Your Windows 10 PC will soon be ‘junk’ - users told to resist Microsoft deadline::If you’re still using Windows 10 and don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11 any time soon you might want to sign a new online petition
Or just try linux. It’s pretty great
I love Linux. I have it installed on 3 machines, have been using it for over 3 years, and would install it right away if I ever got a new computer.
A couple weeks ago, I was feeling pretty exhausted and just wanted to play a game thru Proton on my laptop. I got it running, but it was unplayable because it was using my integrated GPU instead of my discrete one. I spent the night switching compositors, cables, and drivers, but none of it fixed the issue.
The next day, feeling exhausted from fruitless debugging, I tried to launch another game via Proton that I knew had worked in the past, but it crashed on launch. I spent the whole day going thru the same steps I did the day before, but also consulting ProtonDB and trying software that would force usage of the dgpu.
The next day, I installed Windows 10 to an external hard drive and spent the day debloating it. Drivers got installed automatically, I downloaded both games on Steam, and they just worked. So I guess I now dual-boot Windows just for the games that don’t work thru Proton. Loading game worlds and booting up take ~75% longer, but that’s to be expected because it’s running on a 4 year old HDD connected over a USB cable.
As mentioned earlier, I love Linux a lot, and if all games had native binaries or Proton worked 100% I’d format that god-forsaken hard drive. But when real life has got me down, I don’t need Linux to get me down further. I don’t like Windows, and I feel incredibly dirty whenever I press F7 on boot to get to Windows. But when my choices are “spend 8 hours on fruitless quest to get >2fps” and “press play button”, I’m going to take the path of least resistance.
That’s the thing. I love to use Linux for work, but when I don’t want to tinker it sometimes sucks for gaming.
Yep. And then there’s gamepass. I vastly vastly prefer working and using Linux day to day, but games, man. Man’s gotta be able to game after a long day at work and I wasted literally a week of after work hours trying and failing to get Starfield to run on Proton.
iGPU+dGPU, esp with Nvidia is pretty bad on Linux. It’s pretty flawless these days if you’re using only one vendor and it isn’t Nvidia.
Don’t know what you are talking about. I use an Nvidia GPU with a Wayland compositor/Window manager (Hyprland to be exact) and I’ve never experienced any issues whatsoever.
I have an external monitor that runs at 144Hz, but a while ago I realized because it was connected over HDMI, it was limited to 60Hz (for some weird reason). So I bought a DisplayPort cable, and after plugging it in the screen was flickering/artifacting in some weird way that I haven’t seen it do on X11 or Windows with the same cable. So as a result I’ve had to reluctantly switched back to i3 for daily use
Sure, use whatever works for you
I would probably rather get a gaming console for the TV to game.
Why not a steam deck?
Tbf that really depends on the kind of games you like playing.
What game was it?
The first game mentioned was Bille Bust Up. I liked the demo that was off of Steam (and it ran fine using the proton-call command), so I subscribed to the developer’s Patreon (which gives a Steam key) and it wouldn’t use my dgpu.
The second game was A Hat in Time.
Nvidia laptop by the sounds of it?
Anything with an AMD GPU is going to have a better time (or even just a dedicated Nvidia GPU in a desktop).
Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry to hear you had trouble. Both games are rated as gold on ProtonDB. So, I am surprised you had trouble with them.
My experience has been the opposite. Everything has worked surprisingly well. Do you by chance use an Nvidia gpu?
Yep, Nvidia gpu. At the time I bought it I wasn’t aware of their reputation for Linux support, and I bought my laptop from System76 (with Pop!_OS, because Nvidia drivers are more “just works” on it). I’ve had a fairly good experience with all of it, but the next computer I buy will definitely have an AMD GPU.
I think this is the first time I’ve been fully unable to get the dgpu working. Every other time it’s just worked or worked with tweaking
Sure. As soon as Linux doesn’t require memorizing hundreds of commands for basic use, and actually runs the software you need to use, I’m sure it will become very popular.
So… today?
I’m a Linux user. Been one for a long time.
When I’m doing dev-work, shelling into remote VMs and stuff yeah I have to get nitty-gritty with the command-line.
