The article focuses a lot on the security of the boot process, but there’s no reason the TPM can’t be used for DRM as well (as an example, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5283799). It’s correct when it points out the locked down nature of consoles and phones.
We could conceivably be in for a future where Windows refuses to run code that’s not validated even after the OS boots. Or where it sees pirated software on the system and refuses to function in some manner until the software is removed/corrected to its liking.
There are so many possibilities here and all of them are bad.
- Forced online accounts so Microsoft always knows when/where you login
- Stored encryption keys so Microsoft could theoretically provide access to any computer the government requests
- Telemetry already reporting god only knows what metrics about what and how you use your software
- Forced AI that literally watches everything you do on your screen storing it in a known location making for a valuable target and also potentially/likely being used to create more telemetry and insights into your habits
- Eventual full control over your hardware by enforcing “trusted platform” restrictions
It’s so fucking brazen I’m gobsmacked. As an elder Millennial, I get it, I can already hear most of you tallying in your head if having to care about your OS is gonna be the final straw . This is no longer a nerdy request to please use Linux, this is a five alarm fire. Add to all this how much Microsoft is in bed with the US government and potential issues with all that on the horizon and I really, truly believe it’s time to switch, for your own good.
Please. Even if you’re not going to run out and install Linux tomorrow, you need to start mentally preparing yourself for the inevitability of the task. Get yourself accustomed to the idea and when you’re ready to dip your toes in, just know how many resources are out there for you.
And to the Linux community out there, there are going to be a lot of newcomers who don’t have the technical skills to undertake this and enjoy/appreciate this in the same way as you do. Be kind to them, the need for us to support each other has never been greater. Please.
DRM is already the primary purpose of trusted compute if you read shareholder meeting transcripts; security is a marketing side effect.
Ya boy Richard Stallman agrees and has been saying this for years (although this article is more recentish), https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html
“Treacherous computing” is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.
As of 2022, the TPM2, a new “Trusted Platform Module”, really does support remote attestation and can support DRM. The threat I warned about in 2002 has become terrifyingly real.
Actual, honest to god reasons to upgrade to Windows 11 are already vague and questionable. Your average user probably doesn’t even see any particular reason and only perceives the nuisance of it. But it’s hard to fully close your iron fist around a platform when TPM enablement is so sparse in the consumer space. So what better way to do it than a mandatory OS upgrade with it as a system requirement and assure all (or a vast majority of) systems align at once?
Of course there are ways for stubborn users to skirt those requirements, but that misses the primary point of Trusted Computing. While the OS may baseline function to some degree, there’s no telling what functionality may be crippled by not being in a trusted state. EDIT: For example, this could easily tie into games with anti-cheat such that they will refuse to run on Windows 11 unless TPM is enabled.
I don’t know the future any better than anyone else, I’m just trying to read the winds at the moment. I suspect they may not try to pull the entire trap closed all at once and that Windows 11 may continue to more or less function as we’ve seen past iterations. But the pieces will be in place by then and it’s only a matter of time before some greedy exec gives the word …
I suspect they may not try to pull the entire trap closed all at once and that Windows 11 may continue to more or less function as we’ve seen past iterations
Microsoft will be taking a page from Google playbook. Google has be gradually reducing the “openness” of their android platform. They now have these “security checks” enforced on android. Meaning that it’s trivial for an application to determine if the phone a “genuine android” or not.
This’ll trickle into webbrowser too (if it’s not already in browsers like chrome). It’s only a matter of time before web pages will be able to determine if they’re running on a “secure OS” and fail to run. It’ll start out with your banking website, then expand to shopping websites, ultimately every page will enforce it (“oh, I see you have an unauthorized browser plug in installed. We care about your security, therefore we won’t run. Please restore your device to it’s secure defaults.”)
This future is so horrible and Linux with its 4% market share won’t change anything.
Agreed.
And what’s particularly galling about this is that it’s never made any sense to me. Are you telling me an Android app, on compromised hardware or otherwise, could send malformed data that would for instance deposit $1M into my bank account? That doesn’t sound like an issue of local security. An app is just a frontend, all validation would still be through the banking infrastructure.
