and a toolchain and second between a shell emulation and an operation system.

Just saying, even the WSL 2 with Microsoft's own Linux Kernel doesn't have Linux performance and I am not sure if the WSL kernel has full Linux functionality, like choice of graphics protocols and filesystems and so. A VM would, but then a proper installation without anything in the way is even better. At least the WSL Kernel isn't written in C++ or C# . But anyway, it is good if we can choose and peace on earth and to anybody their favourite toys

[Vertigo 7]

well, the Linux kernel doesn't have the full functionality of the bajillions of windows apps, or even have the same hardware support. So if giving all of that up for a few nanoseconds shaved off calculation time is worth it to you, then by all means, Linux away!

[red assassin]

Just saying, even the WSL 2 with Microsoft's own Linux Kernel doesn't have Linux performance and I am not sure if the WSL kernel has full Linux functionality, like choice of graphics protocols and filesystems and so. A VM would, but then a proper installation without anything in the way is even better.

WSL2 is a VM. WSL1 was a Linux syscall implementation in the Windows kernel, but WSL2 is just a Hyper-V VM running an actual Linux kernel and a bunch of integration helpers (like automatically mounting filesystems between the two boxes and, in preview, running X11/Wayland/PulseAudio servers). Of course, a lot of the modern security options in Windows 10 involve it virtualising itself as well.

[BaronVerde]

WSL2 is a stripped kernel implementation, it is not a VM, it uses a downsized VM as a shim for performance reasons. And I am nitpicking and in smart ass mode There's a Microsot document describing the principle, whose link I've lost. But you don't need it the WSL when you can have the real thing with little effort (download an image, copy to a stick, and boot it). For running elfs on Windows, but ok, who cares ?

Here's a funny experience: when trying to guide someone (via e-mail) they told they were unable to copy the image to a stick because Windows (10) does not have a button(!) to do so. Can you imageine that ? It is just a bitwise copy, but there we are: an OS doesn't allow bitwise copy, they need some sort of third party tool, a totally overblown burn program with a graphical interface and error handling over the cloud. What a nonsense. That's where I get so satisfied of using Linux, where it is just a trivial command (dd). Well, not totally trivial for the nitpickers because it shamelessly and dutifully writes over whatever was there at the output end before

Windows isn't exactly the first choice OS when it comes to security, it is holey as a kitchen sieve and relies on closed source and constant patching. It plays no or marginal role outside of the enduser market and on the PC platform, simply because it comes pre-installed and people these days don't install their OSes any more, and of course because of perfect marketing and spreading some FUD about unavilability of software, etc.. Ofc, that should be checked individually before switching to another OS, but, as an example, even the control software and drivers for my telescope and astronomy image processing is available for Linux, and written by scientists. And needs some science to understand Things have changed in the last 20 years, FOSS is really serious stuff these days.

Installing Linux may be a bit scary at first because they ask about partitions, user names and root password, pc and network name, but with a PC that doesn't contain crucial data it is just a little finger exercise. Some literature helps for a deeper understanding, but isn't necessary for the daily work. It is only if one uses specialized software one should definitely check if that or something equivalent is available. And there are windows emulation layer for Linux, multi boot options, VMs etc, but just like the other way round I wouldn't advise a newbie to use them before they know what they are doing.

[Vertigo 7]

wow, so much to unpack there.

dude... are you seriously gonna sit there and pretend that Linux has never faced vulnerabilities or never needs patching? You've never run 'sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade' before? If you haven't, you should try it. You may be shocked at the results. It doesn't take much web searching to find the plethora of CVEs that all flavors of Linux have had to deal with.

2ndly, if Windows doesn't play a role outside of the end user market, then what are the couple thousand Windows servers in my company's datacenter doing? By comparison, we only have a few hundred Linux servers. Linux may be your go to, but that doesn't hold true for everyone else.

Linux constantly lags the industry in adoption of new technologies. How long did it take for Linux to natively support WPA encryption? IF there was even a driver available for your wireless NIC. I've seen the same thing for SATA and SAS HBAs and new generations of CPUs, on and on. Manufacturers always release windows drivers first and deal with MS before they even consider Linux, and that's even IF they do at all. You end up a lot of the times waiting on some basement dweller to reverse engineer a windows driver to get a hacky work around to cooperate in Linux.

Look, I'll admit that Linux is fine if you wanna try to get a few more years out of dated hardware or you have some single use device like a firewall or DNS server or some such you wanna run on a discrete device. But general use and day to day use.... newp.

Only thing I'd ever use a Linux desktop for slap it on several pis around the house and remote into my Windows desktop if I decide to virtualize my gaming rig and slap it in my server rack, essentially relegating Linux to a thin client.

