I recently unpacked an old archive from the time I was making some shareware few decades ago. Windows Defender instantly ate all keygen.exe files from it. Those keygens were my own keygens for my own software (I wrote them myself and used them to generate keys for my customers back in the day).
No, it was just a plain Windows form, built from scratch using a then-popular Windows IDE. I think it was mostly triggered by the file name, maybe in combination with some crypto code inside.
If you're referring to Delphi, this has been a common issue for a long time.
Delphi seems to have been very popular with malware writers, and so AV companies keep flagging stuff from the standard libraries as malware.
Got so bad at one time that some tried to get a deal with the major AV players to provide a suite of very basic Delphi applications they could use for false-positive testing.
I'd add small stand-alone executables. IIRC it was also quite popular in Europe in general, due to Pascal or Delphi being used at universities etc.
In recent times your average Delphi application has gotten rather bloated, but that's mainly due to RTTI, generics and certain standard library stuff. It's still quite possible to make small executables.
Those required prerequisites in the form of the VB runtime, so AFAIK not so popular. Also more limited or difficult to use in terms of writing malware.
Interesting ideas here: how antivirus becomes a form of censorship. Maybe that’s an extreme view but it feels like now that Microsoft supplies it’s own defender app. And like all forms of martial law beginning as a way to protect citizens!
I also noticed that with win10 when apps crash it sends the data to Microsoft—as though they can fix 3rd party apps for us. Yeesh. I think I’ll skip out on Windows 11 TYVM.
Re crash data: MS actually provides crash data to 3rd party providers who set things up correctly. So if you have a desktop app you don't need to roll your own crash collecting system if Winqual [0] is enough. Apps that roll their own (like chrome and 100s of other crashpad based apps) usually disable MS error reporting for their executables.
Also MS does ship shims for popular 3rd party apps that don't fix themselves, for better or worse...
By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring homes? What are koalas but a form of eucalyptus censorship? What is locking your front door but a form of censoring burglars?
No, just no. Censorship is preventing the transmission of ideas, nothing more, nothing less.
Deleting a file has nothing to do with transmission, and it's being done in response to a perceived threat, not its communicative meaning. (Like how you lock your house to protect from burglars.)
It's important not to abuse the term "censorship" -- if it means everything then it ceases to mean anything at all.
If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature.
Now, what if it was deleting "Animal Farm - The Video Game.exe"?
Now, what if it was deleting the keygen for "Animal Farm - The Video Game"? What if the activation server for that game had gone offline, and this keygen was now the only way to play it?
My point being, software (and especially games) can absolutely be a way of expressing ideas, and if you block the software, that seems like censorship to me. I also think that some forms of censorship are fine and even necessary—I don't particularly like stumbling across porn unprepared—but it should be optional.
If the intent is to prevent the transmission of ideas, then yes it's censorship.
If the intent is to protect from harm -- totally unconnected to ideas -- then no it's not censorship.
The reason Defender deletes keygens is that they're statistically associated with malware and viruses, as any Google search will terrifyingly immediately reveal. It clearly is falling under the "protect from harm" category as it's designed to do.
But so to answer your question clearly: deleting "Animal Farm.txt" because of the ideas inside is censorship (prevents it being transmitted). The video game would similarly be censorship if based on its content. But if it's deleting all keygens, regardless of content of their associated video games, then clearly not censorship.
But if it needs to be clearer: in censorship the harm is in the ideas themselves, the perspectives they spread.
In prohibitions that are non-censorship, it doesn't have anything to do with ideas. You aren't locking your door to prevent the idea of burglars entering your house.
Amazon literally deleted Animal Farm off of people's Kindle readers because of copyright[1]. We are so immersed in our ideology that we don't see that copyright is ideological and political.
Would it have really been better if it was because the text of it was considered problematic?
If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right? It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political literature.
I guess, in some ways, you could consider it censorship. But without evidence that its being done specifically to target certain types of speech, as opposed to a side effect from some other goal, I'm not sure it's a particularly useful label.
What is anti-virus software in general but "censorship" of people's abilities to distribute viruses to whoever they want? What is an adblocker but software that "censors" someone's ability to advertise in the most effective way possible?
I think you are holding far too strict a definition of the word related to "transmission". If I am prevented from reading data I want to read, because some entity has decided they don't want me to read it, how is that not censorship?
Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway? Looking up nearly every form of the word 'censor' I can think of, nothing speaks specifically to the transmission of ideas. Rather, every definition I can find that makes sense focuses on deletion.
You could even argue that anti-virus is a form of voluntary censhorship.
Come on, whitelist the folder where you keep your keygens, and windows defender won't interfere.
"Censorship, the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good" (Britannica). Voluntarily enabling a program to filter incoming data for personal convenience and safety is the opposite of the censorship. Like following self-imposed rules and restrictions is not a lesser freedom.
For less tech savvy users wiping keygens might be a safer default approach. I am pretty sure that keygens are an attack vector.
That will work... until you plug that drive into a fresh OS. Or you reformat and forget to unplug the drive before you set up the whitelist. Or it's spotted on a network drive by another PC running Windows Defender.
> If I am prevented from reading data I want to read... how is that not censorship?
Of course it's censorship, they're preventing it from being transmitted to you. That's what I said.
> Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway?
Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia article [1]:
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information."
Speech and communication are transmission. There's no such thing as speech or communication with only a single party involved, as generally understood.
And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm, not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond any recognizable or useful meaning.
Oxford Languages defines censorship as "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
Mirriam-Webster defines a censor as "a person who supervises conduct and morals," adding a subdefinition as "an official who examines materials (such as publications or films) for objectionable matter." The relevant definition for "censorship" simply points at the word "censor," so it was not useful for my argument.
In any case, I think wiki is not 100% right according to the actual language authorities. MS deliberately categorizes otherwise-harmless piracy-related software as deletion-worthy, and that isn't censorship? When they clearly have a conflict of interest in that some of that software represents a direct threat to their revenue stream? C'mon dude.
> And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm, not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond any recognizable or useful meaning.
And what exactly is harm? Microsoft is making subjective judgements, which can not help but be political. Microsoft has decided that historical and obsolete keygens and ansi art are harmful. It would not surprise me if they deemed software to circumvent obsolete abandonware encryption harmful as well, since it violates the DMCA.
A better analogy would be if you let a third party security company examine the items in your home and remove what they deemed to be "harmful" to you.
> By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring homes?
Not inherently, but a disparity in which fires get prevented and put out and with which priority might constitute censorship, just as a disparity in which types of programs are identified as malware might. Many historical examples for the former instantly come to mind, from one library in alexandria to a sexual research institute in nazi germany. Not to imply that this is comparable to those in magnitude of course.
(On second thought, that also applies to systems of explicit censorship, where all media has to be approved but media that exhalts the government line has a higher chance of being approved than media that does not comment. As well as our system of implicit censorship, where every film company has to make money, but a movie produced with approval and material support of the US military has a significantly higher chance of being financially viable.)
Defender is deleting the app as a "potentially" unwanted application, a better analogy would be if firefighters went to every home and confiscated every "potential" source of ignition.
Also, fwiw "transmission" is literally the name of torrenting software. Would your argument change if that was the package being removed instead of qbittorrent?
Most people use windows, windows comes with defender on by default, what's stopping the govt/some company from getting msft to remove programs and files they don't like?
> what's stopping the govt/some company from getting msft to remove programs and files they don't like?
Literally the capitalistic profit motive?
You know, companies generally try to avoid pissing off their customers and driving them to competitors for no good reason. If Microsoft started politically censoring users' content, that's probably the easiest thing they could do to send users away from Windows and Office over to Macs and Google Docs en masse.
That would be nice, wouldn't it? But consumers have never held msft to such a standard so far, so I wouldn't expect it to start now. Sure a small number of people trying to spread the files will care, but if it's implemented right 99.999% of users won't even know the censor exists.
Judging. And it's impossible to build certain feature without judging.
A lot of people here probably don't remember what email was like in the 90s/00s, before it got bad enough that Gmail's killer feature was (what we'd now call) cloud-enabled spam filtering.
The distinction between judgement and censorship is the amount of user control. (1) Does the user know it happened? (2) Can the user override the decision?
Given that Defender (apparently) directly deletes the files in question without asking, it seems you agree with the grandparent that it is, in fact, censorship.
Not true. Defender alerts you when it quarantines a virus or whatever. And if you know what buttons to push, you can tell it to remove it from quarantine. You can also tell it to ignore folders if you so desire.
