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Windows Vista To Make Dual-Boot A Challenge?
mustafap writes "UK tech site The Register is reporting on security guru Bruce Schneier's observation that the disk encryption system to be shipped with Vista, BitLocker, will make dual booting other OSs difficult - you will no longer be able to share data between the two." From the article: "This encryption technology also has the effect of frustrating the exchange of data needed in a dual boot system. 'You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux because it frustrates dual boot,' Schneier told El Reg. Schneier said Vista will bring forward security improvements, but cautioned that technical advances are less important than improvements in how technology is presented to users."
Does Microsoft even realise they're being charged with illegal monopoly practises at the moment? Do they know that the EUC isn't going to let them get away with any illegal bundling while they're charging them? Sheesh...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Any body that is dual booting will also know that making a partition formatted fat32 will allow copying of files between os's.
Anti-competative! Predatory! Monopoly!
Don't worry, once Leopard comes out with Apple's own implementation of the Win32 API, no one will need Windows ever again.
Mmmuh-hahaha!
It's not a big deal that they're doing this, afterall I won't be using Vista when it's released. Me and a lot of people I know will be migrating to Linux entirely and not looking back. Nobody I know wants to pay an arm and a leg to use an operating system that isn't going to contribute to bettering their current desktop experience. Those not migrating to Linux won't be upgrading from XP.
Did I miss something? Is this disk encryption going to be compulsory?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Indeed. It'll be a non issue. Just put your files on a FAT partition or some network share (samba) or whatever else. CDs/DVDs/portable "flash" drives (those USB thingies) will work perfectly well too.
Which is it, data sharing between two OSs or dual booting? Because I can dual boot just fine with current products and still not be able to share data. Not until NTFS for linux makes some more progress, anyway.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I've used every build of Vista or Longhorn ever released/leaked, and so far I have seen absolutely no extra "anti-Linux" default-disk-encryption thing. The bootloader also still works fine with chainloader +1. Since Vista has supposedly been "feature-complete" since build 5308 (now is on 5365), I'm not convinced this is anything but FUD.
Encrypting a filesystem prevents arbitrary operating system from accessing it!
I mean — what the fuck?! — isn't that the whole idea?
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/sec
Easy - a $20 512 MB memory stick should be enough for most tasks.
Once again, the headline is hideously misleading.
I don't know exactly how this encrypted FS works in Vista but I imagine it won't be much more different then cryptfs in Linux or FileVault in OSX. When I boot into Linux on my Mac I can't get into the home directories for any of my users but I can certainly still share files....
Anyway, most dual booters that go between Windows and Linux already have dealt with these issues due to the unfriendly nature of NTFS.
At least, according to Wiki.
As much as we all love to bash Microsfot, I'm guessing it's an optional feature.
Needless to say, Microsoft offered no support whatsoever. I made the employee uninstall Bitlocker from the machines and lets just say he's not with us anymore.
Who in the hell fires an employee for making a suggestion and then implementing it once he has approval? Either you're on a complete power trip, or you really must not want people to suggest things - after making an 'example' like that, who'd want to stick their head out?
Do they know that the EUC isn't going to let them get away with any illegal bundling while they're charging them?
I think they realize the EUC is going to let them get away with illegal bundling while they're charging them.
That's exactly what the EUC has done so far.
Not only will dual booting and sharing files between OSs be harder, but recovery of lost data could also be harder. If they used something standard, or at least disclosed how they were storing the data, we might have a way to recover lost data. However, if we don't know how to decrypt the data, then how are we supposed to recover the data. Will the data be lost if you have to reinstall the OS? I know windows XP deletes sensitive information if your Admin has to reset your password.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I appreciate that it's popular to bash MS (I'm just as guilty) but isn't this getting to be a step too far? They're introducing file system functionality for added security and being ripped apart for it by the same people that scream at them for their lack of security focus? I've had a bit of a read into it, and at least on the surface it seems like a good idea.
r ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
Bitlocker isn't going to be compulsory, and as such it isn't going to affect dual booting in any way shape or form. It's certainly not the sort of thing your average home user would be setting up anyway (IMHO). Seems like Mr Schneier is a good old fashioned troll.
Some more info on Bitlocker here : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/lib
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
What is being locked that defeats dual booting? The MBR or partition table?
Or just the content of the Windows partition? If it is the latter, it doesn't stop dual booting, it just limits some of the uses by making it harder to share data between the different OS's -- but you can still dual boot just as well, and there are other ways of interchanging data.
Also, Bitlocker is only available on Vista, so are you saying you're running your production users on the Vista beta?
The final straw came when one employee lost several hours work when Bitlcoker suddenly had an error reading from our intranet file server and corrupted his project.
Bitlocker doesn't affect files read from network locations, it's merely a hard disk encryption technology. I think you're confused about what Bitlocker is.
Needless to say this entire post is a fabrication as Bitlocker only comes with Vista, Vista only installs on NTFS, Vista is still an early beta version, Bitlocker has nothing to do with remote file systems, there's no way an IT department would deploy beta versions of Windows to end-users with beta full-disk encryption features, it's not something you uninstall as it's built in, and there's nothing FAT32 offers that NTFS does not when Windows is the only operating system on the computer (nevermind that Bitlocker isn't a filesystem).
Needless to say it's not necessary to know what you're doing before using moderation points either. I hope the person that moderated the gp loses their moderation privileges as they have wasted everyone's time, most importantly mine.
The only reason I was considering Vista is because Microsoft have made sure DirectX10 won't run on XP.
Now if I also can't dual-boot then that's the last straw to drive me to a linux-only system.
And before anyone suggests it, no I don't want to be running Linux under a Microsoft VM.
Couldn't this be worked around with virtualization? I.e. run both Vista and a free OS on the same box, communicate over TCP/IP. Kludgy, yes, but better than nothing I guess.
Ummm yeah, I'm just gonna stick with Windows XP if they are gonna be like that. Maybe I'll switch my whole PC over to OSx86 10.5 when it comes to that, I like OSX and it runs well on my PC aside from onboard lan and audio.
Using an incompatible filesystem ("BitLocker") for Vista doesn't help Microsoft in any way but will frustrate many users who want to mount it or have applications that need a standard filesystem such as ext3, reiserfs, etc. Things like that just add to an already long list of reasons not to even consider using Vista.
Actually considering the overall feeling towards Microsoft around here. Who's running Microsoft OS'es anyway, let alone sharing data between the two?
...and (put in your favourite emulator, I use Vmware) for everything else on Windows.
What has changed?
Microsoft's Linux Lab is currently working on a solution. "WILO" (Windows Loader) 1.0 should be released shortly after Vista hits shelves in 2009.
Ok... I've been a linux fan for 10 years or so now. Haven't run anything but linux in about 7 years. But c'mon guys this is FUD.
r ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
First of all, vista won't have this activated by default. Here's how you can turn it on in Vista Beta:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/lib
And yes it will make any data encrypted in this manner unavailable to another operating system. It does this by using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS and can base the key on the kernel and optionally: just the bios, a user supplied key, or a USB drive supplied key.
This allows for the option of encrypting/decrypting data from the very start of the boot process. And guess what? It's being implemented in linux too!
http://lwn.net/Articles/144681/
BitLocker from windows is just a kernel based drive encryption software that takes advantage of TPMs just like the linux system. If you're concerned about cross platform compatibility then use user space encryption rather than kernel space encryptiong. If you're that concerned about secure keys then don't dual boot! If you love dual booting and don't care about encryption at all, noone is going to beat you up and make you use encryptiong.
