I actually love Windows (although I haven't used 11 yet and probably never will).
Maybe it's just what I grew up with, but all the native widget interactions feel perfect, even after the Win 8 style transition. The mouse acceleration is exactly what I expect. The taskbar behaves precisely how I want a taskbar to behave. The filesystem layout is refreshingly straightforward compared to the Unix/Posix FHS. Windows Defender does its job and gets out of the way (remember Norton/McAfee and Spybot?). And there are a ton of nice graphical "power user" applications available.
Part of the reason I like KDE so much is that it feels so Windows-like. But every time I boot into my Windows desktop, I feel a bit sad knowing that there is nothing quite like it in the GNU/Linux world.
There is that one Windows-API-compatible OS, but I have no idea if that will ever be viable as a daily driver.
> Windows Defender does its job and gets out of the way
WD is easily bypassed [1]. It's all smoke and mirrors - Microsoft has never cared about security. The OS is full of wontfix exploits (this is frowned upon to talk about in the security research community, especially among the big players, wonder why...)
One would benefit in exploring the thought that WD is valuable for MS in the way that it can be used to restrict 'personal computing' - the applications you download and use, the files you download and create, all recorded and hashed in some database, all under the guise of security. DeCSS is a good example [2].
One would also benefit in exploring the thought of the possibility that MS spends significant amounts of money in paying off MS partners, researchers, news outlets etc. to convince the public that defender will keep you safe.
I repeat, Microsoft does not care about security. That said, a properly hardened Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC with telemetry removed [3], along with a third-party/router firewall is the way to go, in my opinion.
The repositories shown on the first page of GitHub search are not actual exploits. They all expect to be run through an admin powershell/command line. Under normal conditions (default user and UAC on) you will get a warning before the script is able to gain administrative access. Try to run them again under a normal user and they won't be able to disable/bypass Defender.
It's the same as sudo'ing an unknown script you received in an email. At that point you're begging to be pwned.
Sort by Best match or Most stars. Those github repos are just examples. Pro malware creators wouldn't just copy and paste some code or else it would be detected fairly easily.
UAC is easily bypassed as well. In fact, the majority of wontfix exploits has something to do with UAC.
> They all expect to be run through an admin powershell/command line.
Admin rights will be acquired by using exploits (of which there are many) or by using built-in tools found in the Windows system directory, for example Wscript.exe. No internet connection required. No fetching of external files. You have no say in whether you can allow it to run or not.
> you will get a warning before the script is able to gain administrative access.
False. You wouldn't even know. Not a visible commandline window to be seen. It's all silent. A well-developed exploit will delete most of it's traces.
This is all pretty basic knowledge in the sec research community. Test it and verify it for yourself. I test hardening configurations using a Windows VM.
lol don't have to be coy about naming it, it's called ReactOS. It's an OS project that attempts to be a clean-room implementation of the Windows API. The latest news about it popped up yesterday for being able to run some old Battlefield games: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30888799
Progress is understandably slow but since Microsoft has significantly lowered investment in Windows itself and are pivoting away from it to Azure, I can imagine a possible but distant future where Windows allows Wine & ReactOS to catch up because little beyond surface-level UI changes happen on Windows anymore.
Maybe it's just what I grew up with, but all the native widget interactions feel perfect, even after the Win 8 style transition. The mouse acceleration is exactly what I expect. The taskbar behaves precisely how I want a taskbar to behave. The filesystem layout is refreshingly straightforward compared to the Unix/Posix FHS. Windows Defender does its job and gets out of the way (remember Norton/McAfee and Spybot?). And there are a ton of nice graphical "power user" applications available.
Part of the reason I like KDE so much is that it feels so Windows-like. But every time I boot into my Windows desktop, I feel a bit sad knowing that there is nothing quite like it in the GNU/Linux world.
There is that one Windows-API-compatible OS, but I have no idea if that will ever be viable as a daily driver.