The Death of Windows 10

[Blumlein 88]

I can understand Windows OS is more targeted but is Linux actually more secure ?

Yes.

 

[Music1969]

Yes.

How so lol

Excluding the fact that it is less targeted

 

[jhaider]

When my kids were ready to get their first non-chromebook laptops for school, I made sure they were all Macbooks. Everything at home is Mac because I didn't want phone calls in the middle of the day for tech support.

I did the same thing with my late father’s business. They had some expensive windows nightmares, and because it was a small business and my time was unbilled I was getting all the IT calls.

Then Apple introduced the Mac mini - I’m talking the FIRST one, introduced by Steve Jobs, maybe 2002 or 2003! - and I convinced him to replace the windows crap with those, at $600/piece or whatever. They could do everything his business needed. The tech support calls just stopped. They could just work and the tech was just in the background.

 

[pseudoid]

Seventh generation Intel Core processors were the last ones to lack TPM 2.0.

6th generation Intel Skylake (such as the i7-6700K @14nm - LGA1151) motherboards provided the TPM2.0 header.

Asus Z170Deluxe was such a MoBo; built like a tank w/dual NICs to serve the whole-house in any format/flavor you wanted.
It just wouldn't die in a 4U rack chassis, over-clocked (17%), yet not overbuilt or flashy, but truly it needed to be retired.

Microsoft's on-again/off-again hardware qualification (for Win11 upgrade) ploy made me resist for over a few years to upgrade the hardware.
When StartAllBack became stable enough (to push TaskBar to left of Monitor#1) I couldn't hold out anymore!

It was time for me to learn the new lingo and see what a Z790 (RaptorLake) Class Intel i7-13700K can do:

• Asus ProArtZ790Creator is about the only 'reasonably' priced dualNIC (2.5G/10G) motherboard on the market
• I added some DDR5-6400 RAM and a RadeonRX6750XT
• Replaced some hot-swap SSDs, and up'd VidCam HDDs
• New Noctua CPU fan and a USB3.2/2 (w/card-reader) front-panel hub
• Stuffed the whole thing back in the 4U rack chassis
• Retained the NAS, two 27" 2K DP monitors. keyboard/trackball

Win10Pro was cloned from SSD to a new speedy NVMe.
Fingers crossed and power applied: Windows11Pro installed problem free, although I was doubtful about:
Scoop#1: There is still that 'policy' with WinOS:

Reactivating Windows after a hardware change:
When installing Windows 10, the digital license associates itself with your device's hardware. If you make significant hardware changes on your device, such as replacing your motherboard, Windows will no longer find a license that matches your device, and you’ll need to reactivate Windows to get it up and running.
From <https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...f04c-145b-6ead-fb3fc72b6665#ID0EBD=Windows_10>

Scoop#2: Remembering that the TPM is the hardware encryption part of the "TrustPlatformModule": I ordered a new 14-1pin Infineon TPMv2.0 from Amazon.
After ordering, I found out that the TPM is being shipped directly from China > < quite ODD!!
I was willing to spend another $20 for the NewHail (Nuvoton NPCT750) TPM that is locally sourced (..but possibly made in China, anyways).
Scoop#3: Although Windows11 'reactivation' was not invoked, few days later I discovered that my legit copy of Office2016ProPlus was de-activated.
I'd be crazy to navigate the Microsoft support system to get it re-activated.
After about a 20 minute attempt; I threw in the white-flag and purchased a retail copy of Office2019 for $31 (from Denmark??).
Scoop#4: Try building a gamers-grade PC rig without RGB lighting on any hardware.
Impressive speed increases thru-out all new hardware but Windows11 is mostly mascara (re:Win10).

I am hoping this rig will last me until I get my retina implant... in another dozen years.
Scoop#5:

...Reports suggest a successor, likely known as Windows 12, is in development ahead of a potential release next year. Here’s everything you need to know...
From <https://www.techadvisor.com/article/745965/will-there-be-a-windows-12.html>

 

[MRC01]

How so lol
Excluding the fact that it is less targeted

Linux is less targeted? Much the opposite! However unpopular Linux is with average user desktops & laptops, most of the servers on the internet run Linux.

 

[TonyJZX]

i think the target skillset hitting home users would be different to that hitting corporate servers running Unix.

I'd be of the opinion *most* corporate servers are quite hardened against attack and they're usually behind some state of the art firewalls.

 

[Sombreuil]

Let's say almost trivial -- 'cause I know it can be done, but I am still not altogether clear on how. Seems like a certain amount of fancy footwork is involved.

I think it's akin to the sort of thing for which mathematicians like to invoke the term straightforward. In this context, it means (I think) "it's mind-numbingly obvious that it can be done, but it's gonna take some effort"

Download Rufus (a program that helps mounting the ISO), select "no TPM and / or Secure boot", done.