You may remove the tinfoil hat.
--David
You allowed an employee to install untested software (that is still under development by Microsoft) on FIVE production machines?
Even if I hadn't seen variations on this troll post before, the idea of a company consider going from FAT32 to Bitlocker technology is more than enough to show that it's pure trolling (they'd be using NTFS).
This is a standard troll. HTH. HAND.
And darn those pesky motherboard manufacturers for using a BIOS that includes the ability to put a boot up password. Thereby preventing us innocent and proud computer users from installing an OS onto our machine! This means war! Seriously. Since when is this: A. A new issue (NTFS, translating differences in file structure between OSes, etc) B. A "REAL" issue. It's not like there is a software bomb that will melt your hard drive if you type in an open source url in your web browser. C. Anything but another jolly "Hey let's hate on Microsoft because it's cool!" You are ENCRYPTING THE DISK. What do you expect to happen? I'm reminded of fools that set BIOS passwords, then scream at me beacuse suddenly there is a passworde on their computer and theyt can't access it. *Pixie tosses two red American pennies on the nearest table, and quietly walks out of the room.*
is a must to win the three legged race.
"An employee suggested to me that we use Bitlocker on a few machines here as an evaluation."
"I made the employee uninstall Bitlocker from the machines and lets just say he's not with us anymore."
So, lets see... An employee is aware of a product that might benefit your company, so he suggests it. It sounds to me like your "evaluation" wasnt a very good one at all. In order to evaluate things you are supposes to limit your risks. His suggestion ending up being bad is not his fault, you're puting multiple employees files and work at risk is YOUR fault.
But hey... apparently someone got fired for suggesting MICROSOFT... an internet first.
Isn't it already a challenge?
Parent post is NOT informative; it's a lie. Is the employee that suggested you use BitLocker the same one that suggested you use Vista while it's pre-release?
I find it so odd the lengths people go sometimes to trash a company/person. Outright lies? It's one thing to hate M$ for things they've actually done, but to drive others to hate them for things you've claimed, but never actually happeneed to you? You are what's wrong with society.
" made the employee uninstall Bitlocker from the machines and lets just say he's not with us anymore"
...
Who gave this troll informative? The employe suggested a HD encryption tool, he gave him the ok to TEST it on only 5 machines, and he fired him just because the test did not go well...! So you expect employees to know exactly how a technology performs, without ever trying and who ever suggests trying out a technology jeopardizes his job.
You are most likely a college freshman assuming a fake identity
The hardware part worries me. Is it just that the hardware is used to speed up the encrypt/decrypt stage? Or is it that disc encryption is actually tied to a specific unique chip on the system?
What happens if my motherboard dies one day and I need to copy files from the dead computer onto a new computer? Will there be a failsafe software-based decoder that will let me copy my files?
And how are backups going to work? It'd be pretty poor security to have an encrypted HD but a decrypted backup.
Seriously, by the time Vista comes out, I'll be using a mac (hurry up Leopard), even though I use XP right now.
Why anyone would willingly put up with MS's crap, from Vista, to IE 7 (oh, we won't support installing different versions on the same machine...) I've had it. This "tool" called windows does nothing but make my job as a web developer more difficult than it needs to be.
Thanks but no thanks.
A company plans to include a very useful encryption tool with it's next OS.
This is good news in terms of security and privacy, and therefore /. readers will welcome it.
Oh wait, no they won't, because the company is Microsoft. Microsoft is baaad, therefore everything they do is sinister and evil. You people always manage to find the dark lining to their every silver cloud.
It's the herd-mentality at work, folks.
Yawn.
Azural - instrumentals
Hot damn.. that page has had over 500,000 new hits since I visited it just a few hours ago.
Shocking.
Will it be possible to mount non-encrypted disks in Vista? Well, unless MS is finally prepared to kick backwards compatibilty then yes.
Even if unencrypted HD's ain't supported (unlikely) they would still need to support regular filesystems like FAT for all those flash disks from your camera and USB keys and such.
I am as anti-ms as you can get (if I am ever diagnosed with an incurable disease Gates gets a bullet in the head the next day thanks to my Halo training. Eh non-MS FPS training) but this is just to much. Linux disk encryption makes it just as hard for linux to dualboot windows. In fact every linux distro should just use FAT to make sure windows can be dualbooted and read the linux data.
Geez.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If I use Bitlocker, does that mean my data will smell like dirty socks?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
With Windows XP, dual-booting was as simple as editing boot.ini in the root of the XP partition. With Vista (build 5308), the two articles I have from technet.microsoft.com are 4 pages and 8 pages respectively of instructions. Neither worked. All I want to do is dual-boot between Vista Ultimate and XP!
I don't know if Bitlocker is the cause of my dual-booting woes, but it isn't easy to set up, that's for sure.
(Keep in mind, I've been using Vista for a grand total of 4 days, which puts my experience level somewhere around that of a 1337 n00b13.)
Disable encryption. I'm guessing, and this could be a wild guess, but I'm thinking that Vista will support FAT32 and NTFS. If it's anything like Windows XP (Professional), encryption for NTFS is optional, and the last time I checked, it wasn't enabled by default. My guess is that Microsoft is going to act like they did for the Windows Firewall: They originally included the firewall, but originally hid it and left it disabled. The update will enable it by default. I doubt this will be a problem for anyone dual-booting using Linux, the potential problem would be with people that want to use OSX and Vista, since the average OSX user is not as computer-savvy as someone that dual-boots Windows and Linux.
This only means I won't be trying Vista. I'd rather keep just Linux than mess it all up trying to dual boot with something I don't care for. Sucks for Microsoft since Vista could have been the Windows that made me switch back.
VileFault as Dr Spooner might well state about Vista
The only thing I still dual-boot for is games, and that doesn't require accessing the Windows partitions from Linux.
"You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux. . . "
No, just anti-dual-boot. Microsoft makes their product more secure and people want to say it's anti-competitive. It's like saying that the locks on your house are anti-neighbor. Oh that's so horrible! You have anti-neighbor devices installed in your house!!! You must want to destroy all of your neighbors. It's just sick that you care about your family, safety and privacy so much that you would deny everybody access to your house!
But honestly in the day and age of cheap computing why even bother dual booting? I think I'm probably your average slashdotter, I have a laptop running windows XP, a desktop running windows XP, a linux desktop and a linux server.
Systems are cheap, watch for specials from the big guys and pick up a box for $399 or less.
I haven't had to dual boot a system in over 5 years and I'm certainly not independantly wealthy.
I always found using a Mobile Rack and simply swapping hard drives much easier than dual booting.
One slight detail.
Drive encryption is optional. It's something you may configure while setting up the system for systems carrying sensitive or important data. It's not like a standard Vista install automatically encrypts the entire drive. That would be ludicrous.
Bruce Schneier may be a brilliant security guy, but like every other person (and company) on the planet, he has an agenda. Don't automatically trust the guy telling you stuff because it's embarassing to the person he's telling you about.
...this optional feature will do nothing to prevent dual booting, and, if the user has one of the Vista editions that has it installed, and chooses to use it, will make it impossible to read the data it protects from Linux? Why would someone pretend this is a big deal? It doesn't seem to be a big advance in security, or big blow against dual booting, or a big...well, anything.
