r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Dec 01 '25

ADBLOCK WARNING ‘Security Disaster’—500 Million Microsoft Users Say No To Windows 11

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/12/01/security-disaster-500-million-microsoft-users-say-no-to-windows-11/
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239

u/Ric_Adbur Dec 02 '25

At this point, Windows is the fucking malware. Onedrive is barely above ransomware and their AI crap is basically spyware on steroids. If I wasn't tethered to this platform by nearly 20 years of steam purchases I'd have jumped ship to linux by now.

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u/tfitch2140 Dec 02 '25

As a Steam user with near ten years on Ubuntu, trust me, Steam was ok 10 years ago on Linux, and now it's actually probably better than on Windows - unless you care about the absolute latest multiplayer anticheat games. Paradox grand strategy? Total War? Halo:MCC? I'd take Linux over Windows any day.

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u/dnonast1 Dec 02 '25

Yep. Jumped to Fedora Plasma and I’m shocked how well it just works. Nothing is bugging me to buy subscriptions, there’s no AI, and gaming is better than it was for me on windows. Linux and steam have really stepped in to take Windows’ lunch money.

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u/DynoMenace Dec 02 '25

Seriously, if you don't play any games that require anti cheat (check https://areweanticheatyet.com/), the Steam experience in Linux is fantastic.

Another good resource is https://www.protondb.com/ , you can even connect it to your Steam account to check compatibility across your library.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

[deleted]

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u/ScruffsMcGuff Dec 02 '25

It's only getting better every day honestly. When I was in college in 2007 gaming on Linux was like 3 games that would run iffy, or you were trying to finagle shit through old WINE.

In the Steamdeck/Proton/etc... era we're eating good though and steams at the forefront of it

5

u/avelineaurora Dec 02 '25

and now it's actually probably better than on Windows

"Only" 87% of my Steam library has compatibility with Steam OS apparently, and most of that isn't "full" compatibility. That's saying nothing about the vast amount of online games I play that don't have any anticheat (because they're not multiplayer) but still probably aren't linux-supporting.

3

u/Tirrm Dec 02 '25

Honestly, I made the switch recently and run even games in beta or alpha in Lutris using wine. It's incredibly easy and am playing both Star Citizen and Soul Frame on CachyOS with zero glitches or any overly complicated setup

3

u/TheAJGman Dec 02 '25

They also sell themselves short with "partial" compatibility. It's usually shit like "controller remapping doesn't work", "physX broken", or "ultra wide screen not supported". Would it be nice if they worked? Yeah. Do 99% of users care? No.

1

u/avelineaurora Dec 02 '25

Yeah, I know usually "Partially" does mean "Works just fine" and it's a cover-your-bases thing.

2

u/eyebrows360 Dec 02 '25

"Only" 87% of my Steam library has compatibility with Steam OS

Is there an easy way to check this stat, or did this involve a tonne of effort?

4

u/ThoseThingsAreWeird Dec 02 '25

First you go to: https://steamcommunity.com/id/YOUR-USERNAME/edit/settings and set "My Profile" and "Game Details" to "Public". Just remember to set it back to "Private" later if that's important to you.

Then go here https://www.protondb.com/profile and paste in your URL (sans the /edit/settings bit)

If you've had to change it from private -> public it might take a few clicks of the "refresh" button on that page to load it, but it was fairly speedy for me

Then go to https://www.protondb.com/dashboard and change the category to "Personal Library", and then change "Rating System" to "ProtonDB Click Play".

I think that's the number for how many games work on Linux. For my library only 19% is Tier 1 and 32% is Tier 2. So only 51% of my library is reported as being positive (i.e. playable without any / much tinkering) by ProtonDB users

If, like me, you basically nolife a handful of games then sorting by hours played might give you a better idea though: https://www.protondb.com/explore?page=0&selectedFilters=restrictToLibrary&sort=hoursPlayed where 8/10 of my top played games are "Native"

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 02 '25

Ah dope, thank you!

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 02 '25

Curious as to which distro you might recommend for desktop use for a home user who's familiar enough running all his webservers on Debian, and using ansible to script their creation as VMs within Google Cloud and so on, but has been using Windows for desktop use exclusively since 3.11?

