Increased Use Of Windows BitLocker Is Causing Headaches For Linux Dual Booting

[anarki2]

Isn't this kind of the point of full disk encryption? To prevent 3rd party software from tampering with it in any way?

IKR? I love how the MS haters are puzzled when something actually works as intended lol. Maybe they should actually use FDE before adding their "expertise" to the topic.

[HEL88]

Isn't this kind of the point of full disk encryption? To prevent 3rd party software from tampering with it in any way?

E.g. if you buy a laptop with small disk and only one partition. Then you clicks a few times and you have all data encryption. Very user friendly and convenient.

[birdie]

They actually are concerned these days. Linux is overtaking Windows pretty much everywhere outside of desktops and "pretty much everywhere outside of desktops" is where the big money is at. Sever contracts, cloud hosting, software as a service, etc. Linux is kicking some Microsoft ass with those.

Microsoft's cloud business is thriving (up 28% vs a year earlier). Did you say something about Linux?
Microsoft's Office 365 business is thriving (up 19% vs a year earlier). Did you say something about LibreOffice?
Microsoft's Windows business is OK (down 2%). Did you say something about sold Linux desktop licenses? What about $0 outside of very specialized RedHat/Suse/Ubuntu contracts?

Overall they are doing great.

How can Linux which Microsoft can employ and sell can possibly kick their ass is beyond me. Stop imagining things. I run Linux 99.99% of the time, our company entire server fleet is on Linux, we couldn't care less about BitLocker.

[anarki2]

They actually are concerned these days. Linux is overtaking Windows pretty much everywhere outside of desktops and "pretty much everywhere outside of desktops" is where the big money is at. Sever contracts, cloud hosting, software as a service, etc. Linux is kicking some Microsoft ass with those.

Turn off your reality distortion field, dude. MS makes around thrice as much money from Windows servers&cloud than from Windows desktops (which makes up maybe 15% of their income, and shrinking).

Literally no one cares about the Windows desktop. Or the Linux desktop, for that matter. If the laptop vendor sells it along with the machine, they pay the (reduced) price, and that's about it.

But when you fire up your Ubuntu instance in Azure, who gets paid? Bingo, Microsoft does. They're the 2nd largest cloud provider in the world (1st one is Amazon), and they're printing money with Office 365 as well. Why would they be concerned about Linux? They WANT Linux, because they SELL Linux lol. They're even developing their own Linux distro, and a whole bunch of Linux software, genius. SQL Server, Teams, Edge, VS Code, .NET Core, PowerShell Core, they're all available on Linux officially, and they're all new additions in recent years.

Oh and btw in case you haven't noticed, now you can also install Ubuntu via WSL on your Windows desktop literally with the push of a button and it works pretty darn well, I use it daily.

[skeevy420]

Turn off your reality distortion field, dude. MS makes around thrice as much money from Windows servers&cloud than from Windows desktops (which makes up maybe 15% of their income, and shrinking).

Literally no one cares about the Windows desktop. Or the Linux desktop, for that matter. If the laptop vendor sells it along with the machine, they pay the (reduced) price, and that's about it.

But when you fire up your Ubuntu instance in Azure, who gets paid? Bingo, Microsoft does. They're the 2nd largest cloud provider in the world (1st one is Amazon), and they're printing money with Office 365 as well. Why would they be concerned about Linux? They WANT Linux, because they SELL Linux lol. They're even developing their own Linux distro, and a whole bunch of Linux software, genius. SQL Server, Teams, Edge, VS Code, .NET Core, PowerShell Core, they're all available on Linux officially, and they're all new additions in recent years.

Oh and btw in case you haven't noticed, now you can also install Ubuntu via WSL on your Windows desktop literally with the push of a button and it works pretty darn well, I use it daily.

You need to read more gooder. That's what I said.

[gigaplex]

Turn off your reality distortion field, dude. MS makes around thrice as much money from Windows servers&cloud than from Windows desktops (which makes up maybe 15% of their income, and shrinking).

Literally no one cares about the Windows desktop. Or the Linux desktop, for that matter. If the laptop vendor sells it along with the machine, they pay the (reduced) price, and that's about it.

But when you fire up your Ubuntu instance in Azure, who gets paid? Bingo, Microsoft does. They're the 2nd largest cloud provider in the world (1st one is Amazon), and they're printing money with Office 365 as well. Why would they be concerned about Linux? They WANT Linux, because they SELL Linux lol. They're even developing their own Linux distro, and a whole bunch of Linux software, genius. SQL Server, Teams, Edge, VS Code, .NET Core, PowerShell Core, they're all available on Linux officially, and they're all new additions in recent years.

Oh and btw in case you haven't noticed, now you can also install Ubuntu via WSL on your Windows desktop literally with the push of a button and it works pretty darn well, I use it daily.

That's kind of the point. Microsoft needs to interoperate better with the Linux community because they're making money off it.

[birdie]

That's kind of the point. Microsoft needs to interoperate better with the Linux community because they're making money off it.

What? Why would they want to interoperate better with haters and zealots? What's the benefit? Rapturous remarks on r/Linux or Phoronix forums from absolute no ones? They are doing business. They don't care about fanboys who tinker with Linux on their desktops.

[Neuro-Chef]

Interesting. I already gave up un Bitlocker, because I thought booting Linux did somehow cause the TPM Key to be deleted. Needing Windows only for occasional 4K HDR output and to reset that bloody Lenovo ThinkPad Ultra Docks USB ports every few weeks, this wasn't a real priority, but good to know it is possible to use Bitlocker conveniently.

the possibility of creating a user-space utility to modify the system NVRAM to modify the next boot setting to directly boot into the Windows bootloader

Like efibootmgr already does?

$ sudo efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0006
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0006,0000,0004
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0004* Hard Drive
Boot0006* Fedora

$ sudo efibootmgr --bootnext 0

There are Windows tools as well, but I didn't try those:

https://github.com/pgaskin/bootnext

https://github.com/i255/efiboot

[Volta]

birdie

They will care when we show their customers how broken and insecure windows is.

[gigaplex]

What? Why would they want to interoperate better with haters and zealots? What's the benefit? Rapturous remarks on r/Linux or Phoronix forums from absolute no ones? They are doing business. They don't care about fanboys who tinker with Linux on their desktops.

The haters and zealots are toxic users who aren't relevant to Microsoft's target audience. Microsoft needs to interoperate with the Linux developers. Which they already do.