[Skybird]

Microsoft has me up in full arms. With their overstepping of red lines regardign enforced updating to W10, they finally loaded up the last straw that made the camel's back break. I have started to gain the needed education on Linux to set up at least a dual boot machine, maybe even two machines, one for games and just games, and the other for Linux, surfing, and things I consider to be too sensible as if I would want have Microsoft being involved in it.

If I would speak Russian, I maybe would try to get a Russian OS.

However. These days I am more active in the forums of Kunos Simulazioni (Assetto Corsa) and Sector3 (Raceroom), and since the Kunos forums need game-account based subscription, I cannot take it for granted that most people here can get access to it. I thus quote some posts of mine in full, just copying them over.

Originally Posted by #24

Is anyone here running AC successfully on Linux, in a Virtual Machine or in any other way?

I am so pissed by the criminal and law-breaking ruthlessness by which MS tries to enforce W10 onto people who even actively set their systems to not accepting it, and now even delivers updates that install the data-kraken-functionality of W10 into W7 and W8 for busers who thought they were safe if not accepting W10 updates. Also, that the many spying channels of W10 cannot be reliably shut down and Micrsoft actively hinders people to do so by threatening technical malfunctions if they do so, or when users use to clean registry entries that help in supporting temporarily but frequently installed data extractors on the HD - and that they as aggressively push for using the cloud so that all what you do ends up on servers located in the NSA's backyard: all this pisses me big time. George Orwell's vision was naive, compared to the vision of Microsoft et.al. , they are the wet dream of the Stasi and Gestapo - and you guys even voluntarily expose yourself to it!? They really want to shove this piece of spyware down our throats NO MATTER WHAT, and for me this is finally the one last straw that breaks the camel's back. W7 will be my last OS by Microsoft, and I have started to study the needed knowledge to migrate to an alternative to Microsoft once W7 has reached the end of its usability. At least I will have two systems in the near future. One exclusively for games and nothing else, and often physically disconnected from the internet whenever the game allows to be played offline, and another platform with Linux or something. Personal data files I do no longer maintain on a computer since years already, and so my only concern left is banking, since more and more banks indicate they plan to push people for exclusive online banking usage, making offline banking more and more expensive, even taking it out of service.

The world is a mental asylum, and it turns worse every month.

So again my question: is there any example of anyone who successfully runs AC on a non-Windows system? Offline, of course, considering Steam. Can it be technically done, via VM or in any other fashion?

P.S. Before you call me a conspiration theorist, google for the problem of enforced W10 migration and according updates that cannot be deinstalled, or reinstall themselves even if you ban them from doing so. Its no joke, and it is no minor nuisance. Microsoft takes very aggressive and deliberate actions here to get its way and make people want what MS thinks they should and must and have to want. Its about profling, the crystal clear consumer, marketing and advertising, selling profiles and making profits with that, and obeyiond the NSA that sues trhe global spreaidng of Microsoft software as one opf its major tools to enforce access to where ever it wants and to whomever it wants. In the main its business - and YOU and all your private life is the item that gets traded.

Also keep in mind that W10 enforces the ordinary user to accept all Windows updates that Microsoft labels in all its wisdom and reasonability as "important" , you can no longer delay them, chose, deselect some, get some research done before installing a critical one, and so on. If you ever had installed faulty Windows Updates and ran into a busy day while trying to repair the damage (happend twice to me, since then Auto Updates are switched off on my system), you might see why I have an issue with that.You are completely at their mercy - and thy have repeatedly demonstrated in the past that they are neither pefect, nor inerrant. If the bring a faulty or dangerous update out, you cannot escape to get tackled by it, it is like a firewall being forced to switch itself off so that hackers can have their easy fun with you.

(...)

Originally Posted by #27

Those who cannot value freedom, will carelessly trade it away. And I think they even do not deserve freedom, it is pearls before the swines. When they have lost it, they will care for it. But then it is too late.

Its about your data on your for example health, food habits, private things you give away - being out there and being a wanted treasury for employers. Insurances. Government offices. And they will go after it, no matter what some naive laws and rules say.

Every data that can be used against you one day, will be used against you. The sky is the limit. Compared to that, targetted advertisement bombing and overwatching your consuming habits and movement patterns, all this automatically, stored forever, beyond your control is just an annoyance. But annoying it is nevertheless. Once you do not get a job, or are rejected by an insurance, and are not given a desperately needed credit - maybe that then will make you think instead of giggling. What technically can be done, will be done - that is something like a natural law in progress and future'S development. First illegally maybe, and then it will get legalised afterwards. But getting done it will be, no matter what.

Would anyone of you not mind if cameras and microphones get installed in your flat? Oh wait, I forgot many people watch container TV a la Big Brother and voluntarily post themselves half naked in "social media". Okay. My fault. How could I ever come to care or worry...

