https://borepatch.blogspot.com/
- I will be moving to Linux very soon and get rid of the intrusiveness and skullduggery of Windows and Micro(penis)soft. Cederq.
OldNFO has an important post about how Microsoft is moving very aggressively to a 100% online subscription licensing model. This is important enough that I won’t excerpt any of this; instead, you should go read the whole thing. It’s not too long, but if you care about the security of your home network (especially the whole who has access to my data and can I even know thing), go read. I’ll wait.
What this means is that you don’t own any Microsoft software. Sure, you may think that because you paid them money (most often when you bought your computer – some of that purchase price went to Microsoft in the form of a license fee for Windows). But you actually don’t own “your” copy of software. At all.
Rather, you have the right to run the software on your computer. That may not seem like a big difference, but it is. The license agreement (you know, the one you didn’t read before you clicked “I Agree”) allows Microsoft to change the terms of the agreement at any time, at their pleasure.
Microsoft has just done this in a big, big way. Key new stuff in Windows 11 is:
- AI integrated with your operating system
- Online presence is critical for lots of Windows now (e.g. AI)
- Windows will nag you until you put all your data online (OneDrive) whether you want to or not.
The proper technical term for that first bullet point is that your Windows operating system is essentially now an “AI Agent” which if you are a regular reader you know is very, very bad security juju.
Combine this enormous security hole with the requirement to essentially be online 100% of the time (bad security) and the liklihood that OneDrive will slurp all your data to some Internet black hole in a Microsoft data center, Windows is simply unsecurable.
Yes, I know that is inflammatory, but there is simply no way that you can get assurance that your security is sane. I say that as someone who has spent decades inn Internet Security (and particularly in security assurance). Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think that I could get decent assurance that things aren’t going “bump in the Net”. For most of the readers here, it’s not even worth trying.
So what do you do, assuming that you are not a tech nerd like me?
Interestingly, Microsoft has just flipped the technical script on this. It used to be that it was easier to stay on Windows than to move to alternatives like Linux. Now that’s out the window, at least if you want to protect your data from that OneDrive vacuum cleaner and whatever the AI agent will do to you.
But this is admittedly a big step for a lot of people. So as it turns out, you can “kick the tires” on all the different flavors of Linux without installing it. All you need is a web browser.
This is really slick. The Linux equivalent of the Windows Start Menu lets you try all the apps (I use the Office apps which are every bit equivalent to Word and Excel, etc, and will save files in Microsoft format like .DOCX).
Take a few weeks poking around, you will likely see that it’s not a big learning curve.
Posted by Borepatch
If this indeed happens I will follow you.
Before my retirement 8 years ago I used primarily Windows with Linux and Solaris as secondaries under VirtualBox.
I refuse to have Microsoft OWN me and my data with of course the guarantee that their price will go the way Starship goes: higher and higher.
Welcome to the *nix Community, Borepatch. There are TONS of apps that run under Linux, Open Office I’ve been using ever since it came out. I heavily throttle Winblows because of it’s “open architecture” (Which means it’s open to lots of intrusion!!) and hate it but the kids and the Missus use it. Not well, though.
I prefer CentOS, Redhat, and Ubuntu, but YMMV – it depends on how deep you want to crawl into the OS to do stuff. Me? Started in 1970 with AT&T version 2. Yes, I’m THAT OLD.
Security? Windows? These are oil and weater…
Ubuntu was great when I used it! Click, install, reboot, done!
Gentoo was ahoot, I just don’t have time for that anymore.
Wish my brokerage software ran on *nix. Mac/win only for ThinkOrSwim.
Install “WINE”. It is a recursive acronym:
Wine Is Not an Emulator.
I’ve been running various flavors of Linux for years. No system I’m running now has any version of Windows newer 7 on it, and I keep one machine running that for some legacy software that I still need periodic access to. It is fully air-gapped with no Internet access. Also have an ancient Pentium II 266Mhz box running 98, again for infrequent use of some really old custom written software I did back in the late 90’s, and just won’t work right on anything newer. Not sure what I’ll do when that one dies, as is probably inevitable in the foreseeable future. Probably run a win 98 virtual machine under linux, but I need 4 legit serial ports for use with the custom software (timing critical application wrt the RS232 ports) which is the main reason I’ve kept the ancient hardware going.
All I can really say is the same thing I’ve said for a long time now: “fuck Microsoft”.
I bought me a mini PC. It came with Windows 11, I wiped it an installed Zorin OS 18. Yes a bit of a earning curve. Using Libre Office now instead of Office 365.
I still have nearly a terabyte of files on OneDrive, but they are all backed up to my Synology NAS. I am forcing myself each day to use the Zorin mini PC instead of my Windows 11 desktop.
The roadblock I have come up against is finding Linux equivalents of some of the apps I run.
Also finding a trustworthy Cloud storage alternative is difficult for me. I have Dropbox but limited capacity. Cloud storage for the 1TB I am used to with Overdrive is expensive. Sometimes I am away from the computer but need a file from OneDrive on my iPhone.
Admittedly, I have not tried finding a replacement for Office 365 for my phone yet.
I’m truly baffled as to why corporate IT security has let this happen, but it has been going on for well over a decade. The first time I noticed it was in Adobe Reader which acquired a couple of “features” (pdf editing and something else IIRC) that were actually implemented back at Adobe not in the software itself.
One employer banned staff from using Google Translate for a while, trying to make everyone use an in-house alternative, but they gave up after a while.
