Some flagship devices like Samsung Galaxy Book2 and Microsoft Surface Go come pre-installed with Windows 10 in S mode (formerly known as Windows 10 S). Windows 10 in S Mode locks installation of apps only from the Microsoft Store and users cannot download or install .exe apps.
Fortunately, Microsoft allows users to switch out of Windows 10 in S mode from the Microsoft Store, but users are reporting that this Store feature is broken and they cannot switch out of Windows 10 in S Mode.
That’s pretty rough if you bought a Windows 10 S device without being able to run the traditional applications you might need for school or work.
Getting out os S Mode is relatively easy. Download debian netinst, copy it to usb key, reboot computer to usb, select ‘take whole disk’, wait, reboot. There you go.
S mode leaves you with Edge as the only allowed browser, making your computer useless. Even Android is more useful than Windows in S mode. I wonder what they were thinking when they implemented it.
Your definition of getting out of S Mode is only mildly funny and only mildly easy.
* You forgot about keeping data and you actually destroyed data
* You forgot that machines that come in S mode might not have driver support on Debian
* Your solution still doesn’t allow running Windows programs, so why even leave S Mode at all?
* Edge being the only allowed browser doesn’t make your computer useless
* Have you tried installing Android on a Samsung Galaxy Book2 or Microsoft Surface Go?
Being locked into Windows 10 in S mode is a problem that never should have happened and that should indeed be “fixed automatically in a few days or a week”
Windows 10 in S mode is pretty much a useless experiment when you can just run Windows 10 in non-S-mode and choose to either allow “Microsoft Store apps: Only install apps from the Microsoft Store.”, “Sideload apps: Install apps from other sources that you trust, like your workplace” or “Developer mode: Install any signed and trusted app and use advanced development features” (of course these settings can be centrally managed as well)
Fair enough, it was only a joke. Probably a bad one, although it is actually what I ended up doing on my laptop.
Out of interest: Was your laptop a machine that came with Windows 10? in S-Mode? and did all the hardware work immediately?
Yes it’s a cheap HP laptop that came with Windows 10 in S-mode. I successfully disabled it after much web research but I ended up installing Debian anyway. My GF has the exact same laptop and she didn’t bother and just installed debian. It was a 10 min install and yes everything worked out of the box immediately. Just had to enable tap to click on the trackpad for it is not enabled by default on Debian, whereas it’s the default on Windows. Everything else works just like we expected. The point of those cheap laptops is browsing the web and we like to do it on Firefox. We don’t care what the OS is as long as it runs Firefox. Debian does. Windows 10 would if it was not in S mode. Installing Debian was less painful than disabling S-mode.
Yeah sure, jump from one walled garden (Microsoft App Store) to another (your distro’s Linux repos) #nope
It’s a quick test I like to call the VLC test: “Can I download an installer file from videolan’s official website, copy it to the device in question and install it using the on-device OS UI, without having to get a developer license?'”
Windows proper -> Yes
Mac OS X -> Yes
Android -> Yes
Windows S -> No
Debian -> No
iOS -> No
If an OS requires that the OS vendor repackages and recompiles the application (aka the Desktop Linux repository mess) or locks sideloading (Windows S and iOS) I am not interested. And neither should you.
You have a really messed up definition of walled garden! So every application that doesn’t have an installer for your platform means that that platform is a walled garden…..yeah….nope. According to your logic a program like SharePoint that only runs on Windows Server means that every platform that isn’t Windows Server would be a walled garden
Debian/Linux don’t actually require that the OS vendor repackages and recompiles the application. You can do that by yourself* . So according to your secondary logic Debian/Linux would still be of interest to you.
* Source: https://wiki.videolan.org/UnixCompile/#Debian
What’s really funny is Debian has vlc 3.0.x in the universe repo. I’m not sure why anyone would want the hassle of downloading it and installing rather than one command to install and it’s kept up to date any time you do a system update.
They have a custom-recompiled version of VLC that is not latest, not uploaded by Videolan themselves but by some middleman and has libdvdcss stripped out.
Stripping DRM circumvention features to be compliant with the OS vendor rules. The hallmark of the OS-controlled walled garden.
No, it’s about the platform making it easy for someone to distribute their reasonably complex app without the OS vendor having to be a middleman. If the VLC people can’t (who like open source), most devs can’t. If I have to get developer licenses or compile stuff myself, no thanks, it’s a walled garden.
kurkosdr,
and
If you want to criticize repos for what they choose to include in their repos, then go right ahead…that is your opinion. I have my own gripes at times. However avgalen is right, equating the debian OS to a walled garden does not make any sense.
Regardless of one’s opinions about the quality and suitability of software inside debian’s repos, that doesn’t have a bearing on whether or not debian is actually a walled garden. There’s no way around it, calling debian a walled garden is ether an exaggeration or a misunderstanding of the concepts. Can we agree that debian users are absolutely free to install whatever they like out of the box without restrictions of any kind?
The conclusion that you need a middleman is unfounded. You can (and people do) have other non-free/contrib repos maintained by 3rd party developers. Heck you can even make your own repo with whatever policies you choose. Also, you may not realize that there are different flavors: debian stable is stricter than testing, which is stricter than sid. Not to force debian on you, other distros like mint could be more suitable for you regarding their policy on non-free software inclusion. And I believe ubuntu gives you this choice at install time.
Ultimately, I welcome you to be critical of debian’s repo inclusion policies if that’s your opinion, however being critical of debian for being a walled garden is false, no middle man is necessary.
It’s important to understand that this is completely different from platforms like IOS, which is a real walled garden. There owners are prohibited from going elsewhere to install software and are actively blocked via cryptographic locks that apple places on the owner’s devices to control the owners.