You gave the guy the OK to test and then got rid of him for determining that the product wasn't a) what you needed, b) wasn't ready for prime-time, or c) just didn't work. That's what tests are for, and if you OK'd the test, you're responsible for insuring that the test does what it's supposed to do. You didn't. You fail, not the guy that "is not with us anymore." Did I mention you're a twit?
I wonder if the hit counter has been tampered with. Last time I looked it was only 600000, now it's 1.5 million hours later, which is almost impossible.
Who's running Windows anyway? Seriously folks, I've got everything I need on Linux, thank you.
What are you, his fucking pimp? I tell you, as the slashdit community, we should threaten to hack his site and reset his counter (and delete his access_log file for good measure) unless he promises to post pictures. I mean, what the hell do we get out of getting this guy his 3-way?
If you want your stuff encrypted away and hidden from your other OS, keep it on the Windows partition. If you want to be able to share your data, make a third partition with a compatible file system and dump your files there. Problem solved.
Ah, I almost forgot. This document is the Microsoft whitepaper on setting up and using drive encryption for Vista. Skim through it. Notice that it's freaking huge. The setup procedure is involved and low level. This isn't the sort of thing that will automatically be put on by a ignorant user blindly clicking "Next".
I'm going to move to Linux, not today, and not tomorrow, but certainly at some unspecified point in the future!!! Take that Microsoft!
I really do. If it was me in charge, first thing I'd do - day one - would be to either hire people currently working on the Wine project, or hire a bunch of other qualified people and have them contribute to it. Get Wine working, then get it working well. Get a contract with Transgaming too - have them help. Imagine a Mac that played all the Win32/DirectX games! You wouldn't have an excuse then, right? Then, I'd dump all that work back into the FOSS community so others could benefit, and have a brilliant super-compatible easy to use Wine built into the next Mac OS.
Ahhh...how great it would be. And it's the best kind of dream. It's possible.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Instead of multibooting, use virtualization & do the following:
OS/X: host os - run samba & NFS
Vista/XP: guest OS - configure to live off of a network drive - the one hosted under OS/X. Have everything live in the OS/X filesystem.
Linux: guest os - same deal as Vista/XP.
Swizzle host/guest OSes as you see fit, but the idea is that wherever your files are residing, all of your operating systems can concurrently access.
Pro:
- run everything at once!
Current problems:
- networking performance between virtualized OSes isn't exactly screaming at gigabit speeds yet. You're going to have to take a hit on disk speed.
- no good virtualization of 3D hardware. This might require having OS/X run as your host O/S. It does the best job of managing the hardware in macbooks and has the prettiest eye-candy anyways.
- isolation between the OSes becomes a bit sketchier. Given the insecurity of Windows, you'd hate for a virus there to run rampant across your Linux & OS/X filesystems as well. With some forethought (read-only access of various directories via Samba & NFS), you probably could keep things in check.
To he/she who hired the shadow puppet.
Please make sure that when you hire a shadow puppet for use on technology messageboards that you hire someone who knows the technology at hand. You discredit your client, you burn the puppet's credibility all to shit, and you actually make it harder for those of us who know what we are doing to do it properly.
Stick to astroturfing you tool.
Vista VaporWare dual boot problem... Who cares... it's vaporware!
This article appears to be completely uninformed. Bitlocker works on a volume basis, not on an entire harddrive (unless the harddrive only has one volume). In fact, in order to get Bitlocker to work for Vista you MUST have two volumes, one being the OS volume that is encrypted with Bitlocker, and the other is the system volume which cannot be encrypted with bitlocker. Nothing prevents you from having multiple volumes and only enabling Bitlocker for some of the Windows Vista volumes. You can have other volumes/partitions with Linux or any other OS you want. The only issue is that you will not be able to read the Bitlocker protected partitions from Linux. Isn't that kind of obvious? You can still have a unencrypted FAT32 partition for sharing data between Linux and Windows, or an unencrypted NTFS partition for one way sharing between Windows and Linux (write support for NTFS on Linux is still not reliable). As far as recovery, you will not be able to do that with Linux, you will have to do that with Windows. I guess I'm not seeing a real issue here.
There's no real need to store your data on partitions that are exclusively accessible to Windows.
Simply make your data partitions ext2/3 and access them in Windows Vista with Explore2FS. A commenter in this recommendation of Explore2FS claims that it works fine in Vista Beta 1, so it's moderately safe to assume that it will work in subsequent iterations.
Also, there is an Ext2/3 filesystem driver for Windows which works in XP, and may or may not be ported to Vista as well (it may even work already, but I haven't seen any evidence for this).
shaunjohnston.com
I don't think so, it seems to be getting 2500 hits/min.
that would be 750000 in 5 hours (but maybe the rate was even higher then),
that is 2.5 hours away from a threesome at current rate.
Linux's version of 'encryption' is a feature, not a problem...
Rest assured that much of the media (video, music etc) will be in a bitlock making it impossible to transfer it to Linux or even listening to it. Its the transfering of your own data that will suffer because with Vista its no longer yours to play with if you "buy" it from any of the bigger media corps. You cant even access it with your applications of choice thanks to Vista if the corp se it fit.
Booting wont be a problem, sharing/copying data will. At the bright side, the ability to make a very potent copy protection will make the value of free beer much much bigger. When people will be forced to actually pay for every single app on Windows is when they will understand the just how insanely expensive some apps are.
HTTP/1.1 400
I read this and shrugged my shoulders. Who cares?
All the people here getting all worked up seem to be really addicted to Windows. I just ran Win2K the other day - considering to use it as a webdev plattform. Took me 10 minutes to drop that idea once again. Task Manger had 30+ processes running and was slowpoking about as if it were my old Cyric 150Mhz CPU. God, does that OS suck.
I'm sticking with Mac OS X and Linux. I really couldn't care less about Windows. And you shouldn't either.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
5, 4, 3...
(sheesh, nobody else posted this yet?!)
It should be harder for Rootkits to be installed as well right ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Seriously. we need a "Duh" Tag on this story.
That is the entire point of Bitlocker; Encrypt the drive so only the encrypting OS can decrypt it. Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
Even if you move the bitlocked disk to another Vista machine, that machine wouldn't be able to read the disk without the decryption key, which I severly hoped you backed up.
We're dreading this feature in Vista becuase if its anything like XP encryption and it's easy to turn on, there's going to be a lot of unhappy students when we tell them "Your hard drive crashed and all of your files are unecoverable becuase you encryped the drive"
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Slashdotted for a fuck! hmmmm I should have thought about doing this as well..
I kinda don't trust this counter though... I notice about 30+ hits every time I hit the refresh in my browser... I almost want to say its a joke because many of us slashdotters could be hitting the F5 and the real number of unique hits are around 5 (period).
If you have to buy a brand new computer to even start up Vista, can't you just install Linux on your old one?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I dunno - did the agreement specify unique hits? 'Cause if it didn't, every hit, F5 or not, is still legit.
Because it's pre-installed. Or, if you're building from parts, it's the only Windows operating system available at OEM prices to the public.
The last time I checked, servers at home are a viable option and in fact are a better method to share data between systems. Yes, it means you need to own more than one system but if you really can't afford it maybe it's time to look at some virtual machine software. Just a thought.
there is a native Windows driver for full read/write to Ext2/3 partitions that works pretty well.
Is it signed by the author (at a cost of 500 USD per year)? No? Then it won't work on Vista 64.
I don't give a shit as I've never dual booted in my life.
"You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux. . . "
No, just anti-dual-boot. Microsoft makes their product more secure
Sorry, but since when does dual-boot mean "less secure"?
