All the "things" being talked about windows 11. Security, spyware, and etc.

Rollback_Jockey said:

I think that they believe that you having bought their product would want it running to spec's so will configure it as so.

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They might if it did that... but all it does is dump in all the scamware/trashware/adware and other bloated junk they euphemistically call "software" without bundling in a couple of CD's like they used to... or since nobody has optical drives anymore a USB stick.

But why do this semi-secretly? Why not pump it up in their specs and manuals and tell you exactly how it's used?

Josey Wales said:

If I really believed this, I would get off of Windows period

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It was sarcastic hyperbole. Although I'm not so sure about the sarcastic part sometimes.

TraderGary said:

"So much misinformation on this." was your first sentence in your original post. Be careful you're not posting misinformation yourself. Cookie Poisoning IS just text until it is read and executed by the original web site.

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It's not, you can't read Cookies. You'll need special software to access the database. The misinformation in this post suggests ripping out bits of Windows in the hope it will help. It doesn't. What it does do is cause hanging processes which then cause memory leaks or data forever being downloaded.

ultrajv said:

It's not, you can't read Cookies. You'll need special software to access the database. The misinformation in this post suggests ripping out bits of Windows in the hope it will help. It doesn't. What it does do is cause hanging processes which then cause memory leaks or data forever being downloaded.

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I'm sure you believe what you're saying, but I really do know what I'm talking about. I do have some qualifications. I retired as a Microsoft Windows Systems engineer.

TraderGary said:

I'm sure you believe what you're saying, but I really do know what I'm talking about. I do have some qualifications. I retired as a Microsoft Windows Systems engineer.

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And then he said bye to Windows and switched to Linux!!

Privacy and security is always at risk, just by being online/using the interwebs.

ultrajv said:

It's not, you can't read Cookies. You'll need special software to access the database. The misinformation in this post suggests ripping out bits of Windows in the hope it will help. It doesn't. What it does do is cause hanging processes which then cause memory leaks or data forever being downloaded.

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Many security experts disagree with everything you think a cookie is or can be.

there maybe some confusion between cookies and flash cookies
flash cookies at the time were a concern as they were very difficult to delete
and could be a risk for the user when they were present, they are now nearly non-existent.

best of luck Steve ..

Adobe at it again...who would have thunk!
Yeah Flash is/was one of the most insecure and dangerous things on the interwebs. The idea was great but the execution not so much.
Glad it finally died off and got replaced by better technologies!

SlicEnDicE said:

Which driver are you referring to in particular. Most if not all drivers (those that exist) run better on Linux than on Windows. Also there are a lot more options for tuning them. What you may be confusing as a driver is what the Linux Kernel does. On Ubuntu they use a basic all purpose kernel, which is really slow in comparison to a polished kernel for your current hardware.

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On this particular machine (an older HP ultrabook) a variety of drivers/devices don't work as well as Windows. Wi-fi, sound, and touchpad come to mind right away. I recall that when setting it up and noticing that there were no GUI settings or tweaks within Ubuntu or Mint (Device Manager would be the closest Windows example), I had to try and look up terminal commands to try and improve Wi-fi. I never did find a solution for sound. For touchpad, and still not great, I had to go through several steps to find a compatible Synaptics package to try and see if that helped. Granted, not every machine is the same and I suspect that some hardware works fantastic.

Also, my comment above is not "opposition" to Linux. I will continue to play around with it. Hopefully a few distros will excel and gain enough users to support robust development. Likewise, I hope Linux distros continue to improve and posture themselves for an "exodus" should Microsoft make poor future decisions.

mccmw said:

On this particular machine (an older HP ultrabook) a variety of drivers/devices don't work as well as Windows. Wi-fi, sound, and touchpad come to mind right away. I recall that when setting it up and noticing that there were no GUI settings or tweaks within Ubuntu or Mint (Device Manager would be the closest Windows example), I had to try and look up terminal commands to try and improve Wi-fi. I never did find a solution for sound. For touchpad, and still not great, I had to go through several steps to find a compatible Synaptics package to try and see if that helped. Granted, not every machine is the same and I suspect that some hardware works fantastic.

Also, my comment above is not "opposition" to Linux. I will continue to play around with it. Hopefully a few distros will excel and gain enough users to support robust development. Likewise, I hope Linux distros continue to improve and posture themselves for an "exodus" should Microsoft make poor future decisions.

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Fair enough! Some devices work better than others. HP loves to do their own thing, and everything requires "their touch" in order to work properly, even if pretty common hardware components are used. They're still some type of HP flavor. Good devices, but HP shouldn't need to poke their fingers into everything.

I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad with AMD hardware (check my computers for further details), and everything works really well out of the box, except for some minor convenience tools, which I had to grab separately. No matter the laptop, I suspect I would have had to do this anyways in Linux Mint...

TraderGary said:

I'm sure you believe what you're saying, but I really do know what I'm talking about. I do have some qualifications. I retired as a Microsoft Windows Systems engineer.

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Quite good to know. ha ha. I will take your advice over many!

Kojack said:

Quite good to know. ha ha. I will take your advice over many!

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I try not to give advice. However, I will talk about what I do know about Windows. I've been retired for many years, and there are many on this forum that are more knowledgeable.

Kojack said:

I have been a windows user since 3.11. I have dabbled in OSX/MacOS and could not stand it. So I stayed on windows for my entire professional/personal life. Since windows 11 was released, I have been using it without issue. Recently there has been ALOT of noise about security, privacy and overall meddling by MS in windows 11 and their involvement with Ai everything.

How much of this is FUD? Should I take the talk seriously and move to my second favorite OS, Zorin? or should I take a chill pill and as Frankie says, RELAX.

