Linus Gabriel Sebastian & Linus Media Group / Linus Tech Tips - Narcissistic corporate shill YouTuber driving his media empire into the ground. KILL COUNT: 2

[Pee Cola]

Linus calls Yvonne about a question he received about when he ever did a "I'M LINUS SEBASTIAN!" moment and she brings up that he made sure it was apparent he owns 51% of the company because they don't have a prenup.

Great. Now I have the whitest and most faggy Dave Chappelle impression of Rick James in my head.
"I'M LINUS SEBASTIAN, BITCH!"

 

[guiltyspark85]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7CIkZcWYE

Archive:

I haven’t seen this video covered here, so I thought I’d post about it.

A couple of days ago LTT released a video on purchasing a cheap 2nd hand PC and upgrading the components to turn into a cheap gaming PC. They’ve done this type of video several times before, but the spin this time is installing a Windows 10 debloater called AtlasOS.

What they gloss over in the video, is by default AtlasOS ‘debloats’ Windows 10 by turning off important security features, such as spectre/meltdown mitigation and UAC (everything runs with admin privileges). Windows updates and Defender are also removed entirely and can’t be re-enabled.

They do mention the updates removal, but Anthony says that beyond this he doesn’t really know what else AtlasOS does as he hasn’t really looked into it. In editing, they’ve added text listing some of the security issues, but it’s only flashes on the screen for only few seconds and it’s unlikely many LTT viewers would bother pausing the video to read it.

Linus is blown away by how much more responsive Windows seems, but of course they haven't bothered doing any benchmarks. The anecdotal performance improvements I suspect are due to AtlasOS turning off Windows shell animations and disabling the spectre/meltdown mitigation.

All around very irresponsible not inserting some strong warnings explaining AtlasOS is comprising the OS security.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

The hiring manger is a red flag, fuck him. You do not need to have an online presence for professional reasons and certainly don't need "professional" social media.

But how else will employers cancel/fire you for posting edgy jokes on Twitter?

 

[Troon Whisperer]

What they gloss over in the video, is by default AtlasOS ‘debloats’ Windows 10 by turning off important security features, such as spectre/meltdown mitigation and UAC (everything runs with admin privileges). Windows updates and Defender are also removed entirely and can’t be re-enabled.

What the actual fuck, that is the stupidest shit I've seen yet. There are far better debloating scripts that won't turn your PC in a future botnet member. You'd think after LTTs own security oopsie they'd be a little more security aware but nope.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

The anecdotal performance improvements I suspect are due to AtlasOS turning off Windows shell animations and disabling the spectre/meltdown mitigation.

Disabling Defender SmartScreen will also make the OS seem snappier when running random exes but it's not something the average LTT viewer should do. Basically all these "debloated" editions are an absolute joke and you should never daily drive them. At least the AME people setup a separate user account with admin rights, rolling with admin rights and no UAC on a setup like this when you're a braindead LTT user is a recipe for disaster.

If Linus wants a snappy experience on older hardware, maybe he should install Linux?

Edit: Watched the video. I wonder if he's actually trying to bait Linux users into spazzing out in the comments for that sweet sweet engagement. Basically says the only reason anyone runs Linux on a desktop is to extend the life of shit that can't run Windows.

 

[guiltyspark85]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7CIkZcWYE

Archive:
View attachment 5091397

I haven’t seen this video covered here, so I thought I’d post about it.

<snip>

Adding a few extra things.

Top comments on Youtube do raise security issues with AtlasOS, but like/dislike ratio suggests these comments haven't been seen by most LTT viewers or simply don't care about the security issues with AtlasOS.

One of the first comments in LTT forums thread made me chuckle.

Further into the LTT forums thread, someone is considering installing AtlasOS (despite security concerns) on to their 'fairly new system' and wondering if the risks of comprising the security of their system are worth it.

Just to give some extra context to the above comment, the AtlasOS documentation here (archive) states 'newer CPUs' might have worse performance with spectre/meltdown mitigation disabled. They give Zen 4 as an example, but I have to wonder if previous generations of CPUs with mitigation would be similarly affected. So at the very least there must be some LTT viewers installing AtlasOS on their Zen 4 CPU computers and getting worse performance, but also comprising their security by other means such as having UAC disabled by default.