That's sort of like arguing a hotdog is a sandwich. It isn't simply because if someone asked for a sandwich and you gave them a hotdog they'd say you gave them the wrong thing—even though technically a sandwich can simply be meat between some bread.
> "Microsoft—as though they can fix 3rd party apps for us.."
They can, and have done for decades. The classic famous one is retold by Joel Spolsky as "[...] a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95". One from Raymond Chen is a program which hacked its way through the control panel printers menu and Microsoft had to detect that, put a dummy menu for it to use, then trigger what it was trying to achieve. Since then application compatibility has become its own subsystem in Windows which developers, enterprises and Microsoft can use to create compatibility shims to make programs keep working even if their makers have gone out of business.
> "Interesting ideas here: how antivirus becomes a form of censorship. Maybe that’s an extreme view but it feels like now that Microsoft supplies it’s own defender app"
Why didn't it feel like that for all the other antivirus false positives from McAfee, Symantec, Norton, F-Secure, Panda, et al over the years?
And how is Microsoft (not a government) or Defender (optional) anything to do with martial law?
lowering the quality of the discussion admittedly, but in the most generous possible tone of voice, I ask, why does "thunderbong" have password protected zip files of game-cracking exe files ? because of smoking weed and piratin games thats why !
and, should the wealthiest corporations on earth be in charge of making sure that thunderbong does not get to make game cheats at home ?? of course NOT
on the other hand, as a software developer in the 90s, I went to Hong Kong, and saw first hand stalls of 100% pirated movies, games, OS and apps.. lots of it, with professional COPIED artwork and packaging .. as a content creator this was really disturbing.. people told me that there are no software development jobs (then) only hardware companies, for this exact reason
Summarize- commerce takes place in a market, and theft is a real, constant problem, both at the commercial level (Hong Kong) and personal level (Thunderbong). Yet, society must have some stable relief valves for overzealous, rich Sheriff types, and overreaching rich merchant types, to prevent rifling through the rights, privacy and headspace of Thunderbong, and the legitimate customer THEY might become, while dealing with commercial pirates who are just basically stealing.
I am a Westerner, and I have to say, I am more concerned that Thunderbong have a safe life, than I am about the profits of Merchant and turf of Sheriff.
You should probably research how the crash reporting works, but the gist of it is (iirc) companies can register their software with Microsoft and get these crash reports sent to them.
> I also noticed that with win10 when apps crash it sends the data to Microsoft—as though they can fix 3rd party apps for us
I don't develop software for any Microsoft platforms, but on the platform I develop for it's actually common for the vendor to break something in their API, so that crashes in 3rd party apps are actually due to a regression in the platform frameworks. Analyzing third-party crash reports could guide them in catching those cases.
This is incredibly hyperbolic. If you don't like Defender's default behavior (which is sane for the 99.999% of users who are not devs), turn it off or use a different OS.
Is it? I've personally seen it label keygen type files (with no malware whatsoever) as dangerous more times than I can count. It's false and misleading and I don't see why they couldn't pull the same shit with anything else.
Windows is a consumer/business product. For the vast, vast majority of its customers, keygen files are going to be malware.
It would only be censorship if you didn't have a choice to avoid Defender, and you obviously do, or if Microsoft had some sort of political interest in suppressing files named keygen.exe.
'For the vast, vast majority of its customers, keygen files are going to be malware.'
That's just not true though. They have the ability to detect malware. What they are doing is blindly labeling anything reslembling a keygen as malware , for no valid reason. This also doesn't just apply to Defender.
The problem is that "the hundreds of thousands of malware used to train Defender" include keygen files that do not have any malicious behavior and just generate keys, mixing them together with actually malicious keygens that e.g. try to install some rootkits. It's not a false positive mistake, it's a whole class of intentionally misleading false positives, censoring a type of not-malware that is not wanted by Microsoft but potentially desired by users.
In the Windows defender settings, I believe under history actions or something similar (I don't have a PC running defender at hand) you can release and whitelist files it has placed in quarantine.
Yes that's why you have to unzip them on a Mac or Linux PC first. It does the same for Windows Loader by Daz and similar activation cracks for Windows 7/10.
Not to condone it's stupid behavior, but I believe it put them in Quarantine. They keep moving the setting ___location around but I believe the menu option to located them is called "Protection History" where you can see what action was taken and undo it.
That's fall out from the 90s. People hunted for keygen.exe for their sharewares. And some rouge sites will collect many keygens, attach backdoor program with those and then distribute from their site or over bit-torrent.
Anti-virus then would scan those files. Looks like modern ones simply delete any such named file without scanning.
Non-braindead antivirus software would look for the backdoor programs rather than the keygens themselves. Though as time goes on, I become less and less convinced that there's such a thing as non-braindead antivirus software.
It serms that antiviruses today have only antifeatures. The last time i saw an antivirus detect malware was more than 10 years ago. Now the only protection against viruses is common sense, a good backup and another OS to recover what's left after the disaster strikes.
A friend that worked at an antivirus company told me they had a whole division whose task was to write viruses. This helped then to gain on competitors in the benchmarks "which antivirus detects more viruses"
This depends on your online presence. Even if malware touches my computer it has no access to bank accounts and the amount of personal info is low. I still have to find a better email provider than yahoo or gmail for receipts.
I renamed it into {not-keygen}.{not-exe} instead. I didn't investigate the issue in details, but I think that Microsoft expects a more enterprisey file name for a legitimate keygen. I should have called it something along the lines of CredentialManager.exe instead :)
But I wonder whether it did auto-submit these files to Microsoft together with my private keys. I'm glad that the private keys were in config files outside of the executables, and this probably saved them from being compromised.
If everybody started renaming keygens to CredentialManager.exe, would the learning algorithms the AV companies are using start to flag and delete those .exes too?
Yeah, I once circumvented gmail's antivirus detection by sending a (perfectly legitimate) installer executable as a txt file because gmail apparently just has/had a strict "no files with certain extensions" policy. And IIRC Zendesk applies the same rule to file attachments on support tickets.
I had pitched for my team to build a tiny widget that would send attachments to virustotal, but it would have required a license for commercial use and we never had a security incident with files coming into our support center so it never became a priority.
While this may sound like a dumb policy, the end result is exactly what you want, a system that makes it impossible to have you download executables without you being aware.
It sadly doesn't make a difference. I have about a dozen keygens on my machine and they get quarantined unless they're zipped behind a password or zipped into a 7z.
Just downloading a zip with a keygens inside, it gets removed from the zip before even unarchiving it.
Also, AFAIK by spec, the manifest of a zip file is unencrypted, even if the zip "is".
Most scanners are too brain dead to care, but I have come across a few that still quarantine if the manifest lists a file with a blacklisted extension.
Easy solution? Compress to zip, then compress that zip to another zip, with a password.
(Yes, I've spent far too long trying to get work done underneath insane corporate security policies)
Gmail will block you from sending a a password-protected ZIP with anything potentially bad in it, like an EXE, because they can see the individual file headers and central directory, like you say. Unfortunately, if you have a ZIP inside a passworded ZIP it also gets considered dangerous and blocked.
Here's a workaround: rename the .exe file to a .txt file, then put that in a password-protected zip file. Now braindead security scanners have no choice but to believe that it really is a text file.
it used to be a very common way to append trojans to existing executables. First pack them then add small payload (ones i've seen were usually ~20kb in size)
Then antiviruses took an easy way out and marked all as viruses for some reason...
The complaints in GitHub started rolling in on March 4. I found a few torrent clients that were added by Microsoft as PUA on March 2 (this is probably an incomplete list):
When I mentioned in another thread this happening to other open source projects (winmerge, kdiff3) [0], I was told I was making stuff up and/or this is in 'best interest' of users and that this only happens because these are 'uncommon applications'.
Its going to be amusing to read replies to this thread.
Pardon the snark, but this is BS and its really sad to see this shitshow being defended.
> I was told I was making stuff up and/or this is in 'best interest' of users
This is the sensation I get too. "Why don't you just use regedit/gpedit/etc." (this approach is hilariously insufficient)
Some days I feel like giving up on tech because of how the corporate PR machines have ruined large swathes of the community. It is getting harder and harder to find actual answers to questions like "how do I remove the windows defender binaries from my PC?"
If the TI approach stops working, I am moving to linux and I am taking our product's platform along for the ride too.
>I was told I was making stuff up and/or this is in 'best interest'
I read the comment thread. It's unclear which comment said that you were "making stuff up". There's also zero matches for "best interest" (your direct quote).