But on my regular daily-driver OS? I only use the terminal because I want to; or sometimes I think it’s more efficient. But I haven’t absolutely needed to for a long time now.
Linux GUI has really come a long way. It’s not at MacOS level (yet), but it’s very functional and aesthetic. Give it a try.
I’ve been “trying” it for years. Moreso because Windows became truly unbearable than Linux got more useable.
If you haven’t checked out linux in 5+ years, I recommend that you check out something user-friendly like Mint. No commands needed!
Been using it for the last 2 years. That’s how I know.
Sure ok, can you give us some examples from the hundreds of commands you need to memorise for basic use?
Hundreds of commands is just not true with many distros. Everything is gui based these days. The command line is worth getting familiar with, but it’s not necessary.
Hasn’t been my experience. Usually needed at the bare minimum just to install and uninstall the few programs that do run in Linux.
The time is now then!
I mean, it won’t let me. Windows Update inists my PC doesn’t meet the minimum spec, and I’m not inclined to argue with it.
#GleefulCompliance
Mine doesn’t, either. Go go gadget 12 year old processor! Who knew being a cheapskate could be so beneficial?
Just follow this guide and all of your problems will be gone
But refusing to upgrade me to 11 is an anti-problem…
Is it the UEFI security thing?
Nah fuck you, I’m staying with 10 as long as I can, then I’m switching to linux
My PC doesn’t hit the requirements for windows 11. Yet it kept asking me to update. Been running Ubuntu ever since
Try it on an external drive. I did that a couple years ago just to fool around and see if I liked it, within a week it was my main OS and I’ve barely used Windows since.
Hahaha, no you’re not
I just made this exact switch a few months ago, so, yeah, it happens.
And I did it 18 months ago!
(Spoiler: it turned out fine)
Almost a year here! Working great! (No, for real, modern desktop Linux experience is surprisingly refined, it’s more stable and performant than Windows!)
And I never did. I just started with Linux Mint when I got my first laptop.
But I do see the perspective of Windows users, perhaps. I did briefly try using Windows, but it was frustrating. I don’t know how to set anything in there. For some reason there’s 2 setting apps (control panel and settings), each only being partially usable. My Wi-Fi kept dying, the only solution was replacing the Intel Wi-Fi card for one from Qualcomm. Bluetooth only worked randomly like every 20th restart. Drivers for my 20 year old printer didn’t work in either 10 nor 11. Only up to Windows 7.
Painful experience.Wow, a real Linux native here! Wonderful to know.
Yes, I gotta say after running Linux for like a week I seriously couldn’t think of coming back to Windows. I just began to understand how much of a trash Windows systems are.
Yeah, when they went from 7 to 10 (there’s no 9 for horrible hacky reasons, and 8 was the mandatory half-baked test-run of the next proper version), they tried to redo the aesthetics of those systems to be more touch-input styled, but they only half-did it. If you want anything more advanced than the settings app gives you, you need to dig into the control panel. Then there’s the deeper settings - device manager, computer management, startup services, firewall, the registry, and on and on, all of which are designed entirely differently and many of which haven’t seen any update since windows 2000 at least. I wouldn’t be surprised if some went back further. It all speaks to ancient legacy code nobody wants to touch and the unfathomable depths of technical debt that implies. I get the sense the settings app change is another in a long line of updates that became legacy and added yet another layer to this byzantine system.
Then there’s the lovecraftian user permissions system that seems like it layers three levels of abstraction that you have to utterly master to get literally anything done and which I have given up trying to understand. If I need permissions, I run a third party batch file that assigns complete ownership of everything in a folder to me, and then I don’t think about the consequences.
I really want to move to Linux, but I’ve gotten burnt out on attempting and not being able to do all of the many things I’m used to on Windows. I’ve been hearing good things about it lately and I may just have the energy to try again soon.
I wish you a good luck! And don’t hesitate to ask - often times it’s very simple, actually!
And I’m halfway there, laptop on mint, pc still on windox.
