No. The rebellious spirit is what lights the fire. It may take a few tries to follow through, but I respect the rage >=D

We need to come together as a community and encourage every effort. If you really want to see other people stick to it we need to smash any sense of righteousness or gatekeeping to bits.

I’m still not great with Wine myself, but sit down for an afternoon and try out Bottles. https://www.howtogeek.com/running-windows-apps-on-linux-with-bottles/

I’m on Arch and even the wiki just recommends using the Flatpak. It’s pretty obvious once you get the hang of it, each Bottle is just it’s own little, specific Windows configuration. Try running through the example on that site and installing Notepad++ (or something else of your choice) and you’ll probably have an a-ha! moment.

Isn’t it?

The arguments of preference and convenience are falling by the wayside as megacorporations take more and more control over not just your hardware but your behavioral patterns by dictating what you can install and how it functions. They suck up all your personal, private data for AI training without your consent.

I get it, shit sucks. It really does, but we have to remember who is to blame here and it’s not each other. There has to be some urgency here because this is a battle and we, the consumers, the ordinary people, are surely losing. It’s not about being holier than thou, it’s about lifting each other up.

Well, I wouldn’t say great, merely useful.

The rant is because I’m trying to provide a balanced view of it without coming off as a fearmonger. TPM is certainly not without its uses, but it’s a leash that can be yanked on. Under Windows, you’re fully in Microsoft’s world and they will yank that leash. But given the right leverage and circumstances, that leash can and very well may extend into Linux as well if you allow the software through with it.

Be careful. Use it if you will but remember what it is capable of.

Mostly, kind of.

You can use the TPM to automatically decrypt a LUKS root volume at boot just like you would BitLocker, however your recovery keys aren’t automatically uploaded to a Microsoft account, you must manage them yourself (generally I see this as a benefit but the layman may appreciate Microsoft’s “assistance” here). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Trusted_Platform_Module

You can also use it for SSH, https://www.ledger.com/blog/ssh-with-tpm

⚠️ WARNING, what follows is much more my personal speculation on things so absolutely take this with a grain of salt.

The TPM isn’t ever really under the user’s direct control - it’s used by applications that hook into it. On Linux, I anticipate you would be much more protected from the remote attestation aspects of TPM 2.0 phoning out to 3rd party servers for verification because in general that just does not vibe with the FOSS standards and sensibilities. HOWEVER, in my wildest speculations it may still be possible to fall victim to that through proprietary software. Currently things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or Activision’s Call of Duty don’t work under Linux. If Microsoft gets particularly desperate, I wouldn’t put it past them to actually distribute a native Office for Linux package, or work with Adobe or Activision to do likewise for their programs as a baited hook. Any proprietary, closed-source software can still communicate with the exposed TPM for that remote attestation and refuse to run if they find tampered data, pirated files, or other running applications they object to (I don’t know exactly what form it would take but it could be any or all of these). Effectively they maintain control over your system by right of denial; if you want to run their software you play by their rules.

This of course doesn’t matter if you have no desire to run that software. Again, the TPM itself is not directly malicious and as long as you don’t engage with software that would use it maliciously, it’s fine to have it active and enabled within your OS.

They know they can’t do it overnight and force it down people’s throats, because it’s fundamentally anti-freedom, people will resist, rebel, start to switch to devices and systems that allow them to take back their personal and computing autonomy, using technology to enable their own goals instead of what the manufacturers and services “allow”. So they have to slowly creep it in.

This is exactly what Windows 11 is. I have a background in large scale system deployments and if you want anything to be effective, you have to baseline it. What better way than with a the rollout of a mandatory OS upgrade demanding these features?

You can’t crack the trusted computing whip if everyone isn’t on that same baseline. Mark my words, I’d bet a fucking limb on it, once Windows 11 sees a significant market share the decline will become much more severe, much more quickly. They’re hungry, they relented a bit on Windows 10 in the EU for another year because they’re so close, what’s one more year. They can taste how close it is now …

Trusted computing and TPMs aren’t inherently bad. Like all issues of trust, it comes down to who the trusted parties are and what they’re asking of you.

So for example, let’s start with the idea of a work computer. Say you work for a bank and they issue you a laptop. In order to access all the sensitive data related to a bank, certain guarantees must be made about the environment. The hard drive must have full disk encryption (FDE) so that if it’s ever lost or stolen, the information that may have been on it can’t be compromised. This is not your laptop. This is not your environment. This is for the most part, totally fair.

