Nobody likes Windows 12

[Argent Stonecutter]

Then I already have a gaming Linux laptop. Sheesh.

 

[Free]

It turns out this is the year for the Linux gaming laptop.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

All Linux is gaming Linux with Steam installed.

That's true. With the way things are often talked about, you'd think that there's certain Linux distributions that were "made for" certain tasks or are "the best for" certain tasks, but that's not really the case. You've really got three base distributions of Linux - Debian, Arch, and Red Hat/Fedora, and the only really important difference between them is which package manager and base repository they use to deliver software. Every other distro out there just takes one of those three and adds particular things to it, and I would guesstimate that like 80% of those things are aesthetic.

The particular things a distro adds can be geared toward a particular task, but all that really means is that you'll have certain tools pre-installed when you first install the OS. Any other distro still has access to the same tools, you'd just have to take a few extra seconds and install them yourself. Like, Bazzite calls itself a "gaming distro" but it would take maybe 15 minutes or less of downloading and installing stuff and changing system settings to make literally any other distro capable of everything special that Bazzite is capable of.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

All Linux is gaming Linux with Steam installed.

And even if it is not labeled as Valve, some projects turn out to be mainly financed by Valce in the long run.

Enter Fex-Emu, which is an open sourced x64 to ARM translation layer. So in short a piece of software which is doing what Rosetta does under MacOS. Valve has secretly funded this project for years.

So if we ever find the want/need to run Intel based games under ARM sometime in the future Valve has got us covered with Fex.


And it's doing quite ok, somebody tested it.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

You've really got three base distributions of Linux - Debian, Arch, and Red Hat/Fedora

What have you got against Gentoo?

 

[Free]

Gentoo?

Gesundheit.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

What have you got against Gentoo?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Microsoft: Windows 11 users can't access C: drive on some Samsung PCs

Microsoft is investigating a new issue affecting some Samsung laptops running Windows 11 after installing the February 2026 security updates, in which users lose access to their C:\ drive and are unable to launch applications.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

K2, Microsoft's large-scale Windows restructuring

O my droogs, never let them tell you that resistance is pointless. I've heard that so many times: that resisting Windows is futile, that refusing to use apps won't change anything, the Windows and Office market dominance is fully calcified and there's nothing you can do about it except make things pointlessly more difficult for yourself by using alternatives that are not as good or less convenient by virtue of not integrating with the Microsoft or Google ecosystem.

Well all that is rubbish. Nobody said it would be easy, but Microsoft's full headlong spiral into fantastic garbage even more than usual over the past couple of years has put off enough people that the company can't ignore the complaints anymore.

According to my sources, this effort is codenamed Windows K2. It’s a project that was put together in the second half of last year that addresses the biggest complaints that people have about Windows 11 today. Everything from an overabundance of AI features and bloat to performance issues and reliability mishaps will be tackled.

I'm told that K2 also looks inward at the teams themselves. It's not just about addressing feedback and fixing Windows 11, but it's also about how teams internally can better contribute code to the Windows product. I understand there's a huge culture shift happening internally right now that drives the K2 initiative.

One of the biggest cultural changes internally that I've heard about is that teams are no longer striving to ship fast. The obsession with with being agile has been replaced with an obsession with quality. I understand that new features aren't allowed near public preview builds before reaching a certain quality bar internally now, and while that bar has always existed, the bar is much higher now.

I encourage you to read the article. I'm most curious about the WinUI 3 stuff especially.

Now I don't think I really need to say that there's a difference between promising and delivering, and while I think what I'm reading sounds pretty good, I'm NOT optimistic that Windows will or even can make any of it happen quite honestly, no matter how much it wants to. At this point I'm so happy with Linux that Microsoft would have to do a WHOLE FREAKING LOT to get me to consider using Windows 11 again. Like, the improvement needs to be dire and sweeping, and probably sweetened with an illicit favor to get me to even look their way. But the fact that they're having the conversation at all; the fact that Satya Nadella is giving interviews where he's basically conceding that Windows is putting off users and needs to be fixed, is a capitulation all on its own and not one I ever thought I'd see them making.

 

[Noodles]

Its so crazy, and maybe its because I have Windows 11 Pro, but I feel like I see none of these problems really.

On the other hand, only one of my personal computers uses Windows, the desktop, and the only thing I do there is play games. I pretty much just launch from Steam or Epic from the little icon tray by the clock. Or Firestorm from a pinned icion. I also long ago turned off all of the notification center and widget nonsense and never looked back.

Oh, and Firefox, but I never close it.

Or the Command Line which is just tabs of SSH to the (linux) server to run Youtube Download or manage some blog texts.

My core beef is how it constantly nags to backup the desktop to onedrive.

 

[Knutz Scorpio]

Two key things that MicroSlop would have to do to get me to even consider going back to their Windows:

Make AI strictly apt-in. None of their bull shit renaming it and hiding it.
Stop pushing their network login and cloud services. Can't use MY computer or get to MY data without an internet connection? BULLSHIT!

I have just one computer with Windows on it now, just in case I run into something I absolutely have to have that absolutely with not run on anything other than Windows, and being that I fire it up maybe once a month just to keep the OS updated I'm seriously thinking about converting it too and becoming 100% MicroSlop free.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

K2 oh yeah, because they don't want to be Mount Everest. Microsoft is humble now, or something...

If this should take them as long as replacing the classic Windows control panel with the modern one, well goodbye Microslop then.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Aaaaaaand BitLocker in Windows 11 has a backdoor.

abadidea (@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange)

The chill I got when I downloaded the repo and realized the “exploit” was a zero byte file with a magic filename… The charitable interpretation is that Microsoft accidentally shipped an internal test build to global production. The less charitable one isn’t very pleasant

infosec.exchange

Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social)

So I’ve just had a quick play with this and yes, it works. Essentially BitLocker has a backdoor. https://github.com/Nightmare-Eclipse/YellowKey Mitigation = BitLocker PIN and BIOS password lock.

cyberplace.social

Nightmare-Eclipse

Mind you, BitLocker in Windows 11 is already compromised because Microsoft, by virtue of your required online account, stores a copy of your BitLocker encryption key in the cloud where it is vulnerable to data leaks but also, Microsoft can and already has cheerfully handed peoples' BitLocker keys to the government on request.

But this looks like a very intentionally-built method for getting into a BitLocker-encrypted drive bypassing the key altogether.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

100% of my experience with Bitlocker has been its effectiveness as a denial-of-service attack on user laptops.

 

[Free]

All of my experience with BitLocker has been to tell people not to enable it, or to turn if off if they already have.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The worst part of the K2 leak for Microsoft is that the public now knows that Microsoft is internally using SteamOS as benchmark and performance goal they want to reach. So you are getting for free better performance than using Windows for many games right now.

This must be really embarassing for Microslop: SteamOS relies on running most Windows games on Wine/Proton, which is a compatability layer translating Windows system calls to Linux kernel calls. So in short something which normally adds a certain overhead to the process, slowing it slightly down (1-2%ish).

We all can only guess which pile of junk is under the head of Windows 11 that it turned out that way. Removing React as technic to display Windows stuff seems like a good start. Maybe finishing the new control panel after a decade of the duopoly would be good as well.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/microsoft-has-an-ambitious-plan-to-win-users-back-and-go-toe-to-toe-with-valves-steamos-for-gaming-but-im-not-getting-my-hopes-up