Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
Available for download (for free, too!) we currently have dozens of BSDs (UNIX) and hundreds of decent GNU/Linux distros. Why did Costa Rica not use these? Now it's close to bankruptcy with Microsoft. What else could it do? What should it do from now on? Today I saw some text that explains why there's a wide window of opportunity opening. It's because Vista 10, which is still widely used (having been "out there" on PCs for about a decade, no matter of buyers wanted it or not), reaches its so-called "end of life". Here's the core thesis:
Every new version of the Windows series (1.0, 2.0, 3.11, W95, W98, NT4, W2000, XP, Vista, Vista7, Vista8, Vista10, and now Vista11) has brought inconvenient changes requiring relearning and, in some cases, reduced capabilities. Usually each new version has necessitated new hardware, keeping nations on a sort of treadmill and locked into both the low quality x86 hardware architecture (e.g. Intel and AMD) and the low-quality Windows series of operating systems. This time, however, both factors, i.e. the changes and the forced hardware purchase, are more extreme.The crucial date coming up is when support for Vista10 ends on October 2025, because expensive new hardware is mandated for Vista11. It means that there are only a few months of breathing room. One way out of both problems is through migration to GNU/Linux on desktops and laptops.
GNU/Linux is very polished and it has gotten easy to use on desktops and laptops. It has long been the case, but due to vendor control over Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) few to any nowadays even know about the possibility. Instead they see:
- supercomputers: 100% market share GNU/Linux for every single one in TOP500 (top 500 or most powerful supercomputers worldwide), for years if not a decade already
- mobile devices (smartphones): split about 72% Android (Linux) and 28% iOS (Apple)
- tablets: split about 52% Android (Linux) and 48% iPadOS/iOS (Apple)
- servers: 60+% GNU/Linux specifically, and then maybe another 20+% for the other UNIXes (critical systems do not tend to use Windows)
- routers: hard to say but basically 100% UNIXes (with a large portion of GNU/Linux ot stripped-down Linux)
- televisions: Android and other Linuxes
- embedded systems: harder to measure but when an OS is even involved it is usually Linux (albeit undisclosed)
- automotive: split Linux and QNX
By returning to or upgrading to a traditional GNU/Linux desktop computing environment, there will be changes, but they are smaller and bring more benefits than yet another expensive step on the treadmill. Some benefits include the following: One can continue to use the same old hardware until it wears out on its own, with both economic and environmental advantages to that. Individual accounts are much more customizable. Notably, the threats of viruses and ransomware are basically eliminated. Lastly, there are options for European sourcing which thus avoid the obligatory back doors required by the CALEA and CALEA2 legislations, both of which have been actively exploited for many months now (with no end in sight) by the CCP in a campaign known as Red Mike or Salt Typhoon.
How much better off would we be if the Linux Foundation actively promoted GNU/Linux on desktops and laptops instead of hailing Bill Gates and outsourcing the Linux site (kernel.org) to some private company with proprietary products, having already killed linux.com?
A lot of sites perished, news sites in particular. In many cases, the domains are still online, e.g. slashdot.org, but a lot changed (different ownership and mission), just like at linux.com. Those sites used to call out Windows, but what's left of the media is nowadays pretending that Microsoft breaches are both inevitable and just some "computer problem". In that respect, they want us to think that security incidents are some kind of natural disaster, even when it's the fault of back doors that Microsoft loves so much.
Saying that moving away from Windows would not solve this issue is spreading Microsoft lies that it has spent a very long time promoting, disseminating, even to the point of attacking fact-checkers. Almost exactly a year ago Microsoft GitHub enabled a social engineering attack on Xz* and a Microsoft employee was quick to blame "Linux" for it, distracting from an impending government report about Microsoft's failure on many levels regarding security.
Computer systems can be more secure if we make them so; to paraphrase Theo de Raadt (OpenBSD), the difference between a bug and a security hole is in the intelligence of the attacker. Nowadays many breaches are due to (or target) back doors, bug doors, "legal intercepts" (loopholes) and so on. We're shooting our own foot if we ignore the remedy, which is free to download and within range of sight. █
________________
* We already wrote more than a dozen articles about it last year, mostly in April. Since revisionists still like to recall that incident and spread FUD based on it (even this year! Same for "Heartbleed" and Log4J!), it is imperative that we say Xz was only a close call because the workflow caught it in time, eliminating the problem before it actually reached any live (production) systems. That matters a lot because unlike the thousands of exploits Microsoft exposes people to each year, the Free software community can say nobody was harmed. A lot of FUD and sensationalism in today's Web is shoddy LLM slop; so it tends to "hallucinate" (read: lie about) incidents like the ones above. As we showed a year ago, the Linux Foundation actively participated in this FUD campaign because Microsoft staff now runs parts of the Linux Foundation. They dislike Linux. It's a coup [1, 2].