The VLC people probably use Debian or some other GNU distro to develop VLC. It’s probably the easiest platform to develop for. They don’t distribute VLC for Debian in their web site, not because they can’t but because it’s pointless. They could definitely distribute a .deb package easily. But what would be the point when Debian users can install the damn thing directly from apt-get?
The whole repo system requires SOME kind of middleman. That’s all I see as a user. And that middleman can remove libdvdcss or have an outdated version. I cannot get a binary from the Videolan website and run it, and no, I have no intention of becoming the middleman myself by recompiling the thing and setting up a repo for a media player
By trying to be “open” and pretending that every little unimportant distro out there is equal to Debian, Ubuntu Mint and CentOS, the Linux people created the need for a million repos and the need for the middlemen to run them. But hey, you can apt-get the outdated version they host easily.
For the user who can’t compile VLC (have you tried compiling a media player like VLC BTW? If you did, you can amuse us by posting all the steps), the over-reliance on the repos is a walled garden. The wall is not barbwired like it is on iOS, but it exists.
kurkosdr,
Yes there’s a default repo, but you the owner are in control and if you want to change it, you can. A walled garden means that alternative sources are locked out and users are forced to use the vendor’s channels. With debian, no middleman is forcing you to install software from them.
Like I said, you can complain about the contents of debian repos, and you may even have some valid insightful points to make about that, however it’s really hard to get past the totally false claim that debian is a walled garden. Rightly or wrongly, this claim gives the impression that the goal of your posts is to slander debian rather than to offer constructive criticism.
It seems like your complaints are not so much about having middlemen, but having middlemen that don’t offer exactly what you want. It’s sort of the opposite of your opening argument where you were complaining about debian being a walled garden. You are totally ok with (and even for) the centralization of a walled garden, so long as it has all the right versions of the software you are looking for.
It makes me curious, what do you think about windows where you are responsible for installing most of the software you need yourself?
No, just no. This would go more smoothly if you would quit using “walled garden” incorrectly, haha. Is walmart a walled gardens because they don’t sell all the content one could want for a gaming console bought there?
BTW I just looked up videolan availability and it turns out that videolan does distribute binary downloads for ubuntu using snap…
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html
The the version in debian’s repo is “VLC media player 3.0.7 Vetinari”, which is the same version you can download for windows and that you can build from source. So I think there’s been much ado about nothing. Do you still have a complaint?
bit of a non-story isnt it? Its a bug that MS have acknowledged and are working on a fix for.
Entirely a non-story because it is already fixed in Microsoft Store version 11906.1001.24.0;
Source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/Surface/forum/x/y/fd4a09ed-b3cb-43bf-8e0e-1565cebb00d4
I for one wonder if that was not deliberate. The process used to get out of S mode is needlessly confusing, with misleading option labels, if not outright wrong. It’s ofuscated deep on the config options and warns with several alarming messages. One has to wonder if they are not delibaretely trying to make it less likely most people will successfully get out of S mode…
Of course this was not deliberate. No company is going to spend time on first breaking a feature, then responding to angry customers and then fixing the feature on purpose.
The process to get out of S-mode is indeed forcing users to go through many steps while throwing up warnings, but that isn’t strange when you are giving a consumer the option to “break open” his entire OS.
It wasn’t much easier to “jailbreak” your iOS device, add Android to a ChromeBook or similar OS-breaking actions.
The other way is simply so much easier: Get a non-S-mode Windows, tell it to allow running Store Apps only. done*
* Yes, I know that S-mode has more limitations than just “only store apps”
avgalen,
So windows 8 never happened? Haha 🙂
“Break open” is a bit dramatic though, not long ago new computers were sold like that out of the box and owners had the ability to install new browsers, new search engines, etc without going through hoops. It’s pretty clear to me that s-mode is designed to increase barriers to microsoft competitors more than do anything that owners genuinely benefit from.
The market doesn’t want microsoft to be in the position of gatekeepers to control & tax software. It’s turned out awfully for IOS developers under apple, but it’s generated huge sums of wealth for apple. Microsoft’s goal is to replicate that on PCs, and although there has been lots of resistance, microsoft is playing the long game and always finding ways to add and raise barriers so that gradually they increase control and we become more dependent on them.
Access to your own device as a premium feature… we live in dark times when it comes to tech rights indeed.
And the worst thing is that most people are completely oblivious to all of this due to widespread technological illiteracy. Try and tell someone at a family gathering why his iOS device is violating his tech rights because it has “no sideloading” and “a locked bootloader” without getting blank stares and without having to spend 20 minutes covering miles and miles of explanatory ground, and you ‘ll see what I mean. I don’t even try. In fact I never did.
I believe such education should be compulsory. But since we allow people who cannot calculate interest payments take high-interest loans on the virtue of being 18 years old, I don’t see why technological education would be any different.
kurkosdr,
Yea, I hear that. I won’t hesitate to discuss it, but you are right about people being oblivious. Boycotts by niche populations generally don’t have an impact, so the realist in me predicts that the rights we’re loosing aren’t coming back, and that we can look forward to loosing more in the future 🙁
I bet the reason it’s this way is because microsoft originally intended users to pay microsoft to turn off “S mode” restrictions. But what a stupid failure mode this is now. The setting should be a local control panel setting, not something a user should need to go to the microsoft store for. I hope the fix is a local patch rather than a server side patch.
But but but, then Microsoft couldn’t stop you from turning off S mode. You know, for your own good. Or making you pay…
darknexus,
Why do I have so much trouble detecting sarcasm? 🙂