08.10.11

Windows — Just Like Microsoft — Does Not Play Nice With GNU/Linux

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 5:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A reminder of the sinister nature of Microsoft Corporation, the world’s biggest technology bully

Windows and Microsoft are not the same thing. One is a product and one is a company. But the latter controls the former and both are attacking Linux in different ways^*. For instance, Microsoft launches lawsuits against Linux, whereas Windows uses technical sabotage to marginalise GNU/Linux, as in the MBR case we recently covered yet again (Microsoft wipes out access to GNU/Linux or gives no access to it).

Check out the following new post titled “Dual-boot woes”:

My laptop is dual-boot with Windows 7 and Linux. It’s a fairly straightforward setup (with only a few twists to support Dell’s “Instant ON” mode, which turned out to be useless because I don’t use Exchange.) My drive has several partitions: a “Dell Utility” partition, Windows 7, a Dell “Instant ON” partition, and Linux. I rarely boot into Windows these days – but when I do, it’s usually to attend a conference call that requires Silverlight. I never boot the “Dell Utility”, or the “Instant ON”.

I’ve tried the trick of telling BitLocker to accept the new system configuration. This doesn’t fix my problem. I’m still prompted to type in the key to boot Windows.

I’ve also tried booting into Windows, suspending BitLocker, then re-enabling BitLocker. This also doesn’t work. I can suspend/re-enable just fine, but it doesn’t solve my problem.

Oddly, TPM keeps disabling itself, I don’t know why. Is this part of normal TPM behavior when it detects a change in the configuration? Or is this a hardware fault on my laptop?

Frustrated, I did some research, and found lots of (albeit old) sources that discuss troubles in dual-boot with Windows/BitLocker and Linux. The description that makes the most sense to me is from this article on technet.com: Building a dual boot system with Windows Vista BitLocker protection with TPM support, by Cyril (“Voy”) Voisin. In it, Voy says:

[...] Therefore if you replace Windows Vista’s MBR by a MBR that is not TPM aware, it won’t hash the boot sector before executing it and a register in the TPM won’t be populated. Same with the boot sector. Therefore Bitlocker will simply refuse to be enabled.

Since I put GRUB on my MBR, I understand this to mean that a register within TPM isn’t getting set correctly, which may explain why I always need to type in that key to boot Windows.

Interestingly, Homer’s list of Microsoft’s bad behaviour was brushed up a bit earlier this week. He posted the following summary about the “new Microsoft”:

Oh yes, I forgot, Vole "reinvented" itself as Snow White, and is no
longer the evil witch that did all those nasty things to DR-DOS and
OS/2 Warp back in medieval times.

Well apart from those pesky Barnes and Noble people that they tried
to extort money from under the cloak of NDA, using bogus patents of
dubious provenance and undeclared prior art, of course.

And all those Taiwanese manufacturers they threatened if they would
not ship Vole's "tile" phone instead of Android, and making "deals"
with anyone else too small or weak to stand up to them.

And building spying technology into Skype, and admitting they would
violate EU data protection laws by handing over Europeans' personal
data to American spy agencies.

And launching a "Screw Google" campaign, complete with orchestrated
FUD supplied by Burson-Marsteller.

And another FUD campaign against OpenOffice.org, where they grabbed
a handful of old case studies, and spun it into something that made
it look like there was some kind of uprising against OpenOffice. In
fact the only genuine point they made was that Microsoft Office has
compatibility issues with everything else, including older versions
of itself.

And their Best Buy anti-Linux propaganda training brief, where they
tout the virtues of "regular Windows updates" on the one hand, then
criticise Ubuntu's "hundreds of updates per month" on the other, in
an attempt to make Microsoft customers' month-long wait for updates
seem like some kind of "advantage", but GNU/Linux's daily updates a
disadvantage.

And their predatory acquisition of Nortel's patents, using a cartel
of Screw Googlers.

And their equally predatory (and clandestine) acquisition of Novell
using a cartel of vulture capitalists, primarily to get patents for
the purpose of attacking Free Software.

But yeah, apart from that, Microsoft is a totally reformed company.

Honest.

[...]

Yes, the list is endless. I could have mentioned the MSBBC and Nokia,
for example, or the fact that Skype will no-doubt be locked-in to the
Windows platform eventually, or the "community" of traitors Microsoft
built up around Mono, fooled certain people into being "pragmatists",
then unceremoniously dumped them, along with its own community of Net
developers. Now one of the key players, the founder of Gnome, is more
interested in running a proprietary software company than helping the
Gnome community through a difficult transition.

None of that is exactly ancient history either.

Let us remember that Microsoft is still quite the villain, not just by characterisation. █
___
^* Microsoft is hardly alone anymore because it joined forces with Apple. Apple not properly supporting ODF and instead helping OOXML, joining Microsoft’s patent cartels, etc. They share similar problems because GNU/Linux is gaining in many areas while both proprietary operating systems suffers security issues. “Black Hat Apple may have built its most secure Mac operating system yet,” says The Register, “but a prominent security consultancy is advising enterprise clients to steer clear of adopting large numbers of the machines.” Enterprises are said to be increasingly deploying GNU/Linux. The “security” (e.g. “malware”) FUD has therefore gained ground recently, especially against Android. Apple and Microsoft proponents both use this FUD, along with the “not open” FUD and the patent FUD.

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