Surely everyone working on anything with national security requirements ought to have to ban such things, at least? Or at least vet everyone at Adobe, Google and now Microsoft?
Adobe has been bad about this for a long time. Microsoft has basically fully copped their business model now. Screw ’em all.
Also, am I the only one amused by the name “Zorin OS”? As in Max Zorin, silicone valley villain from “A View to a Kill” (played by Christopher Walken)? I haven’t looked to see if that naming was intentional, but it gave me a chuckle.
Don’t forget, if you have a smart tv, and you accepted the ToS and connected it to your network, its sending regular screenshots back to the mfgr, regardless if you have it connected to cable playing the Simpsons, or connected to your pc updating your password manager.
Linux is great. I’ve been a aix/solaris/unix/linux/etc admin since 1988 when I was 19. I’ve spent the last two weeks having to triple-click everything on my Ubuntu laptop because the mouse driver was broken in the Jan 2026 updates. To their credit, the authors developed a fix, and pushed an update in less than a week after a bug report was opened. So, for two weeks, my work flow was severly impacted. My suggestion is “go for it” but make sure you have a cheap, i-can-reinstall-if-i-have-to machine on which to test updates. Also, don’t be the first to update, but make sure you …do… update.
And good luck.
Have your router shitcan all the outgoing packets from your “smart tv” to the manufacturers home base server to null. Easy enough. And if it compromises the functionality of the set, then you just live without those features and use it as a stupid TV, which all of them are anyway.
I’ve been using Linux since the first kernel was released. Corporate insisted I use Wintendo for some stuff (had to write drivers, etc, and email) but I refuse to have it on any network near me. I even built my own Linux-based router in the house so’s the Win users here don’t see anything I do. If you need help, pointers, etc, just touch base – I’ll be glad to help.
First tip: I use Ubuntu on all my machines; but I have some virtual machines running Centos, which is a fairly clean distro and easy to use.
I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS since mid 1998. For that vast majority of people, there’s nothing it can’t do for you. Yes, there are some gotchas. For me, there are a few programs which simply have no equivalent in Linux – programming certain radios. Most of my radios, I can program using Linux. I’ve heard that TurboTax requires Win11, but I have no experience with it. There can be issues finding printer drivers – that’s a hit’n’miss proposition. But overall, Linux works very well for all your daily stuff, such as e-mail, surfing the web, making spreadsheets, writing documents, listening to music, and watching movies. I think there’s no way to watch movies from Blu-Ray disks though.
The biggest issue for new users will be choosing which distribution to install. There are some flavors specifically geared towards Windows users. For new users, I usually recommend the “Mint” distribution.
Sometimes, web sites will be a little glitchy. Stoopid web developers still haven’t stopped chasing the bleeding edge, and being Microsoft or Google centric. So, “works only in Edge” or other such nonsense happens a little bit. Yeah… didn’t we leave behind the platform wars years ago, when Microsoft finally abandoned Activescript and supported Javascript?
For all those programs that only run on winblows install “WINE”.
One of the worst security and efficiency problems I see on the computers of my Windows-using friends is that over time, their systems accrete orphan files or processes, malware, etc over the years because they *never* really clean up things and often rarely even turn off and reboot their machines. Over time, their systems become slower, clunkier, and dirty.
One of the best things I like about linux is that it’s very easy to install (nowadays at least). So, as a matter of hygiene, I wipe my hard drive/ssd and reinstall my OS every month or so. It takes about 30 minutes to do it, and about another 30 minutes to reinstall all my data. That means that if I have inadvertently done something silly and gotten compromised, I know it’s gone.
The other great thing is that virtually all of the software you need is open source, that those things that aren’t are usually pretty cheap — at least for “home” software. Of course I can’t speak for packages folk use in their business. Some of those demand a Windows or Mac box. I have Windows installed as a virtual machine using Virtualbox, and run it for Quicken. Unfortunately, I have 30 years of financial data in Quicken, and it uses a proprietary data format. I could use some of the free Linux-based financial programs, but exporting all those accounts as .csv files is just too much work. Similarly, TurboTax is Windows specific (and for 2026, Windows 11 specific). Sigh. But other than that, I never use Windows.
I dumped Microsoft three weeks ago. I had a professional technogeek install LinuxMint, Cinnamon desktop. I’m glad I hired him; he’s been worth every bit of his fee. He first backed up everything I had on my Windows 10 pc to a flash drive. He then installed 500gb SSD in addition to my 1tb hard drive, upgraded my RAM to 12gb, and loaded the Linux OS.
So far, so good. I’ve got my browsers doing what I want from the internet, including my online banking and bill paying. Linux connected and found every driver it needed save one: the only glitch was a Canon problem. My old laser printer is “legacy equipment” and Canon will not write drivers for it. I got an updated model (using the same toner cartridges) and loaded its drivers from Canon. Works fine now.
There’s no going back: he wiped the partition on my hard drive with the Windows OS, so it looks like blank space now.
Retired Unix programmer here. Been using Linux since 1994, never looked back. A few minor issues here and there, but 99% of everything is rock solid. Vastly superior to M$ Windows.
My story is similar to Swede’s (at 0703).
Before I retired, my oil search company used AIX, and then Linux, for the three onboard systems that made money. Of course, the IT department only supported Windows, and Mac, so we became the admins.
Forgot to add:
For REAL fun with Unix flavors, try installing SCO Xenix from all 32 floppies!
Real good fun. For certain values of “fun”, that is.