>that this only happens because these are 'uncommon applications'.
Relatively speaking, winmerge and kdiff3 are quite uncommon, compared to the normal stuff that people have installed on their computers.
>Pardon the snark, but this is BS and its really sad to see this shitshow being defended.
Are you against people defending microsoft on principle, or are simply unsatisfied with the explanations given? The explanation given (ie. unknown software -> don't know whether it's safe -> warn users it's unknown) seems pretty reasonable to me, as it fails closed rather than fail open. For a technical user that might not be an acceptable trade-off, but I also don't see it as an unacceptable default for non-technical users.
I admit and apologize for salty tone above. It is not very constructive, and I agree, and would like to elaborate.
This isn't the first time such thing has happened and it won't be last. Windows has becoming more and more painful as Operating System as in operating the machine and has been trying to operate the user instead.
The incidents I mentioned about Winmerge and Kdiff3 did happen with me and I stand by that. Above comment does not quote anyone but convey my understanding of the replies in general, which I now understand to be less than perfect.
You must be able to realise that it is not exactly presented in such manner as to be "unknown". Unknown would simply mean windows doesn't know about it and its upto user's discretion. Microsoft, by virtue of all the telemetry, happen to know that this application is uncommon. Why not say that? Why not let the user decide whether they want to run an uncommon app? What is happening here instead, however, is it gets presented as "dangerous" and blocked by default. This, along with Microsoft's position ends up being (in my humble opinion) an abuse of powerful position. And that, again, in my own humble opinion is unacceptable in being defended.
TBH, Windows shouldn't even be in the business of having any opinion on uncommon software.
If they want to collect data sets for virus protection, go ahead.
If they want to hash installed files from common software to detect divergences for virus protection, go ahead.
But having any kind of notification that an install is uncommon? We call it a general purpose computer because we want to use it for general purposes: which is to say, uncommon purposes.
This feels like ape'ing Apple without thinking it through.
> But having any kind of notification that an install is uncommon? We call it a general purpose computer because we want to use it for general purposes: which is to say, uncommon purposes.
How much % of the windows install base do you think is running random programs that they downloaded off github, and how many are just running the top 1000 programs (eg. chrome/office/winrar)?
> Do we want to live in a world where someone running something different than everyone else on their computer is treated with suspicion?
It depends on what you mean by "suspicion". Should users be wary and not blindly run uncommon binaries they got off the internet, on a unsandboxed system? I don't see why not. I'll even say that most developers are not exercising enough caution when downloading random packages off npm.
> Isn't this already what Windows does? It's warned about unsigned binaries on first run for a while now, no?
Sort of? There's three I know of
1. the generic warning for files you downloaded off the internet
2. the UAC warning when you try to run any program as admin
3. the smartscreen warning for uncommon files.
The first two has the "run/open" equally as visible as the "don't run/cancel" button. The last one is the one where the "run" button is hidden.
>And I can see some argument for that, even if in practice it feels more like teaching users to blindly ignore warnings.
That's exactly the problem. The first two warnings show up for everything, so users are trained to click through.
>But holding uncommon or un-Microsoft-sourced (that is, signed) to a higher standard feels wrong.
The problem is that without a digital signature, you can't tell whether a binary from a legitimate developer and a malware developer. Hence the need to rely on file hashes and needing to warn users for uncommon binaries.
Another interaction before 3. is the Edge / SmartScreen integration where it won't download files thought to be unsafe "This is unsafe to download and was blocked by SmartScreen Filter" and you need to explicitly download them, e.g. screenshot in this blog:
Have you tried running anything on new Apple architecture -- even running your own apps built locally works half of the time, and that's _with_ the full moon out and correct number of goats dully sacrificed...
>You must be able to realise that it is not exactly presented in such manner as to be "unknown". Unknown would simply mean windows doesn't know about it and its upto user's discretion. Microsoft, by virtue of all the telemetry, happen to know that this application is uncommon. Why not say that? Why not let the user decide whether they want to run an uncommon app?
2. the prompt says running the app "might put your PC at risk". I'm presuming that's what you meant by "dangerous", but that's not exactly the same thing.
3. The default option is indeed "don't run", and you do have to click on the non-obvious "more info" link for the "run" to show up, but this seems like a reasonable trade-off. Otherwise users might instinctive click "run" and ignore the warning.
>This, along with Microsoft's position ends up being (in my humble opinion) an abuse of powerful position. And that, again, in my own humble opinion is unacceptable in being defended.
In other words, "I'm so confident that I'm correct and microsoft is so powerful that I think it's unacceptable for people to present arguments to the contrary?
> Relatively speaking, winmerge and kdiff3 are quite uncommon, compared to the normal stuff that people have installed on their computers.
I think you missed the point here. The fact that programs are uncommon isn't a legitimate excuse for Microsoft to falsely flag them as malware and then not fix it.
> Its going to be amusing to read replies to this thread.
I feel like respondents did a good job in the previous thread explaining what is going on and why. Your summation of that interaction, tone then, and tone today seemingly suggests you've got a predetermined conclusion in mind and consider any other interpretation/explanation as inherently adversarial.
Or to phase this more simply: This isn't constructive. You should assume good faith in the people who respond to you, test your assumptions, rather than simply dismissing any insight as a blanket "defense."
Switching my home computer to Linux has had its problems since I'm an avid gamer, but the more news I read about Windows the less I regret that decision.
I set up a LAN box for my parents on a computer that my dad received for free. It came with Windows 10 on it, but wasn't very powerful - company's old hardware.
After several...frustrating...hours of trying to talk them through things over the phone to get RDP working, just so I could install Docker to run some containers that didn't even work properly with networking, and having to call/text any time the machine thought it was smarter than me and rebooted because of an update, I finally drove out there, wiped it, and threw linux on it (Ubuntu 20, which serves the purposes I need).
The entire installation process took about 15 minutes because I was explaining it to my dad as I installed it. Zero headache since it was plugged in next to the router and powered on weeks ago, and the performance on the running containers makes it feel like a brand new computer compared to trying to run them in Windows.
I run a Windows desktop locally for gaming. I've heard good things about SteamOS and have been toying with switching, but I'm put off by the idea of trying to re-flash Windows if it doesn't work. Personally, I'll be happy when I no longer need Windows even for gaming.
Which games do you play that don't work on Linux? Because I switched to it a long time ago and haven't looked back. Proton and Wine are excellent nowadays, and 99% of what I want to play works, with the rest usually just a short `protontricks ...` command away from working.
The only stuff that is completely broken is Easy Anticheat and BattleEye, but those will supposedly be working when the new Steam Deck starts shipping.
I played through that entire game through Wine on Linux last year. Idk if the Steam version works out of the box, but IIRC I didn't have to do anything special to get the GOG version to work.
I agree completely. I have Windows at home for gaming, and Windows at work (because those are the laptops we get). It's rough. The only thing that makes this bearable is Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Side note: if you end up dual booting your gaming PC, please learn from my mistakes and disable Fast Startup before you do. Otherwise you're going to have a bad time.
Funny you mention it. This thread actually sparked some digging and I'm currently looking into flashing Pop!OS right now.
For anyone interested:
From what I've gathered, Pop!OS has a bit more support than the officially released SteamOS Beta version, which is actually someone outdated right now. But from what I've read about the Steam Deck, Steam has a new version of their OS that the deck runs on. So maybe (hopefully) it will be released along with the deck - couldn't find any info on that though.
> maybe (hopefully) it will be released along with the deck - couldn't find any info on that though.
Valve has stated that their SteamOS 3 will be a freely-available open platform, and that they encourage other device manufacturers to ship it on their hardware. I assume that this means isos will be available.
After several...frustrating...hours of trying to talk them through things over the phone to get RDP working
Having had similar problems (not just windows, RDP/VNC/you name it) to me this now sounds like 'wrong tool for the job'; just use e.g. Anydesk : no install, just an exe, have the remote side run it and tell you the ID and you're good (at least it didn't fail me once yet). From then on configure RDP/VNC yourself, and the router's port forwarding, etc.
I don't care how much of a Windows fanatic I was I'd never even try to use the GUI of the client version to configure the a box as a Docker server remotely. I don't know what to expect from that other than frustration. I'd definitely use Linux myself but if someone asked me to use Windows I'd still just enable the OpenSSH service instead of RDP and use the Server version if possible and if not at least set up the auto update schedule to the early morning like I would on the Linux box.
I ditched in the middle of Windows 7, with absolutely no regrets. Valve has made tremendous inroads in gaming with Proton, along with developers releasing for Linux, there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.