Now let’s consider Microsoft and your personal device. Microsoft is forcing you into their trusted environment by requiring online accounts and TPM/SecureBoot. And how do you benefit? FDE through BitLocker, sure. But you know there are other FDE solutions and BitLocker results in you losing control of your keys because they are automatically uploaded through your online account to Microsoft for “recovery” purposes. ~Source ~Related What Microsoft is really saying here is that they have a trusted environment, and if you are to be a trusted party in that environment with the “privilege” of accessing their software and services, you must submit your personal device to their rules. Are you starting to feel the icky vibes here?

This is made worse by TPM 2.0 supporting remote attestation.

This of course raises the question, verified to what degree and to whose standards? Are they simply trying to protect us from maliciously crafted software, or is it DRM to prevent running pirated content, Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and Secure Boot for Call of Duty. Of course this is ostensibly for anti-cheat, but you see how quickly that moves adjacent to other purposes. How much are you willing to give up to maintain (a sense of) security?

EDIT: One final point. Trusted systems are the general security engineering concept of protecting systems through enforced policies to achieve certain levels of trust. Trusted Computing is a very specific set of technologies with a board of directors worth taking a quick look at …

Trusted computing has been a trap, slowly closing over the course of years. And with so many things like it, it happens very slowly at first, then all at once. The door is closing. Escape their environment before you can’t anymore.

We’ve seen that consumers can no longer dictate the market, they are dictating the market at us. This will not get better, you have to be proactive.

EDIT: Richard Stallman article that is necessary reading on the matter, Can You Trust Your Computer?. Do you find this hard to believe?

Cyber security effectively doesn’t exist without consequence in capitalism. If there aren’t regulatory fines or monetary damage from breaches, what incentive is there to spend on enforcing anything? When they can’t innovate or compete anymore, they’ll begin cutting at the structural systems to save more money until it’s just a shell of an appearance of security, and maybe not even that. Who will care?

Absolutely boggles my mind that they would even consider this? I can’t imagine the amount raised would come anywhere close to justifying the damage done?

Agreed. I was actually afraid to modify my KDE desktop for months because of the trauma sustained from just trying to customize Gnome a bit. My configuration is still pretty vanilla, but it’s got enough personal flair to it that it feels uniquely mine and I’m the happiest I’ve been.

Aww, I will always love XFCE and save a place for it in my heart … but I moved to Plasma 2 years ago and haven’t really looked back either >_>

It annoys me how much crap people still give Arch because it did honestly deter me from trying it myself when all this time it was exactly the distro for me. A lot of it is the nature of the rolling releases and pacman just feeling more clean and simple then apt and the inevitable Franken-Debian installs I end up with.

The archinstall script makes installation much easier. After that, choosing all my own apps and having to read the wiki and perform minor configurations on them could be seen as tedious when something like Mint is just more out-of-the-box, but it both helped teach me more about Linux so I have a better understanding of how my own system works when things do rarely go astray and it helps me feel like my system is very personalized and my own. Sometimes I still go, “Wait, why don’t I have this very basic thing or why isn’t it working?” And I find out it’s because I didn’t install a necessary package, but then I learn and build

As far as rolling releases, I update daily because I’m a geeky maniac and I have had better stability doing that the past 2 1/2 years than I ever did in Windows. Truly, no lie. Part of that is Microsoft setting a low bar, but also my system is a simpler build. That’s not to say there have been no issues whatsoever, but I wonder at the people making these claims how much they’ve really used Arch.

My point generally being: don’t let the opinion of some Linux snobs deter you. Try Arch, it may very well be your thing, too.

I recently sat down with Baroque, the cult classic dungeon crawler for the Sega Saturn. Very good, top 20 games for me now!

First off, play the Saturn version. You can liberally rebind the controls in an emulator to make them feel a lot more like a modern FPS (d-pad up & down to left analog up/down for forward and backward movement with L & R to left analog left/right for strafing while putting d-pad left & right on right analog left/right for turning. Also rebind attack to R1 or R2 and map to whichever you didn’t bind attack to). Use scanline shaders, something like crt-royale or just hyllian-fast. Under the hood this game is a fairly standard mystery dungeon style roguelike but it’s ALL about the vibes.