I’ve been daily-driving Linux for over a decade at this point so you don’t need to convince me, and I’ll just spin up a Windows VM for things aren’t picky about baremetal OS installs, but also don’t play nice with WINE.
You’re making up scenarios so you can get outraged over them and push linux lol.
TPM was known to be a DRM Trojan horse in 2004. Then everyone forgot about that fact.
Sure, pushing Linux is just a new angle, but don’t think for a second that TPM has any purpose other than making your own computer trust a cabal of corporations over you, the owner. And if there is a critical mass of TPM standardized hardware, such that a “trusted” environment is the standard, it will lock you out of major use cases on all “untrusted” systems, including Linux.
And that deserves a lot of outrage.
Hey man, yeah, I get it. I worry a lot about sounding like a conspiracy theorist; a real Chicken Little.
But when I look internally and ask myself why I make these posts, why I conspire so much about unknown futures, I come to two most likely outcomes:
- I’m trying to trick you into installing Linux for some reason. Selfishly I guess if there’s a larger userbase demanding support for things then I can expect better support for myself. Or I’m just trying to sound like a pompous smartass in front of internet strangers. But those are a little obtuse.
- I see a bunch of people standing in what I perceive (possibly incorrectly, but nonetheless) a trap and I’m shouting, “Hey, get outta there now before it springs!” because I have general empathy towards other people.
Worst case I’m wrong and I look a fool. I really don’t have a problem with that. I know who I’d trust if the positions were switched 💯
Didn’t Apple brick ipods if they had pirated audio files?
Didn’t Microsoft push a few updates that BSOD Windows OS if you weren’t setup for their OneDrive cloud?
Doesnt seem very made up.
I had an ipod that was filled with “pirated” (ripped) audio files, never owned a single itunes purchased song, and have used Windows on many computers that didnt have OneDrive setup and never experienced either of those.
Do you have some sources for those cause I’d be interested to read about them.
I currently have a modded iPod mini with 128Gb of music, around 1Gb of which was bought from iTunes.
It works perfectly fine. Remarkably so, in fact. Damn things 20 years old, I can plug it into my M2 Macbook and sync music like always.
Strange cause that must be bricked according to the person I replied to lol
Apple are shithouses under Cook, but they’re not that bad.
Yet.
This may come to shock you but not everyone has the same experiences as you.
Which is why I asked you for some sources for your claims. I told you my experience and that I’d never heard of what you’re saying happened.
So do you have any sources or did you just make it up?
I can hear the ‘just use Linux/BSD/etc.’ crowd already clamoring in the comments, and will preface this by saying that although I use Linux and BSD on a nearly daily basis, I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here.
Still though.
🐧
I just switched to Linux mint as a HTPC and it works great! Wine and Bottles bridged most of the gaps in software availability.
Try winegui as well…
nice!
Ive personally used proton as well for the one program that I need in windows land. It works really well.
I would not want to use it [Linux or BSD] as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here.
https://twitter.com/MayaPosch/status/1809311467545735654
The Linux kernel not having a stable driver ABI is why Linux will never amount to anything outside of some embedded and server applications.
— Maya Posch, author of the submitted article
I guess maybe that’s their reason.
never
That tweet must be some kind of joke, because I don’t know what to make of the many people who use Linux outside of embedded and server applications. And it doesn’t even have to be my hearsay because the Steam Deck is exactly such a device.
In fact, I have a USB audio interface which I use near daily on Linux that has no driver support in modern Windows, because the vendor only provided beta support for Windows 7 as that OS was releasing. By Windows 8 it was unsupported. So the journey of that device is XP->Stable, Vista->Stable, 7->Unstable, 8±> Non-functioning. If the driver ABI were so stable, why does my device not work on Windows anymore?
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I’ve converted a ton of my older family to Linux, it does everything they need as far as web browsing and some basic office applications, and it offers a polished enough UI these days that most barely tell it apart from windows, some even prefer the UI more. Even 2/3 of our home systems have gone full Linux now too (no more dual booting) and handle all my own gaming, audio and programming needs. I really hope this message keeps getting out there and we can cut back on ewaste and forced obselence.
