Link: https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/10/16/microsoft-bringing-defender-to-linux-desktops-repeat-microsoft-bringing-defender-to-linux-desktops/5303477

pauses massive bong rip

Wait what this doesn't sound like reality

checks

Hmmm

I was going to say something but clammed up

Who on Linux is going to consent to Microsoft telemetry on their machine?

Corporations

Defense industry, and basically every 3-letter agency. Probably a lot of state- and county-level government offices too.

IT departments that need to check the box thats says "does your organization have antivirus or anti malware protection on all desktops?". Common in soc audits and cyber insurance attestations.

I wonder if there will be a libre version of this. Somehow use just the database with an open source version with no telemetry

People agree to Google telemetry on their Linux phones.

Maybe they're already capitulating, accepting they couldn't write a proper os even if their damned lives depended on it and the next windows release will be a bastardised Linux distro with wine/proton built in so the compatibility would be transparent to the user. But idk, these are only hopes, I doubt that the people at Microsoft are that self aware and, even if they are, they'll find a thousand ways to fuck it up.

Why is there google telemetry on Nura, Ubuntu Touch and SailfishOS?

Android is Linux with orders of magnitude more users than all of those combined.

yeah no... Android is as linux as Windows is POSIX compatible e.g. absolutely irrelevant that in the backend is running a linux kernel. Besides, only Google Android is plastered with Google Telemetry.

You know... Morons.

"I install the malware to protec me from malware"

ClamAV exists...

EEE

It’s just gonna be part of security audit theater. “Prove your organization is [x] compliant.”

IT: you have to use windows so we can add your computer to intune

Developer: no

IT: Microsoft pls

Microsoft: Ok it’s on Linux now, that’ll be another seat license for clamav wrapped in our logo or something

IT: omg we’re so secure

Auditing company: omg they’re so secure

Yeah but clamav doesn’t have “a centralized dashboard with mdm and intune integration” e.g. a spreadsheet that says when everyone’s last scan was and that their definitions are up to date so the security theater can exist. Not to worry, more likely than not this is just built on a mountain of open source software like clamav that’s probably MIT licensed so MS can slap their logo on it and charge for it

Ah, so there’s no Linux in Android and it’s running some other kernel. Must have been mistaken, sorry.

I wonder what will be the point where we stop calling SteamOS a Linux distribution too. Maybe greybeards and their GNU/Linux thing were right. But now Ubuntu switched to Rust coreutils, I guess it’s no longer Linux. Apple recently stopped certifying POSIX compatibility so MacOS is longer UNIX even if they run BSD coreutils. Gosh, darnit.

Same people who use Microsoft Edge on Linux.

Their point is to answer the question "who is going to consent to Google telemetry on linux". 99% of humanity, that's who.

Corporations can plaster over the open source baseline to make a Product, at which point Consumers will feel the comfort and familiarity of being able to displace responsibility for their satisfaction onto someone else in exchange for a price, such as their privacy.

Consider the Capitalist adage "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product". How would that belief affect how someone feels about baseline Linux, about FOSS in general? They would constantly be waiting for the catch, for the monetization or hack or cult pitch or communism that explains why people are spending their time contributing to FOSS instead of making money.

Corporations are the devil they know.

Don't forget powershell. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/linux-overview

absolutely irrelevant that in the backend is running a linux kernel

I don't think so. Android is a Linux distribution, because it distributes Linux and is build the operating system using it. Besides that, Linux itself isn't fully POSIX standard conform too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#Partially_conformant and thus no operating system built distributing the Linux Kernel is POSIX compliant. Android supports lot of POSIX functions, so its not that far off. The difference is not POSIX, it's actually GNU tools and proprietary blobs included, and the user application packages that make it so much different.

Also interestingly there is a man page about these type of standards: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/standards.7.html

Ah right. Forgot about that cancer. If we are at it, also Visual Studio Code (or VSCode for short) too.

I use a Linux desktop for work. My employer is constantly threatening to replace it with a mac "so they can control it". Their main control point is microsoft defender. I would rather have defender on my work machine than be forced to use a mac.

Not just telemetry, probably full root remote access.

tell me, how much do you interact with linux when you are on an Android Phone? 0 percent perhaps? No, you start in the single user application of android and that's it.