I used to think that too before I made the switch to macOS. Yes it was a learning curve initially, but it wasn't unmanageable, and you start to uncover Windows annoyances that you never knew existed because you were used to them and conditioned into thinking they were normal for so long. You'd be surprised how flexible your needs are when you aren't pigeonholing yourself.
>and you start to uncover Windows annoyances that you never knew existed because you were used to them and conditioned into thinking they were normal for so long
..which promptly get replaced with mac annoyances. Random ones off the top of my head:
* closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close the app
* overwriting a folder deletes existing contents, rather than merging them
* weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll wheels unusable
>* overwriting a folder deletes existing contents, rather than merging them
Wait. If there truly is not a setting for this then it makes finder unusable as a file explorer and arguably the entire OS. Recursive merge is one of the most fundamental things a personal computer does.
I hate being the kind of internet guy who's like "X sucks" about something a lot of people have worked on, but I really, really, really dislike Finder. It fails as a file explorer on several fundamental levels. For example network shares in Finder feel so tenuous and like they could break any instant. Sometimes after you sleep your Mac and wake it up, you have to reboot to be able to reconnect to a network share.
that's the pretty standard behavior on unix. Unless the window manager goes out of its way to override it, mv'ing a folder to a place where one already exists will replace the old folder with the new one.
You can go out of your way to do it manually with rsync and similar tools, of course, but by default you're moving directory pointers around, not merging trees.
How many Unix graphical OS distributions are there even, let alone how many are installed?
Nautilus, the default file manager of GNOME (and by extension Debian and its children such as Ubuntu) handles recursive merge. This isn't an issue on Linux.
It's obviously bad design to have something as high level as a file manager be a glorified 2D wrapper of 2 command line tools.
> * closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close the app
There are applications with more than one window.
> * weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll wheels unusable
This is called "progress" or UI/UX or whatever name they have today for brain damage . Some years ago the Apple GUI was looking good. Then the replaced the window buttons with coloured circles. Guess which one is which ?
I never understood the rational behind the second one... Sure I get that's how directories probably work underneath the hood but in a GUI I guess I expected a bit more "magic"
I have to use macos for work. I don't think it's very good. Mostly just different (and less untuitive for me - ymmv). I started by being annoyed about the UI, then the cli differences (it's not linux) then I got annoyed by the terrible finder, then I got annoyed by frequent beachballs, then... it goes on.
Indeed. That goes for any software and it'd be really nice if we could grow beyond our childish tribalism and accept that "I don't like the way your favorite software works" is not a personal attack.
Your frequent beachballs might be caused by your work installing an antivirus on the mac, such as carbon black or crowdstrike. Or a bad external hard drive causing i/o freezes.
Honestly, I feel like Apple should just throw away Unix compliance at this point. The average Mac is less POSIX-derived than most unlicensed Linux distros (or BSD derivatives, for that matter), and it only serves to further ostracize people like me, who just want to develop and not wait on my computer. Most Mac owners I know wouldn't care at this point, since they're either completely used to this kind of treatment or quit programming altogether.
I have used other operating systems, including Linux and MacOS. While I am fond of MacOS Application Bundles, I do not like many other things, like single-button mice, limited choice in hardware, and relative lack of gaming.
Apple's mice haven't been single button since ages ago. Right click works out of the box, and all of their own mice also supports right clicking in various ways
Yet they still build the Magic mouse as though it was a single button mouse so it doesn't actually have 2 separate switches, just 1 in the middle. This annoyingly means that clicks don't always click if you're too far from the center.
Apple has never actually built a mouse with 2 distinct switches for left and right click. It's like they are too proud or something and "right" click needs to be faked for some reason.
> You know you can connect any USB mice you want, right?
Yes, I'm aware of that. When I last seriously used MacOS X it was still the PPC era, and while technically you could use a 2 button mouse it wasn't really designed for it. Anyway, compared to other complaints that's a minor gripe of mine.
> and while technically you could use a 2 button mouse it wasn't really designed for it.
I don't quite think this is true. I'm pretty certain that MacOS 9 had a right click menu if you plugged in a two button mouse; I've used MacOS since version 6 and I recall distinctly right click being a novelty in OS 8.
Apple's philosophy always was that context menus could aid other workflows in the program, but couldn't replace them -- the functionality had to be accessible in some other way. Which, I thought, certainly makes sense if 90% of your users have a one button mouse. Could this be what you're thinking of?
Side-note: I really, really, really wish MacOS had mouse acceleration control in the settings menu. It's the first frustrating roadblock I hit whenever I set up a Mac, and it makes me just want to flash it with something else.
Why would it matter? So they could try and change my mind?[0] That I prefer the way Windows works is sufficient reason to continue to use it instead of Linux Desktop. Why is not really relevant.
[0] I've played that game a thousand times and it is always an exercise in frustration. No thanks.
"Windows good, you can't change my mind!" doesn't add anything of value to the conversation, especially for people who aren't dead-set either way.
If you swear by windows, you probably have good reasons. People who like windows would love to hear them. Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that frustrates you at all if you don't want to argue in support of your opinion?
+1 for the windows camp: Personally, I haven't found a better alternative for running Adobe programs on good hardware without taking out a loan on my house (mac pros are a no-go). So Windows works best here.
Another +1 for the windows camp: Gaming (but SteamOS is starting to compete here).
Other than that, I have found that some variant of linux or macOS outperforms windows in every way for my needs (insert obligatory, YMMV), and I am happy to list those out if anyone is interested or needs help deciding which OS suits their needs best.
> "Windows good, you can't change my mind!" doesn't add anything of value to the conversation
I was making a specific counterpoint to the argument "there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft". My point needed no elaboration to be valid.
> Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that frustrates you at all if you don't want to argue in support of your opinion?
Because in my experience said "conversations" always devolve into the same useless arguments, which are entirely irrelevant to the point that people have good reasons they use Windows because anyone else's opinion of their reasons is irrelevant.
> Why would it matter? So they could try and change my mind?
Because you want upvotes, so you gotta give people things to agree with. If I just say "Linux Sucks" I'm not giving people much to agree with, except naked tribalism.
But there are other things I can say that will allow members of my tribe to feel they're not voting tribally - and even some Linux enthusiasts to think I've got a point:
* "Linux doesn't support Photoshop / MS Excel / Altium / SolidWorks"
* "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-compatibility means I don't have to worry old software will break because I've got the wrong version of python installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
* "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers on Linux are a right mess"
* "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both hardware and software makers giving it less testing and support than they do Windows and Mac"
> * "Linux doesn't support Photoshop / MS Excel / Altium / SolidWorks"
"You don't need those things anyway, Krita / LibreOffice Calc / etc are good enough. Alternatively, don't they run in Wine?"
> * "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-compatibility means I don't have to worry old software will break because I've got the wrong version of python installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
"People shouldn't use old software because it is insecure. Fortunately there are armies of third party package maintainers dedicated to keeping software up to date for you and updating is easy and painless."
> * "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers on Linux are a right mess"
"Don't use Nvidia then."
> * "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both hardware and software makers giving it less testing and support than they do Windows and Mac"
"That's why we have to push more for its adoption!"
Like I said, I've played this game a lot. This is exactly how it goes every damned time. No matter what you say, someone will come out of the woodwork to argue that your opinion is wrong, you chose the wrong hardware, or even, bizarrely, that normal people don't need that, like that has anything at all to do with why you need it.
But this is not arguing that the opinion is wrong. It just shows that it's not a universal true for everyone and that Linux could work for other people reading this.
But the whole point of what I'm saying is that I personally use Windows for my own personal reasons. Why is it my job to provide a platform for some Linux Desktop evangelist to promote their favorite OS by arguing against my reasoning?
HN is not the place for dry posts like "I love Windows/Linux". Nobody cares that you run Windows for "your personal" reasons. People are actually interested in the reasons.
This all started because someone posted "[...] there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.", a point I sought to refute. That's it.
I would say it is at least as good as this post:
"You actually can directly listen to many scientists on social media."
Literally everything that followed was people being upset I didn't give them reasoning to attack. Well you know what? I'm sick of their bullshit arguments designed to promote their favorite OS by telling me all my personal decisions are bad just because I don't like the same things they do.
"I love Windows" does not refute anything. It's just tribalism.
"there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft" implies that Microsoft is bad, and on HN it's more or less accepted (mostly due to the user tracking and non-flexibility). Of course, there are still reasons to stay with Microsoft, so that argument is far from perfect too.
