5 ms·

I use HP laptop. With latest Windows, it is manageable. One can use windows firewall to block out going connections on per app base. 1) Use SystemInternal's

by srcmap 9y ago

I use HP laptop. With latest Windows, it is manageable. One can use windows firewall to block out going connections on per app base. 1) Use SystemInternal's process explorer and track all network connections: (As admin: Add column to track the network tx, rx counts) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/proc... 2) When I see some app, system that connect to network which I think it should not. I just block their network connections with Windows Firewall or uninstall those app. There is a "netsh advfirewall firewall" command that can do this from command line. 3) BTW this works very well with Windows' own service too. I block svchost.exe, Edge, SerchIndex, etc from accessing internet. svchost.exe is allowed to access local subnet for file, print sharing. When I feel like upgrade to to latest version windows 10. I turn off the firewall rules for a few hours to allow the update to go thru. 4) Only Firefox and Chrome in my windows system are allowed to connect to internet full time. The CPU usage is normally < 15% and most of the time < 10% even when playing youtube @ 1080 resolution. The latest Firefox Quantum has less CPU usage and faster also. I love it. 5) The WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is getting better - X, xfce4-termnial now working good enough for me. I like accessing the Ubuntu shell in windows environment without the overhead of Virtualbox.

notsrg 9y ago
That's a lot of work to make software you paid for not spy on you...
- m_fayer 9y ago
  Indeed, and I hate it. I have a beloved 2015 MBP that I'm trying to keep alive, but it's becoming a little underpowered and it's not upgradeable. New MBPs are a non-starter with the port and keyboard situation and my coworkers all hate them. Then I have a maxed out XPS 13 which is a very nice and capable machine that suits me completely, except that it has a malicious OS that I have to constantly fight. And Linux doesn't support a lot of the tools I need. So..... what's the solution here?
  - soperj 9y ago
    use linux for everything that you can use it for and then just run windows in a vm when you need it for certain software. I started off in a dual boot situation, and i can't even remember the last time i went into my windows partition. It has to be less than 5 times in the past 3 years.
    - yyyttt555 9y ago
      Games are what would prevent a lot of people. GPU support in a vm (at least VirtualBox) is still abysmal.
  - xfer 9y ago
    Use a windows vm for the tools that are not available on linux.
  - habitue 9y ago
    What are the tools you need that work in both Mac and Windows but not Linux?
    - srcmap 9y ago
      Running MacOS on virtualbox on top of Windows works ok. There are a lots of tutorials on the web that shows you how to do that. It does violate Apple's SW license. It is very fun to play with a full screen MacOS on a touch screen enable Laptop.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      My 3 monitors (which have different DPIs than the monitor that comes with my linux laptop). Trying to do this with the tools Ubuntu provides doesn't work. Ubuntu's GUI doesn't scale well, and I can't find a setup that does. I just want this to work, but it doesn't. This was a Dell laptop that came preinstalled with Ubuntu, too.
    - m_fayer 9y ago
      Xamarin, Adobe stuff. And I've found a Windows VM in a Linux host to be passable, though suboptimal. Especially because you only run it sporadically, so even though it's a VM you still have to deal with its compulsive and compulsory updating, restarting, and whatever else it does that keeps it busy for 20 minutes when it hasn't been started in a month. Also Linux multi-screen/multi-DPI support is still bad.
en-us 9y ago
I use a Dell XPS with Ubuntu. I didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit. Why do people continue to purchase products from companies that blatantly want to spy on them? Vote with your wallet and never go through a bizarre multi-step anti-spyware setup again.
_jal 9y ago
My solution with Windows is easier. I run it in a VM and block all network traffic. Problem solved. And regarding (5)... well, the same thing I used to tell people about WINE applies, just in reverse. Unless you're butting up against a corporate policy or something, why pick the inferior, broken imitation when the real thing is right there?
frankohn 9y ago
That sound interesting but you have really to be proactive and deploy significant a technical knowledge to block the software from abusing you. Still you count as a happy Windows user and will reinforce the Microsoft position. This way they will be able to abuse 99% of their users, those that don't have the same competencies and time to spend on these countermeasures. As for the WSL I stopped using it. This is an honey trap to let people use Windows as their primary OS by just giving them the developer goodies they like. I may consider it again if you can use it to develop a full-fledged Windows application that can access the windowing system and can be redistributed. You may have noticed that with WSL you cannot and the applications you may do remains nicely restricted to the linux subsystem.
- teilo 9y ago
  > As for the WSL I stopped using it. This is an honey trap to let people use Windows as their primary OS by just giving them the developer goodies they like. I may consider it again if you can use it to develop a full-fledged Windows application that can access the windowing system and can be redistributed. A honey pot? I don't think that means what you think it means. If you are interested in developing full-fledged Windows applications, why in the world would you want to use WSL? You are not the kind of developer that WSL is designed for.
  - frankohn 9y ago
    I develop full fledged Windows applications using GCC with MinGW. They could have managed to let people doing the same thing with WSL but you cannot.
    - teilo 9y ago
      WSL is Linux. It is not Windows. Microsoft "managed" to make it possible to run Linux binaries on Windows, in a pseudo-virtual Linux environment. The distro you choose to run in WSL is not built by Microsoft. If you want to develop to a Windows target, then configure your WSL environment to do cross-compiling. That's up to you. If you can cross-compile in Ubuntu, then you can cross-compile in WSL. Just don't expect WSL to be anything but Linux.
caesarshift 9y ago
As an experiment last year, I tried to run Windows Firewall in "block all" mode and wrote this tool to manage it: https://github.com/caesarshift/msfw https://github.com/caesarshift/msfw I would run "msfw log --tail" to watch for blocked connections. If I wanted to allow the connection, I then added it as a rule. It was alot of work to setup initially, and I even found some scenarios where adding a rule was not sufficient to allow the connection. I never understood why.
tbrock 9y ago
Jesus man, wipe that OS off and do a clean install or jettison for Linux immediately.
pritambaral 9y ago
MS has in the past overridden (or gone around) Windows Firewall for the downloading of Windows updates.