SteamOS meanwhile is a full featured Linux distro, heck Steam in that Distro makes it super easy to switch to "Desktop Mode" e.g. KDE.

“does your organization have antivirus or anti malware protection on all desktops?”

Talk about suggestive question phrasing. Where better organisational security could often be accomplished by assuming every device attached to the network is a potential threat, and focusing on the network security, shielding devices against each other with only whitelisted protocols, plus locking down all devices that are configured by corporate IT.

Practical IT security in most orgs these days is "configure a big firewall with default settings from corporate provider, assuming everything is safe inside." then they get one compromised device (USB stick, cell phone transfer, exploit, whatever) and the whole ass network is fucked. and they have a "oh well, we did everything we can" excuse. fucking BS.

There already better alternatives like clamav but I guess that assumes the IT department is actually Linux proficient.

It is surprisingly easy to install Edge on Linux. I just had to do the forbidden thing, once, and then immediately remove it again.

You can do that? And the machine doesn’t overheat and start letting the smoke out?

No, Linux can handle that. :-)

No IT Auditor ever tests this, the just ask and if you say yes they move on. To actually test this you would have to statically sample a random sample of devices and confirm the antivirus is installed.

Instead that auditors are going to ask for a list off devices enrolled in the antivirus and a list of all devices (if the company even has an asset inventory) and see if they look right. But, most like the asset list will come from the antivirus enrollment and it won't matter.

People will scoff at this but speaking from experience Defender is a very good AV if you are using MS Windows. MS has a vested interest in keeping their flagship OS safe.

Putting it on Linux though? No . Fucking. Way .

Complicate requirement are kind of out of date. They keep adding requirements to them but then don't often take them away. So if a requiment made sense 20 years ago it's still there even though there are better strategies to protect your environment.

You could skip a requiment if you can establish a compensatinh control and show that the threat the requirements is intended to address is addressed. For example skipping antivirus by reimagining the devices every morning, this is an absurd example but would work.

And it'll probably feel 150% faster compared to Windows. Just like Edge. lol

It's one of the few things they ever got right.

E: I should also say that the release of Defender was devastating to my "house doctor" PC services side-hustle. E2 XP SP1 out also rocked my profits - that RPC vuln was a gold mine

well that's a big F you for people enjoying freedom at work by using linux instead of windows and avoiding corpo bs

Linux is a kernel. If you try to define it as more you’ll find yourself in a land of contradictions due to previously mentioned examples.

Android is “Linux”. It might not have GNU userland or X11/Wayland. It is essentially a commoditised appliance but there’s Linux kernel there. KDE runs on many different Unix-like systems, it’s not something that defines Linux.

If I log into a remote Linux shell where a system administrator locked me out of most of the things, does it make it less Linux?

Mildly related: I might try to convince my job to let me use Linux come device refresh time. But we use all Microsoft stuff. Is support for Teams, OneDrive, etc reliable on Linux? I have, of course, avoided it like the plague for personal use so I don't know. Is anyone else in a similar situation?

Edge on Linux is great for getting boomers to use Linux.

Doesn't help that IT is outsourced to the lowest bidder, which typically means the IT contractor enslaving corporate IT to microsoft and playing a game of "forward the ticket".
Then "IT managers" in the organisation responsible for the contract typically know jack shit about IT and are busy trying to save face over protecting their users from incompetent contractors.

ClamAV is shit, and I’ve been using it on my machine for years

I've used Teams on Linux and it worked fine. Granted it was basically just a wrapper for the web version, similarly with Outlook for Linux. I've not used One Drive on Linux, but that is what I'd be more concerned about.

clamav works fine on my mums laptop.

I have to use the web version for work anyways, so yes. One Drive is broken regardless of platform, unfortunately.

They want to scan all of my files. They can go fuck themselves.

On their own machine, maybe not. On their employer's machine, maybe if the employer demands it.

They can now ditch the dumpster fire of an OS that is Windows and lobby for the adoption of a corporate choke-point on Linux while continuing to bludgeon the remaining bits of your dignity and soverignity. At least this could be so for enterprise Linux.

in what sense?

Wait til you learn about EDR like crowd strike

Bots?

Humans don't do that