> I would say it is at least as good as this post: "You actually can directly listen to many scientists on social media."
My post suggests how to find the opinions of actual scientists. It's an actionable suggestion with reasoning unlike yours.
> by telling me all my personal decisions are bad
Nobody tells you that your personal decisions are bad. People are just discussing the reasons to choose one system of the other. Bystanders read that and decide for themselves. "I love Windows" arguments do not help anyone to decide.
> "I love Windows" does not refute anything. It's just tribalism.
Let me sum up:
>> There's no good reason to use Windows
> If Windows fits how you use a computer better, then that is a good reason.
That's it, that's all I'm saying. I didn't even say Windows was good. I certainly didn't say I love Windows, because I really don't and you will find many posts by me to back that up.
> Bystanders read that and decide for themselves.
THIS thinking precisely illustrates why I didn't elaborate on why I use Windows. With evangelists it isn't about discussion, or understanding, it's about performing a fucking sales pitch and I'm goddamned sick of it.
People really latched on to that "single button mouse" thing, completely ignoring the other 2 reasons I listed that I don't like MacOS. Not to mention that I wasn't telling people they should use Windows or criticising their reasoning for using MacOS.
To be fair to you, there is not a lot that can be done about the other two things that you don't like. Everyone knows that gaming on the Mac is limited, as is hardware choice. The reason that most people latch on the mouse comment is because it hasn't been true since the last century in all reality.
Which I'll accept is a problem of my last real attempt to use a Mac being well over a decade ago. I guess I just don't get why people keep harping on it, like correcting me on MacOS's 2-button mouse support is going to convert me or something.
for the most part, HN is pretty squarely in the 'windows bad linux good' camp. It is dumb af since according to a lot of the users on here, linux is gods gift to humanity.
doesn't matter that pretty much all software is a dumpster fire, and linux is just another, less hot dumpster fire compared to windows.
The difference between Linux and Windows is that in Linux I have never encountered any problem that I could not solve, in the worst case, when all else failed, by reading many source files of the offending programs, while on Windows I have encountered many cases of unsolvable problems, for which not only I was unable to find a solution (even if I have a lot of professional experience with all Windows versions since 3.0 till present) but also nobody else from IT support.
Just to give a recent example, 3 different IT support people, from 3 different countries, have worked one day each, trying to discover why MS Teams does not work on a certain new Dell laptop, while it works fine if you move the Ethernet cable to the old laptop. After many efforts, nobody has any clue.
It's the OS. The application distribution model is, in my opinion, significantly better than Linux and it's package management/repo scheme. I don't have to recompile old software to keep using it 2 years later (or 10 for that matter), I can place applications on different disks than the OS resides on, I can keep multiple versions of the same application, etc.
Is there a difference really? Microsoft spent years and literally billions to get developers on their OS (see Balmer's "developers developers developers" speech in the nineties).
Of course some people consider this evil.
No and no. Windows is "the better fit" because:
1) AD. 2) corruption (it's a very long story, see Munich for one). 3) anticompetitive behavior. 4) Excel.
Don’t let the haters drag you down. Myself I think Windows is fine (I work in finance). I use Fedora at home as my daily driver but lots of things on Windows are just as easy (or as tricky) to get running as they are anywhere else.
> there really isn’t a good excuse to stay with Microsoft
Except, if you run nvidia optimus laptop and have mixed display DPI.
Every few months I try to run Arch on my recent laptop and it’s always a nightmare.
I was hyped that 470 driver would fix wayland in nvidia (the only half decent way to fix mixed DPIs on Linux). Lo and behold, It’s still a buggy mess that made me crawl back to windows.
Maybe on 570 I will be able to use Linux on this laptop, likely never.
I believe Wayland may be better than X with this, but my displays have the same DPI so I haven't tested myself. My displays do have different refresh rates and Wayland handles that better in my experience.
NVIDIA has been slow on the Wayland front though, but I think they may have made decent progress with recent driver releases.
In recent years I have used only laptops with non-Optimus NVIDIA, and on these I had no problems in Linux with multiple monitors with different resolutions, even if I do not use Wayland.
The NVIDIA settings program allows you to configure the monitors at any resolutions and in any geometric arrangement.
Some 6-7 years ago, I had a laptop with Optimus NVIDIA and I lost a couple of days until making it work. After that I had no problems, but the external monitor had the same resolution with the laptop display, so I have never tried mixed DPI with Optimus.
In any case, after that I have avoided Optimus and there are enough alternatives.
I switched to Linux with the release of XP. Later versions of XP (SP2 and 3) were better with their service packs offering new features that really should have been in vanilla XP. But the original release of XP was slower than Windows 2000, uglier than Windows 2000 and required twice as much system resources as Windows 2000 while offering literally nothing in return aside a little more compatibility for gaming. But since all of the Windows games I played already supported Windows 2000 (bar the DOS games but I kept Win95 about for DOS games) there was no benefit in upgrading to XP. So I switched to Linux instead.
So it's been nearly 20 years running Linux and honestly I've never once missed Windows. I've never got people who said "I can't run x" because everything I've needed to work has worked or there has been some open source alternative that has worked equally well. And if I really needed a corporate platform there was always OSX. Unfortunately macOS these days is becoming a similar cesspool as Windows. Before long the only good operating systems left will ironically be the free ones.
Valve has made it so Linux is finally back to the point "Linux has games it can run that I can play" but it's still a far cry from reaching "Games that I play I can run on Linux".
For some it's not a problem but for those that play games from developers which use kernel level anti-cheat Proton isn't a be-all-end-all that Linux is now ready to migrate to.
I was so happy with Linux, I switched my 80+ yo grandmother's computer as well. My father now runs it on his laptop. For the average user who does not game, windows is not recommended by me. Linux has stopped me in my tracks a few times, but I fiddle with things. My grandmother and father haven't had any issues in the years they have had it installed.
Facetious question but for a genuine response: Firefox yes, your distro's Chromium package yes, but Chrome proper is still refusing to enable it though (they allowed you to toggle it for a bit after 88 the retracted that in 91).
Not being facetious at all. I'm replying to "there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft." and last I checked browser video acceleration on linux with nvidia was still broken, no matter whose fault that is.
I'd love to use linux but It's hard to say everyone should use linux when in 2021 not everyone even has proper video acceleration.
Yes. Download them with youtube-dl and use whatever hardware-accelerated video player you like. (Bonus: Youtube can no longer steal them out from under you at the behest of copyright trolls, because they're on your harddrive.)
recently switched off of Windows to using PopOS. Really impressed how everything kinda just worked out the box. I'm very excited to see if Valve's proton will push more people to Linux and in general, improve the desktop experience.
Whatever runtime Steam bundles with its games will soon grow almost as many irritating warts. Valve is apparently getting anticheat to work, which under Windows involves basically voluntarily installing a kernel-level rootkit so the game publisher can fully monitor your PC.
Ultimately the ideal setup will probably involve keeping a Windows machine around for gaming and using Linux for serious work. Or running Windows in a VM with PCI passthrough for the video card.
I've had the opposite experience - Proton has been getting better and better - even more so if you like to play around with the Glorious Eggroll fork.
Then again, I mostly play single player games that don't have anti-cheat. Once Valve gets anticheat working though, which they are actively working on, it's basically game over.
Unfortunately my favorite game right now, Vermintide 2, uses Easy Anti Cheat which does not work with Proton. I've had to set up a VM with pass-through to play it.
I have a computer that runs Windows, exclusively for playing video games, and I have another computer for doing work, that will never run Windows outside of a VM.
I love Linux, but it's still like a glass house. One simple terminal command out of curiosity will basically force you to reinstall the OS.
If you're response to that is "well you should know what you're doing before you run as sudo," all I can say is no. There is no reason why changing a DE, or installing certain software should make it nigh impossible to revert to previous changes short of being an expert or full reinstall. Plus minor quirks with every single one. It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want to develop. I don't want to mess around with why I can't use this piece of software because of some configuration issue related to Linux. I just want it to work.
When I'm on Linux, more often then not I'd rather just not have complicated software as I'm used to on Windows or Mac. Linux is where you go when you borderline have to expect something isn't going to work or you'll need to do a reinstall at some point. I've never felt that way about Windows or Mac unless my root drive felt bloated and it was entirely optional.
> I love Linux, but it's still like a glass house. One simple terminal command out of curiosity will basically force you to reinstall the OS.
Counterpoints:
* Fedora Silverblue provides an immutable base OS with atomic updates/rollbacks. Makes it hard to mess up your system to the point where it doesn't work.