I’ve been using linux on my secondary machine for a couple of years now and I don’t really feel the need to use Windows anymore.
all of my software just works and my workflow is cross-platform (I don’t really care about which os I’m using, i can get things done regardless); but as a software developer I’d much rather use linux than spend my time managing like 6 virtual linux/unix-like environments on windows. (wsl, msys2, etc)
All of the games I care about actually work slightly better on linux than on windows. (and a single click away from installing and launching from steam); also Steam Big Picture mode and gamepad support (dualshock 4) is much better on linux than on Windows 10, on windows some features only work over Bluetooth.i use arch btwYes I am
Fun fact: Linux is so customizable that you can run a modern GUI and software on 46mb of ram and a CPU from 1989. Don’t let Microshit tell you to throw out your old PC, it’s truly surprising what’s possible.
So customizable that it can’t even be run on many devices.
Linux runs on way more devices than Windows, what are you talking about?
Well not the ones I tried. Maybe I had bad luck.
Now this has me curious, what devices are those? Since transitioning to Linux I’ve installed it on a Mac, a surface pro 4, an old Lenovo laptop, an Asus laptop from 2014, my dedicated LAN desktop PC and my main desktop gaming PC, and none of those have had any issues.
It’s been like 15 years so I don’t remember but I remember one wouldn’t work due to a proprietary driver. The other I just couldn’t figure out so it may be user error but it certainly wasn’t easy to set up.
That’s understandable then, a lot has happened and the installation process in most distros is extremely user friendly and automated these days.
I have been meaning to give it another go. You think it’s easier these days?
Probably something in the BIOS, like secure boot or something. Normally such issues are easy to troubleshoot.
Once was a proprietary driver. Obviously not the fault of Linux but still an obstacle for me. The other I forgot the issue. It may have been solvable but it was not easy for me.
Got you. Yes, drivers are still a mess sometimes.
Lmao. This article is junk. Yew I’m sure millions of people are going to suddenly dump their PC’s because they don’t get security updates. Most people don’t follow this at all and don’t care.
And no, they’re not going to magically jump to Linux as much as the Lemmy circlejerk loves to believe. If they know enough about security they probably already have looked into Linux and decided against it.
The article is typical clickbait from the Express, that’s bottom of the barrel trash.
Companies are a tad different and this could be a big problem with adhering to security and patches. It’s a big problem with companies doing this engineered obsolescence (stares at Apple) and making products that work trash.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about banks during my time as a developer, it’s that they’re on the oldest version of windows they can get to run.
This, many businesses will consider Linux for various devices.
It’ll likely start as “Oh we can use it to deploy for, this this and this, and avoid putting Windows here and here, to save X dollars” as certain applications in business are not available on Linux, but others will be. It will be a slow transition in the business world. But they will do it.
Why would they decide against it? I understand security and thats part of why i switched
When asked to choose between convenience and security, a lot of people will choose convenience. Staying on the computer you already have as long as it seems to work fine is very convenient. I still occasionally see computers running Windows 7 for no reason other than that the owner can’t be bothered to make a change.
Those people are lazy and really not thinking about their security imo but whatever its their data not mine
As I Linux user I can’t wait for the flood of cheap perfectly good hardware from these idiots
Bonus points is that they’ll probably be the last gasp of hardware consistently supporting S3 sleep too
Hey, can you elaborate? I switched my couple year old Windows 11 laptop to Linux a few months back, and no matter what I can’t get sleep to work. After doing research, apparently this is a common issue with Linux on laptops.
I eventually got hibernate to work, so I have it do that instead, but regular sleep would be nice…
Yep! So I can’t say necessarily what your specific problem is but it’s probably related to the big push towards “S0 Low Power Idle”, or “Modern Standby/Sleep”.
In a nutshell, MS and related peeps wanted to go after the always-connected, updated info, instant-on nature of the iPads and other mobile devices. I would guess Apple’s “Power Nap” functionality on their Mac was on their mind too. The effort resulted in the Windows 8-era Connected Standby as it was known then.
They have been pushing hard on S0 as the next version of sleep since. Who “they” is I am not entirely sure - it could be upstream at MS, Intel, most likely but the end result regardless is that OEM’s have been switching to Modern Standby.
