That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy it.
And also! A big shoutout to Linus for helping to make source control distributed and open, which means swapping between git providers (for the code at least) is simple, easy and impossible to block. The amount of good Linus has done for the world is incredible.
"Others do it too" is not a very good justification in my mind.
I don't think whether one is more evil than Apple/iOS in this regard is a good benchmark.
(which would be the more apt point of reference)
There's a trade-off to be had between security/reliability and flexibility.
If MS were selling those devices as general purpose computers and then refusing to allow other OS installation, I think that would be dishonest, however as far as I'm aware they're not making such claims.
But ultimately true ownership, recyclability/reusability (Linux on aging hardware..), and hardware-independent OS competition are norms with significant benefits that we shouldn't give up lightly.
Realistically most people (numerically) don't want a computer, they want a thing that lets them communicate, create and consume content.
Lockdown isn't a problem for them, and walled gardens like iOS are generally the best way for them to stay secure.
If you provide a method to escape the sandbox, it is likely that attackers will work out how to exploit that. For example try going to facebook.com and open the developers tools. They've had to put a warning in there to stop people from "self-XSS" ...
And it's not just IT professionals, but also their friends and family, especially those that can't afford to or don't want to get a new device that often. I think this is a pretty significant set of people.
My two reservations:
1. I think such a lockdown is a kind of hidden anti-competitive "dark pattern" that benefits the seller much more than it benefits the consumer by significantly lowering the the reuse/resale value of the device. One could argue it makes the device cheaper to begin with, but I have serious doubts about that. The anti-competitive effect seems more likely to increase the price instead. Hindering reuse also implies an environmental impact, though I'm not sure how significant that is.
2. If lockdown becomes the norm for >99% of devices/users and even we tech people start to accept it the way of things, some sufficiently bribed lawmakers will no doubt be inclined to make unsurveiled general purpose computing illegal because "security" and "copyright" and "pro-business" etc. Yes, it's a "slipper slope" argument, but when it comes to social norms, I think that's a valid form of argument.
Security is a difficult topic, even for IT professionals, and it is easier to secure a locked down environment for non-technical users than an open one.
If you look at mobile platforms as an example, the prevalence of malware on Android compared to iOS is significant.
Now for many I'm sure that trade-off is worth it, but I also feel there is a place for more controlled environments.
But I'm under the impression that that is exceedingly rare and that Android has many way more pressing security concerns (e.g. the lack of driver security updates to even slightly old devices).
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/android-root-faq/17135/
Also the control which allows users to install sofware from different sources, leads in many cases to them installing malware masquerading as "free games" or similar.
Android malware is a much larger problem than malware in the more controlled iOS world.
so to me that's a real trade off. you have control of your device and the ability to install software from more locations, however your security risks increase.
For some people that risk will be entirely justifiable, for others, it makes sense to have an option of a more locked down environment.
Personally I like Linux for servers (I have control/responsibility) but for my smartphone I use iOS as it's easier to secure and I don't really want to use that device for "proper" computing.
So clearly there's a significant demand (some of which I'm inclined to believe is very legitimate), and clearly there are significant dangers.
I guess in the end it comes down to the eternal debate of freedom vs safety. I find it very hard to side with the stance of protecting people from their own stupidity, beyond giving stern warnings. It feels sort of like giving up on cultural progress in humanity :/
And I think we could still do much more to mitigate this attack vector (Big flashy red lights with "probably a bad idea" in all-caps? Adding more fine-grained permissions so root is needed less?) before ceding yet more control to powerful organizations who are already, somehow, in a position to tax 30% of all software and IAP sales on most devices and reject apps that don't align with their interests.
They are computers, regardless of what sort of dress they wear, and users should have control over their own computing devices.
(edit: specifically benefits that couldn't be effectively addressed by making it a little difficult and scary to open that lockdown?)
The point about attackers with physical access is fair, though significantly mitigated on Androids (and Chromebooks I think) by a warning (of varying severity) that the OS has been modified. On my Nexus 5, it's a subtle "unlocked" icon, on my Moto G it's an unmissable red triangle on white background with "warranty void" and other scary words.
It's still vulnerable to the user getting a prebooted device and only seeing the warning on next boot, so not perfect, but also not the only imaginable defense. One could e.g. move initial authentication to the locked down "bios" phase so either (a) the warning is visible there and/or (b) the OS isn't replaceable in the first place without authentication.
And we should bear in mind that a malicious repair tech can probably convince a fair portion of the population to give away their password :/
It is ultimately backed with NTFS and NT's buffer cache. Running a VM is still several orders of magnitude more productive. And you can't fix NTFS and NT now. It's impossible.
Even cronjobs work… The performance is sometimes better than on native linux, as a few of the syscalls are better implemented on windows. The file performance is abysmal, but that only hurts if you're using npm (and there you're in a world of pain already anyways).
The only thing lacking, is that some debuggers don't work, which is a pity, but then I just start a docker container and mount it on my filesystem.
I am using services on it too actually, everything works as expected. I can actually create windows bat files to redirect to linux binaries, which lets me do for example OCaml development, with the linux toolchain, on a system that actually works reliably. (my experience is, that as of windows 10, desktop linux environments crash way more often than windows ones)
Real data:
linux -> 1.3 seconds, all from buffer cache on a cranky old 10 year old HP desktop with 8 gig of RAM and bottom end SSD.
wsl -> over a minute on a 12 core i7 with high end m2 SSD, every time.
This is because of NTFS's awful performance on small files. The whole of Unix is file based and uses huge numbers of small files, as does source code generally so this is an end game scenario for the platform. It simply sucks!
This goes back to when we had SVN which would take 6-7 minutes to check a repo out onto NTFS versus 20-30 seconds onto ext4 on the same rust disks. SVN was treated like cancer by the organisation for what is fundamentally a platform limitation.
$ find ~/src | wc -l
242341
I was attempting to use AVR-gcc toolchain and some SCPI over serial stuff with WSL unsuccessfully.
The problem with Microsoft wasn’t that their software sucks (some does, some is great).
It is that they have been bullying users and companies for the past 30 years. Many people point to a “new Microsoft”, and the win10 rollout is a stark counter example to that claim.
- forced updates (and forced restarts that go along with that)
- OS level advertisements (even though you are still paying for the OS)
- impossible to configure privacy settings
That alone makes it one of the shittiest OS's ever released.
I'm not quite as cynical as the author of the OP when it comes to Microsoft's recent apparent change of direction, but who knows, that may just be naivety speaking.
"Nothing good coming from it" seems a bit of a stretch when we don't even know the terms of the deal yet - or indeed whether it's actually happening at all!
Personally I like Windows 10 as a general purpose client OS, WSL is great and stability for me across a number of devices has been very good.
How about disabling all of the "phone home" stuff, telemetry or whatever else? There is still only two options "Basic" and "Full" options without any "None" option and really most of the relevant options are scattered all over the place, making it a chore to disable them (and you need to redo that stuff every big update). This is either extremely dumb (which i doubt) or done with malicious intent so that people will miss stuff and/or get tired of them.
Unless they provide the means to completely stop all communication with their servers with a single switch, there is no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.