* NixOS and Guix provide delarative system configuration with atomic updates/rollbacks.
* Even on a 'traditional' distribution, you can use something like btrfs or ZFS snapshots and rollback your changes if you have a tendency to destroy systems ;).
That said, Linux is not for everyone and it is completely fine to use macOS or Windows (as I write, I am using macOS on a MacBook).
> One simple terminal command out of curiosity will basically force you to reinstall the OS.
You mean like `sudo rm -rf /`? Would an equivalent command run by an admin on Windows not cause the same types of issues?
Sure, there might be some files that can't be deleted while the system is running (like kernel32.dll or whatever it's called), but you'll certainly break a lot of things which you can only reasonably fix by reinstalling Windows.
> It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want to develop
What type of development do you do? Front end web development? C#/.NET/WPF? Something else?
Because life as a developer on unix is much much nicer than it is on Windows for most types of work. If you're not one of those people who is stuck with Visual Studio, you should invest time into learning to work on Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, etc. It'll be better for your job prospects (and sanity) in the long run.
I just reinstalled gnome manjaro. Not even an hour in and there is a major issue. I right clicked on the dock to get to Dash To Dock. I hit the super key at the same time an while that menu was up, I hit the settings button for the dash to dock.
My dock blew up to ~200% in size, all my icons increased in size and I can no longer enter the settings for dash to dock. It just opens up an error that is very long and I'm not willing to resolve.
This is why Linux desktop will never be taken seriously.
> My dock blew up to ~200% in size, all my icons increased in size and I can no longer enter the settings for dash to dock. It just opens up an error that is very long and I'm not willing to resolve.
Because you personally don't know how to use it, the Linux desktop will never be taken seriously?
Imagine if a tech-illiterate person was using Windows, and then they accidentally enabled the option to hide the taskbar. If they were to throw their hands up and complain about how this shit doesn't work, you would probably think they were overreacting.
And if you send them some instructions on how to restore the task bar, and they reply with "instructions too long; I'm not willing to read all that, I'll just reinstall the operating system", you would probably think they were being ignorant and lazy.
I think the problem is that not everyone reacts differently to being made to feel stupid (which software frequently does to us): some people approach the situation with humility, other people get defensive and angry.
I see this a lot with programmers, where someone inherits another person's code and rather than attempt to understand it, they proclaim that it's shit and decide to rewrite it.
That's the only explanation I have for why so many tech literate people (incl' engineers) seem to completely shutdown when confronted with seemingly trivial issues. It has to be something emotional like that, because doesn't take much time or effort to look up how to fix whatever problem you're having. Sure, you might not need to "look up" how to do something on Windows, but you've also (probably) been using Windows for a very long time.
And with all that said, I would recommend you use KDE Plasma instead of Gnome, and a mainstream distro like Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, which comes preinstalled with KDE instead of Gnome).
Aside: Idk why people keep recommending Gnome to Linux newcomers. Gnome is basically a hyper-opinionated attempt to copy the worst parts of Windows/macOS/Android/iOS, and a half-assed attempt at that. KDE Plasma is an actually usable and mature desktop, and it should be much more familiar to people coming from Windows (which is probably the vast majority of people). I've been using it without issues for the past 6~7 years (never had to fix a broken thing, never had to copy and paste a magic command, and certainly never had to reinstall the operating system)
I like how defender has been a daily thing on HN for the last week.
If you want to turn this shit completely off (or actually remove it), you just need to find a way to elevate a prompt as TrustedInstaller. This is the magic spell required to carry out extremely dangerous actions, such as 'net stop windefend', or otherwise adjusting permissions so the local administrator is allowed to do administrative things again.
I hesitate to share the actual mechanisms for elevating TI at this point. God forbid Microsoft plugs all those little holes and I have literally no choice but to move everything to Linux. I don't mind hacking around the consumer safeguards to get rid of cortana/defender/telemetry/etc because everything else about win10 is amazing. Ideally, I wouldn't have to jump through these hoops and could just pay for a properly-licensed copy of Windows that I actually own.
I don't think those controls will ever go away, because Windows is mostly just gamers and corporate IT installations, and IT people will need full control over that kind of stuff until the end of time, due to law.
> IT people will need full control over that kind of stuff until the end of time, due to law.
This is the other edge of the sword when dealing with leviathans like Microsoft. They cannot directly target & oppress independently-minded assholes like myself without also compromising their target markets.
If some arbitrary megacorps need a way around this, it would be economically infeasible for Microsoft to develop special custom code piles for every one of them in addition to the builds that the general public use, and also ensure the corporate builds don't magically leak out somehow at that scale.
I use that and another setting to disable automatic sample submitting after catching Defender uploading sensitive files from my Firefox profile directory like places.sqlite.
I don't know how the new Defender quarantine works, but it's not just a folder on the system anymore. Often you just can't get your files back and Microsoft's answer is "well, they're dangerous".
And I speak from experience that defender likes to magic away files to quarantine without any user interaction. Yes I didn't believe it either but it does. Indignation!
I wonder if the MAFIAA can pressure software vendors to ban classes of software. I think agreements like: "We'll only make it legal to run our streaming service on your OS if you can prevent these specific set of software from running". I think this already happens with TV's but anyone knows if there is already pressure in this direction in the software world?
I basically do the same thing. Why bother figuring out how to run Netflix with DRM on Linux and pay for the pleaser of a subpar libary when my little Raspberry Pi Seedbox, a 5$/Month VPN and Membership in a private Tracker gets me everything I want without the hassle or annoying DRM to deal with.
But we are not the ones that will be hit by this. It's the normies and computer illiterates that will have to deal with the issue. And god save us from the politicians that will make OSes that can pirate content just plain illegal.
> Why bother figuring out how to run Netflix with DRM on Linux
Because you want to pay for things. You want to support people making the things you enjoy. You want Netflix and other streaming companies to see that Linux users matter.
What if you pay for Netflix — because you want to support creators, — but you actually download stuff — because you also want to be able to watch it without hustle?
Like Netflix 4K is not working on Linux. It’s just not. And it wasn’t working on Macs either until very recently, but it needs some special hardware.
> What if you pay for Netflix — because you want to support creators, — but you actually download stuff — because you also want to be able to watch it without hustle?
I dont have to do that with music (spotify works on linux and my phone so its fine) or with games (steam works with linux and valve makes linux gaming better every single day).
I don´t mind paying a fair price for media and i like the convenience of a large, always available, curated, searchable, instantly available Media service. But the movie and TV Industry doesn´t offer it. Netflix here in Germany has a pathetic libary and i dont want to subscribe to 5 services to watch the 5 or 6 TV shows i want to see. Thats neither fair nor convenient. I´d rather take that money to my local cinema and pay for the experience instead of just the content.
Piracy is mostly a distribution problem and to a much lesser degree a pricing problem. As long as I can´t buy into a service that is better than pirating content why should I pay for it.
Yeah, no. I don't have to prove to a company that i am worthy to use their service without selling my soul and privacy to shaddowy entities. It's their job to sell a service that i would want to use to me.
>I wonder if the MAFIAA can pressure software vendors to ban classes of software.
What if the vendor just says "no"? Who's going to win in the court of public opinion when this hits the press? Besides, they don't seem to care that much, considering that very few people actually watch videos on their computers anymore. In case they do, it's through a browser which sandbox (at least on firefox) the decryption modules to prevent them from scanning the operating system.
The "court of public opinion" didn't prevented walled gardens on the mobile world. People wouldn't stop watching BigStudio if they didn't offer their service for a TV vendor, people would just buy from the vendor who bowed to the imposed conditions.
In Brazil, there's nothing legally preventing you from recording OTA TV but no big name TV vendor add a unencrypted record feature. You can find it on cheap digital decoders which have no support for streaming or apps. I don't think this is mere coincidence, I think streaming services and content producers already pressure TV vendors to not support "unwanted features"; in exchange, they gain the right to include some apps out-of-the-box.
>The "court of public opinion" didn't prevented walled gardens on the mobile world
That's more like megacorp vs consumers, not megacorp vs megacorp. Trying to force vendors to remove piracy apps would be closer to the latter. As a concrete example, apple's app tracking transparency seem so be doing pretty well.