But fortunately, some machines have a choice. My ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 has a BIOS toggle to switch between S0 and ol reliable S3 sleep (labeled Linux sleep) - no Windows re-installation needed despite the warning on it. Other machines might not like the XPS 9510 and Latitude 7210 2-in-1 I had previously. (I got rid of the former due to warranty issues and suspect build quality, the latter because I needed more oomph and less portability)
I was losing 8% battery an hour in the 7210 and I wasted hours troubleshooting only to find out that the M.2 drive I installed was somehow “not compatible” with Modern Standby, after that was sorted it was the only Modern Standby experience I had that was mostly acceptable.
My new work laptop is a ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 and there is no option to enable S3 so I am on that Modern Standby train involuntarily for this one. Anyways, after the battery reliably drained several times in a few hours of sleep, with the power light pulsing indicating it was sleeping - I was able to get the company service desk to enable my hibernate setting and I use that exclusively so I don’t have to keep it plugged in while traveling to save my state.
Sometimes that toggle is removed in a BIOS update so you’ll have to research that too, and what version to install if it occurs.
So yea, S3 is going out of fashion and taking reliable sleep with it. Lot of complaining out there about battery drain, overheating in bags, OEM’s recommend just using hibernate, Linus Tech Tips had a video ranting about switching to Macs over it and supposedly heard from an MS engineer but I don’t think Microsoft will be able to truly fix it, it’s been years.
If my laptop dies, I’ll probably get another like it or maybe take the opportunity to jump to a Steam Deck and maybe an ARM Mac. Not sure yet. When the time to jump to Linux comes in a couple years, maybe I’ll just get a desktop.
Oh wow, thanks for the in depth reply. Am I incorrect in assuming that they want the “Modern Standby” to be standard, because that mode means the device is always “connected” despite being asleep?
There must be a reason that a corporation would push for a seemingly inferior technology, and it’s basically 100% of the time about money.
I’m just speculating but I would say that’s “not wrong”.
The network connected part of Modern Standby can actually be disabled reasonably easily in command prompt and it does come up as a possible band-aid to battery drain issues. (In my applications it didn’t help a noticeable amount but at least it’s there.)
When Modern Standby works, it works… okay. I mentioned getting it working on my 7210 2-in-1 after swapping for a proper SSD (eyeroll) and while it still used more power than S3, I could live with 1-2% of battery loss in an hour a lot more easily than 7-10% and I leaned on hibernate more as well since so many of us have been burned by Modern Standby when it doesn’t work.
I’m sure that while having the user computer being connected more is a net positive for telemetry and data collection but I think the drive towards it is more of a semi-misguided effort to compete with the sheer instant-on, always-updated nature of smartphones, iPads, Android tablets, etc. much in the vein of how Windows has been pivoting left-and-right to fit onto tablets the past decade but not completely recognizing that people often use desktops and laptops differently.
So on paper it’s not inferior at all. Instant on, instant off, minimal power use increase, the computer can ring when calls are received, it can keep email up-to-date, sound alerts for reminders all while sleeping whereas it’s completely dead in S3 save for RAM being powered.
Sounds cool, it’s high-tech, I thought it was neat when I first heard about it especially since Apple’s Power Nap feature was around for years already and did nice housekeeping functions while the machine was sleeping - albeit within power use and thermal limits.
Microsoft and OEM’s just can’t seem to make it reliable enough to be the slam-dunk it theoretically can be nor do it’s benefits really shine in my use case since I sit down to use my Windows machines and nothing I use really can take advantage of Modern Standby. And since S3 is increasingly being pulled out, Linux has to deal with their shenanigans too.
Edit: Also I would expect ARM Windows machines to sleep better or at least be efficient enough to not worry, but I can’t say for sure.
Amen brother
People will just keep trucking on Windows 10.
I’ve been to the swap meet prices are already falling for older PCs.
Nah, fuck it, I’m switching to Linux.
Yep. Gaming is starting to work on Linux, so I will move to Linux once Microsoft cancels 10.
