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Comment by Subsentient | Hacker News Reader

Well you'd really have to be crazy to try and torrent stuff on a Windows machine nowadays anyways. That's just getting on your knees and begging for malware. Maybe this will help some of the more savvy users realize that Windows should be relegated to a virtual machine for when you need a specific Windows app that doesn't run under Wine, and never given access to real hardware. I only use my Win10 VM for compiling stuff with MSVC that refuses to build with MinGW.

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You mean the act of torrenting on its own would cause you to fall victim to malware, or that the process of finding a torrent via certain sites would do so?

Both. Plenty of malware-infested executables in torrents.

Instead, just don't run executables from untrusted sources.

Torrents, email, mobile apps (like that fake banking iOS app that looks like the legit one) or otherwise. The transport method doesn't matter much.

So of course double-clicking Band.of.Brothers.mkv.exe will cause you to have a bad time. But I'm curious why just having a torrent client downloading something would cause anyone to get compromised. I haven't heard of this.

That's just getting on your knees and begging for malware.

We're not in 2007 anymore.

You'll keep thinking that until you pirate a copy of Adobe Shitware 2077(tm) and it works fine for a day until the embedded cryptolocker activates and holds everything on your system hostage for 3 bitcoin.

If you ran Linux executables you torrented you'd have the exact same problem.

Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely the malware author would take the time to make a ransomware for Linux, though I know it's happened before. 1% of the market vs 80% of the market, which would you target? And of course, utilities being free on Linux negates the need almost entirely in any case.

Right, so the problem isn't really because "Windows is a bad OS, m'kay", it's because Windows is popular... why might that be, I wonder? Maybe people like using it more...

Yeah this type of argument always contradicts itself. "Use Linux because it doesn't have viruses". Why doesn't it have viruses? "It's not popular enough". So by suggesting Linux, thus making it more popular, you're increasing the risk of viruses?

> utilities being free on Linux negates the need almost entirely in any case

Some of these utilities are installed by running: curl hxxp://urlshortener.ly/Bde29al | sh

> Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely the malware author would take the time to make a ransomware for Linux

Linux is the dominant server OS. Enterprises are far more capable of paying ransoms than individuals.

>> Maybe this will help some of the more savvy users realize that Windows should be relegated to a virtual machine for when you need a specific Windows app that doesn't run under Wine, and never given access to real hardware.

hurr durr windows bad linux good im so smart.

you're practically _soaked_ with condescending smarm. Caureful, or it'll rub off on innocent bystanders.

Windows is the dominant operating system, and as such has a giant target on its back. It's true, I despise Windows, but the risk of torrenting on Linux vs the risk of torrenting on Windows is quite a huge difference.

And look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years now, the fact is, this kind of behavior from them doesn't surprise me anymore, and I'm tired of watching people take those punches lying down.

Windows is definitely more user-hostile than it has been in the past, and seems to be becoming more so[0], but honestly I'll still take Windows over a Linux Desktop any day because it works in a way that is much more in line with how I want my computer to work.

Your attitude seems to very much be "you're an idiot for still using Windows and Linux is great", which is condescending as hell.

[0] I am by no means defending this behavior. In fact, I hate it and kinda want to beat certain people at Microsoft with a rubber hose over it.

Ahh, well no. I don't think Windows users are idiots. I think they're normal, non-technical people who don't want to drop to a terminal to pair their bluetooth earbuds because the BlueZ GUI was written in an afternoon by some rando and never worked right.

But I do admit that for programmers, I don't understand why they'd want to still use Windows. I mean obviously there's reasons, but they're totally beyond me. Seems like masochism.

And using Linux Desktop seems like masochism to me. Why would I want to use an OS where I can't install applications to a different disk without recompiling them or otherwise jumping through a bunch of namespacing and filesystem overlay hoops?

There are reasons people make the choices they do and to assume that just because those reasons are beyond you that they are not reasonable is silly.

> non-technical people who don't want to drop to a terminal

PowerShell exists. and it is LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than bash for pretty much anything related to scripting. so much so that half the time when I needed to write a script on linux, I opted to write it in ruby because bash is just that bad to write anything meaningful with.

To assume that people on windows don't use a terminal is STILL coming across as condescending as hell.

> But I do admit that for programmers, I don't understand why they'd want to still use Windows.

there is an entire development ecosystem built around windows that has been around for decades. Only recently (relatively speaking) has it started to branch out and be OS-agnostic.

Are you actually saying you didn't know .NET Framework existed, or are you just being willfully ignorant?

I used Linux for years as my daily driver OS. Eventually got fed up with it. Driver support for a lot of USB devices is atrocious, and support for HiDpi monitors was still in its infancy when i switched. these are problems that Windows has fixed _right now_ and I don't get paid to fuck with my desktop settings so I can make my monitor display things correctly.

I switched to windows, and if I need anything from linux, there is always the WSL, which is pretty much the best of both worlds for me.

> "and look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years now"

You know how sometimes people can have things completely backwards, and it's impossible to understand how? This is one of those times.

Windows: the best thing for accessibility, screen readers, keyboard navigation. The best user-side (rather than admin side) automation of programs using things like Autohotkey and COM automation. Windows defender is a response to protect users both from malware and from the predatory behaviour of the likes of McAfee. Enormous amounts invested in hardware compatibility, software backwards compatibility. Generally very good tooling for introspection, performance monitoring, debugging, development on .NET, event tracing, public symbol servers. Famous for GUI wizards making complex tasks possible with less skill. Most typical programs have a next->next->finish install including technical programs like WireShark, Python, etc. "user hostile".

Linux world: a culture where the user should "RTFM", where lack of technical skill is mocked, where a GUI wizard is scorned as inferior and people who use them shunned, where not wanting to self-host a LAMP stack is considered "lazy and incompetent", where technology being difficult is seen as par for the course and people who deal with that are lauded for it, where simple things are complex and common things in Windows land are dismissed with "nobody does that" cluelessness accepted without question.

It's like seeing a billion people walk into shops, exchange money for food, and leave in 5 minutes and hearing someone living on a homestead who works 5am-10pm pickling cabbage and making the vinegar to do so describing shops as "user hostile" because you can't choose the pressure the grapes were crushed with - the tyrants!

Windows is nice.

It's incredible to think that you can go to Add/Remove Programs and switch on a type-1 hypervisor with a checkbox click and a reboot (or with a command line if you want) and that's the kind of engineering which runs through Windows, and people dismiss it because of Candy Crush in the start menu (and Microsoft ruin it with candy crush in the start menu).

you hit the nail on the head.

I don't particularly like the way you said it, but the sentiment is most definitely shared. It seems like this attitude is incredibly common in the Linux Desktop community and it is definitely not working in their favor.

ive seen this attitude from linux fanbois too many times at this point to be polite about it.

Unfortunately I know all too well what you're saying.

That's just complete nonsense.

There's nothing inherently dangerous about torrenting on Windows, assuming you're not a moron who indiscriminately downloads warez. It's still relatively common for large files to be distributed as torrents, like game mods or Linux images.

Any pirate worth their salt knows how to avoid malware - reputable and/or private trackers. If needed, throw the executable into VirusTotal, otherwise if you're worried about bespoke FUD malware, you've already lost regardless of OS.

Do you use a VM to download everything? Malware exists outside of torrents.

Not sure what you mean as I’ve used reputable tracker sites without any malware for many years.

As for downloading random torrents off I trusted sites, that seems about as smart as random exes.

You sound like the kind of person who would report this page as suspicious: https://torrent.ubuntu.com/tracker_index

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