IHawkMike

u/IHawkMike@lemmy.world
3 posts · 362 comments

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on Must have apps · c/lemmyshitpost · -11 pts · 80d

100%

It's literally drag and drop after initializing MBR, format FAT, set active. Rufus is pointless.

Lemmy is sure showing its usual technical incompetency while pretending they are superior because they can install Linux. In a shitpost thread no less.

on Must have apps · c/lemmyshitpost · -41 pts · 81d

If you need an app to format a drive and copy some files, maybe you should stick with Windows.

Modern start menu search was designed to drive users toward Bing and give MS-favored results to users. It's hot garbage and has been for a while. So yeah, if you rely on as an IT pro it you probably aren't very technical.

You can launch any common inbox or Office app and most MMC panels from the Win-R menu. And most of them haven't changed since Windows 2000 / Office 95. Not being able to adapt and improve upon how you perform your job is sad.

Win+R, wt, Enter

OR

Win-X, I

The start menu has sucked for a long time, but you don't have to use it. I cringe when I see other IT folks using its search feature to launch common apps.

At least they are improving the app list with a nice category view and removing the All Apps button (still in preview). That'll at least upgrade it from hot garbage to okayish.

LUKS > LVM > ext4

Every time I install a new OS I ask myself if I should use BTRFS, if for no other reason than just to experience it. But I've never found a good enough reason that's worth even a sliver of stability loss over more mature options.

It's probably because I've also been burned too many times trying ReFS over NTFS on Windows (except for Veeam).

given that Secure Boot prevents any modification of your computer's boot chain

Secure Boot does no such thing. All it does it require that everything in the boot chain is signed by a trusted cert.

Binding TPM PCR7 to FDE (or more brittle options like 0+2+4) is really what protects against boot chain modifications but that's another topic.

Disabling SB to install the distro, then re-enabling it once installed with either maintainer-signed shim or self-signed UKI/bootloader is perfectly fine.

You need both FDE and Secure Boot, ideally with FDE using a TPM with PIN and PCR 7+15=0. FDE without SB can be trivially boot-kitted and obviously SB without FDE is mostly pointless. Maybe for a server/desktop behind locked doors you don't worry as much, but for a laptop you absolutely should. Also it's really easy in Arch to resign the UKI with sbctl via a pacman hook whenever the kernel is updated so there's no good reason not to use it.

If you're relying on a LUKS password only, it can be brute-forced. To protect against that you need a decently long password which is annoying to type every boot. A short TPM PIN sealed by SB protecting LUKS is both more convent and more secure.

Finally, if an attacker or malware gets root, FDE isn't protecting you either.

Yeah this is an issue but not a big one. Most distro's installation media don't use shim so you have to disable SB during install anyway.

And installing the 2023 KEK and db certs can be done via firmware without much trouble or you can use sbctl in setup mode which I believe has both the 2011 and 2023 keys.

If you dual boot Windows you'll want to update it to the new bootmgr signed with the 2023 keys and add the 2011 certs to dbx to protect against BlackLotus or let Windows do it via patches+regfixes.

Also know that any changes to PK, KEK, dB, or dbx will change the PCR 7 measurement so handle that accordingly if you use TPM unlock for FDE.