As much as I loathe m$, the one thing they got right was forcing casual users (windows home) to install security updates as top priority, whether they like it or not. I know we all hate on windows, and rightly so, but that policy does nullify this particular vector and that is great for the consumer-level users.
(… for the sake of argument lets just pretend windows doesnt have 10,000 other vulns the malware devs can just exploit instead)
I mean, I don’t think I would mind forced updates if they didn’t take so damned long and fail half the time. And then, just when you think you’ve finished installing all updates, you reboot and there’s more updates! Why can’t they just install it all at once?
Plus, after each major update, Microsoft wastes your time by advertising to you about Edge, Office 365, and OneDrive before they even let you get back into the desktop.
Forced security updates is addressing a symptom but not addressing the root cause, which is that the Windows update process is just painful for a myriad of reasons. In Linux, I run one command, wait 5 minutes, reboot, and I am back to work.
I legitimately haven’t had a windows update take more than 5 minutes during the reboot phase for years. Most of the time it’s about 30 seconds.
Same here. I don’t know what people that have all these issues are doing, but none of my systems or those of my friends and family have these issues.
We also aren’t fucking around with the various random guides to “debloat”, mess with telemetry, eetc. however, so I can only assume that it’s things in those guides and programs that cause issues. For the people with enough technical knowledge to look for the guides but not enough knowledge to know what they do, or care enough to find out.
The longest update I’ve had took about 15 minutes. My system never restarts in the middle of use to install updates, with the only exception when I was actively hitting the delay button for several days to see if I could force it to. And it finally did, after several days of it asking and me telling it no, and it still gave me a countdown to save my work. It did not randomly restart while in use without warning.
Programs like candy crush, that had install links that were preinstalled (it’s not the full game, just a link to install it) I uninstalled like any regular app and they never returned. I use my system like a regular user, not mucking about blindly in the registry, and never run into these weird issues people complain about. I block telemetry I don’t want at the network level. The OS never knows and I don’t have to blindly trust random guides telling me to mess with things that aren’t intended to be messed with. The OS seems to work just fine with telemetry connections working but failing to connect, as would be expected and tested by MS. People messing with those things manually is not something they’d likely spend much, if any, time on testing.
From my experience, many so-called “power user” complaints are caused by the user doing things they don’t understand, outside of what would be expected and tested.
I legitimately haven’t had a windows update take more than 5 minutes during the reboot phase for years.
I wasn’t just talking about the reboot phase…
Downloading gigabytes worth of updates, waiting for them to install, rebooting, see more updates, reboot again takes WAY more than 5 minutes.
I love that on my arch setup, I update every single day, usually more than once, and doing so almost never requires me to powercycle my computer.
There is occasional weirdness if you don’t powercycle though. In particular, certain KDE updates will make the desktop misbehave until you reboot. I get where you’re coming from though. Quick updates and the ability to decide when you want to restart means that I have no qualms about updating frequently.
I am on Arch too and pacman -Syu is usually a snack I have with my morning tea.
Also keep in mind that the main reason Windows is targeted for so many exploits is because of the consumer market share. If Linux consumer market share goes up, so will general malware targeting it. We already saw it happen when OSX share increased and Apple had to abandon the whole “Macs don’t get viruses” schtick.
We already saw it happen when OSX share increased and Apple had to abandon the whole “Macs don’t get viruses” schtick.
It’s kinda crazy that Apple got away with spinning “Our products don’t sell well enough for this to be a problem” into a marketing point for as long as they did.
Apple always does that. After iAds failed, they pivoted into advertising a privacy focused ad campaign to counter Google. Had iAds succeeded, they’d be perfectly fine into getting into that business.
I assume they said it was due to other reasons than obscurity, although we know better.
I don’t want to install security updates. You cannot and will not force me. Case closed.
The problem with Windows Updates is that they force new ‘features’ on you along with the patches.
With Linux you get to choose how bleeding edge you want to be, and can generally avoid the monetization crap.
There is some enterprise stuff that charges out the ass, IIRC, but I think your comment speaks for itself regarding the home user.
I remembered when OSX didn’t barely had any viruses and malware. Then their user base went up and more malware started to appear.
I’m starting to think virus and malware creators only want to focus on making things that will actually be used. Linux being not one of them.
The magical time where OSX “barely had any viruses and malware” never existed.
Source: Was instructor in a Mac lab for 2 years.
I see. I always thought it was significantly less than PC. Thanks for the info.
Linux has good security updates too. Fedora installs pending updates on restart, and I believe flatpaks are updated automatically in the background.
The virus discussed in the article doesn’t affect Linux PCs, only servers. Windows-style forced reboots wouldn’t make sense in a server environment, and it’s up to the server administrators to implement good update policies for their nodes and containers.
It’s one of those ones where you have to install niche software and then not keep an eye on what your system is actually doing, isn’t it?
Arstechnica looking like a malware proliferating site itself on mobile.
Oooo I’m really scared
That’s not good, but it’s not like we can switch to a more secure alternative. ;)
If your distro is affected distro hop to a secure distro and hop back if it is patched ;D
Arch! Too much work, then I have to invest in long socks and shave my legs.
The vulnerability isn’t even with linux anyways, it’s just for PHP servers that run on top of linux.