 

[IAtaman]

Linux is less targeted? Much the opposite! However unpopular Linux is with average user desktops & laptops, most of the servers on the internet run Linux.

I believe the point was that there are fewer malware and viruses out there targeting users running different versions of Linux desktop operating systems than Windows, which is correct. It might be the case that there are a lot more people looking for vulnerabilities in Linux as an OS, but that is of no concern to the Music1969 as I don't think he is planning to setup a data center anytime soon, so I believe it is fair to take his question to mean for desktop operating systems for end users, not OS in general.

How so lol. Excluding the fact that it is less targeted

In my opinion there are a couple of reasons why Linux is considered safer for desktop users:

- Market share of Windows in home desktop market is over 70% whereas Linux is around 2-3%. People who are using Linux as their desktop OS at home usually tend to know what they are doing better than Windows users as well so if you are going to invest time to develop some malware to break into people's computers and steal their passwords, session tokens etc. Windows is a much better investment. Especially if you take into consideration that most companies, with juicy revenues, valuable interest and commercial secrets to protect, use Windows as their default operating system. Consequently there are far fewer attacks targeting Linux users than Windows users in desktop space.

- I am not sure I can make full justice to explaining why Linux is considered safer as an OS in a simple way, but it might be fair to say that Linux is desinged to control access to memory, data, devices, and code execution in a way that is considered safer by software engineers than how Windows used to handle things in the past. I am not sure if it is still the case though with current suite of NT based Windows versions. And when it comes to making choices on how the OS works, I think Linux distributions generally tend to make choices that prioritize security over user friendliness. These are my opinions and not facts so take them with a pinch of salt please.

 

[Rick Sykora]

@Rick Sykora I think there may be an extension due to the amount of cyber trash which will be generated.

Am guessing waste was already considered as well as the useful life of a personal computer. Most businesses depreciate PCs within 5 years. Much past that point, they shift to being more of a cost to maintain. Waiting until they are that old risks data loss and lost productivity if you do not proactively maintain them.

This leaves aspects that are harder to estimate. Something like AI eliminating legacy apps that run fine on old hardware. Having enough computing horsepower to run Word, Excel or other business apps was exceeded years ago. Another aspect of real productivity improvement requires more interaction between computers to achieve. This is where security that TPM provides is essential to high integrity transactions. Whether MacOS, Windows or Linux, all these OSes are pretty mature at this point. Is reasonable to anticipate that they are due to be replaced by newer technologies that are leaner and more agile.

 

[chelgrian]

Am guessing waste was already considered as well as the useful life of a personal computer. Most businesses depreciate PCs within 5 years. Much past that point, they shift to being more of a cost to maintain. Waiting until they are that old risk s data loss and lost productivity if you do not proactively maintain them.

This leaves aspects that are harder to estimate. Something like AI eliminating legacy apps that run fine on old hardware. Having enough computing horsepower to run Word, Excel or other business apps was exceeded years ago. Another aspect of real productivity improvement requires more interaction between computers to achieve. This is where security that TPM provides is essential to high integrity transactions. Whether MacOS, Windows or Linux, all these OSes are pretty mature at this point. Is reasonable to anticipate that they are due to be replaced by newer technologies that are leaner and more agile.

The reason for the five years is that is how long must OEMs are willing to support the hardware. For example Dell will support machines aimed at business for 5 years in terms of being able to buy a support contract or them being guaranteed to have parts and produce firmware updates.

I think in the medium term that time length is going to get pushed out to 7-10 years by legislation.

For Windows 11 there are good technical reasons why they moved the processor requirement forward and by the time Windows 10 goes out of security support the last machines that don't meet those requirements will be 8 years old.

 

[Mart68]

I use Windows 10 daily on multiple devices for work and home. I don't run into any of those problems. That's how I put up with it - there's nothing to put up with.

Likewise although it does have some niggles. I do a lot of copy/paste at work, so the worst one for me is 'We couldn't free up space on the clipboard.'

Firstly - who is 'We'?

Secondly - it's the third decade of the 21st century, why is the clipboard out of space after one short line of text?

Thirdly - why the contraction 'Couldn't.'? There's nothing worse than error messages that try to be 'chatty'. What's wrong with 'Clipboard full.'?

 

[Gorgonzola]

Linux can be what happens. Not without its own issues, but would you prefer to use the most targeted os without security updates?

Linux, Linux, Linux ... I've been hearing about it for 20 years and I'm heartily sick of hearing about.

I've tried it 1/2 a dozen times; I've never discovered any significant was that it is superior to the then-current Windows version -- not in terms of anything I wanted to do. Plus I have a dozen useful programs that won't operated on that platform; sometimes there are Linux alternatives, sometimes not. In any case switching to Linux would mean not only learning a new OS but also several new application programs.

