Indeed. I have a fully cleaned down version of Windows 10 on one of those old Asus C Chromebooks, it is almost 7 years old and still going, however the battery is showing signs of age. It’s one of the ones you had to open and remove the CMOS battery in order to unlock the boot loader.
I was able to remove most of the Windows bloat, however Windows Update still manages to drop a drive-by turd on occasion.
@Akkar_Kardashev CrowdStrike is the company they hired to do Windows security updates. It is one of those, you have it, and just don’t see it.
@Syzygium yes, I still own one legit Windows 10 license I use for testing apps on Windows. Make no mistake, you bought the license, it was part of the price for buying the PC. Windows 10 debloat scripts are easy to use and they work well getting rid of those pests. While I don’t think they will ever do forced subs, they might do the forced online to prevent hacks. It is their OS and it is their choice even when you paid for the license. I guess we will find out next year when they release Windows 12: Next Valley version.
Also I want to make this clear, I would switch back to using Windows, if they would pull out all the bloatware, tools they use to pry into our online privacy, and make all apps optional to the OS. The day that miracle happens, I would become a Windows user again and use Linux as a hobby tool. I stopped using Windows in 2010.
I have been greatly amused by the number of people I have seen posting about how Linux is the best thing and using any other system is akin to Russian Roulette.
I use Windows, Windows and Linux within Windows (WSL), but boy, some people like to wear rose-tinted glasses… XZ utils backdoor anyone?
Now @Nyx_Viliana1 I addressed this already, I never tell people that Linux is superior. I happen to appreciate it for being user owned, not controlled by some mega corp conglomerate. If you think my title is spouting “Linux OS superiority” that question was directed at the players running Linux OS. I seem to be having flashbacks here to the old Usenet newsgroups. Back when programmers were at war with each other. “Turbo Pascal vs Turbo C”, I belonged to both groups and once in a while people would fire shots at each other spouting one language was better than the other. Both were made by the company Borland and both had pros and cons and people always wanted to claim their favorite was the best. I did favor Pascal but C had it’s advantages too. There was blood in the streets in those days.
As to the XZ utils backdoor, that was quickly corrected before any damage was done. To further explain; Back in February some maladjusted hacker placed code within the compression utility. These binaries are available for FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux systems, Microsoft Windows, and FreeDOS. This is a cross platform tool. The backdoor was set to target Linux systems but was discovered in March of this year and nothing became of it because distributions were rolled back. New stable Linux distributions come out in April of each year. The only people who would or should download unstable are the data testers.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike made a security driver and it would appear they failed to even test it before it left their site and was was distributed to Microsoft. Apparently Microsoft put so much faith into CrowdStrike they didn’t test it either. The driver was then distributed and shut down machines globally, causing the world’s largest known security breach to this day. Do me a favor, let me know when Linux OS causes people to die horribly or causes a mass panic.
Also I just wanted people to know, CrowdStrike stock has dropped 18% since this issue. There is no sign it hasn’t stopped yet. I know there will be job loss over this and it doesn’t make me happy. I would expect these corporations to learn a valuable lesson here about work ethics, stop taking humans out of the loop with automation.
I use Linux exclusively for 25 years including for gaming and for about 18 years as a systems engineer.
The problem that happened had nothing to do with Windows. It is a symptom of the absolutely desolate state most modern enterprise IT, who have long lost the sovereignty over their computing by moving to public cloud, outsourcing authentication to foreign companies and deploying tons of security snake oil garbage on their systems.
You can expect more of this in the future. This wasn’t even an attack, it was just a security snake oil company being insanely incompetent by rolling out new software to > 8mil system without testing it on a single server prior to pushing the button.
Imagine what happens if a single of this companies that has the power to push code or create valid credential tokens to critical systems of thousands of companies, gets infiltrated by criminals who will use it for a ransomware attack.
This should have been a weak-up call. But as far as I see, the people who should now make the right decisions don’t even understand the problem.
…And on a Friday too, I think. What competent software Co. does that?
Pushing untested code to production on a Friday is a meme at this point.
It’s just something you don’t know.
People think rogue AI will destroy humanity.
Software as a Service will get there first 
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