(...)
And the one I am really after when replying in here at Subsim:

Originally Posted by #42

Sorry for returning to it once more, but this is not really unimportant: 4-5 days ago (I learned just today) thousands of users in the US have been assaulted (there is no other word for it) by a Windows Update that changed registry entries once again (even one that is deliberately left by a third-party tool designed to prevent GWX-driven update launch)and ended by leaving these users with only the choice to accept the update or a deadlocked system. Microsoft calls this, like several of its other attacks before, a "mistake", a mishap and error, claiming it was unintentional. But you see, Microsoft happens to suffer so many mistakes recently, all of them opportunistically chosen, it seems, all of them helping Microsoft to get its way, and bypassing user's rejection of W10. The excuse made, that is was just due to an error, is not believable. Its bullying by them, plain and simple.

BTW, GWX means "Get Windows X" (not to be mistaken with the mod for Silent Hunter). If you have an icon named like this on your system but do not intend to go with W10 right now, your alarm bells should now ring DEFCON-1 and you should realise that you already are in the decisive last battle of the war - and that you can still prevent W10 is no certainty any more from here on.

I recommend this reading which includes a link to said tool - it must be run EVERY time you have activated and run Windows Updates, since Microsoft just has demonstrated to have full access to your computer and being able to alter its registry entries in any way they want.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/29...pgrade-block-settings-are-still-in-force.html

Then google a bit by using this search string "Windows 10 enforced update"

Finally, follow the advise here:

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/17/how...ndows-7-and-8/

Note that Microsoft deliberately attacks tips and routines like described here, you may find that some of the updates mentioned for deletion cannot be deleted on your system anymore. In this case, find and download an old tool called "XPantispy", a reliable and classic tool whose author already thought he would go as a pensioner, but is so angry about Microsoft'S crossing of red lines that he has announced to update it after years of hybernation and to make it fit to easily clo9se all those privacy holes in the registry that W10 leaves users vulnerable to. By using that tool, seal your system off and switch off all channels by which the OS contacts the web automatically, from Windows Updates over error notifications to time synchronization - EVERYTHING. Make those settings a profile. Then try to deinstall the critical updates again, reboot, and see whether they are gone. For me, they were gone this way. And only in this way.

Next, you need to check whether the several GB-heavy hidden W10 isntallation f iles already have infiltrated lyur system without your knowledge. Make sure that hidden folders are being displayed, then have a system search for $Windows.~BT. On my W7x64 OS, the place it showed up in was in the Windows folder, other users said they found it at the root of their drive c:\ You need Admin rights to delete it. - Interesting: I NEVER gave consent to get lined up in queue and get a copy of W10 "reserved", never, nowhere. Still I got this junk forced onto my HD in the background, without any notification. I love it when I delivered something that I enver wanted, and aft5erwards getting told that they are just doing what I told them what I want. The arrogance of getting told this lie into my face, is infuriating.

Next, reboot, use a standard profile in XPantispy that opens Windows Updates again, switch off automatic update search, switch off that optional recommended updates get installed just like security updates, and laucnh the search process ,anually (ALWAYS do that manually, ALWAYS!). The critical updates probably pop up again. Rightclick on them, and then chose them for being supressed in any further update search runs. If no security updates need to be done, break off here, and then chose the XPantispy rifle that seals your system again, shutting down the Windows Update Routine alltogether.

This compares to not leaving your front door open and hoping that no bad guy sneaks in but only the good guys do, but to keep it closed and locked and only open it manually at a time of your chosing, with you beign on your guard and overwatching the scene and process. W10 standard ediitons makes htis impossible, btw. You get all updates enforced onto you immediately whenever the wise super mind in Redmont decides that you should get it. Of course they claim its for your own good and that it is about making the world a safer place and blah and blöah and bölah.What it really is about is making you even more defenseless to them.

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For IT professionals and thos eusing comouters for a living, rejecting W10 right now has some more validity than "just" privacy concerns and being pissed about Microsoft no longer just being enthusiastic in advertising its OS, but clearly overstepping red lines and getting away with it, you may consider these arguments as well:

WHY DID YOU WRITE THIS PROGRAM?
I use my main desktop PC for music production, and at the moment some applications and hardware that are critical to my work either have known compatibility issues with, or flat-out don't work in Windows 10- so I'm sticking with Windows 7 until I'm reasonably confident my stuff will still function correctly after I upgrade. While I don't have any general negative opinions on Microsoft or Windows 10, I found the Get Windows 10 app's relentless upgrade reminders absolutely infuriating because there was no obvious way to stop them. Of course I found some solutions online (of wildly varying complexity and efficacy), but I had a bigger problem...

You see, I also had a lot of friends and family with Windows 7 and Windows 8 on their computers who were also continually pestered by the Get Windows 10 app- and I wanted to give them a solution that was literally so easy my mom could do it. None of the tutorials I'd seen about how to deal with the app are what I'd consider novice-friendly, whereas GWX Control Panel is a one-click solution.

Maybe my recipe list is not the best-structured out there, but you should be able to find just any other, any better, if just playing with search terms yourself and setting time-limits for results of not longer than one year. Its a very hot topic out there, practically every tech magazine and blog writes about it. Since April last year.

Hope one day somebody will hack a predator drone and make it bomb the MS HQ at Redmont, flattening it. It took me years to overcome my laziness and comfortable easiness, but Microsoft has finally succeeded in making even lazy me turning my back on them. I'm done with them. Congrats, MS! I think never before have you managed to make yourself so many new hostile new "friends" in such a short period of time. Hide and rot in that dark hole where the sun never shines.