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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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The power of Linux (aussie.zone)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.

I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.

While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.

After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?

I'm sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

How old is your laptop? Pretty much every Windows machine I've ever owned after a certain year requires you to type in your Bitlocker key, including my first-gen Surface Go from 2018.

Also, you often have to manually set up encryption on most Linux installs as well - I did it for my Thinkpad. I need to do it for my desktop as well - I should probably do a reinstall, but I'm thinking of backing everything up and trying to do it in-place just for fun. On top of that, we can finally transition to btrfs.

Wink

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I think my laptop is from 2018 so is getting old. It's an asus predator gaming laptop

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Microsoft used to have a division for testing windows on various hardware configurations. They stopped doing that when they could just put different versions of windows on people's computers and use telemetry to check the differences. This could be an artifact of that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Pretty much every Windows machine I've ever owned after a certain year requires you to type in your Bitlocker key, including my first-gen Surface Go from 2018.

This is interesting. I had a work computer require this ~4 years ago, but not one of the three since have (personal and different employers.)