How many viruses are going to be stopped by preventing dual-booting? How many trojans?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
or my personal favourite: just don't use windows.
And re-buy your peripherals when the manufacturer takes the effort to make Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista drivers available but not Linux drivers. Migrating away from Windows completely is not the best solution for many users until hardware makers start taking Linux seriously.
there is an Ext2/3 filesystem driver for Windows which works in XP, and may or may not be ported to Vista as well
If the author can't afford $500 per year to get a driver signed, then it won't work in Vista 64.
Seem a litte silly for Microsoft to do something like that when its biggest concurrent is going in the opposite direction and is gaining popularity with the direction he is going.
Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
If any OS could read the encrypted drive given the key, then there would be no problem. The problem comes when Microsoft does not specify how to turn the ciphertext plus the key into the cleartext.
Based on the quality of the betas so far, I'd say that single-booting Vista is enough of a challenge...
Pffft...Windows Vista sounds like dog****! I'm happy with SuSE 10, and i've already got family & friends who are impressed & want me to install it on their boxes.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
I'm sorry, but this seems to be a bit of a non-story
... I give it less than a month after release untill somebody has been able to figure out how to pull the data from there.
Mickeysoft can't stop anybody from boting anything. THe boot process is handled by the bios and the boot sectors on the disk, which can't be encrypted unless the bios cooperates.
If the bios cooperates, it still has to be able to read said boot sectors, and if it can read windows boot info, it can read linux boot info, or anything ELSE you want to put in there.
So "difficult to dual-boot" is as far as I can tell, CRAP.
As for sharing data between the two systems
Not only will dual booting and sharing files between OSs be harder, but recovery of lost data could also be harder. If they used something standard, or at least disclosed how they were storing the data, we might have a way to recover lost data. However, if we don't know how to decrypt the data, then how are we supposed to recover the data. Will the data be lost if you have to reinstall the OS? I know windows XP deletes sensitive information if your Admin has to reset your password.
1. This "problem" only occurs with the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
2. There is not a problem here. Bitkeeper (EFS with a name created by the marketing department) will not be enabled by default unless your company enables the policy. If your company does enable the policy, you should also create a Data Recovery Agent. This can also be done on a standalone workstation.
3. If you can't access your ENCRYPTED data from another OS or boot CD, the encryption worked. Encrypting data involves risks just as leaving your important data unencrypted involves risks. Pick your poison and move on.
4. If you do decide to encrypt your data via EFS, think first. Trust me, I made a huge mistake because I didn't understand the technology at the time.
I had a 20 GB hard drive for the OS and an 80 GB hard drive for "important data." This was four years ago, I was a college student, and legal digial music was in its infancy. I spent my savings on the 80 GB drive and acquired the music from various online sources. I had the 80 GB drive about 65% full when the RIAA started targeting universities. I thought encryption was an appropriate response since the data was "important." About a month after encrypting some contents on the drive, my 20 GB system drive died. It was still under warranty so I sent it in and got a replacement a couple weeks later. I reinstalled Windows XP Pro on the replacement drive and was looking forward to listening to the music again. To my surprise, many files were unreadable. Luckily I didn't encrypt the entire drive but just a few directories.
Drive encryption is optional. ... Don't automatically trust the guy telling you stuff because it's embarassing to the person he's telling you about.
He says it's there and may do things people don't expect, you say those Dells coming off the assembly line are going to make it an option.
One slight detail: Vista isn't out yet.
To me, it looks like you're both guessing, but even if you're right, are users going to understand that they're signing away their data to Microsoft with the push of a checkbox?
Okay, first off, the article headline is HORRIBLY misleading. BitLocker will NOT ENCRYPT THE ENTIRE DRIVE. It is required that you have a ~100MB partition in order to boot off of, which will then in turn load the needed software into RAM and *then and only then* decrypt the encrypted partition.
r ary/plan/5025760b-0433-4ba1-a2f4-9338915fdb4b.mspx - Beta1 won't install on FAT32, but according to offical MS docs, it will (eventually, most likely))
Read: This has nothing at all to do with dual booting. Your ability to dual boot will remain completly unchanged, period. This, however, is about your ability to share data between OSs, not your ability to boot two. Learn to write a article headline, please.
FAT32 is dead. Period, get over it, dead. No, I take that back, it still has one use: flash drives, and other forms of removable media. Other than that, IT IS DEAD. Why? Simple: security. From Windows 2000 and on, Microsoft actually put some degree of effort into security. "Some degree?" you ask? End result, due to NTFS, you can actually secure your system. Compared to FAT32 anyways, where a *guest* user can drop a virus as c:\explorer.exe, and then the next time Johnny Admin logs in, it's over. NTFS added actual security measures. ACLs. Execute bit. And, well, quite a bit more. Due to this, I can say the following without doubt that I'm right:
1) BitLocker will ONLY work with NTFS.
2) Vista will do everything they can short of threatening to eat your children to get you to install on NTFS. (Side note: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30128 vs. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/lib
3) If you're still using FAT32 as your primary OS partition, you're an idiot.
4) Due to #4, if your defense is, "my [windows] OS can't run on NTFS!", my response is still the same. Go upgrade, you're not helping anyone.
FAT32 is nice for removable media. That's about it.
(</troll>)
I think you're confused about what Bitlocker is.
More likely this guy has a bad case of bullshit-itus.
Sure they might be trying to annoy Linux dual booters, but what about Intel Macs? As far as trying to interfere with dual booting, I see the Mac threat a bigger issue for Microsoft than Linux. Well, ok maybe not bigger, but seeing as its the most recent news as far as dual booting, the implications for Macs should be considered as well as those with Linux.
So hey, no problem. Use an ext3 driver to write the data to a Linux partition from Windows mode.
:v)
What's that? They're all read-only? I'm sure that'll be fixed. Probably is already.
Right?
Vik
That means you won't be able to see 11.28% of the web, you realize...
Hip, Hip, Apache... hoard it while it's legal. ;-)
Pi Ran Out
The users that don't understand aren't going to be the ones dual-booting. Even if they do get the dual-boot bug, turning off the encryption is (most likely) just an annoying-but-managable reinstall away.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
What will likely happen is that when you a buy a computer, it will already be enabled.
I've tried telling people that if they want Windoze on computers, they should buy the computer with no operating system and buy the operating system separately. That way they would avoid all the crap that the vendors install.
Format C: install FreeBSD and Linux :)
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
... not to be stupid, but... is Apple really working on a WINE-type thing for OSX?
Counter went over 2m right around 10:03pm EDT on 4/27/06. Just FYI.
Here's a better picture of his girlfriend.
For all of your criticism of FAT, NTFS provides -zero- security when the host Windows operating system isn't in charge (e.g. when you've dual booted, or even booted with a Knoppix disc, and that Linux install happily disregards NTFS ACLs). It's functionally no better than FAT32 in that very common scenario. Encrypted File System, really a more granular, earlier version of BitLocker, does offer data exposure protection, however it's really an application layer above NTFS, much like PGPDisk.
1) BitLocker will ONLY work with NTFS.
Given that BitLocker exists transparently under the file system, automatically encrypting/decrypting transparently, there is no technical reason for them to limit it to this. In fact, given the wide number of FAT32 removable storage devices, which people will likely want to encrypt, it seems very likely that BitLocker will support non-NTFS devices.
So the next version of Windows is going to come with a functionality that is similar to a product that costs 125EUR and people are complaining?
I'm glad that someone noticed and bothered to point it out. A whole mess o' people must be new here, eh?