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I have a custom built PC running on Windows 10, which has no TPM and therefore cannot update to Win11. I might consider Linux as an alternative on some regular laptop, but I’m afraid that my games might no longer be running if I switch the OS from Windows to Linux.
Proton has come a long way.
The only game I can’t play is fortnight, and that’s because Epic won’t enable the anti cheat to run on Linux, not because the game doesn’t work.
What is “Proton” in this context?
Adding to what the others were saying, proton has an unaffiliated website for reporting purposes, protondb.com. It tallies user reports of the games working or not. The data is associated mostly with steam libraries.
I don’t have a lot of games in my steam library, relatively speaking, barely over 100. But there are zero games that would not work on Linux for me:
In this context Platinum means it works out of the box, Gold means some users experienced minor issues (mostly older reports by nvidia users) that required some tinkering with launch options, such as setting an environment variable. Silver and Bronze mean gradually more tinkering required but still works. This excludes native apps (which do not use wine/proton) and borked apps (of which I own zero).
Note, that this is a translation layer, not emulation, and often games can have better performance under Linux thanks to the system not getting bogged down by the OS itself.
Also note, that 99% borked games are due to kernel level anticheat and DRM being implemented improperly by the game developer, which proton can’t handle. You can still make it work under Linux, but you’d actually require emulation for that, instead of proton.
Edit:
Another screenshot of the top50 played saturation to show you what to expect.
OK, thanks for the information, that sounds really interesting. I was playing Doom Eternal and Metro Exodus some time ago, but I made a bread and didn‘t pick it up anymore due to a lack of time. Many years ago I was also trying a bit of Linux on a Netbook (small notebook). By then it was really a different world than Windows.
However, I am not sure how easy that is to manage with getting the right Linux distribution, then Wine, then Proton and then getting all tricks and tweaks right… - I am not a tech expert, so leaving a system that works out of the box is a bit of a hurdle for me.
What would be the best Linux „Distro“ (I guess that‘s how it is called) to start with? I would prefer if I would not have to deal with command line stuff… ;-)
Luckily, Steam handles all of that for you.
People keep saying Bazzite now for distro. But as a relatively new linux user (since last summer) I’ve managed to make things work with Linux Mint, arch and Fedora no hassle.
Heroic launcher (GOG, Epic) or Steam will handle proton&wine for you. Just need to check a check-box in the game’s config on whether you want to run native or proton.
Which Distro would you recommend for a relative newcomer? My PC was once “high-end” but is already a bit older (2016/17?). Still quite powerful, I guess.
As another person mentioned Proton is Linux’s compatibility layer for Windows applications, from my understanding it installs necessary .NET frameworks and other dependencies into a fake C:\ drive an then utilizes that fake C:\ to trick the game into thinking it’s running Windows.
Every windows applications I put through Proton has not once failed to open. Now the claims that Anti-Cheat for games isn’t supported is purely false, most popular anti cheat’s do support Linux however, it’s entirely up to the publisher to tick the checkbox to allow Linux users to play.
Battle eye, Punk Buster, Easy Anti-Cheat all support Linux natively.
It’s an extension of WINE, a compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Linux, with better support for games. It’s what the Steam Deck uses.
What games? Even games with EasyAntiCheat work in Linux nowadays, but it depends on the devs.
Almost every single modern game runs on Linux, i always thought it was an issue but in reality it just works out of the box most of the time.
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For what it’s worth, I switched 2 years ago and have yet to run into a game I wanted to play and couldn’t. There are some glaring holes, mostly around “serious e-sports” games that have overly invasive anti-cheat (or devs that specifically choose to block linux) that won’t work. Riot and Epic both seem to have a hard on for blocking linux users, as an example.
But here’s the neat part. You can make the switch and see, and it costs you nothing. If you are in the minority that it just won’t work for and have to switch back to windows, you are in the exact same spot you are in now, with nothing lost but a bit of time.
Linux is fantastic for gaming. You’ll even see performance improvements. The only games that have problems are those that intentionally block linux, like Destiny 2, but they’re not worth playing.