The story is opaque but advances simply by doing runs through the dungeon. Make sure to talk to all the NPCs and do what they tell you to/fulfill their requests and you’ll figure it out. The gameplay is simple but the player movement is fast and smooth enough as well as hits having decent enough feedback when connecting with an enemy that it avoids feeling too much like a clunky old game. The weird monsters, gnawing on bones, and using torture devices really sell the atmosphere. A+ soundtrack, IMHO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRXUEH0ijdk&list=PLfhw8A1mg64H1MVWcSPocp6qaaQoiOAJo

TIP: Throw stuff at stuff. Experiment by throwing all the things at all the things. Throwing is a big mechanic in this game, don’t sleep on it. Throw things at sense spheres to teleport them out of the dungeon so you can guarantee them for your next run. Here’s an adorable Neocities fanpage for if you really get stuck, https://nervetower.neocities.org/guide

I’d skip the PS2/Remake, the vibes are all wrong and again, this is just a good game to spend some time with and soak in the bleak world they created. The PS1 version is pretty similar to Saturn but I think honestly the Saturn just nails the atmosphere a bit better.

Under no circumstances does fucking HOT SHOTS require anti-cheat. Ever. The fuck?! I don’t care if it has multiplayer, JFC what are we doing?!

This is a good point. I’ve been trying to make it clear in a lot of my predictions that Microsoft doesn’t want or even need full control, just enough. They don’t even need to do anything particular here other than continue to manage github with their current level of incompetence.

Was trying to source an article here, wasn’t there just an outage or some other major issue a few days ago? Anyways …

not only is Windows not very profitable anymore, the real money is at businesses.

Hear me out, this is exactly why they care. Windows as a product isn’t profitable anymore, but as a market share it is. Apple has always enjoyed their locked down ecosystem and Google is trying to completely block side loading on devices we already largely don’t have control over the bootloader. It’s no secret Microsoft has been seething with jealousy for years.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

You’re a soulless corporate ghoul, how do you make those numbers work for you? Why do you think they have the absolute gall to tell you to throw your computer out and get one that supports TPM 2.0? Why do you think there are still so many people willing or not that will swallow that bitter pill that’s Windows 11?

I’m not trying to call you out in particular here or anything, but I think it’s foolish to assume they don’t

Some others have already said the “embrace, extend, extinguish” but here’s my take on it. Pair it with Secure Boot and TPM 2.0

• Embrace: Secure Boot can already work with Linux, how lucky! This gives them not exactly control, but authoritative denial over your boot process and hardware.
• Extend: This is the part that remains to be seen. If they feel threatened enough by the shift in the gaming landscape, mind you not over losing out on sales or the hearts of gamers or anything, but again control, they may begin to make Linux offerings. A concession to allow an honest to god, thick Office client on Linux would certainly appeal to some. Adobe gets in on that action to back them up with Photoshop and Activision with Call of Duty, etc.
• Extinguish: TPM 2.0. One of the less talked about features of this is remote attestation (“Remote attestation allows changes to the user’s computer to be detected by authorized parties. For example, software companies can identify unauthorized changes to software, including users modifying their software to circumvent commercial digital rights restrictions.” - DRM). We’re already seeing this with CoD on Windows. They’ll allow you to run much requested Windows software on Linux, even provide direct support possibly, but at the cost of not precisely control but authoritative denial. Which still works out to be control in most ways since if you want to use the software and they are to remotely attest, they can also insist that part of that attestation is you running some sort of telemetry or not running software they disagree with.

The reason I think this route is highly likely is because it plays well with uninformed consumers. To the untrained eye it looks like they’re giving ground and actually allowing for broader support of their software while effectively gaining control over the environment once again and removing the biggest benefits of running FOSS on your system.

I don’t know why I expected a Zitron-esque lambsating from fortune.com, but reading the article is disappointing,

But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT’s research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don’t learn from or adapt to workflows, Challapally explained.

Sure. Let’s blame anything but the AI 🙄

I had, yes. I was honestly at the point where I was looking at running some suspicious commands in my terminal to blacklist the keyboard in particular ways that escape me now. I hesitated because I was afraid of killing the keyboard entirely and not being able to bring it back.