The complete lack of recording features? I can't comment about brazil because I don't like there, but in the US they're pretty popular, to the point that cable providers even advertise it as a feature, eg. https://www.xfinity.com/learn/digital-cable-tv/x1 (search for "DVR")
> "We'll only make it legal to run our streaming service on your OS if you can prevent these specific set of software from running"
With windows I don't think this will be technically feasible. Sure I could see something like this happen on a mobile device or even MacOS but with Windows I feel like it's far too open ended for MS to do something like this without screwing their enterprise customers. And even if they did do something like this, most pirates will just pirate the enterprise version of Windows and run that.
> With windows I don't think this will be technically feasible.
It's not only feasible but it's basically reality.
Anti-cheat systems for online games can literally ban you if they detect that you run a blacklisted program in the background or use a modified graphics driver. And you won't even know why you were banned, and lose access to all games you bought with that account.
Just another way in which the cure (anti-malware software) is worse than the disease (the malware). Slows down every file access and program launch, high false positive rate, is itself a vector for exploitation... why did we ever think this was a good idea?
Anti malware software is worse than malware in itself.
By the way the reason we have malware in Windows is for how Windows works: unlike Linux distributions Windows doesn't have a package manager (yes, now there is the Windows store, but practically no one uses it, even Microsoft itself since you don't find Office on it!), and thus users need to download executables from the internet.
But users are stupid and will probably download the first link they find on Google that probably contain malware. In Linux that is not possible, not because Linux is more secure (it's not), but for the simple fact that downloading executables from the internet is not something you commonly do, you install software from trusted sources.
To run a file you downloaded you even need to add a permission that is not enabled by default. That is enough to avoid people executing by mistake with a double click a file they received by email named invoice.pdf.exe (where of course Windows hides the .exe extension by default...).
Microsoft is addressing a problem the wrong way around, instead of establishing a trusted source of software, they are still developing antivirus software that not only slows down the computer, but they don't even work so well with modern malwares, that are so sophisticated to bypass easily an antivirus protection.
I imagine that what happened was that, if the same muggles came back to you every week to uninstall the same malware from their computers, you'd get pretty tired of it after a few months and install some kind of malware blocker. It's not a solution to the problem, but it's a painkiller.
> It seemed like a good idea because back then the OS wasn't multi-tasking.
Of course virus scanners have been around in some form forever, but I believe always-on virus scanners didn't really take off until the multi-tasking age (and indeed couldn't—"always on" doesn't mean much without some sort of multi-tasking). For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software#2000%E2%80%... tells me that ClamAV wasn't released until 2001.
Optional, "on-call" virus scanners are highly unobtrusive (though, like manual backup, only as reliable as their operators), and I can't imagine this sort of outcry against them.
PUA == Potentially Unwanted Application. This is a class of application enterprises might not want to see on their computers. I bet there is a hidden registry key or something to allow PUA.
If it was blocked on Home and Pro versions of Windows, then it is indeed odd.
Defender also doesn't like NirSoft's ProduKey. Which is irritating, as all it's doing is retrieving product keys. If you want to reinstall Windows, it's a pretty normal thing to want to do.
Many NirSoft utilities get detected. Not sure if it's still true, but back in the day it was surprisingly common to find them embedded in password stealing malware, it'd basically run a few different password dumpers, make a zip and send it off to an FTP site. Minimal software development knowledge necessary as the whole operation could be done from a batch script.
Particularly bad malware too since anyone who reverse engineered it could get the FTP site password and download/delete all their stolen passwords.
Then wmic.exe should also be listed as PUA, as you can get the product key with it. Not even mentioning Powershell and CMD — average user never runs them, while bad people do that all the time. Their appearance in the process list is a sure sign that the system WUZ HAKKED.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've had to ignore every PUA detection in the book. They're completely useless, especially if you pirate Microsoft stuff or use "hacking tools" like netcat.
I'm not defending the behaviour, it's incredibly stupid, but it might have caught some legitimate malware in some cases where Defender itself was unable to detect the actual malicious portion.
For what it’s worth, Defender has been going crazy with false positives since the last Windows update. It’s regularly flagging Android split APKs that I build as trojans, with different signatures each time.
I hate all antivirus software and always try to disable them as soon as I can. They enforce their own values and ideology, and they do terrible at respecting users.
Once I had to do disk imaging on a very slow drive. After the imaging was 10% done, it complained that one of the files contained a malware and aborted. I found that it was Windows Defender that was blocking access to one of the files, so I went to Settings and turned off Real-Time Protection, and did disk imaging again. This time the imaging was 80% done before it aborted. The Real-Time Protection turned itself on because it reached time limit. F**k you, Windows Defender. It took me another four hours to find out how to disable it completely because neither registry keys and group policy worked, and its service can't even be turned off. I had to use a third-party tool called dControl to turn it off completely. And interestingly, dControl was flagged by Windows Defender as malware (for the apparent reason that it was designed to disable Windows Defender).
Modern approach to protecting computer systems is to design software that is already secure and isolate programs using privileges and sandboxes. NO antivirus, please, they're just bad because they're a blackbox, and all blackboxes are destined to be bad.
There's a group policy to prevent this in Win 10 Pro. Although, I haven't tested it with this issue.
Open Group Policy Editor, then:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Microsoft Defender Antivirus > Turn off routine remediation
Enable "Turn off remediation"
Policy description:
"This policy setting allows you to configure whether Microsoft Defender Antivirus automatically takes action on all detected threats. The action to be taken on a particular threat is determined by the combination of the policy-defined action, user-defined action, and the signature-defined action.
If you enable this policy setting, Microsoft Defender Antivirus does not automatically take action on the detected threats, but prompts users to choose from the actions available for each threat.
If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, Microsoft Defender Antivirus automatically takes action on all detected threats after a nonconfigurable delay of approximately five seconds."
It's the official Microsoft stance that torrent software is considered PUA (potentially unwanted application) on Enterprise. Perhaps they're expanding that to consumer versions? They define PUA very vaguely, with rather disturbing language. Phrases like "safeguard productivity" and "help deliver delightful Windows experiences" are not what I would expect in security software documentation:
Our PUA protection aims to safeguard user productivity and ensure enjoyable Windows experiences. This protection helps deliver more productive, performant, and delightful Windows experiences.
Microsoft uses specific categories and the category definitions to classify software as a PUA.
Interestingly, that document states that "PUAs are not considered malware."
PUA detection and removal also seems to be a separate toggle from general malware protection, so running
Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection Disabled
From an admin powershell session should prevent this behavior. It sounds like a bug/unintentional if it's being flagged on non-enterprise SKUs of Windows, though.
Hmm, many Linux distro are distributed via Torrent. As well as many video platform also use webtorrent. It is a just protocol like http. And when one is downloading a really large file, torrent can arguably be much better than direct download.
Sure, I use BitTorrent for Linux isos at work in a highly controlled environment, but for every one of me there would be hundreds pirating software at work, and tens accidentally killing their businesses bandwidth/quota by seeding too much.
Enterprise also expects certain kind of user awareness, or if not then certain amount of admin-set restrictions on the machine. Not these kind of big daddy policing decisions.
Defender working this way by default is a ‘big daddy policing decision’. The default should be to not do this, and people that want it should have to enable it via Group Policy.
Are you saying that insecure by default is a good idea?
Defender enabled by default would save billions annually, and not just from businesses but also grandma who’s entire photo collection just got ransomware’d.
That big daddy policing move was the single best action taken by Microsoft.
That might be true, but let's be real here: torrents are overwhelmingly used to pirate software/videos/music. The categorization is "potentially unwanted", not " definitely unwanted", so I think the classification is justified. Also, despite "linux iso torrents" being a meme in many circles I have rarely actually used that to download isos. The default option of http is almost always fast enough and the increased hassle of booting up my torrent client isn't worth it.
I suppose that in enterprise environment Defender acts as a simple agent reporting to a control center that can be set with a lot more granular rules on whether something is wanted on a specific workplace.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that most of the people with these issues are using pirated Enterprise versions of Windows, not trying to install a BitTorrent client on their work computers. It's definitely not impacting Home or Pro versions.
I'm so glad I vaporized my Windows partition a few weeks ago - for completely unrelated reasons but the more time goes on the more I'm sure I made the right choice to swear them off forever.
Linux is the only real option if you care about using your computer the way you want instead of how some global corporation decides you should.
If you're in the market for a new computer, shop with someone that also cares - System 76 seems like a good start. Dell XPS or Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled would also be a solid choice.
This is why the first thing I do in my computers is disabling Defender via Registry or Group Policy.
It not only enables itself after rebooting the computer, it also ignore your exclusions every month or so when it has an update and removes files you don't want to.