I would like to hear thoughts from people here.

I do like the fact that this forum is not complete doom and gloom regarding windows. Nice to read some refreshing positive vibes.

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Now your showing your age, lol. wasn't it wonderful when the ancient windows 3.1 crashed and you simply just reinstalled windows without losing any data or programs. Then along came registries and that was the end of that. The days when you could simply do a right mouse click and under properties find out who was hassling you, lol.

I also think along the same lines as you, we are more and more getting pushed out of our learning of syntax, defaults, work arounds and repairs onto the desktop to satisfy simplicity and control. I do not like forced installs as in the case of outlook when it totally trashed not only my mail experience but my system blue screened as well whenever I tried to open pdf files within. I do not like being starved of technical information. I do not like it when proper support is not given, I do not like it when certain updates don't install and no information as to why etcetera etcetera.

I am afraid we just have to go along with it and hope one day the user can get some input to modded updates. having said all that I did look at other operating systems and also held interest in Google's new OS but .......... with the latter I felt I would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The old saying is better the devil you know than the devil you dont know. I have been with windows all my life since the days of the186, I could be wrong (memory) but a massive 200k onboard ram and a 20 meg HDD that cost an arm and a leg. At least I have windows 11 pro version so a lot more system defaults are available.

The other annoying thing is I had always purchased my Windows software along with ms office and now all I can get is a subscription. This is a real sore point with me, specially when full support finished for the last 2016 versions I could purchase outright.

I guess I will never stop using Windows and as another post stated "you just have to go along with it" which I guess we have no real choice.
lets hope the future hold some better things.

Cheers Pete

rednut said:

The other annoying thing is I had always purchased my Windows software along with ms office and now all I can get is a subscription. This is a real sore point with me, specially when full support finished for the last 2016 versions I could purchase outright.

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Office? You 100% can still buy a license without a subscription

I have to stay with windows as well. There is one software package I need to use with my new business venture that requires Windows. So that puts the nail in the coffin for me and my family switching. Now, I can use Arm bases laptops. The next question is can I edit video on an arm system decently?

I am looking at getting the 64gb ram surface 15 inch model.

Kojack said:

I have to stay with windows as well. There is one software package I need to use with my new business venture that requires Windows. So that puts the nail in the coffin for me and my family switching. Now, I can use Arm bases laptops. The next question is can I edit video on an arm system decently?

I am looking at getting the 64gb ram surface 15 inch model.

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One thing is often forgotten in these discussions - mainly I suspect that the sort of hardware and apps being used is of more a domestic or office variety and isn't on the whole bonkersly expensive to upgrade or replace. However there's loads of really expensive industrial / medical equipment out their that is HUGELY expensive and can easily last 30 years or so. A lot of this stuff was designed with specialized applications to run on hardware available at the time and Windows XP was very common.

A lot of this stuff can still run on modern hardware as a VM - probably better than on the original hardware.

If you need / want to switch your HOST OS the fact that you still need Windows for some applications shouldn't deter you -- if the OS you want can run Virtual machines then just run Windows as a VM. Macbooks can use parallels for running VM's while Linux can run KVM/QEMU or VmWare workstation or Oracle's Virtual box.

@rednut
Office 2024 is the latest non subscription version available and Ms has states that there will be AT LEAST one more retail version available.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Macbooks can use parallels for running VM's while Linux can run KVM/QEMU or VmWare workstation or Oracle's Virtual box.

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There is a new player too. Winboat for Linux. It is like a VM but without the overhead of a full blown VM. It is something in between Wine and KVM. Can launch apps directly onto the desktoo with quite high compatibility. Better than Wine, and pretty much any app that can be ran in a VM also WinBoat supports.

Still work in progress but looks very promising.

Winboat homepage

SlicEnDicE said:

There is a new player too. Winboat for Linux. It is like a VM but without the overhead of a full blown VM. It is something in between Wine and KVM. Can launch apps directly onto the desktoo with quite high compatibility. Better than Wine, and pretty much any app that can be ran in a VM also WinBoat supports.

Still work in progress but looks very promising.

Winboat homepage

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Thanks
Worth a look at -- I tried Wine a long time ago with mixed success --this looks a lot better.

Cheers
jimbo

SlicEnDicE said:

Many security experts disagree with everything you think a cookie is or can be.

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Let's just say, experts can disagree.. I have over 50 years in the industry. The advice on this thread has been appalling regards ripping apart Windows to improve privacy. I see nothing to counter my viewpoint. As I stated, disabling services has a Domino effect. Causing weird problems. That's the cause of many complaints with Windows. Debloat scripts are even worse, to be considered malware as they don't have a revert option. Cleaning utils etc are also malware. Windows looks after itself. If you want a leaner Windows, you simply use IOT LTSC version. It's designed by Microsoft for efficiency.

I brought up cookies as it's overlooked on every OS. Yet cookie problems and poisoning is out there. All online systems store your passwords, profiles, hidden code etc within cookies and it's accessible to other services without your consent. Many on here are stuck in the past when cookies were just text files you could read easily. Not the case now. Anyone concerned with privacy should start with cookies. It's a rough ride though because you can't do much about it. Blocking cookies stops you accessing online systems that need your profile data. Worrying about so called Windows spyware is missing the bigger problem. People who recommend Linux instead of Windows are just playing Devil's advocate. Each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses.

Online Privacy is an illusion, not just because of cookies, you never had any privacy on any OS once online, logged into any service it's too late. The best OS for privacy is Qubes, 2nd is Tales but you won't like the hoops you'll have to jump through to use them. No other expert here mentioned those OS.....