From my personal POV, Linux isn't a practical alternative to Windows or for that matter, macOS. Great for hackers and those obsessed with computers as toys -- or in stripped down form as a cheap OS for media servers.

Incidentally my latest Linux effort was a Raspberry Pi which worked fine, but of course it's just a home-brew media server.

Our family has five Windows computers, four Windows 10, one Windows 11. Yes, eventually at least a couple of the four Win10s machines will have to be replaced soon. I don't begrudge doing so, one in particular is overdue for replacement being about 8 years old and originally Win8.1. Win11 is stable, functional, and is presents a minor learning curve for Win10 users.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Problem in the Wintel world is lack of compelling reasons to upgrade hardware unless tricked into doing so by machinations like this. While there are legitimate reasons for wanting everyone to use features like UEFI Secure Boot, I’m pretty confident that many older system are capable of a perfectly serviceable W11 experience. If I still own my current PCs when W10 security updates are ended, I’ll weigh my options. Only real gripe that I have so far is that my 7th-gen Intel i7 systems cannot play 4k video smoothly, but by itself, this isn’t a deal-breaker. My HP Spectre notebook and Lenovo Thinkcentre all-in-one desktop are otherwise in great shape and scarcely seem like throwaways.

Exactly. Old hardware is perfectly capable. Like your i7. I have still my i7-3770k. It can play all new games (with a new GPU of course). No problem. Well, and 4K videos are hardware accelerated in my browser so not a problem. The GPU does it 100x more effective than a CPU anyway.

 

[JSmith]

JSmith

 

[anmpr1]

Even now I feel it makes sense to keep one Windows machine around so I don't have to futz about with issues with commercial software or gear where vendors are hostile to linux or whatever.

Most folks just want something to work, easily. Out of the box. If you are just surfing or emailing-- i.e., routine tasks, Linux is OK (does wireless work in Linux?--that used to be my problem.).

However, as you mention, if you use dedicated software, it's a tough nut to crack. I use Katana Tone Studio daily. Without it, the amplifier is pretty useless. That's the problem with digitized sound, I guess. With Win, just plug in a USB from the amp to the PC, drivers are auto installed, and the software works.

There have been limited work-arounds. Below is what one person was able to accomplish, and why 99.9% of the users aren't going to bother. Plus, he only suggests it will work on Debian (Ubuntu) distros. YMMV.

I mainly show it for fun. Take it as a humorous example of the lengths some will go to.

________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: Since you are modifying your kernel, things can go wrong and you might end up with a system that is not bootable. Make a backup of your important data. You have been warned.


In this guide, I will walk you through the process of making your Katana and Linux like each other. In order to do that, you will have to tweak the included USB audio driver in your kernel.

I’ve tested this workaround on a few different kernel versions, and it seems to be working. I am also assuming that you’re using an Ubuntu-derivative.

Here is the gist of what you will have to do

1. Install the tools and dependencies required for building the kernel from source
2. Download the kernel sources
3. Prepare the kernel sources for building
4. Patch the USB audio module
5. Build the new USB audio module
6. Install the new USB audio module

Installing the tools and dependencies​

Open a terminal and run these commands:

1 2	sudo apt install build-essential -y sudo apt build-dep linux -y

Getting the kernel sources​

I created a folder called katana in my home directory and downloaded the sources there.

1 2 3

mkdir ~/katana cd ~/katana apt source linux

After running the commands above, you should see several archive files and one folder that begins with linux and ends with a version number. You don’t have to worry about the version number, the command above will always download the source code of the latest available kernel for your distribution, which you should be running if you do updates regularly.

Preparing the kernel sources​

Navigate to the single directory created in your katana folder:

1	cd linux-*

You want to use the same configuration as the currently running kernel, which you can do by copying these files over to the root of the source directory.

1 2	cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/.config . -v cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/Module.symvers . -v

Then you need to update the Makefile according to the currently running kernel.


For that, you need to find the version of the kernel you are currently using:

1

uname -r

On my system, this command gives the following output:


5.0.0-16-lowlatency


If I were to dissect the output, I would get the following parts:


Version: 5
Patch level: 0
Sub level: 0
Extra version: -16-lowlatency


You will find similar variables in your Makefile. In my case the sub level was always different in the Makefile than the output of uname -r, and if the numbers don’t match, you will get errors.


Open your Makefile in any text editor and you should see lines similar to these at the beginning of the file:

1 2 3 4

VERSION = 5 PATCHLEVEL = 0 SUBLEVEL = 18 EXTRAVERSION =

Make sure that the variables reflect the output of uname -r


My Makefile looked like this after the changes:

1 2 3 4

VERSION = 5 PATCHLEVEL = 0 SUBLEVEL = 0 EXTRAVERSION = -16-lowlatency

Save the file and run the following command:

1	make modules_prepare

If nothing threw an error, you are ready for the next step.