The places you are likely to run into problems is with certain desktop apps. For example, the Affinity suite or software designed to support specific devices or peripherals. But if gaming is your focus, Linux is genuinely a better choice than Windows all around.
what a bizare take to suggest hoping for ReactOS to mature before using Linux as daily driver. A lot of the current reactOS app compatibility depends on WINE implementation anyway.
ReactOS is a very fun project, but anyone expecting it to be a real useable OS is absolutely mad. It’s been going for almost 30 years, and they’re almost at the point of binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003…
Last I checked it didnt play very nicely in real hardware, and required running it in a VM
Fucking Christ, you have choices people. If windows won’t meet your needs anymore, USE SOMETHING ELSE! Why do these people pretend there are no alternatives to windows?!
There are no alternatives to Windows. You will join us. Embrace ☀️. Extend 🌈.Ȩ̷͙͙̺̰̦͊̏͜x̷̱̹̃t̶̡͉̍̋̌̿͗̈́͘í̴̡̼̱̫͚̺͙̉ň̶̛̮͠ģ̴̛̹̮͎̏̓u̷̢̢̜͊̆̈̉͐̑i̸̛̪͔̤̰͚̾͌̈̍͜ͅs̶̳̜͎͓͚̣̼̖͌̇̈́͊̌͋h̷͉̹̄͐̋̐͛🌚.
Think about all the people with computers that don’t know about Linux.
Why do these people pretend there are no alternatives to windows?!
They’d have to admit they were wrong.
Most people are incapable of doing this unless they literally have no choice.
I had a Windows 10 laptop that has a CPU not supported by Windows 11. It’s not e-waste, though. It just runs Ubuntu now.
You can argue all you want about TPM and its ‘security’. I ALWAYS thought that forcing users to use TPM 2+ hardware is planned obsolescence and nothing/no one will convince me otherwise.
The only thing affected users can and should do is to leave that PoS of an ‘operating system’.
Install Linux already
yeah I’m over here trusting them to flood the scrap market with AM4 motherboards so I can build Linux machines
This is on top of potential tariffs which if enacted will make PC costs skyrocket. I feel like a lot of people are just going to skip the generation like they do with every other windows OS version. They will just keep windows 10 forever kinda like XP did back in the day.
I’m pretty hesitant to find the time to install and learn Linux but I’m VERY hesitant to upgrade to Win11. I’m having trouble understanding what the selling point for it is over Win10. I feel like it used to be clear and exciting to upgrade but they’ve managed to make this feel sort of dreadful.
There is no particular selling point. That’s why they force it.
Well yeah, w11 has no selling point, that’s why they’re forcing you to switch by removing support by autumn 2025
Where’s Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer on this one? Too busy looking the other way on Copilot’s massive energy usage?
Microsoft: BUT WE’RE THE MOST ECO CONSCIOUS COMPANY WE KNOW!!!
You can’t say they’re not. The even have a Chief Sustainability Officer! /s
OK I’m sold…they are officially the most eco efficient and conscious company in the WORLD and bill gates is not about to garrote me agent 47 sty-
DON’T TURN ON DISPLAYING SECONDS IN THE TASKBAR BECAUSE THAT’LL USE MORE ENERGY!
Debian user here. All people have a doorkey. Some people have an alarm system as well. Infosec is about ’ what do you have and what do you know '. So in principle TPM is a defencible argument. You should absolutely bail from MS products for different reasons. Like privacy. Your PC isn’t yours anymore. Your NPU will reduce THEIR costs. Etc.
Don’t enter Linux thinking its a drop in replacement. Go slow and do ‘ships in the night’. Move data over to the new ship. Start embracing OSS on windows, it’ll be familiar when you finally bail. G luck.
TPM is the wedge to put a cryptoprocessor in your computer so program can finally operate under the tyrannical scrutiny of users and the pirates using ghidra !
It’s not really a TPM problem, my Dell has TPM2.0 which is perfectly compatible with win11. My problem is the CPU (i5 6th gen) missing some stuff for modern device drivers or something, that is preventing me from upgrading win10 to win11.
Yes I dual boot MX Linux on it :)
I can’t wait for the surge in cheap PCs available to buy and install Linux on. Please, Microsoft, lock down Windows more.