"gambling" is also an interesting twist on the ol' boilerplate.
Fixed.
Ext3 driver for windows won't work, as Vista will require signed drivers (last i heard), which you can be damn sure won't be available for ext3 :D
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This shouldn't affect dual-booting at all. It's called Mac and Linux or BSD.
Be heard || Be herd
In ten years you'll be saying exactly the same thing about replacing cocoa so you don't need a machine made by Apple ever again.
Way to go there, migrating to a locked in proprietary platform. Oh, and on top of that, one that's crippled to only run on mandated hardware.
But Apple are hip at the moment, so it doesn't matter.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Who dual-boots? A small subsection of the "geek crowd" who have some kind of moral objection with owning more than one PC ("but, I run Linux, I don't need a hundred servers to do the job of one!") or are too poor to do so. True geeks have more than one PC and find dual-booting to be annoying. That leaves the bulk majority of PC users: home owners and corporations. How many of them dual boot? Exactly. So, you've been shut out. Who cares as long as everyone else (the ones who really NEED to be protected automatically) are protected from not only harming themselves, but others. For a group so concerned with security, and bashing on endusers inability to grasp even the simplest technical knowledge, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the complain when someone makes it easy on the people most needing of someone to lock their system down for them. Yeah, it's a runon. That's what you get when you read this far down in the comments section. Nosebleeds of comments, baby.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
So, without hardware drivers and DRM keys you can't see any of the drive unless you never use it? If you do use it and then install a bootloader, won't that foobar everything windoze on your computer? I think I can see how this is going to make running anything but windoze on any pc a royal pain in the ass.
There is no filesystem specific overhead because it's transparent to the filesystem
Are you saying that this will work as fast as the same drive without any encryption? Will it work faster than a system that only encrypts a file or two, but does not carry the encryption overhead for every single file you touch? Somehow I don't think this feature is much of a feature but is just another M$ roadblock.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and an ext3 drive mounted by a hostile system will ignore security settings as well. the point of filesystem permissions is not to defeat a hostile system, but rather to allow admins to keep contorl of the machine and users to protect their files from other users.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
and the "restore" disk will only allow a whole disk hogging, exact partion reinstall. This will force the user to have a second hard drive and much more complicated boot mechanism if they want to get their money's worth out of the M$ tax and still use Linux. This assumes a chain loader will be able to deal with the encrypted volume without hardware drivers and DRM keys.
Although experienced linux users will have no problem with reformatting and creating new partitions
Experienced users will be able to do that if they can mount the drive in the fist place and don't mind wiping out the partition.
Like NTFS before, it will take years to get around this crappy little roadblock M$ is creating. New hardware is going to suck more than ever for a few years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
for the Mac OSX/BootCamp fanboys out there since the combination of Mac OSX and Windows XP is far superior to Vista apparently. The Register was probably waiting for Intel to put their CPU in the Mac prior to breaking this 'bad' news. Those Brits sure are clever.
Why on Earth would you want to encrypt system files and programs like calc? The overhead is going to make Vista suck more than ever. It would be much better to encrypt user created content exclusively. There's much less of that and they system should be able to discern the difference if simply encrypting the /home and user scratch spaces is not enough.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Saying an optional feature in Vista is targeted to making dual booting harded is like claiming Aero Glass is targeted to making XP look ugly.
Apparently, keeping you from seeing your data without Windoze is the idea, thank you.
Encrypting a whole "volume", aka the mindless single disk windoze partition, is a tremendous waste. There's no reason to make the user wait as every single file is decrypted for every dinky application. Hard drive access takes long enough when you don't have to decrypt temp files and IE's 500 MB of binaries every time. It's not wonder they gave up their vapor ware database filesystem. On top of the waste of time, system recovery is going to be more ... interesting to say the least. When your Vista system goes tits up, how much is it going to cost you to get your data back?
M$ has lost it on this one. The performance, cost and ease of use difference between Windoze and free software is going to be worse than ever. Vista is going to destroy them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
NTFS is "optional" too and was once only available for their most expensive offerings, with the best of expensive hardware. For a long time now, however, it's been the default system with your OEM "restore" disk that will only create a single disk hogging partition. It took years to get around NTFS resizing and read/writing. It might not be possible to get around this stupid kludge. It will suck to not be able to use the nicer equipment they will polute, and soon enough it will work it's way down to every major vendor's cheapest junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This encryption technology also has the effect of frustrating the exchange of data needed in a dual boot system. "You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux because it frustrates dual boot,"
No claims were made to universality or ability to turn the feature off nor are they required for this to frustrate dual booting. Like NTFS before, universality will come and every major OEM will make it very difficult to not do as M$ wants. In the mean time, it will make thing difficult for all the "enterprise" and "ultimate" editions all the leet little windoze users demand. Your boss is going to demand it, it will suck, then the OEMs will force it on you too. Nice eh?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and an ext3 drive mounted by a hostile system will ignore security settings as well. the point of filesystem permissions is not to defeat a hostile system, but rather to allow admins to keep contorl of the machine and users to protect their files from other users.
Right, and that isn't in dispute. This whole conversation relates to a volume encryption system that is intended to thwart data thieves who have physical access to a machine (to remove the HD, boot into alternate operating systems, and so on). In such a scenario, NTFS, ext3, and FAT32, are all on a equal footing minus any additional security.
Wouldn't it be nice if some big dumb monopoly would quit making performance robbing kludges that keep you from running free software on shiny new equipment? The fact that free software does more with less hardware does not make people want slow and old hardware when they can afford better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
in 3, 2, 1...
True.
DRM is going to cost them their majority market share. The more they make things suck, the less people will want to use them. WMP 10 is an indicator of where things are going. Check out this satisfied customer's opinion of it:
Then Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) started harassing me and asking to connect to the internet to check for licenses where none had been needed before. The worst part of this "upgrade" is how it poisoned the whole system and crippled Media Player Classic too.
How much more can they make things suck? Firewalls you can't configure, entire volumes encrypted and media players that don't play. What do they have to offer?
Who's going to buy this shit?
Things have never looked better for free software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Seems to me as if you're all talking about making it hard for yourselves. Why not simply take the opportunity to ditch Windows altogether?
There's no avoiding the performance hit. The low end co-processor will still have to wait for the underlying physical media. Pre-fetching and other nice tricks are also faster without encryption. There's no way to make a sum of two times lower than the individual times. Such a performance hit for everything, like calc for example, is wasteful.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This article is yet another ill-concieved, biased piece of FUD crap from the Register, brought to /. by Zonk.
/. is losing cred big-time.
Zonk should be dropped as a poster. Seriously,
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
Wow, looks like you have all this figured out.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Haha well done Asshat. That was one of the better first post trolls in a long time. Long live trolling!
Install COX in your backend today!
Cool. I had to post the FP link after it came through work on an IM and I read the site. The counter was leaping at one point and now the webserver is dead at 10:00PM PST. I think the girlfriend picture kept people interested. It did me anyways.
~S
volume encryption is nearly useless since ALL it protects against is a hostile mount, using object level encryption you can protect againse hostile mounts as well as hostile users exploiting a permissions glitch
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Amazing. I just looked at it at 01:12 (22:12 your time) or so and it's responding again... only the counter is at 2.6 million - it's gotten more than a million hits in the past 24 hours alone. So that's what they mean when the say "/. effect"!
Hmmm, I wonder what he gets if he gets 4 million hits...?
