Windows 10 has been around for a long time, but not everyone likes it. On the other hand, support for Windows 7 ended in early 2020, and users must either upgrade to a new version or look for an alternative. For such cases, there are a huge number of free Linux distributions that you can try and start using.

In today’s article I will give 10 reasons why you should leave Windows in favor of Linux. Linux-based operating systems are open source and freely distributed, but this is not their only advantage.

[...]

In this article, we’ve covered 10 reasons why you should replace Windows 10 with Linux. Every year there are more and more such reasons. Previously, Linux was positioned only as a system for servers. Now everything is not so bad on home computers. In addition, thanks to Valve for Linux, games have appeared. I hope this article will help those who still have doubts. Have you already switched to Linux? What are the most compelling reasons for you? Write in the comments!

• Mysterious bug is deleting Microsoft Teams, SharePoint files [Ed: "Mysterious" means secret code; Microsoft booster Lawrence Abrams seems to be growingly concerned about that]

• Verkada [Cracker] Charged With Wire Fraud, Identity Theft in U.S.

  A Swiss computer [cracker] who was involved in the intrusion of Verkada Inc., exposing surveillance footage from Tesla Inc., was charged by prosecutors in Seattle with conspiracy, wire fraud and identity theft.

  Till Kottmann, 21, and their co-conspirators were accused of [cracking] dozens of companies and government entities since 2019 and posting private victim data of more than 100 entities on the web in a grand jury indictment released Thursday.

• Ohio senator lashes govt over accountability for SolarWinds attack

  Portman did not take kindly to this and fired back: “So if everyone is in charge, no one is in charge, right? Who exactly, who is accountable?”

  A similar scene was played out in the House of Representatives on Wednesday with 14 politicians, both parties, on the House Energy and Commerce Committee trying to find out which departments had been affected by the attack.

  In a related development, questions are continuing to be raised over the extent of Microsoft's involvement in the SolarWinds attacks. As iTWire outlined, the company has been gradually revealing more about its connection to the attack.

• 'Who exactly, who is accountable?': Rob Portman presses cybersecurity officials on SolarWinds [attack]

  In the House, lawmakers are similarly frustrated with the federal government’s answers on the fallout from the SolarWinds [attack]. A bipartisan coalition of 14 House Energy and Commerce Committee lawmakers wrote to Biden administration officials and Cabinet officers on Wednesday seeking answers to basic questions such as, “Has your department been impacted by the compromise?”

• Serious Security: Mac “supply chain” backdoor takes aim at Xcode devs [Ed: The latest example of Microsoft-hosted projects (GitHub) causing security problems, which are then being blamed on "Linux" or "Macs" (but never Microsoft). Use Microsoft GitHub/NPM and get destroyed, just like Microsoft's own systems.]

• Jussi Pakkanen: Microsoft is shipping a product built with Meson [Ed: Microsoft says it loves Open Source; it's merely exploiting it to cement monopolies of proprietary software, i.e. the antithesis of software freedom]

  Some time ago Microsoft announced a compatibility pack to get OpenGL and OpenCL running even on computers whose hardware does not provide native OpenGL drivers. It is basically OpenGL-over-Direct3D. Or that is at least my understanding of it, hopefully this description is sufficiently accurate to not cause audible groans on the devs who actually know what it is doing under the covers. More actual details can be found in this blog post.

  An OpenGL implementation is a whole lot of work and writing one from scratch is a multi-year project. Instead of doing that, Microsoft chose the sensible approach of taking the Mesa implementation and porting it to work on Windows. Typically large corporations do this by the vendoring approach, that is, copying the source code inside their own repos, rewriting the build system and treating it as if it was their own code.

• Ransomware attack on Pimpri Chinchwad Smart City servers managed by Tech Mahindra [iophk: Windows TCO]

  India is the second most impacted by cyberattacks in the Asia Pacific region after Japan, according to a recent study by IBM. About 40% of these were ransomware attacks.

• Attacks on firms using Microsoft email servers tripled in 72 hrs [iophk: Windows TCO]

  Unaware of the full magnitude of these findings, Microsoft was prompted to further investigate their Exchange server.

  The investigation uncovered five more critical vulnerabilities.

  The vulnerabilities allow an attacker to read emails from an Exchange server without authentication or accessing an individual's email account.

• Microsoft 365 services take a hit globally after authentication update [iophk: Windows TCO]

  In a tweet, the Redmond-based software giant said: "We're investigating an issue for access to multiple M365 services. Please visit the admin centre post M0244568 for more information. We'll provide additional information here as it becomes available.

• GitHub employee fired for saying ‘Nazi’ in Slack declines to take his job back

  GitHub fired the employee two days after he wrote “stay safe homies, Nazis are about” to colleagues in Slack on January 6th, as first reported by Business Insider. Approximately 200 of the company’s 1,700 employees signed an open letter asking the company for an explanation, and employees began using the word “Nazi” in Slack to describe the Capitol [insurrectionists].

• Microsoft could reap more than $193m in new US cyber spending

  Microsoft stands to receive nearly a quarter of Covid relief funds destined for US cybersecurity defenders, angering some lawmakers who don't want to increase funding for a company whose software was recently at the heart of two big hacks.

  Congress allocated the funds at issue in the Covid relief bill after two enormous cyber attacks leveraged weaknesses in Microsoft products to reach into computer networks at federal and local agencies and tens of thousands of companies.

  One breach attributed to Russia in December grabbed emails from the Justice Department, Commerce Department and Treasury Department.

• Microsoft customers locked out of Teams, Office, Xbox, Dynamics – and Azure Active Directory breakdown blamed • The Register

In June, 2019, Microsoft applied for a US patent covering enhancements to a data encoding method known as rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that form the foundation of data compression schemes used by Apple, Facebook, Google, various other companies, and open source projects.

Its US patent application was published on the last day of 2020. Recently, the inventor of ANS, Jarosław Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, expressed concern that if Microsoft's patent application is granted, anyone using software that incorporates an ANS-based encoder could be at risk of a potential infringement claim.

[...]

"Google ended up abandoning that application," said Alex Moss, staff attorney for the EFF and Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, in an email to The Register. "But it looks like Microsoft picked up right where it left off."

"Professor Duda’s concerns about the Microsoft application are similarly well-founded: these are broad claims that implicate practically any use of ANS without adding anything new and non-obvious," said Moss.

The USPTO has already said as much, Moss explained: It has rejected this application twice before, including a final rejection for obviousness.

The USPTO issued a non-final rejection of the application on May 21, 2020. Microsoft sought a review of the decision and the patent agency then issued a final rejection on October 27, 2020.

Yet on March 2, 2021, Microsoft tried one more time to get its patent application approved. In a USPTO explanatory filing, attorney Kyle Rinehart said, "The Applicant respectfully disagrees with the rejections."

"Microsoft’s recent filing takes advantage of what’s called the "After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0" program," Moss explained. "This program was started under former Director of the Patent Office, Andrei Iancu, and before leaving office, he extended the program through September 30, 2021."