by srcmap 9y ago

notsrg 9y ago

That's a lot of work to make software you paid for not spy on you...

m_fayer 9y ago
Indeed, and I hate it. I have a beloved 2015 MBP that I'm trying to keep alive, but it's becoming a little underpowered and it's not upgradeable. New MBPs are a non-starter with the port and keyboard situation and my coworkers all hate them. Then I have a maxed out XPS 13 which is a very nice and capable machine that suits me completely, except that it has a malicious OS that I have to constantly fight. And Linux doesn't support a lot of the tools I need. So..... what's the solution here?
- soperj 9y ago
  use linux for everything that you can use it for and then just run windows in a vm when you need it for certain software. I started off in a dual boot situation, and i can't even remember the last time i went into my windows partition. It has to be less than 5 times in the past 3 years.
  - yyyttt555 9y ago
    Games are what would prevent a lot of people. GPU support in a vm (at least VirtualBox) is still abysmal.
- xfer 9y ago
  Use a windows vm for the tools that are not available on linux.
- habitue 9y ago
  What are the tools you need that work in both Mac and Windows but not Linux?
  - srcmap 9y ago
    Running MacOS on virtualbox on top of Windows works ok. There are a lots of tutorials on the web that shows you how to do that. It does violate Apple's SW license. It is very fun to play with a full screen MacOS on a touch screen enable Laptop.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    My 3 monitors (which have different DPIs than the monitor that comes with my linux laptop). Trying to do this with the tools Ubuntu provides doesn't work. Ubuntu's GUI doesn't scale well, and I can't find a setup that does. I just want this to work, but it doesn't. This was a Dell laptop that came preinstalled with Ubuntu, too.
  - m_fayer 9y ago
    Xamarin, Adobe stuff. And I've found a Windows VM in a Linux host to be passable, though suboptimal. Especially because you only run it sporadically, so even though it's a VM you still have to deal with its compulsive and compulsory updating, restarting, and whatever else it does that keeps it busy for 20 minutes when it hasn't been started in a month. Also Linux multi-screen/multi-DPI support is still bad.

en-us 9y ago

I use a Dell XPS with Ubuntu. I didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit. Why do people continue to purchase products from companies that blatantly want to spy on them? Vote with your wallet and never go through a bizarre multi-step anti-spyware setup again.

_jal 9y ago

My solution with Windows is easier. I run it in a VM and block all network traffic. Problem solved. And regarding (5)... well, the same thing I used to tell people about WINE applies, just in reverse. Unless you're butting up against a corporate policy or something, why pick the inferior, broken imitation when the real thing is right there?

frankohn 9y ago

That sound interesting but you have really to be proactive and deploy significant a technical knowledge to block the software from abusing you. Still you count as a happy Windows user and will reinforce the Microsoft position. This way they will be able to abuse 99% of their users, those that don't have the same competencies and time to spend on these countermeasures. As for the WSL I stopped using it. This is an honey trap to let people use Windows as their primary OS by just giving them the developer goodies they like. I may consider it again if you can use it to develop a full-fledged Windows application that can access the windowing system and can be redistributed. You may have noticed that with WSL you cannot and the applications you may do remains nicely restricted to the linux subsystem.

teilo 9y ago
> As for the WSL I stopped using it. This is an honey trap to let people use Windows as their primary OS by just giving them the developer goodies they like. I may consider it again if you can use it to develop a full-fledged Windows application that can access the windowing system and can be redistributed. A honey pot? I don't think that means what you think it means. If you are interested in developing full-fledged Windows applications, why in the world would you want to use WSL? You are not the kind of developer that WSL is designed for.
- frankohn 9y ago
  I develop full fledged Windows applications using GCC with MinGW. They could have managed to let people doing the same thing with WSL but you cannot.
  - teilo 9y ago
    WSL is Linux. It is not Windows. Microsoft "managed" to make it possible to run Linux binaries on Windows, in a pseudo-virtual Linux environment. The distro you choose to run in WSL is not built by Microsoft. If you want to develop to a Windows target, then configure your WSL environment to do cross-compiling. That's up to you. If you can cross-compile in Ubuntu, then you can cross-compile in WSL. Just don't expect WSL to be anything but Linux.

caesarshift 9y ago

As an experiment last year, I tried to run Windows Firewall in "block all" mode and wrote this tool to manage it: https://github.com/caesarshift/msfw https://github.com/caesarshift/msfw I would run "msfw log --tail" to watch for blocked connections. If I wanted to allow the connection, I then added it as a rule. It was alot of work to setup initially, and I even found some scenarios where adding a rule was not sufficient to allow the connection. I never understood why.

tbrock 9y ago

Jesus man, wipe that OS off and do a clean install or jettison for Linux immediately.

pritambaral 9y ago

MS has in the past overridden (or gone around) Windows Firewall for the downloading of Windows updates.