11 has nothing more than more telemetry and tracking going for it. Gaming is slower, so why would I upgrade for a worse experience.
I play old games still anyways. Linux is more secure than Windows 11 anyways. I won’t upgrade to 11, and turned off TPM in BIOS so 11 won’t automatically install.
Can’t wait for anti cheat to work with Linux ☹️
This is my biggest hold up. Pretty much any triple A game has anti cheat these days.
Most anticheat software actually runs on Linux! Even the previously stubborn EasyAntiCheat got its Linux-compatible version.
I know it can run on it but games like destiny and fortnite still have to allow it unfortunately
Most modern games can work. But this is a dev issue, not a “wait until it works on linux” issue
EAC, and BattleEye both work on Linux, all the dev has to do is tick a “Proton Compatible” checkbox. Which many publishers/devs, namely Epic, don’t do because they hate linux with a red hot passion for some unknown reason.
Gaming is starting to work on Linux
Are you living under a rock ? Gaming is working in linux now.
What I meant was that it is starting to get simple to play games using Linux now.
I’m not a teenager anymore who enjoys getting games to work by editing settings outside of games like during the Win 3.11 and MS-DOS days.
After decades working IT jobs I don’t want to do work when I’m trying to relax. Linus will have a nearly seamless system when Win 10 reaches EOL.
I haven’t entirely switched in part due to Rainbow Six Siege not working on Linux. Something about Battleye supports it but Ubi hasn’t done the few simple steps to allow it. So it’s not entirely working yet
Edit: Apparently this is one of the best ways to let Ubisoft know that players want this fixed https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LIVE-49179
Next computer of mine will definitely be running Linux. Only thing I’d ever need windows for is some oddly specific software that won’t work on Linux because I’m too dumb to get working properly.
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There is no way they don’t offer extended support for Windows 10. Many PCs can’t get to windows 11. Imagine all the malware infected machines that will be out there.
I worked for a large computer company in the late 90s, early 2000s. When XP came out, they said there would be no site licensing. This meant we had to keep track of license keys for thousands upon thousands of systems, costing millions. This was before KMS or anything.
“Nothing we can do,” Microsoft said. “We have no gate key.”
Our server farms at the time were 40% Windows NT 4, 55% Sun systems, and 5% Linux. So we said, “okay,” and called Red Hat. In a year, our back end was 60% Sun, 35% Linux, and 5% Windows NT. We were already in talks to start switching to Linux workstations for desktops.
“Oh, you mean this gate key,” said Microsoft.
Asshats. They lost our server business, but let us use XP with a site license.
I assume eventually they’ll drop the UEFI security requirement, which is why 90% of the “can’t” cases occur.
My Windows install is still in compatibility mode. It’s the sole reason I can’t upgrade to 11, not that I want to. I can’t be bothered to reinstall Windows on UEFI when there’s no point anyway. I’ll happily stick to 10.
Microsoft products are all about getting infected with malware. That’s the whole point of this company.
The day i had ads on my start page i immidiately uninstalled windows. I installed some linux distro its been like three years and ive finally settled on arch. it was hard but fuck ads on the start page and i feel smarter for it
When you swap distros, how do you manage all your files and settings? Do you just save your files externally and start from scratch every time you change a distro?
how do you manage all your files and settings?
I don’t. I just use a separate drive for /home. And since I just prefer KDE no matter which system I’m using, all my files, settings, layouts, panels, etc are exactly the same whenever I switch out the OS.
Typically your personal files and app settings are stored somewhere in your user home folder, eg under
/home/bob/. Ideally you’ve set up your system in a way so that the entire/home/folder is stored on its own disk or partition at least. That let’s you boot up a different distro while using the same home directory. But even if you haven’t set it up separately from the rest of the system, you can still manually copy all those files.Not every single application setting is transferable between distros as they sometimes use different versions but generally it works well. Many apps also let you manually export profiles or settings and reimport them elsewhere later. Or they have online synchronization baked in.
So in my previous experience I never get prompted to create separate partition, but I have seen others use this method in the past, however this should probably be a step in any Linux install wizard.
It should be offered as an option really.
