I am currently using a legitimate copy of Windows 11, on the latest version. Just started getting this message after the latest update.
Considering I already have Linux and Mac as alternatives, if they actually pull my license they will just lose a lifelong customer. Their business decisions truly boggle the mind…
99% of what I do is on Linux, I have one Windows partition I occasionally boot into to play games, it is and will remain Win10.
I don’t even want windows on raw metal, so I have a virtual machine for work stuff
@KazuchijouNo I had a virtual machine with GPU pass through that I was using for gaming but it got broken in the upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04, it seems the UEFI bios provided in 24.04 does not work with GPU pass through, and I’ve yet to grab one off an OS where it works to replace it. So for now I’m dual-booting. Yea I agree, not all that comfortable with bare metal but Windows doesn’t seem to want to recognize ext4 so there is some security by accident there.
There are cases where Windows messes up with booting, rendering Linux unable to boot. There’s even a recent thing involving GRUB that stopped booting up after some Windows update.
Win and Linux on separate drives, with no boot loader, using bios boot selector is the only way. Windoze has no idea it’s not the only OS on my machine.
This is the way.
Whenever I installed another operating system (newer Linux or long time ago when dual booting to Windows), I always unplugged the older drive physically. Then installed it and plugged it back. This way none of the OS changes anything on the others boot system. And I choose to boot the drive from UEFI boot menu.
@thingsiplay @metaStatic Normally I use grub on one drive to launch all of the OS’s from a boot menu.
Windows can interfere with grub, or any other OS can for that matter. I use an alternative boot system than grub, which is much more simple. When I install a new operating system as described before, then each operating system has its own boot menu and entries (like multiple Linux Kernels per OS or other configurations).
@thingsiplay Again, I’ve been doing this for many years without problems. If it’s interfering it’s most likely operator error.
@metaStatic @datavoid @KazuchijouNo @dsilverz I’ve had them sharing drives for many years no big deal. If you understand Linux well enough to know how to install a boot loader if it gets overritten not an issue. If you’re using a modern UEFI Bios also not an issue. Only an issue if you’re using legacy bios and don’t know how to re-install a boot loader.
funny thing about people, most of us don’t want to reinstall our bootloader every time windows updates. Putting aside windows removeding up linux partitions in other totally not intentional ways.
@metaStatic @datavoid @KazuchijouNo @dsilverz As I previously stated, I have NEVER had to do this with UEFI bios. Early versions of Windows 10 had a tendency to create a new EFI partition instead of using the existing one and that could be problematic but even that is no longer an issue.
That’s why I just use a VM, I skip all the complications of having to fix bootloaders and broken installs. If anything goes wrong with windows I just delete the VM. Arch barely uses any RAM, so even back when I had only 8GB, windows ran incredibly well. I’ve updated to 16GB (because I needed the 64 bit version of excel and I wasn’t being able to install it due to RAM requirements). Ever since then, I don’t even look back to dual booting.
Funny story, originally my laptop was dual booted, but I removed windows completely and formated the partition, and since it was at the beggining of the drive, and you cannot move blocks around so easily in storage (I needed another SSD or hard drive to copy them momentarily) I was left with a hole in my storage. What I did was, mount the directory with the VM image storage to the empty partition. So now it’s kind of “dual booting” with some extra steps and with the added benefit of being able to use both OS’ at the same time
[TL;DR] If possible, just use a VM
You can always reinstall GRUB with Super GRUB2 Disk.
@daggermoon I just use a live boot usb,
mount /dev/sda1 (or whatever root is) /mnt
mount /dev/sda3 (or whatever EFI is) /mnt/boot/efi
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/pts
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --rbind /proc /mnt/proc
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/resolv.conf
chroot /mnt
grub install /dev/sda (or whichever drive you want)
@dsilverz Yes Windows will sometimes overwrite Linux boot block IF non-UEFI and you install Windows After Linux, but easily fixed with boot-repair or just use a life distro to re-install the grub boot-block. I run EUFI so Windows just makes a different directory in the EFI system disk so not an issue for me anymore.
UEFI is also affectable: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/08/windows-update-breaking-linux-dualboot-fix/amp
@dsilverz Never been an issue for me, I keep good backups so not really worried about it.
I use an emulator to play Windows 98 games. That’s the extent of what I use Windows for. Unfortunately Windows 98 is not compatible with the newest AAA multiplayer games or Steam.
I can’t think of any windows specific games I’ve payed for the last two years.
@mesamunefire I started playing a game called Flyff back in 2004, though I’ve had to switch servers several times because admins have become incompetent or discontinued, I’ve played ever since, currently playing Insanity Flyff, level 311 character Nanook there. I’ve tried to get it to run under wine but it uses a root kit anti-cheat so won’t work under wine. This is soon going to be an issue with Win11 as well as they plan on disallowing root-kit anticheats soon. So maybe the game will adapt and then play under wine.
Microsoft has discussed the possibility of creating user mode APIs for the monitoring that security programs like CrowdStrike could utilize instead of installing a kernel mode driver, but they haven’t said anything about locking down kernel mode drivers and I personally doubt they ever would.
@YaBoyMax I’ve heard differently from a Microsoft insider, but since I don’t know if it was told to me in confidence or not, I am not going to name names.