Comment by noirscape
3 months ago
I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs just to get rid of MS's garbage (arguably already the case if you use Rufus, which customizes the OOBE setup to already reject checks and tracking if you tick the boxes. They also have a checkbox to iirc disable the TPM check that's killing a lot of older device support because there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware), which will just lead to people doing what they've already been doing with Microsoft's stuff: pass it around like arcane knowledge that becomes increasingly difficult to find as it gets ingested by dodgy spam sites to the point where you're entering registry keys that either fix your problem or send everything to a third party.
Microsoft is a level of entrenched that Linux practically won't be able to beat for reasons that have little to do with technical viability and everything to do with legacy tools, having software that works with business formats (Office; any other office equivalent on Linux will still have compat issues and as long as those exist, they won't be a valid replacement - for much the same reason, although not fully locked to their platform, Adobe is a permanent barrier to Linux adoption) and video game DRM on popular titles keeping them basically in that position forever.
> there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware
untrue; bitlocker, an important thing for businesses, is far more secure with a TPM. Lots of things are more secure with a TPM, but people who think that Microsoft requires a TPM to sell more copies of Windows will never, ever, believe that to be the case.
Windows is a relatively small portion of Microsoft's revenue generation these days. Windows used to be the main breadwinner for Microsoft, but that has all changed now that Office is a subscription and Azure exists. That smaller portion of the revenue pie is why Windows has stupid shit like suggestions and tons of preinstalled crap: it matters a lot less who is put off by Windows than it used to.
The TPM is a genuinely good thing. Windows DOES use it. You can write applications which use it as well, if you want to. Short of any hardware bug in the TPM (which did happen once) it is capital-S Secure, as I understand it.
I had to invest a bit of time to get my NixOS install to play well with secure boot and the TPM.
Something Windows was doing for free (time-wise).
Edit: my point was agreeing the TPM is useful which is why I spent time making Linux "more Windowsy" in this case.
> Adobe is a permanent barrier to Linux adoption
I tried their online versions of Lightroom and Photoshop in Firefox on Linux, and I am quite happy to continue paying the subscription. It definitely takes less clicking there to remove an unwanted bird from the sky in a photo than it would take in GIMP or RawTherapee.
With PhotoGIMP, Gimp is pretty usable, and I’d dare to say it can handle like 90% tasks (if not 100%) an average Joe has. If not for this beer weird interface, that would be a pretty usable piece of software. There are aspects that are much better than Photoshop.
For basic usage (crop, edit screenshots) I go for Pinta and can recommend. It’s fast, and usable too. No need to throw even more money into Adobe.
> I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs
Hasn't it always been the case? Nobody buy licenses besides companies right?
My uncle taught me how to torrent ~20 years ago, he was already cracking stuff for the whole family, he passed away but his legacy lives through me, I have never seen or heard about anyone buying a windows license in my entire life
You understand the situation better than most do here. The anti-cheat technologies built into competitive games is huge for me. I don’t enjoy gaming without it. That’s a big statement. When you simply don’t enjoy competitive gaming unless it’s on Windows.
Maybe it's time for the Linux version of WSL. Wine is already that for some subset of things - maybe the best way to run Win32 software in 2030 could be on Linux...
Is not supporting TPM an issue in terms of some app compability though? I was investigating whether to upgrade an old computer from windows 10 to 11 and that was said somewhere online. I don't know if its true or fearmongering.
Office and some other “modern auth” apps can store MFA-equivalent tokens in the TPM to minimise the number of “tap the thing on the phone” prompts during single sign on.
I discovered this when I recovered a dead laptop’s disk image to a VM and the sudden absence of a TPM killed all of my cached Office credentials.