One caveat is that you need to think ahead about how much space you want to assign to each partition. You could end up with your
/home/partition being full while the system partition still has plenty. Or vice versa. You can manually readjust the boundaries but it requires some understanding and can’t be done on the fly by a non-technical user. By contrast if everything’s stored on the same partition you never have to worry about this.You can, by the way, manually recreate this set up even after the initial set up although it will require lots of free space to shuffle around files (or some external storage to temporarily hold them). Basically what you do is create a new empty partition, copy all your
/home/stuff there and then configure your system to always mount that partition as the/home/directory when it boots. Files are just files after all and the operating system doesn’t really care where they come from as long as the content is correct. Once you got it working you can delete the originals and free up the space to be used otherwise.
You can have a separate partition for your files so that you change only your OS. Even with windows. This way you’ll always keep your files and just need to customize your distro and reinstall your apps when you change between distros
Yeah i kept my files on a seperate drive and just wiped the one with the os. for settings i was trying a different distro and desktop enviroment so those where always a bit different and i started from scratch
I was already using Linux a lot of the time when Windows 7 was out, and seeing Microsoft push ads in the start menu, as well as all the other trash and pointless changes that they included with Windows 8+ just confirmed my decision to leave the Windows ecosystem.
ive finally settled on arch.
What are you, some kind of Linux prodigy?
arch is basic. It’s just minimalise by default.
It has an amazing wiki, extremely active and helpful user forums, and an installer (i think now) or at least a massively helpfully customised shell for initial setup.
you can install arch and make it look like mint or whatever easily, then the only difference is pacman and the amazing AUR
It’s not like he’s compiling Linux from scratch on day one. Arch is pretty well supported and has a package manager.
Lol i hear this alot about arch users and as a newbie i dont get it. It has been the easiest for me to understand, maybe its the documentation idk i started with endavourOS as well which is a great beginner OS for arch IMO
EndeavorOS has been a great experience for me as well. Also KDE Plasma and now Wayland.
EndeavourOS isn’t pure arch. (I don’t mean this in an elitist way. Use whatever is best for you.) Pure arch doesn’t come with a desktop, so it sucks for new users.
I would agree but most people dont even know that a DE is different then an OS. I do plain arch now i was just saying it was a good starting point
I started with an Arch-based distro and haven’t looked back (EndeavorOS. Though I guess it’s kind of like Arch easy mode). I have a family member that has been daily driving Linux for over a decade, so that was very helpful during the transition. But after a week or two, I haven’t needed his help at all.
My laptop that previously ran Windows 11 is faster than ever.
Dude what ad ridden hellscape is that site, ublock pinged 45 ads on that page just on load lol
Oh that’s just the start menu
🥇
Third-party scripts disabled and it loads instantly, no ads. Funny that.
yea it was overkill enough to make me look into if connect supports always opening links external so I can have my ad block lol
My machine running Win10 LTSC is getting updates until 2029. I also have machines running Debian. There is no way I am installing the regular version of Win11. Its trash made to pander to greedy shareholders. If they take the garbage out for LTSC, I might run it.
As an individual, how do you get the LTSC version legally, and how much does it cost?
Imagine trying to get Windows legally lol. This provides a much better solution.
You can’t unless you form a small group like a non profit organization or a business. You can cheat the system legally going the NPO route as long as you find a way to fulfill legal requirements, but you need friends (it helps to know someone in law school too) and you have to do the legal paperwork and share all the cost. You could make a gamer NPO for example. The price to do this will vary depending on where you live. The price for the volume license can vary a lot depending on where you get it from. Where your group is located effects this. In my local it is about $200-400 USD per person.
Your other alternative is the grey market. Its grey because it is legally ambiguous.
Can you ping me if they tell you? I would also like to know
Well, your best option is to switch to Linux
Just in case you don’t want to go to the tabloid hell that is the Express Petition Link pirg.org
It’s such an awful site, and always surprises me when I see it being used/shared. Surely when it comes to tech there are better resources than a tabloid for it.
A bit clickbait’y. Windows 10 will still work just fine for another decade at least, even without support.