Nobody that uses Vista would be smart enough to use an alternative operating system. This is just another reason why I will stay as far away from the Vista operating system as I can.
Wait.. calc?? save yourself some money and buy a dedicated, portable device that provides all the functionality and more for no more than the cost of a couple submarine sandwiches. If your math needs are served by calc, you don't need a computer. you need a pencil.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'd argue that FAT32 is awful for essentially everything, we just have to use it for some things anyway. Consider removable media - they need to be *reliable* and *robust*, which fat32 is not. Any modern file system would be better ... but there's no other read/write FS that Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux can agree to read and write on any media type (ie not ISO9660/UDF because most only support it on optical media).
FAT32 is dangerously fragile, is very slow in real world use - consider how fast it fragments compared to a modern FS - has very limited partition sizes, and has no provision for any sort of file extended attributes, security controls, etc. It's horrible.
I must certainly agree that if you're still using it for your primary partition, you're probably making a big mistake.
Aaah, if only MS would publish the NTFS specs...
Wow! +4 Informative?
... 50-60 occasions) where the proprietry NTFS file format has given me hell or the file system permissions have caused more problems that they're worth.
... bitlocker. Good for them!
That was the worst Microsoft employee fit slashdot has yet seen, congratulations!
Never has my explorer.exe been replaced with a virus. Or for that matter, I can't recall having difficulty with virii in general. But I do recall (on, about
Okay so business loves security, encryption &
I'm an enthusiast. I love big shared data partitions, multiple OS's and easily re-sized, backed up and restored operating systems. It's FAT32 for me baby! That is until Microsoft starts opening up their partition formats so other software will work along side them.
Now have you got an XP driver for me that will read/write HFS+ extended (jourmaled) and HFS+ extended (case-sensitive, journaled)? Or an OSX driver that will let me read/write NTFS?
Nobody in their right mind would run his OS on fat32, but if you're planning on dual-booting, you probably already have made an extra FAT32 partition, in which you dump the stuff you want shared.
You can even mount it in your home directory for easy access. (And on Windows you just use X:\ as your 'my documents' folder).
And I don't get your ranting about the security of NTFS vs. FAT32. With NTFS, anybody can boot Knoppix with captive NTFS (or a Windows-based LiveCD, if those exist) and overwrite explorer.exe with anything he likes. You're screwed if somebody has physical access, no matter what the OS or Filesystem is.
anti-Linux? why not anti-Windows? someone who really like linux why need a second os like Windows?
I'm planning on getting some fine wire, maybe 22gauge, and hack the Master/Slave jumpers on the back of two hard disks.
The wires will lead to a DPDT physical switch on the computer case.
Flicking the switch (with power off!) will swap the Master/Slave status of the two drives.
So Windows, no matter what they do to it, can be installed in one drive, bootable, and Linux/other OS's can be installed in the other, bootable.
Obviously when Linux is booted, it will have access to the Windows drive. All I need then is a decryption/encryption tool, to swap data between drives.
What I always do is to keep my data in a separate partition from the main Windows partition. This has some advantages and some disadvantages:
Advantages:
1) easy sharing with other O/Ses that can handle FAT32.
2) I can reinstall everything without loosing my data.
3) I can keep separate snapshots of the O/S and the data.
Disadvantages:
1) FAT32 performance not the same as NTFS.
I remember Microsoft's "encryption" security. I used it on my personal folders once, and it showed the folders and files in a reassuring green colour, telling me they're "safe". Very cheap and easy peace of mind...
Except for the day I had to reinstall Windows XP. What happened to those files? It was impossible to read them, and I found ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING HELP on the internet about it.
All my files got lost forever. I fiddled over a day, but it was just more hassle than worth my while. "Safe" indeed.. I just reinstalled the stupid OS and it forgot the keys to unlock these encrypted bogus "safe" files that were already present on the harddrive.
Luckily I have aquired many backups over the years, so I didn't lose too much or anything important. But it will be interesting hearing the nightmare stories that will unfold a few years after Vistas release.
It's just so sad to see all the fools falling into the trap, not listening to your cautious words, again..
Remember I told you so.
Again, and again we do. But do they listen?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pretty laughable. They still havn't got full NTFS support in Linux yet. Perhaps they should concentrate on their 1st....
Hell I don't do windows now.
I see this as pro linux.
After the security, and stability issues with vista (and there will be) more people will dump windows all togather rather than atempt to dual boot.
> From Windows 2000 and on, Microsoft actually put some degree of effort into security.
... sigh.
And here I was, using ACLs on my Windows NT 3.1 workstation back in '95
Go somewhere random
Indeed. And in fact you see a lot of implementations for windows of which a lot are based on the open-source code.
This shows that :
Meanwhile, the opensource community is trying to play nice with Microsoft's OS.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As usual, nothing official is coming from Apple, or hasn't survived long enough before being crushed/sued.
For now Boot Camp is just a dual boot tool.
But rumors, and speculations (from I, Cringely) are that Apple may try to develop some virtualisation solution to have Vista run on top of MacOS X. (And so you'll be able to play your Win32/DirectX games sand boxed inside a MacOS X environment).
On the other hand, the opendarwin community is working on a WINE implementation called DarWine which aims at porting Wine to MacOS X for Intel and PowerPC (thanks to qemu).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is not a good move on Microsoft's part. At least, not unless they've improved Vista's realiability one helluva lot over XP's!
Over the last year I have worked on many XP systems that hosed the NTFS file structure to the point that they wouldn't boot anymore. In the end, the only way I've been able to fix it is to reload Windows. The only way that I could recover any data was to boot a Linux "Live CD" with NTFS support, transfer all the client data to other media and then reload Windows. Oddly enough, Linux could read the files just fine but Windows could not read it correctly on boot.
All of my clients (rightly or wrongly) are more concerned with recovering data from a corrupted Windows install than they are about others being able to read their files from a stolen system.
... on my dual-boot system, because I didn't want to play around with ntfs 3 years ago - and never changed the running system afterwards ;)
Would Vista support F32/NTFS as an option at least for a data disk?
In fact I couldn't care less, as I moved to vmware long ago.
Only good for an X11 envrionment ? Try to explain this to the darwine team of opendarwin or the ReactOS developper team...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's no avoiding the performance hit. The low end co-processor will still have to wait for the underlying physical media. Pre-fetching and other nice tricks are also faster without encryption. There's no way to make a sum of two times lower than the individual times.
If your hard drive platter reads at 30MB/s, the I/O chips can run on the HD can run up to 69.7MB/s, SATA works at 133MB/s, and your processor can only possibly handle reads up to 200MB/s, what will your net speed be?
30MB/s.
It's the weakest link that dictates the real world speed, and the same will be true with whole drive encryption as well. So long as the encryption can be accomplished faster than the I/O, and without using CPU time that would otherwise be used to better effect elsewhere, there would be no hit at all being completely irrelevant block latencies.
What will likely happen is that when you a buy a computer, it will already be enabled.
Well it would be pretty hard to enable, unless they magically know who is buying the computer ahead of time,
The whole point is the END USER has to create their own key and pin/biometric at the TIME the drive is Encrypted.
So unless you see Dell becoming 1800 Ms Cleo, or see Gateway flying people to their factory just so they can enable the feature for that person, I think your tinfoil hat may be leading you down the wrong path...
One slight detail: Vista isn't out yet.
Actually this feature is pretty much as set in stone as you can get. The guy writing the article knows little to nothing about bitlocker, especially baiting people into believing it has any anti-Linux intentions.