The AtlasOS twitter account is also doing damage control, due to security concerns raised.

Link (Archive)

 

[Miller]

What the actual fuck, that is the stupidest shit I've seen yet. There are far better debloating scripts that won't turn your PC in a future botnet member. You'd think after LTTs own security oopsie they'd be a little more security aware but nope.

Somehow I was expecting LTT to shill for Tiny 11, something just as bad as AtlasOS.

If Linus wants a snappy experience on older hardware, maybe he should install Linux?

Edit: Watched the video. I wonder if he's actually trying to bait Linux users into spazzing out in the comments for that sweet sweet engagement. Basically says the only reason anyone runs Linux on a desktop is to extend the life of shit that can't run Windows.

That's probably the reason. They could have at least showed another way to make an old PC worth using by installing Linux Mint or something. I guess it was too much work for the "writers".

 

[Susanna]

I’m going to be very controversial here, and point out that as of today, Spectre/Meltdown still have not been used in the wild. The vulnerabilities absolutely exist, but if they can only be used on specifically targeted setups in a lab, it’s not something the consumer at home needs to worry about. Absolutely a huge deal for cloud providers or large offices with managed computers, who use standardised hardware and stand to lose a lot of money if they are specifically targeted, which they would be because hackers would stand to gain a lot of money, but not applicable to the average PC gamer, who never uses their computer for anything remotely productive, and who can just reformat and reinstall Steam in less than an hour anyway. Disabling Spectre/Meltdown mitigations on older Intel systems is a huge performance boost (actually you’re removing a huge performance drain, meh details) with almost certainly negligible risks for a home computer.

Obviously disabling your firewall is beyond asinine though. I’m shocked that’s even an option on windows, but not as shocked as I am that it apparently makes a big difference.

 

[Slav Power]

I’m going to be very controversial here, and point out that as of today, Spectre/Meltdown still have not been used in the wild. The vulnerabilities absolutely exist, but if they can only be used on specifically targeted setups in a lab, it’s not something the consumer at home needs to worry about. Absolutely a huge deal for cloud providers or large offices with managed computers, who use standardised hardware and stand to lose a lot of money if they are specifically targeted, which they would be because hackers would stand to gain a lot of money, but not applicable to the average PC gamer, who never uses their computer for anything remotely productive, and who can just reformat and reinstall Steam in less than an hour anyway. Disabling Spectre/Meltdown mitigations on older Intel systems is a huge performance boost (actually you’re removing a huge performance drain, meh details) with almost certainly negligible risks for a home computer.

Obviously disabling your firewall is beyond asinine though. I’m shocked that’s even an option on windows, but not as shocked as I am that it apparently makes a big difference.

Disabling firewall in Windows is good for network diagnosis to see if the reason something doesn't connect is because of the firewall, but then you re-enable it and manually add a needed rule. What's even more asinine is gutting Windows Update. It first appeared in Windows 98 and it has less of a performance impact on your OS than Windows Defender, which is also something you shouldn't remove unless you have a 3rd party antivirus to be installed in place of it.

Debloaters should never affect core system function such as Windows Update. This level of debloat voodoo stems from those old Windows modding groups that only know one thing: less = better, even if the thing you're removing is important to not get buttfucked by malware.

The more Linus advertises software he doesn't fully understand the more people will get harmed by his sheer stupidity, because his viewers will install anything he advertises. And I'm sure on the next WAN show he will be coping that he didn't do anything wrong, because of course he's never wrong.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Obviously disabling your firewall is beyond asinine though. I’m shocked that’s even an option on windows, but not as shocked as I am that it apparently makes a big difference.

Messing with Windows Firewall doesn't make much difference but disabling Defender definitely does. You don't need to run some dude's random garbage off the net though to do that, it's possible to neuter Defender through Group Policy. "But I'm on Windows 10 Home and can't open gpedit.msc." is a common argument but generally the OS respects the registry keys regardless (which is how much of the "debloating" works) and if you can't figure out how to pirate Pro, you probably shouldn't be screwing around anyway.

You have to be on the high band of the autism spectrum to even notice the difference after a few minutes.

