The Snowden revelations are something I forgot about, this is a valid observation that you’ve brought back to the forefront of my mind. It was one of the many times that Microsoft was revealed to be an unscrupulous corporation.

Yeah, ever since I’ve never purchased a console (Only exception was a Wii and a 3DS, which I modded with homebrew and never connects to Nintendo’s servers), because they are completely unable to be audited. Personal computers (and certain smartphones) can.

What would that solve?

The EU would be the one to attempt to strong-arm Microsoft at any rate, since they care about their citizens. Making Microsoft create an Office version for Linux, is highly unlikely; as that isn’t in Microsoft’s best interests (despite it being beneficial for consumers). In my case, I can get by using open source software; LibreOffice Writer for general documents and Bibisco for creative writing.

You don’t have to ever fully switch, there is an option to create a dual boot situation; a distro and Windows can coexist on the same machine. Or you could use Windows via a virtual machine when you need Office.

Complete compatibility (because you are running office on Windows natively through a virtual machine rather than a translation/compatibility layer like Wine or Proton) with any of those tricky windows-locked programs that have intentional roadblocks to disrupt normal compatibility methods.

If it wasn’t Office, Adobe, or Autodesk, I wouldn’t bother, but those 3 are enough of a pain to run via compatibility layer that a virtual machine would be preferrable.

This might be my last time that I do buy a console for this reason; if I can’t audit it, there is no reason to possess it! Getting a new computer with higher specs would last me for many years, and my old PC can be used for a personal NAS.

Yeah but, at that point, why not just install Windows?

I will say buying older consoles that can be modded or don’t connect to official services anymore (7th generation and below) is a lot easier to justify and to enjoy, but do keep in mind a lot of those can be replaced with emulation unless you have a particular reason in mind.

You get the best of both worlds - you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows, while still having access to crucial programs required for certain jobs or activities. The only downside is performance, because running a GPU passthrough for a virtual machine is a bit of a pain in the nuts, but that’s why I mentioned only using that solution for specialist programs that intentionally try to trip you over - use Wine or Proton for everything else.

Plus, it’s a bit defeatist to go “Fine Microsoft/Autodesk/Adobe, here’s my data” because they’re being a dick to you. Just flip them the bird and run a virtual machine or even a cracked version on the virtual machine.

Software emulation is where I lean, in terms of emulating games on my computer! That is a road that I will travel with older games, at least. Other games can be played via Steam’s Proton Compatibility Layer, my GOG games run fairly well using Heroic Launcher (barring exceptions like Daggerfall). I don’t have a real interest in deeper modding of consoles, it’s not all that appealing in my opinion.

There are some tough eggs out there (PS3, PS4, and XBOX360 come to mind) to emulate, so there are reasons to mod hardware even if you prefer PC. I helped contribute to the RPCS3 emulator back in the day by using my childhood PS3 to provide data dumps and testing my own game rips to give compatibility feedback

you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows

How do you figure that? You’re just running Windows inside of Linux, along with all it’s cancer.

Any other suggestions for Windows 11 users that haven’t had to use it since 8? I want to kill as much of their garbage as possible, but I feel like I missed so much of their dastardly crap I could be missing something.

It solves almost everything?

I guess you don’t understand the benefit of putting all the shady Microsoft shit in its own dirty polluted sandbox (or individual sandboxes) where it can’t spy on anything besides the other stuff in its sandbox that is already tainted and at most it may find a way to spy on the stuff you give it implicit permission to while you do whatever work you need to do with it. Meanwhile your main OS which hopefully does at least 90% of what you actually need to do on a daily basis, and does all the stuff that is actually important to you and happens to be none of Microsoft’s business, is safely running the actual show and remains completely under your control and authority, private and spyware-free. If you can’t completely get rid of Windows from your life (and some people still feel like they can’t for whatever reason), you can at least limit your exposure massively and turn it into practically a non-issue. Compartmentalization is a very effective way of dealing with nasty untrusted software.

When you get that shit locked down tight enough you can run straight-up viruses and rootkits with no concerns at all. You can see what they do, or try to do, and when they’re finished doing it, just casually delete them. Some people do. For research. In fact it’s so common that a lot of viruses or rootkits go out of their way to try to detect that they’re on a VM and refuse to activate if they think they are, there’s a whole arms race of researchers trying to make the VM look more realistic so the virus will still trigger. Even the viruses know your VM is probably just fucking with them. Windows, thankfully, isn’t quite that bad, and programs written for it will run quite happily in a VM or other virtual environment and let you do whatever you want to do with them, quite safely and subject to your complete authority over them that a VM or other simulated environment can provide.

You can restrict network access to the VM and still do normal network stuff on the host machine, for one thing.

Still happy I switched to Linux. Been playing divinity original sin 2 without any problems. (It’s one of those games I’ve started a hundred times but only finished once.)

• Using Windows Virtual Machine for explicitly few programs (less than 2 ideally)
• Able to be shut off at any time (or wiped/remade completely)
• Ran in a VM for complete network security
• If cracked, software can be ran in the VM completely offline

Lol.

Lmao, even.

Whoever believes a single word that company says?

Like why are we as a society normalizing lying about everything? “Marketing”, “Public relations”, even “Politics”. All of which are ultimately pointless, as we don’t need to keep buying shit, think better of corporations, and argue about same three questions over and over again.

Which is to say, fuck Microsoft. And everything they do. Yes, EVERYTHING. Including the open-source stuff. We need to break down big companies into much smaller ones.

You can restrict access to your entire network.

Using Windows Virtual Machine for explicitly few programs (less than 2 ideally)

That goes for normal Windows.

Able to be shut off at any time (or wiped/remade completely)

Normal Windows

Ran in a VM for complete network security

How does running it in a VM improve network security?

If cracked, software can be ran in the VM completely offline

Normal Windows 1 more time.

All the things you can do in a VM you can do running Windows normally.