As for it being a real feature and as the person above posted, they are correct and it is.
I am truly looking at the help file for Bitlocker in Vista as I type this. (We have also tested BitLocker on several systems, it does what it is supposed to do, and it has to be enabled by the END USER, as their key/pin is used to encrypt the drive.
And lets say as a goof Dell did enable this feature, and assigned a key and pin to the person buying the computer, all you do is type in your pin for access and then turn BitLocker off. (It can be turned on and off for the entire drive quite easily once it has been enabled.)
It is 100% optional, and not something recommended for the average person, it also is not recommended for volumes that need to be access from another OS in a multi-boot environment, so just don't use it.
You do realize it even locks out WindowsXP if you are dual booting WindowsXP and Vista and you use BitLocker to encrypt your Vista partiion?
This is NOT an evil plan against other OSes.
P.
Nice. That's sick.
My front door has a lock on it. I have more valuable things in my apartment than the computer and its data.
Sure, this encryption scheme could make things more secure for the corporates, but offices have doors and locks, too, and a business isn't likely to dual boot.
This is once again taking away functionality without adding (for me) any real additional security. I lost functionality when I "upgraded" to XP last fall from 98, as I lost the use of some software, and my CD burner (Imation) is flaky as hell now. It won't read CDs I burn at a friend's house unless I close the session, if I don't close the session Windows thinks it's a blank (even though EAC and CDex can see the data, but not do anything with them because they're not music). I haven't found a single thing that XP will do better than 98, or that XP can do that 98 couldn't. I feel like Microsoft STOLE that hundred bucks I paid for their shitty OS.
What I need for Windows to do AT HOME is to boot into a user space without my having to enter a password (like Mandriva lets me) where I could get on the internet and perhaps play games, and only get into root when I need to install something. That would enhanse MY security, an encrypted file system won't.
I also need Microsoft to unweld the fucking apps like Media Player and IE from the OS. I don't use them, they're just more plumbing for the virus writers to plug (or open) up.
Most of all, I need then to check each and every buffer for overflows, isn't something like 90% of all exploits from buffers that let the data spill into executable space?
If Windows holds the key to the encrypted file system, a virus can pretend to be me and ask Windows for the key, how is this going to help?
Thank god you ended that with the end-troll tag. I was going to respond to that tremendous bout of idiocy, until I was made aware that you were trolling. Haha, fat32 is dead. That was a good one...
Conspiracy theorists! Start your engines!
But really, I still don't understand why anybody would purposly take something like dual booting, that people like to do, and put limits on it. I don't understand why Microsoft and Apple both don't build their products to be able to be installed on anything. Sure, you can spout the usual stuff about Microsoft's deals with OEM's and Apple's "our hardware is pwnage" defense..It's like making cars that don't drive on some roads...
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Don't use Vista. I know I won't, especially if I can't share my data between Windows and Linux. Games is the primary reason I use Windows anymore, with most of my other tasks/projects are migrating to Linux without much trouble.
These restrictions and limitations are seeming more and more likely to shoot Microsoft in the foot. The only problem is the foot is the size of Wisconsin and the bullet isn't making a big enough hole yet. We need bigger bullets.
And they said zombies weren't real!
From the end-user point of view. ;)
;).
Oh, wait, end users don't care. Huh, you got me. Good job
You have a good point, so let me re-phrase: BitLocker will only encrypt the partition it boots off of, if and only if it is formatted as NTFS. Other exceptions may, but probably won't, exist.
It does work well enough to use. For me. For Joe User...not so much. Take a look at CrossOffice. That package works *extremely* well. Unfortunately, it's only for a subset of windows apps, but for what it does, it does it perfectly. If every app worked as well, we'd have a winner.
The next step would be to finally get a handle on Win32 DCOM and the like, so Installshield and other ole stuff works. Complete the picture, you know? Get all the major core functionality in there so you don't have to install dcom98.exe and all that. And polish the thing so you don't have to spend any time fiddling with config files. This app uses the override for X.dll, and this one doesn't. That kind of thing. I can do it - Joe User cannot. We need a Joe User friendly Wine.
All it would take is one corporate backer with deep pockets to make Wine work like a drop-in replacement for windows. Just one. Apple - I'm looking at you. Do this and you're rule the world. You've already put x86 in your machines. We all know why. Now follow through! =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ever tried getting at data on an NTFS partition with Fedora? ZOMG! Fedora is trying to lock out Windows!
:)
Nope. This is still Microsoft trying to lock out everyone else (including Fedora). Until the NTFS specs are published in enough detail.
It works in reverse, too. Windows still can't read any other filesystem other than FAT/NTFS. The ext/reiser/xfs/afs/hfs/whatever specs are out there, Microsoft just has no interest in working with them.
See how easy it is to bash Microsoft?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The whole point is the END USER has to create their own key and pin/biometric at the TIME the drive is Encrypted.
According to the Wikipedia article on Bitlocker, the transparent operation mode (uses a TPM) does not seem like it requires the end user to create his/her key. The drive could be encrypted by the OEM during installation, without letting the OEM get a copy of your key since it is just available to the TPM.
"Windows Vista To Make Dual-Boot A Challenge?"
Tip of the hat to the understated humour. When has Microsoft _not_ made dual-booting a challenge?
It can be turned on and off for the entire drive quite easily once it has been enabled.
But I guess that turning it on and off would take a while, since it would have to decrypt everything on the volume when turning it off, and vice versa.
TPM is this, whether you enter your pin/password at BIOS or whether you enter it at the Vista Login screen. That is the difference.
The data on the hard drive is 'still' encrypted to the 'user', meaning their specific administration GUID assigned to the user, including their password pin.
So again, for the system to be 'pre-encrypted', they would have to setup the user administration account in Windows Vista (And this is different that XP), and also assign the user a password before they ever shipped the computer.
Since DELL and no company ever did this for XP installations, I see no reason they would go to all the time and trouble to lock a persons hard drive, especially when it is AGAINST MS's RECOMMENDED OEM specifications.
But lets say, they create a User for their customer, and turn on BitLocker. And now let's say YOU are the customer. All you would have to do is 'TURN OF BITLOCKER' in the Control Panel. The Drive would be decrypted and you could install Linux on a second partition or WindowsXP on a second partition or whatever you wanted.
So even if a company is so stupid to try and turn this on and create a unique user and password for every customer, and wait for the drive to lock to itself, any person that would want to multi-boot, would be smart enough to click the cute little button to turn it off.
It is a not a permanent lock, nor can a system be sent a user where it the user could not turn it off or the user would not be able to log in. See, the OEM would have to give the user the SPECIFIC admin account information used to turn on BitLocker for the person to get into the computer.
Are you starting to see how far fetched this would be? There is no way Dell or an OEM is going to waste time doing this, nor compromise their sales by locking their own customers out of the computers they are buying.
.
9:34 PST 4/28/2006 and it's at over 4.5M hits.
~S
I have LVM2 in my linux partition and up to now only explore2fs supports that, but with xp only running as admin which is very dangerous. Any win32 malware picked up by browsing under linux is going to be executed as root so I''ll be PWNED!!
If this OS is an open door to viruses like previous versions of Windows, an encrypted file system merely means you will be encrypting viruses onto your hard disk but does not prevent them from running. And if you have a virus on your hard disk, nothing is truely secure no matter how you encrypt them.