In the Enterprise we ran 10+ year old PC’s with XP still on them because the CNC program only runs on XP. No issues but of course you wouldn’t use the internet on that machine.
Does having support really make a massive difference, especially if you’re running AV anyway? A good AV suite will still be updated for years to come.
The government sector like hospitals etc will pay for extended support so not to worry.
It’s only Enterprise that might have an issue because they want patched systems but may not be able to afford Win 10 Enterprise. Especially small to medium business.
As for the home user, it’s not a massive issue.
Personally I don’t care because I run Linux exclusively. I only gave win 10 running in a VM for printing. Canon said on the box that the printer supports Linux, then after I bought it, officially stopped all Linux support on their site. The original Ubuntu driver only support black and white. So I’m forced to use Windows in a VM for printing. But it’s not connected to the net so it will fulfill this role forever.
If you’re a regular home user and don’t use any special proprietary software like Photoshop, I highly recommend you try Linux Mint. It will also breathe new life into your machine
Not having security patches on a system you do things like go to your banking website on is actually a pretty big deal, and I don’t think it should be dismissed lightly. Also AV is mostly snake oil, and is in no way an adequate substitute for a properly patched OS.
Hi, someone that worked on banking stuff in the past.
You are not safe, nothing is even half as secure as it should be and you are most likely just using a web based front end puppeteering a much much older system. The browser you are on is normally the second weak point after your own dumb self and I have not even heard of one case (not saying there are none) of a OS related vulnerability with online personal banking.
I’m with you there. It’s all layer upon layer of vulnerability and false security, and then at the bottom of all of it lurks the Ken Thompson hack.
Still bad advice to tell people it’s okay to use an explicitly vulnerable OS, I think.
But in that lies the rub, how is it explicitly vulnerable?
It’s not as big a deal as you think because most banking hacks are done via browser vulnerabilities rather than OS vulnerabilities. The exception being if you’ve somehow managed to install a keylogger, in which case the issue is the user and a decent AV should detect and block the keylogger.
As long as you use a browser that gets the latest updates (Firefox, Vivaldi, Chrome), run a decent AV, and don’t install dodgy software you downloaded from some dodgy site, you should be ok.
AV is definitely not snake oil. I worked in Enterprise IT and a robust AV alongside other security measures is a must and does catch alot. More than the built in Windows security catches. Plus the AV normally incorporates a virus/malware removal tool which tends to be better than Windows built in tool.
Would you advise your enterprise clients that running Windows unpatched is ‘not a big deal as long as you have patched web browsers and AV’? Of course not. Because that’s dangerous advice and could even open you up to legal liability.
So why would you advise otherwise to home users, who are often more vulnerable in the first place?
Because home users are not Enterprise users. They are not nearly as juicy a target.
If we are talking about malware and vulnerabilities, home users are a far bigger and easier target then corps.
Corporations have a custom firewall, proxy servers, VPN connections for all clients and double safeties for all important processes. While they are an interesting target for big organisations like terrorists and secret services, they have near to no value for the average Internet thiefe. Even if one could get in, there are no bank accounts lying around with money in them.
Home users have none of that, once you are on their PC you get everything. Sure their bank account will only net you a few thousand on average, but you get it easily.
What? Why would you get anything from a home user that you would not get from a corporate user? In fact I think you will find they get all the juice from the person (staff) and then extra from the business (and access to more victims).
You also have to factor in the sad fact that the age of viruses and malware has largely become the age of phishing and scams. People found out you don’t need malware when you can just trick people into giving you access anyway. This endless fear of missing updates is now mostly just marketing.
Very well said 👍
Last winter I ripped my DVD collection to my NAS. Problem: Neither my current daily driver laptop or desktop have optical drives. So I hauled out my father’s OLD Dell XPS. This thing has a Core i7 with three digits in the part number, I think it was built in 2008 or so. Felt like absolute sluggish crap running Windows 10. It feels perfectly modern running Linux Mint. And I have the old box a pretty hot supper ripping and transcoding all those DVDs all winter, but it did it.
Computers don’t slow down, Windows does.