Patching the USB audio module​

For this, you will need to connect your Katana to your machine and find out the USB identifiers:

1	lsusb | grep Roland

This will list the connected USB devices, and filter the output to entries that contain the word Roland, which is the company behind Boss and therefore your amp.


You should get one line, something like this:


Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0582:01d8 Roland Corp.


You are interested in the 0582:01d8 part. That is the USB Vendor and Product identifier. You will have to use those numbers when patching the USB audio driver.


If you get no input, check your USB cable, or try a different USB port.


Now you are going to patch the USB audio driver.


This part will be different for each kernel version, but stick with me. Open the pcm.c file in the sound/usb folder with a text editor. The changes that you will have to make will be around line 355.


This is the part of the code that you are looking for:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

case USB_ID(0x1397, 0x0002): /* Behringer UFX1204 */ ep = 0x81; ifnum = 1; goto add_sync_ep_from_ifnum; } if (attr == USB_ENDPOINT_SYNC_ASYNC &&

You will have to add some extra code right after goto add_sync_ep_from_ifnum;. The affected part of the file should look something like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

case USB_ID(0x1397, 0x0002): /* Behringer UFX1204 */ ep = 0x81; ifnum = 1; goto add_sync_ep_from_ifnum; case USB_ID(0x0582, 0x01d8): /* Boss Katana 100 */ return 0; } if (attr == USB_ENDPOINT_SYNC_ASYNC &&

Save the file.

Building the USB audio module​

1	make M=sound/usb

If everything goes executes without an error, you have successfully built a patched version of the USB audio module.

Installing the patched module​

It’s a good idea to make a backup before you make any changes to your current kernel.

1	sudo cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/sound/usb/snd-usb-audio.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/sound/usb/snd-usb-audio.ko.old -v

You have to make sure that the module is not in use before installing our own.

1	sudo rmmod snd-usb-audio

Then overwrite current module with the patched one:

1	sudo cp ./sound/usb/snd-usb-audio.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/sound/usb/snd-usb-audio.ko -v

Then you need to refresh the modules:

1	sudo depmod -a

And finally load the module

1	sudo modprobe snd-usb-audio

You should be able to record your Katana on Linux now.

 

[computer-audiophile]

ChatGPT says:

There are several reasons why someone might consider switching from Windows to Linux as their desktop operating system:

1. Cost: Linux is typically free, providing an attractive alternative to Windows, which comes with high licensing fees. Most Linux distributions are also regularly updated and supported, so you don't need to buy a new version every year.
2. Security: Linux is considered more secure than Windows, as it is less vulnerable to viruses and malware. There are also fewer security vulnerabilities since Linux is an open-source operating system supported by a large developer community.
3. Flexibility: Linux offers a wide range of distributions that cater to different requirements and user groups. There are a variety of desktop environments and applications that run on Linux, so you can customize your system to your liking.
4. Speed: Linux is generally faster than Windows and requires fewer resources. This makes it ideal for older computers or computers with limited hardware.
5. Open source: Linux is an open-source operating system, meaning that the source code is openly accessible. This allows users to understand how the system works and modify it if they wish.
6. Privacy: Linux distributions often respect user privacy and collect less data than Windows. If privacy is important to you, Linux may be a better option.

However, there are also some disadvantages to switching to Linux, such as a potential limitation on the availability of specific software that runs on Windows, potential difficulties in configuring and using hardware and peripherals, and the need to adjust to a new user interface and workflow.

 

[Ron Texas]

@pseudoid my old Z170 had a TPM header and I looked around to buy one but found several different kinds. Not being sure of compatibility I passed on that option.

 

[computer-audiophile]

Most folks just want something to work, easily. Out of the box. If you are just surfing or emailing-- i.e., routine tasks, Linux is OK (does wireless work in Linux?--that used to be my problem.).

No problem with wireless or connected audio devices etc. On the contrary, I once had an HP GDI laser printer that was no longer supported by a newer version of Windows. I would have had to buy a new one. With Linux it continued to run for years.

 

[LTig]

On the contrary, I once had an HP GDI laser printer that was no longer supported by a newer version of Windows. I would have had to buy a new one. With Linux it continued to run for years.

Same with my Edirol UA25 USB sound interface and the great Nikon LS5000 film slide scanner (for the latter I could use the driver delivered with vuescan for Windows 7 though).

 

[Rick Sykora]

Every desktop I have (3 in use and more in storage) are not Windows 11 compatible. Am about to land another as my father upgrades and his is not compatible either.

I am confident Microsoft will offer a solution that avoids having millions of Windows PCs vulnerable. Am also comfortable with using Linux but know that many distros do not support rolling updates. If you chose the Linux route, be sure to select one that does. Also, should look to how well funded they are to issue security patches. Otherwise, suggesting Linux is less vulnerable than Windows is shortsighted.