They don't care about being charged. Hell, they don't even blinked at being convicted here in America - they simply delay the next Windows release until the sanctions/limitations run out then do what they please with Longhorn/Vista/Windows XP + Shiny skin and DRM. I'm sure they'll pull a similar move in Europe.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Although Linux supports every one of my old peripherials, the ISA cards won't fit in the PCI slots.
Close, but no cigar. The problem I'm having is that I have a USB scanner, but there exists no public free software that knows how to talk to the scanner.
Well it would be pretty hard to enable, unless they magically know who is buying the computer ahead of time,
But dude, the lizards who own Micro$oft and the Repub1iKKKKKKan party will just use the Patriot Act and the so called Department of Homeland Security (did you know that the Nazis set up a department of homeland security too?) to ship you off their secret base in Iran in a black helicopter where you'll be tortured, brainwashed and fingerprinted by the aliens and shipped back to the US with your memory blanked. The one day, you'll decide to buy a computer, and it will never occur to you that it's strange it knows your damn name and shoe size.
Hell you can't prove that's this hasn't already happened to you, can you?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I installed Vista on my XP Pro laptop. Flawless dual boot on the first try.
Actually, the reason FAT32 partitions are limited to 32GB was because larger FAT32 partitions can experience wrapping and data corruption due to some bug in FAT32 itself, the details of which I forget.
I found info on this in M$'s knowledge base, after experiencing it myself on a 60GB FAT32 partition. It *looked* like HD failure, in fact it was so convincing that I RMA'd the drive before discovering the KB article on the subject.
There is also a patch on M$'s site, to let FDISK make FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. However, it appears that the original FDISK "limit" was deliberate, and that some later bunch of coders weren't aware of the FAT32 bug, so they "fixed" FDISK to remove the limit. Ooops...
Which probably explains the rash of "failed HDs" once HDs got into the 40GB range, prior to WinXP making NTFS the consumer-PC standard -- NFTS is not affected by this bug.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sorry I didn't mean to be harsh, only a bit sarcastic.
What currently happens, is that the biggest part in Wine is trying reverse engeneer the Win32 API, and implement most of it. that's the part that is even used on completly different project like ReactOS. Only a small part is "translating to X11". So most of Wine's achievement is only POSIX dependant and could work in any other environnement.
But on the other hand you're right about Wine not running everything yet (although most application I try to run in Wine just run fine, but maybe we're not trying to run the same things) and Apple my try to develop another solution. Maybe starting their own project similar to Wine.
It's also very likely that "Virtualization" will be the Next(c) Big(r) BuzzWord(tm) in the industy. Maybe Microsoft will try to implement it in Vista. And Apple could "piggy-back" on this trend and uses this potential Virtualisation capability to run Windows inside MacOS X (using virtualisation instead of full hardware emulation like VMWare). Some, like I Cringely have such speculation.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You're running Windows in a non-admin account ? Whoa ! That's rare, but very good !
Solution that is recommanded almost everywhere :
- Use the "Run as..." feature of WinXP to run only "explorefs2" in an admin account and the rest in normal accounts. Therefor, only exploits directly aimed at explorefs2 will have admin privilege, if other exploits are encountered (you got an MS-Office-only document. you reboot under windows, you import this MS-Office document using explorefs2 and MS-Word gets exploited) they won't pwn the whole machine.
Solution I use here :
- Get some of the old hardware you have lying around (some Pentium-II/III era mother board and CPUs), a nice netword card (1GBps if you get one. Even if PCI bus won't max it out (33Mhz * 32bits), they're cheap) a lot of memory, nice new shiny disks (the only realy new stuff you buy), and maybe some controller to put them on (if you're unlucky with some pre-LBA48 chipset like 440BX)
- Install a headless linux on it. You may use LVM2 and RAID, even software RAID5 (you don't give a damn if software raid slows your machine : the CPU on this machine is used only by the server. It doesn't slow the CPU on which you're gaming/working). It's like turning your old hardware into a glorified hardware RAID controller. And the good part is, if the CPU or motherboard dies, you'll be able to re-plug the harddrive into any other linux box with instant raid & lvm2 support. (Unlike trying to find a RAID controller of the same exact model). (Besides, as almost nothing runs on this machine, most of the memory will be used as cache.)
- Install a file server on it, using Samba and requiring log-in (no guest accounts).
- Voilà ! You can mount your share from whatever OS you want, underwhich ever user access level you want, the files remain on the server and are only accessed with the right of the user loged in samba. And on top of that, you get a nice journaled file system you choose, with support for >4GB files, even if the clients you connect with don't support it. (like FreeDOS. Reiser & Ext2 DOS tools don't support the journaling. But you can still SFTP or SCP files to/from your server)
Other ideas :
- run clamav periodically on it : virus scanning may slow computers, but it won't slow the computer you're working on.
- use Smart : the disk are the only precious thing that must be monitored. The rest is old recycled crap.
- run some P-2-P software that has distinct core (running on file server) and GUI (on your box). Sancho and mlDonkey are a nice combination. Your torrent keep being downloaded at night, but your girlfriend doesn't complain because you have to keep you "OMG!!LOL!!11!!!"-overclocked-with-ponnies cooled-with-20-12cm-fans-running-at-10'000rpms Pentium Ultra Extreem edition running at night.
- If you need to access other machines at home remotely, no need to keep them on. Only keep your server on, log-in with SSH, and use Wake-On-Lan feature to turn on the other machines.
- You can give the spare CPU cycles that aren't used in software RAID or clamav-scanning to some distributed project at BOINC
- I heard that part of the StarForce protection scheme detects when data is simultaneously streamed from both the harddrive and the cd-rom (id est : DaemonTools reads image from hard-drive and then feeds it as virtual Cd-ROM). Using a server to store disc images supposed to circumvent this part of the protection scheme.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
a company is so stupid to try and turn this on
"to try to turn".
hi i want to post a new post i'm really happy to learn windows is becoming less of a computer these days than ever before. also last night, i had special night, seeing mr ceo M$ in the 80's office throwing floppies in front of the mac... old photoshop version??? i digress (is that how you spell that) don't be rude now cause my spell checker is not activated on bootup through linux kernell win32.dll what i want to SHare with you today is how using p2p software is a lot of fun esecially,,,, iwht an alterneativeeeee"" oss like linux... hihihi the thing is i downloaded some neat programs to make my windows files run on my linux system all videoy and full of sound... so it goes.... no i can see beautiful programs loading when i play my mp3 files in linux that you might otherwise not see if your a plain nt user???? intersting?? i get supra windows that loop over and over with what i presume is the windows media player thingy jiggy going completetly out of whack.. and its only a musuk phile when mod, sorry yes i know its far away in the post, you ready this please guide this stray sheep into new posting lands where i may talk laugh and exchange(?) right?
Well i may as well double post this baby since no one else is saying antyhihg.. anyway just to say the other day i wanted to get my windoze files on a fat32 partition and i could not format the very format with the windows thingy formatter tools .,. so anyway i decide to load up my old win98 in order to be able to actually partition the drive/drivespace into fat32 so i can dump my files and have them linux read them,,,, yeah yeah i know its easier if you go with another program that will let you read ntfs.. but whatever to say the least windows98 totally destryed any trace left of the boot loader and i had to noppix my way into burning a dvd of at that point my linux files using waht? virtuall memiory or some shit to buffer my programme for writing???? hello i am probably a minor excerpti0ohn but anyway i feell your pain.
Anti-Linux? Oo-er... The EU have just been given another excuse to put Vista's release on hold for another antitrust case.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
No running ROT13 doesn't take too long...