Yeah, I know this is unsafe, but if you don't go to weird webpages, only install trusted software from trusted sites, doesn't use other people's pen drives, have weekly usable backups, and check every month the PC with other antivirus and antimalware there isn't so much dangers IMO.
I wonder if this is a weird bug? A/B Test? Locale-specific settings? The thread has several people without the issue and I just checked, Defender is not blocking my qBittorrent.
Wouldn't signing the application help? I understand many open source projects don't sign their app, because it's not free to do so, but on the other hand it's a bit of a waste. They spend years developing something great, and the first thing users see when they install the app is a big yellow warning as if it was malware (and in this case it's literally detected as such).
I expect so. I didn't poke around it, past the initial message & a whitelisting / allow option.
The breach of user trust, to me at least, seems to be Microsoft deciding a user installed application should not be installed, and leveraging Windows to uninstall it for the user.
As noted somewhere else, there seems a big gulf between quarantining + alerting & uninstalling + deleting.
kind of hilariously ironic. What do you call an app that makes itself impossible to remove, and deletes users' files without their consent? I guess when you spend too long fighting malware, you end up becoming the malware, or something.
qBitorrent is working fine on my windows home machine. I also as a test just updated to the newest version and it works fine. This seems like a isolated issue only happening on certain Windows machines.
They would get lot more of community to agree with them had they thrown in a statement that they are doing it as part of "stopping distribution of misleading content". /s
Given that Linuxes are usually distributed via torrents, isn't it curious how suddenly a "bug" in Windows blocks so many torrent applications all of a sudden?
Yes, Microsoft which has been hating on Linux for almost 20 years since Ballmer days (despite moving .NET to Linux and releasing VS Code and building their own Linux distribution and becoming one of the biggest Linux server hosts in the world in Azure and building WSL and hosting Linux distributions for use on it) has just this week moved against the torrent protocol from 2001 which is famous for spreading Hollywood films.
What's curious is that Linux is used by reasonable people for sensible reasons, but mostly represented online by total conspiracy theorists. At least make your conspiracy believable that the MPAA lent on Bill Gates who used his contacts inside Microsoft to get a rule added to Windows Defender?
Looks like HN prefers to suffer. Yesterday I watched a video that talks about this kind of human behavior. You are welcome to "hell". (This might be inappropriate to say. To the atheists out there.)
Well you'd really have to be crazy to try and torrent stuff on a Windows machine nowadays anyways. That's just getting on your knees and begging for malware. Maybe this will help some of the more savvy users realize that Windows should be relegated to a virtual machine for when you need a specific Windows app that doesn't run under Wine, and never given access to real hardware. I only use my Win10 VM for compiling stuff with MSVC that refuses to build with MinGW.
You mean the act of torrenting on its own would cause you to fall victim to malware, or that the process of finding a torrent via certain sites would do so?
So of course double-clicking Band.of.Brothers.mkv.exe will cause you to have a bad time. But I'm curious why just having a torrent client downloading something would cause anyone to get compromised. I haven't heard of this.
You'll keep thinking that until you pirate a copy of Adobe Shitware 2077(tm) and it works fine for a day until the embedded cryptolocker activates and holds everything on your system hostage for 3 bitcoin.
Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely the malware author would take the time to make a ransomware for Linux, though I know it's happened before. 1% of the market vs 80% of the market, which would you target? And of course, utilities being free on Linux negates the need almost entirely in any case.
Right, so the problem isn't really because "Windows is a bad OS, m'kay", it's because Windows is popular... why might that be, I wonder? Maybe people like using it more...
Yeah this type of argument always contradicts itself. "Use Linux because it doesn't have viruses". Why doesn't it have viruses? "It's not popular enough". So by suggesting Linux, thus making it more popular, you're increasing the risk of viruses?
>> Maybe this will help some of the more savvy users realize that Windows should be relegated to a virtual machine for when you need a specific Windows app that doesn't run under Wine, and never given access to real hardware.
hurr durr windows bad linux good im so smart.
you're practically _soaked_ with condescending smarm. Caureful, or it'll rub off on innocent bystanders.
I don't particularly like the way you said it, but the sentiment is most definitely shared. It seems like this attitude is incredibly common in the Linux Desktop community and it is definitely not working in their favor.
Windows is the dominant operating system, and as such has a giant target on its back. It's true, I despise Windows, but the risk of torrenting on Linux vs the risk of torrenting on Windows is quite a huge difference.
And look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years now, the fact is, this kind of behavior from them doesn't surprise me anymore, and I'm tired of watching people take those punches lying down.
Windows is definitely more user-hostile than it has been in the past, and seems to be becoming more so[0], but honestly I'll still take Windows over a Linux Desktop any day because it works in a way that is much more in line with how I want my computer to work.
Your attitude seems to very much be "you're an idiot for still using Windows and Linux is great", which is condescending as hell.
[0] I am by no means defending this behavior. In fact, I hate it and kinda want to beat certain people at Microsoft with a rubber hose over it.
Ahh, well no. I don't think Windows users are idiots. I think they're normal, non-technical people who don't want to drop to a terminal to pair their bluetooth earbuds because the BlueZ GUI was written in an afternoon by some rando and never worked right.
But I do admit that for programmers, I don't understand why they'd want to still use Windows. I mean obviously there's reasons, but they're totally beyond me. Seems like masochism.
> non-technical people who don't want to drop to a terminal
PowerShell exists. and it is LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than bash for pretty much anything related to scripting. so much so that half the time when I needed to write a script on linux, I opted to write it in ruby because bash is just that bad to write anything meaningful with.
To assume that people on windows don't use a terminal is STILL coming across as condescending as hell.
> But I do admit that for programmers, I don't understand why they'd want to still use Windows.
there is an entire development ecosystem built around windows that has been around for decades. Only recently (relatively speaking) has it started to branch out and be OS-agnostic.
Are you actually saying you didn't know .NET Framework existed, or are you just being willfully ignorant?
I used Linux for years as my daily driver OS. Eventually got fed up with it. Driver support for a lot of USB devices is atrocious, and support for HiDpi monitors was still in its infancy when i switched. these are problems that Windows has fixed _right now_ and I don't get paid to fuck with my desktop settings so I can make my monitor display things correctly.
I switched to windows, and if I need anything from linux, there is always the WSL, which is pretty much the best of both worlds for me.
And using Linux Desktop seems like masochism to me. Why would I want to use an OS where I can't install applications to a different disk without recompiling them or otherwise jumping through a bunch of namespacing and filesystem overlay hoops?
There are reasons people make the choices they do and to assume that just because those reasons are beyond you that they are not reasonable is silly.
> "and look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years now"
You know how sometimes people can have things completely backwards, and it's impossible to understand how? This is one of those times.
Windows: the best thing for accessibility, screen readers, keyboard navigation. The best user-side (rather than admin side) automation of programs using things like Autohotkey and COM automation. Windows defender is a response to protect users both from malware and from the predatory behaviour of the likes of McAfee. Enormous amounts invested in hardware compatibility, software backwards compatibility. Generally very good tooling for introspection, performance monitoring, debugging, development on .NET, event tracing, public symbol servers. Famous for GUI wizards making complex tasks possible with less skill. Most typical programs have a next->next->finish install including technical programs like WireShark, Python, etc. "user hostile".
Linux world: a culture where the user should "RTFM", where lack of technical skill is mocked, where a GUI wizard is scorned as inferior and people who use them shunned, where not wanting to self-host a LAMP stack is considered "lazy and incompetent", where technology being difficult is seen as par for the course and people who deal with that are lauded for it, where simple things are complex and common things in Windows land are dismissed with "nobody does that" cluelessness accepted without question.
It's like seeing a billion people walk into shops, exchange money for food, and leave in 5 minutes and hearing someone living on a homestead who works 5am-10pm pickling cabbage and making the vinegar to do so describing shops as "user hostile" because you can't choose the pressure the grapes were crushed with - the tyrants!
Windows is nice.
It's incredible to think that you can go to Add/Remove Programs and switch on a type-1 hypervisor with a checkbox click and a reboot (or with a command line if you want) and that's the kind of engineering which runs through Windows, and people dismiss it because of Candy Crush in the start menu (and Microsoft ruin it with candy crush in the start menu).
There's nothing inherently dangerous about torrenting on Windows, assuming you're not a moron who indiscriminately downloads warez. It's still relatively common for large files to be distributed as torrents, like game mods or Linux images.
Any pirate worth their salt knows how to avoid malware - reputable and/or private trackers. If needed, throw the executable into VirusTotal, otherwise if you're worried about bespoke FUD malware, you've already lost regardless of OS.