[red assassin]

WSL2 is a stripped kernel implementation, it is not a VM, it uses a downsized VM as a shim for performance reasons. And I am nitpicking and in smart ass mode There's a Microsot document describing the principle, whose link I've lost. But you don't need it the WSL when you can have the real thing with little effort (download an image, copy to a stick, and boot it). For running elfs on Windows, but ok, who cares ?

Again, WSL2 is literally the Linux kernel as a Hyper-V VM. "WSL 2 uses the latest and greatest in virtualization technology to run a Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility virtual machine (VM)" (You can look at the source on Github and verify that yes, that's a mainline Linux kernel with a few patches.) There's a lot of integration helpers to make the experience more streamlined than a typical VM, but that's all it is under the hood.

Windows isn't exactly the first choice OS when it comes to security, it is holey as a kitchen sieve and relies on closed source and constant patching. It plays no or marginal role outside of the enduser market and on the PC platform, simply because it comes pre-installed and people these days don't install their OSes any more, and of course because of perfect marketing and spreading some FUD about unavilability of software, etc..

I'm as big a Linux advocate as anybody, but this is nonsense. Windows is still a major player in the corporate server world and absolutely dominant for corporate workstations, and it's just as secure as Linux, if not more. Perceptions of its lack of security come primarily from a) its popularity making it a great big target, and b) historically having been rather slow to catch up to that fact. But Microsoft have been investing incredibly heavily in security for years now and Windows provides an excellent suite of defence in depth security measures. If you switched out every end user Windows PC for a Linux one right now and left the OS security untouched on both, users' security would get worse, not better. (Linux-based platforms like Chromebooks and Android are better, but that's the tradeoff that comes from having a locked-down platform with additional restrictions and security measures in place.)

edit:

Linux constantly lags the industry in adoption of new technologies. How long did it take for Linux to natively support WPA encryption? IF there was even a driver available for your wireless NIC. I've seen the same thing for SATA and SAS HBAs and new generations of CPUs, on and on. Manufacturers always release windows drivers first and deal with MS before they even consider Linux, and that's even IF they do at all. You end up a lot of the times waiting on some basement dweller to reverse engineer a windows driver to get a hacky work around to cooperate in Linux.

Look, I'll admit that Linux is fine if you wanna try to get a few more years out of dated hardware or you have some single use device like a firewall or DNS server or some such you wanna run on a discrete device. But general use and day to day use.... newp.

This is also nonsense, though. It's not the 00s any more. You do get occasional issues with esoteric bits of hardware like biometric security in laptops and things, which is still kinda the domain of random hobbyists reverse engineering drivers, but claiming popular mainstream things like new CPU generations have issues is obviously absurd. New CPUs get rolled out in colossal numbers to cloud hosting providers which run Linux virtualisation stacks and Intel and AMD both commit a lot of code to the Linux kernel.


As far as your random end user goes, honestly, Linux and Windows are generally both fine. People tend to be more used to Windows because of popularity, but that doesn't make Linux unsuitable. Most users are mostly just using a web browser these days anyway. For gaming, sure, Linux is still a pain and I still mostly game on Windows, though Proton is surprisingly good these days. For corporate applications, both have their pros and cons in different situations. We don't need to have religious wars about operating systems! Most of the really bad ones are dead now! (IoT aside, anyway.)

[BaronVerde]

Linux is in forefront technology wise in o so many fields. Except for gaming, but the world's bigger than that

@red assassin: web servers are 80% Linux, 20% other, mainframes, apart from IBM z/OS are Linux, supercomputers are all Linux, maybe some Unix dinos around, idk. Enterprise servers - I don't trust the statistics as they are based on what was sold, but that doesn't mean it is what is actually run. Microsoft market share is overblown because many manufactureres sell Windows with their prodcts without an option to, well, opt out, though that's improving.

I have an old laptop and an old pc (sold as a 'server') around with windows licenses that never ran windows, but add to the statistics of OEM licenses, and I am not the only one. Linux otoh has no licensing, so they simply don't appear in the statistic. In other word, a statistic of sold licenses covers mostly, well, sold licenses.

[red assassin]

I work with corporate networks. I'm not going to try and offer statistics for all servers because as you say it's hard, but Windows Server is still incredibly common, and Azure managed services (Office 365, Azure Active Directory, etc etc) are very popular and all Windows backed.

[Vertigo 7]

I can provide some stats:

https://i.imgur.com/2SvVFRe.png

of those 170k windows devices:

https://i.imgur.com/SChg6ov.png

We have to comply with HIPPA and PCI regulations. Pretty sure we couldn't comply if we weren't able to secure our environment due to leaky windows or leaky tpms... just sayin'

[burger1]

More stats to watch out for when buying pcs. Not new but maybe more common 1Rx16 slower ram vs 1Rx8 regular ram. Might be up to 20% speed difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CO9v9rpOk