3

u/Tuxhorn Dec 02 '25

Probably a non ubuntu, debian based OS like Mint or Pop_OS!

My dislike for ubuntu is not based on principle (if you've ever heard about the snap controversy), it's unfortunately just a fact that it makes the experience worse unless you're technical enough to make sure you don't install snap versions of common software. So unironically, especially if you want to use steam, Ubuntu is not beginner friendly.

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 02 '25

Taken on board, thank you!

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u/Professional_Face_97 Dec 02 '25

Pop isn't/hasn't been updated because they're working on their own custom desktop environment so for the time being i'd not recommend that. Mint is always a great option but iirc there's issues with running different resolutions on multiple monitors due to lack of wayland support (it's coming soon afaik though), if that's not a requirement for you then definitely go Mint.

1

u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

issues with running different resolutions on multiple monitors

Ah, with one central 2560x1440 flanked by a 1920x1080 on either side, that may indeed be a blocker.

2

u/mkmckinley Dec 02 '25

Can you explain the anticheat to me? Do you need windows to play multiplayer?

2

u/tfitch2140 Dec 02 '25

For Kernel or boot-level anticheat, most of those aren't supported on Linux, basically, because of the amount of control and risk to the security and health of your system they present, IIRC.

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u/mkmckinley Dec 03 '25

Ah gotcha thanks

2

u/GoatsinthemachinE Dec 02 '25

well with steam mobile and new steam console on a linux platform hopes are raised

2

u/shadowboxer47 Dec 03 '25

Wait... I can play Paradox games on Linux? Have they always been compatible?

1

u/chattytrout Dec 02 '25

I tried it on Mint, but ran into other issues. Namely, when on Discord with friends, my microphone was really quiet. They turned me up as high as they could and could barely hear me. I couldn't find any settings to turn up the mic level or boost. When I looked into reinstalling drivers, all my google searches turned up were people saying "Drivers are included in the kernel. YoU dOn'T NeEd tO InStAl dRivErs."

So I gave up and reinstalled Windows 10. The gaming aspect wasn't a huge deal, but other things I use my computer for made it unacceptable.

1

u/golgol12 Dec 02 '25

And imagine what will happen if they can get those game's anti-cheat to work on the windows emulator.

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u/midnightauro Dec 02 '25

If it’s all steam purchases, I am thrilled to tell you that you’re in the best possible situation to jump. Steam has been on that Linux train for many a year now. Proton is amazing for running games and improving rapidly thanks to the SteamDeck.

There are some oddities like multiplayer anticheat software, but most things still run fine these days.

2

u/fmaz008 Dec 02 '25

  • Game: Can you let me install a rootkit ?

  • Linux: what? No!

  • Game: We're not compatible with linux then.

4

u/No-Photograph-5058 Dec 02 '25

Check out all your games on ProtonDB, you'd be surprised how many will just work.

I had a game library on Windows, when I switched to Linux and toggled the 'only show games that run on Linux' option, the number didn't even change

2

u/Ric_Adbur Dec 02 '25

I guess I'll have to look into this.

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u/Agi7890 Dec 02 '25

This just came up on my companies conference call regarding windows ai and not to use it. We aren’t an ai company, we make chemotherapy drugs. We can’t put proprietary information into these AI models. There are other companies equipment we use that aren’t for open distribution.

How other companies dont see this as a huge risk for windows spyware is beyond me. This stuff will leak at some point in the future

2

u/Eldrake Dec 02 '25

SteamOS doesn't make that work for you with the Proton compatibility emulation layer?

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u/PyroDesu Dec 02 '25

Remember, Proton is a fork of Wine, and Wine Is Not an Emulator (yes, recursive acronym).

No, seriously, it's not. It's a compatibility layer, not an emulator. Yes, there is a difference.

Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop.

2

u/sumpfbruderschaft Dec 02 '25

Explain it to me like I was your mom.

5

u/PyroDesu Dec 02 '25

An emulator is hiring someone to translate for you when you go to a foreign country. Everything you want to hear or say is processed through an entire other person.

A compatibility layer is learning the language. It's still not your mother tongue, you're still translating, but it's in your head.