I’m running windows 10 on a first Gen i7-930. I’ve upgraded my ram and video card over the years but still on a crappy hdd. Windows isnt lightning fast by any means. But it’s not unbearable. Perhaps my mind will blow when I finally upgrade.
My pc isn’t eligible for upgrade to eleven. Guess I’m sol then.
Great story 👍. Amazing
The daily express isn’t exactly known for it’s accurate insightful reporting. The headline is mostly about scaring people, mostly elderly (their main readership) that their computer is about to stop working.
AV cannot fix it all, unfortunately. But Linux is the way.
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Sounds like a good time to give Linux a try!
In line with many folks’ suggestions here, I’m ALL for switching to Linux full time after playing around with a few distros… BUT, I use dxo Photolab for photo editing which doesn’t run on Linux, yes, even through wine etc.
Also yes, I know the are a bunch of great Foss alternatives. I’ve tried them all. Nothing touches the results from my current program unfortunately.
I would be stoked if anyone could enlighten me as to how I could get that working.
I can highly recommend either using windows as a VM in virtualbox, or simply dual boot. I’m using Linux 99% of the time, but I still boot into windows occasionally for some firmware updates or software that does not work with Linux.
Have looked at dual boot before but it seemed like a ( admittedly fairly minor) pita. File sharing/ access across both systems is my main concern. Thanks for your response.
File access across systems is no problem.
It just has to be a separate partition either in the form of a whole SSD/HDD or as a partition on your main drive. Just make it NTFS (a file system that all those OSes know) it works with both windows and linux. I still have 3 NTFS partitions from my dual-boot days.
Like others have said, file sharing works pretty well with NTFS. I’ve had some issues playing games on steam that are on NTFS drives, but most work well. Also some issues accessing files from Cura for some reason. Other than that I have had no issues sharing files between w11 and Linux.
If you can, I recommend getting a dedicated SSD to install Linux on, and I’d recommend getting PopOS or Linux Mint as your distro. Both are Debian/Ubuntu derivatives, but are even easier and just overall better distros than Ubuntu imo, and most hardware and software will be compatible ootb without any tinkering.
Yeah, just make a drive/partition NTFS, and it will be usable by both systems. Please note that some Linux software doesn’t work well with NTFS, for example Timeshift (backup utility) and Steam Proton, so it’s best to have an ext4/btrfs drive for things you do exclusively on Linux and NTFS for common files of both systems (like documents, music, films, whatever)
FWIW, I only needed to install one package to be able to read the drive that my Windows install is located on/a shared drive between my two installs. It has been very easy to access the Windows partition from my linux install, but I have not needed to access my linux partition from the Windows install yet, so can’t speak to the ease of doing this.
I usually use USB sticks for sharing files between VM and host.
I personally had much better experience with QEMU than Virtualbox (although all my VMs are Linux, so might be specifics here).
Your best bet is virtualization. I use that for my CAD software, games that dont run under linux and Microsoft office
This allows me to only use Windows that 10% of the time I need my software and be using linux for all other stuff.
Only issue is that it requires some effort to get it going and some additional hardware if you want to run both at the same time.
Nice, i will take a look at this. With virtualization are both OS able to share files/ access the same files?
Kind of… You usually can mount a directory or similar from the Host machines (Linux in this case) on the Guest (windows in this case). It uses a virtual fs so it doesn’t matter the filesystem used on the host or similar. That said due this is slower than direct use of files.
Alternative even if that wasn’t a thing you could always do a network share in SMB or similar and as long as they have access to network it would work too.
Not by default, but can be set up without much PITA.
You have a W10 license, so just run up a VM, and install your software in that. Whilst it will be marginally slower, it will be 100% compatible and run on your host OS (this is not good for gaming in general, but if the VM software you use supports passthrough, mainly for GPU, then its pretty negligible).
Keep the Win10 VM off the WAN, and who cares how out of date it is and lacking in security updates.
Lots of people suggesting VM, but you can also consider dual boot.
I use Linux for everything except for the very few things were I can’t (specific games for example). That way you have the best of both worlds.
I even have it set up in different drives and use the MOBO boot menu to choose, so no worries about Windows breaking stuff
