Windows

After months of disappearing, I’m able to come back blogging, with A LOTS of drafts. I’ll be updating more details about my current situation in a more dedicated post. But for now, let’s talk something technological interesting. Dell Optiplex 3050 Micro has been my ideal open source desktop PC for quite a while, probably since the first time when Libreboot added its support. Recently, I got the chance to have one of these as an upgrade from my older mini PC build. ...

Recently, I started sending/receiving documents to/from untrusted sources. In my threat model, this requires extra operational security to prevent privacy exposure and security risk. Since the offical guide is not so detailed for Windows, I decided to write one while installing on a Windows 11 LTSC. First, in Windows Terminal/PowerShell, run wsl --install to setup WSL2. Read my previous post for more detail. Because the latest verisons of Dangerzone 0.9.1 and docker desktop 4.44.3 have unsolvable bug (reports unknown error '2'), I have to choose the ealier version which works properly. ...

Windows Nostalgia A recent video on Windows 7 as daily driver OS by Brodie Robertson was hilarious but also arguable. For me, XP is the best OS ever made by M$. However, it has became not so useful nowadays neither for retro gaming (which 98SE is the king) nor for day-to-day usage, due to both hardware and software incompatibility. The compromise would be Windows 7. I agree there are too much of accumulated unpatched security vulnerabilities, but there are tricks to mitigate most of those either technically or strategically. ...

The End of Timelessness? As a free and open source provocateur, I use Linux on my old and new hardware. But when installing OS for non-tech-savvy people, most of time, Windows is my only option. Nevertheless, I often install and recommend open source tools on Windows platform for them. During Windows 8 to 10 LTSB period, I wasn’t so interested into installing the latest Windows. However, when M$ decide to block hardware in their installer either via TPM or CPU generations, I started installing later version of Windows just for bypassing the restrictions. ...

WSL Installation There are some special use cases where I would like to go through and show the process of setting up WSL. Ubuntu’s official document works well on Windows 11 LTSC for WSL installation, there is also a tutorial from sitepoint with more details. I’m doing this on a double debloated version of Windows 11 from previous post of Tiny 11 WTG, where I downloaded WinGet, extracted DesktopAppInstaller_Dependencies.zip and installed with PowerShell: ...