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Sabotage, Not Negligence: It's 2015 and Microsoft Still Cannot Properly Handle Bootloaders

Manchester



Summary: Microsoft's aggression against GNU/Linux as witnessed in light of the company's multi-boot policies and handling

AT THE very end of July we noted (in several articles in fact) that Microsoft continues to attack dual-boot setups (meaning GNU/Linux). After all these years and despite having the manpower, Microsoft still claims to be incapable/unable to do what very few Linux hackers could do decades ago in order to facilitate OS co-existence. grub is maintained by very few people (almost none) and lilo is dying. As we noted here 4 days ago, "Microsoft's Vista 10 Still a Failure, So Focus Shifts to Attacks on GNU/Linux, Android". Below [1,2] there are some newest rants about dual-booting. Microsoft, now with the UEFI trap (some computers won't made 'secure boot' toggle-able with the introduction of future versions of Windows), continues to making life hard for GNU/Linux users. It's not a coincidence, it's intentional. Formal complaints were made as recently as 2 years ago to European authorities, which are too slow or apathetic to take action.



"Formal complaints were made as recently as 2 years ago to European authorities, which are too slow or apathetic to take action."Vista 10 reportedly gets some users banned from particular sites, notably torrent sites. It is not as though many people are affected because according to the most Microsoft-friendly data/surveys, Vista 10 has not even reached 5% market share. The market share share of Vista 10, based on the past week’s logs in Techrights, is 0.8%. This is not a success story considering the zero-cost 'upgrade' in the summer vacation months (when people have time to undertake this task). The market share share of Vista 10 based on the past week’s logs in Tux Machines is even lower (0.18%). Deterrence against exploration of GNU/Linux is now high on the agenda at Microsoft, as recent stories of ours served to demonstrate.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Solution to freezing Ubiquity while attempting to dual-boot Ubuntu with Windows 10
  2. How to delete GRUB files from a Boot EFI partition in Windows 10




Recent Techrights' Posts

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Proud to Host Free Software Talk by Richard Stallman
ahead of Monday's talk
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Companies that lie try to drown out the signal with falsehoods
Report About February Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025) Comes Back From the Dead
Yesterday we wrote about an article in CRN (reporting Microsoft layoffs) being removed without any reasons specified
Links 21/02/2025: Myanmar Scam Centre and Disruptions at USPTO
Links for the day
 
The Streisand Effect is Real
So don't be evil. Also, don't strangle women.
Links 21/02/2025: Linux Foundation Openwashing, Microsoft Copilot Goes Down
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: Doomscrolling and European Ham Radio Show
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: TikTok Layoffs, WebOS Software Patents in Bad Hands
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/02/2025: Web Browsers, Mechanical Shortcuts, and Internet Hygiene
Links for the day
Richard Stallman 'Only' Founded the FSF
there's no reason to be upset at the FSF for keeping their founder in the Board
Techrights Disconnected From the United States Two Years Ago
Did people really need to wait for the US government to become this hostile towards the media before recognising the threat?
Before Trying Censorship by Extortion the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Literally Begged Us to Delete Pages
This is very clearly just a broad campaign of intimidation
Hype Watch: Weeks After Microsoft Disappointed Investors With "Hey Hi" It's Trying Some "Quantum" Hype (Adding Impractical Vapourware to Accompany This Hype and Even LLM Slop in 'News' Clothing)
Remember "metaverse"? What happened to media hype about "blockchain" and "IoT"?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 20, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 20, 2025
gbhackers.com is Not Hackers, It's LLM Slop Outputs (Fake 'Articles') That Attack 'True Hackers'
A site called linuxsecurity.com keeps doing this and now we see the slopfarm gbhackers.com doing the same
Gemini Links 20/02/2025: Law of Warming and Cooling, Health, and Devlog
Links for the day
linuxsecurity.com Continues to Spread Lies or Machine-Generated FUD (Microsoft LLMs Likely the Source) About OpenSSH and Linux
this LLM problem is global
Links 20/02/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs and IRS Layoffs (Good News for Rich Tax Evaders)
Links for the day
IBM Layoffs in Europe Already Happening or Underway (UK and Spain). They Try Not to Call These "Layoffs".
"CIO" in particular was repeatedly mentioned lately, as was Consulting
People Who Came From Microsoft Demanding Removal of Articles About Them, About Microsoft, and About Microsoft GitHub is "Generous" (According to Them)
Imagine choosing a law firm that borrows money in the same year just to avoid overdraft in the bank!
Possibly a Third Round of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 ("Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Roles"), Report Removed or Censored
This is literally the top story for "microsoft layoffs" right now
Instead of 'DoS Protection' Cloudflare is Allegedly Conducting 'DoS Attacks' on Users of Browsers Other Than Firefox and GAFAM's DRM Sandboxes (Chrome, Safari and Others)
If you value the Web, you will avoid Cloudflare
Mixing Real With Fake in One 'Article' (by "Director of Content, Help Net Security")
From what we can gather, he got machines to generate some slop for him
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 19, 2025