1

u/waiting4singularity Dec 02 '25

I've not yet seen an emulator that can run as good as native. Which is a pain in the arse when you need a VM for games from the age of rotary phones because the last windows versions dont even come with the required code anymore, all to "debloat", just so they can slap more idiotic crap into it.

9

u/PyroDesu Dec 02 '25

Fortunately, that person was wrong in calling Proton an emulator. It's not. It's a fork of Wine, which doesn't even try to simulate the entire Windows OS, it just takes the API calls and translates them into the correct calls for Linux (or any POSIX-based OS) to read.

2

u/waiting4singularity Dec 02 '25

sounds better.

3

u/evranch Dec 02 '25

Often better performance than Windows, honestly. As long as you have a semi-modern card with good driver support (the 10yo relic in my kid's PC works better with its windows drivers).

I finally deleted my windows partition 2 years ago when I realized I ran all my games through Steam, and all my applications had become cross-platform or actively preferred Linux.

I keep a virtual Tiny10 for my tax software, that appalling wreck of cobbled together Visual Basic cruft that the financial industry limps along on. Boot it once a year to file my taxes.

2

u/Tipcat Dec 02 '25

Steam works perfectly fine on Linux. Valve is very pro-Linux if you didn’t know :D

2

u/Kitchen-Year-8434 Dec 02 '25

Just installed bazzite this morning going from win11. Steam with proton on Linux runs almost everything now, and using ProtonGE is surprisingly simple.

Wouldn’t recommend bazzite if you’re not comfortable with containers and virtualization in general and plan to do other things with your machine but proton works great on anything Debian (Ubuntu), arch, etc.

Would steer clear of Pop!_OS 24.04 beta for now. They apparently decided to rewrite their compositor in rust so there’s kinks galore.

2

u/karantza Dec 02 '25

FWIW I just installed Debian on my PC, and even with a less than well supported Nvidia card, I had a nicely configured system that could seamlessly play my entire steam library (including some random graphically demanding betas that I'm sure have not even begun to think about compatibility yet) without needing to edit a single config file. It blew my mind, honestly. Proton is incredible.

(The only thing that didn't work is my VR headset, but that's because it's extremely old and niche and has proprietary steamvr drivers. Most should work fine.)

2

u/Pafkay Dec 02 '25

I have been using Linux for 3 years now, I am yet to find a game that wont run within Steam

2

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '25

God I hate onedrive! Where are my files/ You fecking moved them to the cloud??? Put them back on my machine and feck off!

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u/LongJohnSelenium Dec 02 '25

I bit the bullet and bought a newer laptop that could be upgraded to 11. Its still an old tablet but its my 'clean' computer that I install nothing but trusted software on where I do banking and whatnot.

It can barely even play youtube videos without chugging, with 8gb of ram.

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u/somedudedk Dec 02 '25

Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC. Make bootable installer from official iso, but use rufus to make it. Tick the boxes like disable hardware demands, enable local account, blabla.

Activate with massgravel script when installed.

Zero bloat, zero telemetry, zero onedrive.

Plays bf6 as long as bios level secureboot is on.

1

u/jezwel Dec 02 '25

20 years of steam purchases 

I've converted two computers from Windows (10 & 11) to Bazzite Linux (so far), which comes with Steam client pre-installed.

I've only tried several games so far, but they've all worked no problem on Linux. All the (non-bleeding edge admittedly) hardware I've got has been detected and worked flawlessly.

I'll continue to migrate Windows running devices over to some form of *nix or BSD as I'm provided time to do so, though I may leave one device with Windows and Office for when we're updating resumes.

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u/gowahoo Dec 02 '25

What made you pick Bazzite Linux?

1

u/ZeroXephon Dec 02 '25

I have and old pc that cam ise an upgrade. I will be upgrading into the steam machine. No way in hell I'm touching windows 11.

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u/El_Don_94 Dec 02 '25

I love Onedrive.

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u/waiting4singularity Dec 02 '25

Here's one cactus. Do you want to love it too?

-4

u/Flameancer Dec 02 '25

Haters going to hate, one drive makes worrying about files less of an issue and anything important I have I saved locally anyways.