Looooooooooool no

I am at a loss of words for how non-sensical this is.

Can't wait to ignore it

Is it at the very least vibe-coded slop (like the Epic Games Store)?

lol

lmao even

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit

If this allows more companies to offer Linux as an option for employees workstations, or even instead of Windows, I’m fine with this. Obviously this is not something for consumers.

Not really, Defender is quite popular as an EDR solution and a lot of companies love the pricing and logging of a modern EDR.

Defender with its timeline is also better than some of the alternatives I've seen in the field.

It's actually not.

Many laws and insurances require the use of anti-virus software. This is like a leftover from 20 years ago, where anti-virus actually did something. If you have a security breach and the insurance finds out you didn't have any anti-virus, it's not going to pay. So, for legal/liability reasons, company do need to install that kind of bullshit, even tho it's not doing anything today.

For consumers, this is completely irrelevant, but for companies that want to offer linux as an OS for their employees, that is actually a nice thing to have.

Where is this?

I've worked in office space with computers, handling sensible data, and there wasn't an anti-virus solution. Ever.

The pricing is garbage. The only benefit is the classic "unreasonable enterprise demands" (UED, that's my term for it): Rather than use multiple tools that are each best in class (and possibly cheaper or even free!) enterprises will always choose one product that does all the things. Even if it does those things poorly or even worst-in-class.

Example: VMWare. For ages, enterprises used VMWare for all their VMs because it could run/manage both Windows and Linux VMs from a single tool. Even though HyperV for Windows is vastly superior for Windows VMs and KVM is vastly superior for Linux VMs.

Aside: Yes, you can run Linux on HyperV and Windows on KVM but neither are ideal.

Windows Defender as an EDR is OK-ish for Windows but it'll never top CrowdStrike Falcon or SentinelOne Singularity for Linux. It probably won't be better than FOSS alternatives like Cilium Tetragon or even Falco (because of their flexibility/customizable nature).

Edit: I also have a pretty firm belief that putting Windows people in charge of managing Linux systems (of any kind) is always a bad idea. Yet the very nature of the product (Microsoft Defender) insists upon this.

Fair point, but the actual use is still nonsensical, even if required by rules of insurance policies. That makes it necessary, not "sensical".

That makes it necessary, not “sensical”.

It's not necessary. You can not install an anti-virus or any kind of security. You can work without it. But if something happens, you will be very likely held liable.

So it absolutely makes sense to install an anti-virus software if your insurance policy or maybe even your contracts with customers require it. You don't install the anti-virus to protect from viruses, you install it to comply with the contract. That is very sensical. Not obliging by the rules of a contract is, on the other hand, very non-sensical.

Every technical person knows hat anti-virus doesn't do shit. The policies requiring the use of anti-virus software is non-sensical, I agree with that. But installing software you need in order to not get sued if something happens is very very very sensical.

Necessary from a legal point of view, not technical. Or regulatory maybe.

Most insurances I've worked with require those. This is not a country thing, but a company thing. My current business insurance requires them

By law, there is nothing thar REQUIRES it per se, but there is a set of rules and regulations where installing it is one way to fulfil the requirements. Especially NIS2 requires "appropriate cybersecurity risk-management measures", so having a free anti-virus run on the system is one way to implement it, amongst other measures of course.

and there wasn’t an anti-virus solution

I'm not saying every company follows them. I'm just saying if something happens and they discover you're not following certain regulations, you are in the big shitters and will be very likely held liable.

Not caring about security is fine as long as nothing happens.

That is completely irrelevant. At the end of the day, microsoft porting windows defender to linux makes sense because there are rules and regulations in place that can be fulfilled by having an anti-virus. That was all I was talking about.

I absolutely agree that, from a technical standpoint, it's useless beyond imagination. But that's not the point when you have to comply with rules.

I mean, if you're insane you could pair this with Microsoft Edge for Linux

At least it's accurately named. "Microsoft Defender" is designed to defend Microsoft from competitors. All those EU orgs switching to Linux are now just one short sales call to the right idiot away from falling back into Microsoft's ecosystem.

I don't disagree with what you're saying necessarily, but I feel like you're giving Microsoft too much credit here. There are anti virus solutions on Linux. This isn't a thing they're doing because they see an unserved market and a new way to make money. This is a thing they're doing to get a foot in the door with orgs that are switching away from Microsoft products to Linux (like many EU orgs recently), so they can try and draw them back into a 365 subscription or whatever.

So, yes, some businesses may need an anti virus solution due to contractual stupid reasons, but that isn't what makes Defender on Linux "sensible" for anyone except for the Microsoft salesperson.

I'm going to get nightmares.

I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1st

Cats and dogs living together, MASS HYSTERIA!

from here https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftdefenderatpblog/secure-linux-desktops-with-microsoft-defender/4560822

This sounds like the type of stuff a company would require on their business laptops, so this might actually be a good thing for Linux adoption. Of course it sucks for people who were already using Linux for work and now gotta put up with this shit lol.

Defender on Linux desktops requires the standalone Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or Microsoft 365 E5 and E7.

If it's easier to set up and work with than ClamAV I'm down to clown. I won't put it on my personal machine, but I've got machines I use corpware on for work and school I wouldn't mind having it on.

Fuck, next will be teams

Hahaha... no. Never installing that.

EEE in full effect.

IDK. Defender had a good reputation when I still was on Windows, 8 years ago. It was non-intrusive and didn't slow down the OS like other AV solutions. One good experience I had was when I dragged a zipped e-mail attachment to the desktop out of interest and Defender immediately quarantined it. Don't understand the MS lingo in the text you quoted but yeah everything mentioning 365 sounds like a PITA. So maybe it's BS now.

All I know now is that Windows Defender keeps causing problems with people trying to install Deus Ex Randomizer just because it's an unpopular and unsigned program

you must have never worked in a corporate or enterprise environment.

I'm a security engineer and we work with this stuff daily. In fact most enterprise endpoint devices (laptops, phones, desktops) have not one but several security software by different vendors for different purposes.

Antivirus, firewall, proxy, VPN, monitoring, ....

We have a small desktop farm environment and a handful of devs with Linux laptops, they all have defender installed.