I enjoy using some penabled touchscreen art apps as well as a few other very valuable programs of that ilk ...on windows tablet xp and windows 7 ...can't stand win10 ...
But now...
DaaS is coming for the next version of windows ...
and I draw the line there.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...u-know-it.html

I will continue to use the handful of fav progs that do work so well...
in a vm of win tablet xp and win 7 ...
But I go no further with a future in Windows...
Most of my life is Linux based ..past those few art and audio creation apps I like that windows xp tablet and win 7 has....
I feel I have transitioned a long time ago from the necessity to have windows ...

Holy ****
Lucky me I'm on Linux since years. Anyway it seems like the main direction nowadays is give away control, let others think for you.

The main issue is that most of the harware you want, ship with windows, so we still have to pay for it even if we don’t use it

Has anyone tried System76 native Linux machines? The top end laptops seem like real max power beasts, desktop CPU/GPUs in a laptop form factor; they also disable the Intel management engine by default.
https://system76.com/
Looks interesting but I have not seen what reality is.
I have been using Asus and now Asus ROG for years, but that is mostly for price and they come with Windows, I never give that a chance to boot though.
I do run virtualbox for win7 so I can run an old version of SolidWorks.

At my work I am running win7 where I removed telemetry, other updates and removed some services (nobody knows). But since this month the it department will only deliver new computers with win10 and in 2020 I will be forced to use win10. I only need this bull.... for Creo Parametrics so 3D-CAD like you.
Does virualbox have a good support for 3D-graphics? And is it feasible to work with huge models and many parts?

You may find that "Microsoft tax" is often negative. Hardware with Windows preinstalled is cheaper than bare bone. I know purists will not like me saying that but though. Don't blame Microsoft for doing their marketing right. Blame Linux and bare bone hardware sellers for doing it wrong.

Well, finally. It fits their philosophy. I've been waiting for this switch basically since their anouncement of Office 365, which turned writing simple text documents into SaaSS [1].




If you say desktop CPU, then you surely mean the Serval [2] and Bonobo [3] series.
These seem to be based on Clevo gaming barebones [4], more specifically the P75*/P77* series for the Serval, and the P87* for the Bonobo.

There are some other "manufacturers" who build laptops based on Clevo barebones, so it's worth it to keep an eye open for reviews of these other "manufacturers". One of them is Nexoc with their current G736 (P77*) [5] and G737 (P87*) [6] models.
In 2010 I was contemplating to buy one of their desktop-CPU laptops, which was basically a predecessor to the G736/737 series. Even back then Nexoc used Clevo barebones.
In the end I went for a more "traditional" 17" DTR Dell Precision M6500. My main reason being, that as far as I found out, while Clevo managed to cool the desktop components to barely tolerable levels, they apparently did that at the cost of a lot of fan noise.

Maybe that situation has improved, maybe it hasn't. But I'd be cautious to buy a laptop with desktop components. Also, the touchpads in Clevo barebones only have two mouse buttons, which I find less than optimal under Linux.


To be more precise:
You believe you've done that, respectively you've set some options that claim to disable these "features" like [7].
But how do you know it's actually doing what it says if nobody who is independent from MS even knows the source code?


[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-d...-serve.en.html
[2] https://system76.com/laptops/serval
[3] https://system76.com/laptops/bonobo
[4] http://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodet...d=1073&lang=en
[5] https://www.nexoc.de/en/products/gam.../nexoc-g736iv/
[6] https://www.nexoc.de/en/products/gam.../nexoc-g737iv/
[7] https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-ma...tical-updates/

How do I know that any code does what it says and nothing else? Regardless of who wrote it and how open it is?

"The code is open, you can check it."

I know I can. But I have neither the time nor the capacity to inspect millions of lines of code. Literally anything can hide in plain sight. And even if I could, how can I be sure that the installed binary matches the source? And even if I could verify that, or build it from sources myself, I would still have to check the code of all the build tools in case they insert some "goodies".

"Others have checked it for you."

Have they really? Or is everyone relying on someone else doing it? And even if others had checked it for me, how can I be sure that they would share their findings with me? What if they added some goodies in, exactly because the code is open and thus allows them to do that, and are targeting me?

I am not saying that I believe any of that BS. I am not that paranoid. My point is that there is no guarantee that the code is doing what it says, regardless of whether anyone "independent from MS" has access to it or not. You do not trust Microsoft, but if you were really security conscious, you would not trust anybody.

With a good router+software you could see the difference or spotting something weird. When you don't have the router npcap, with the right software, could be some of help.

Thanks for giving most of the answers to your questions yourself!

The code is always doing exactly what it says. That's the beauty of formal languages. The only questions are, whether you know what it says (have read the code) and actually understand what it says.
If you can't do that yourself for whatever reason, you can outsource that task to someone YOU trust. And if at some point you change your mind about the reviewer's trustworthyness, you can just task someone else with it.
That's what makes open source more trustworthy than closed source, even if you're not capable of reviewing the code yourself. YOU are the one who decides who can be trusted.

Of course, someone (trustworthy) still has to actually do that task of reviewing the code. But with OS you at least have the chance that it's actually done.
With CS you never get that chance, because even in the unlikely case that there's an external source code review happening, there's always the question lingering, under which restrictions the rewiewers got access to the code while you didn't.
So even if these reviewers come to the conclusion, that the code is clean, you can't trust that conclusion, because you have no way of verifying it independently.


That's assuming, the software is doing something weird while you're looking and you can actually distinguish the weird signal from random noise.