I have a Windows PC?
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
349 points (99.2% liked)
PC Gaming
15727 readers
1216 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
It’s news to me. I gotta get Mint on it.
CachyOS has been phenomenal for me. Coming up on 7 months now without using windows beyond as a moonlight client on an ARM64 laptop (and windows server, because sysadmin gotta sysadmin.)
load more comments
(1 replies)
People should stop doing that
They should have stopped decades ago. Mint or Ubuntu are easier to install than Windows 2000 and way more powerful.
Yeah, been using Linux as my only OS since late 2000s
you wouldn't download an operating system
Without a window, how else can you appreciate your RAM’s obligatory RGB features?
I haven't since middle of last year.
Congratulations!
Guess you won one?
Is this one of those scam mails where you won something?
Oh No, no no no no, you just won a super pc gaming and all! Just send me your credit card number and I'll figure out where to send it! Promise!
load more comments
(6 replies)
Microsoft continues to outdo itself as the best advertisement for migration to Linux.
For Microsoft Linux, right? Right?
Fuck this OS, left it behind a long time ago and nothing ever will bring me back. This platform should die, they turned everything good about the platform to trash over years.
I finally made the switch a couple of weeks ago. Running Cachyos and it's a dream. I'm not going back to MS anytime soon. Now I dread work because I have to use that POS there.
Court filings in the Scattered Spider hacking case reveal Microsoft provided the FBI with a complete IP history tied to something called a Global Device ID (GDID)
It's kinda like a MAC address
Except the MAC address isn't propagated through gateways, only on your local network(because that is their job).
I don't have a Windows PC
I do.
Though, those socket A boards kinda suck even after a recap. 98 runs great when it boots!
Gotta power cycle the PSU to get it to boot the first time. Tried 3 PSUs before the recap and nothing changed.
load more comments
(7 replies)
There are lots of unique identifiers in computers, not just Windows.
MAC address, serial number, bios uuid.
Linux even has /etc/machine-id
yes, but what secret undisclosed id systems, that weren't definitevely known to exist untill legal proceedings 'oopsied' them into reality?
load more comments
(5 replies)
Your Windows PC Has a Permanent ID That Follows You – Even With a VPN
Yes, it's bad, but worth pointing out, they didn't identify the user directly by somehow extracting GDID from their traffic, they identified them because their GDID happened to be in the same place at the same time at their hacking efforts that became statistically impossible to ignore.
Realistically this kind of tracking could be accomplished with any software with a unique ID that does, say, daily update checks or usage pings. This one is just extra bad because it's ubiquitous (on Windows) and almost impossible to change, so they have a 1-stop-shop for spying.
All tracking is done by amalgamating as many different overlapping signals and indicators together as you can, and then establishing basically a confidence score/threshold.
This one is extra bad because it was never disclosed previously.
Trust = Gone, what else is MSFT hiding?
Which trust?
I think the ngrok tunnel server they setup to exfiltrate data actually sent the GDID to the ngrok servers. This GDID was then linked to non-VPN IP logs by Microsoft.
Does it follow me after Linux install?
Well, there is /etc/machine-id on Linux...
Just want to point out that /etc/machine-id is unique to systemd systems. AlpineLinux, for example, doesn't generate this file on install.
We tossed systemd out the window on our Debian. Stuff broke when we removed /etc/machine-id.
Turns out dbus ALSO uses it, but if it's not in /etc, it makes its own at /var/lib/dbus/machine-id (which was symlinked to /etc/machine-id on our system).
So we just wrote 00000000000000000000000000000000 to it instead. 🙃
-- Frost
load more comments
(1 replies)
windows is the virus
Well shit.
I have Linux, so I don't gave that feature either! What am I supposed to do now? I want to be visible everywhere and tracked by everyone, but I had to chose Linux and again I'm left out!
This sucks
I bet you don't get those aggravating pop ups and ads either.
You're missing out on the typical PC user experience
Windows
What's that?
Well that's terrifying,
but not unexpected...
What kind of hacker uses windows?
WTF
I have a photo scanner I can't get to work on Linux Mint, so I have an old laptop with Win10 on it for that single purpose. I haven't booted it in months, but I do need to get back to that project.
It doesn't need or get internet access.
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›