Edit: He also cheaped out big time and threw in a WD Blue SATA SSD. I wonder how much difference getting a cheap NVMe would've made without screwing up your security at all. Brand new low end NVMe drives are dirt cheap nowadays, I rebuilt my old 6th gen system for my nephew and put in a sub $100 Samsung NVMe drive and it was insanely fast.

 

[guiltyspark85]

I’m going to be very controversial here, and point out that as of today, Spectre/Meltdown still have not been used in the wild. The vulnerabilities absolutely exist, but if they can only be used on specifically targeted setups in a lab, it’s not something the consumer at home needs to worry about. Absolutely a huge deal for cloud providers or large offices with managed computers, who use standardised hardware and stand to lose a lot of money if they are specifically targeted, which they would be because hackers would stand to gain a lot of money, but not applicable to the average PC gamer, who never uses their computer for anything remotely productive, and who can just reformat and reinstall Steam in less than an hour anyway. Disabling Spectre/Meltdown mitigations on older Intel systems is a huge performance boost (actually you’re removing a huge performance drain, meh details) with almost certainly negligible risks for a home computer.

Obviously disabling your firewall is beyond asinine though. I’m shocked that’s even an option on windows, but not as shocked as I am that it apparently makes a big difference.

Look up Spook.js. This seems like a real world attack that has been mitigated by browsers. But given how many applications these days rely on internet access and embedded browsers, I'd prefer my OS to provide some baseline security rather than relying on each specific app keeping up-to-date with latest security flaws and providing spectre/meltdown mitigation.

Also, AtasOS has the Windows firewall enabled by default, so not sure why you've mentioned firewall being disabled. UAC being disabled is probably the biggest flaw (and having Windows Defender disabled)!

 

[Susanna]

Look up Spook.js. This seems like a real world attack that has been mitigated by browsers. But given how many applications these days rely on internet access and embedded browsers, I'd prefer my OS to provide some baseline security rather than relying on each specific app keeping up-to-date with latest security flaws and providing spectre/meltdown mitigation.

Also, AtasOS has the Windows firewall enabled by default, so not sure why you've mentioned firewall being disabled. UAC being disabled is probably the biggest flaw (and having Windows Defender disabled)!

Doesn't spook.js also rely on the user installing a specific browser extension? Yes, I suppose it does use spectre, but if you control a compromised extension the user has installed, you could steal more data faster without using spectre.

My bad, I thought Windows Defender was the firewall. ChatGPT tells me it's actually a service that hashes executables and checks them against a table, like an old-fashioned antivirus, so I guess that would be a much higher impact on performance. Still, I'm sure I've seen "disable your firewall" on various "how to install game" and "game doesn't run, pls help" pages.

 

[Slav Power]

Doesn't spook.js also rely on the user installing a specific browser extension? Yes, I suppose it does use spectre, but if you control a compromised extension the user has installed, you could steal more data faster without using spectre.

My bad, I thought Windows Defender was the firewall. ChatGPT tells me it's actually a service that hashes executables and checks them against a table, like an old-fashioned antivirus, so I guess that would be a much higher impact on performance. Still, I'm sure I've seen "disable your firewall" on various "how to install game" and "game doesn't run, pls help" pages.

If you want info from someone who knows something about Windows and not a glorified chat bot, Windows Defender and Windows Firewall are two separate things. Windows Firewall existed for a long time and it's meant for filtering what network traffic goes to which parts of the system, while Windows Defender is basically Microsoft's antivirus that comes pre-installed with Windows.

For example, Windows Firewall was first introduced in Windows XP, but in those days you had to install an antivirus separately. Microsoft's offering was Microsoft Security Essentials, which got remade into Windows Defender and made a part of the OS by the release of Windows 8. And yes, sometimes Windows Defender hogs your CPU and RAM quite a bit when doing it's thing, so it does have a much greater performance impact than the Windows Firewall which is only meant to do simple network filtering.

So no, those are two independent parts of the OS, with the firewall component being much older than Defender, which is an iteration of Microsoft's older antivirus that's bundled with the OS since Windows 8.

EDIT: As for Windows UAC is, basically back in the days of XP any process was ran with admin privileges, meaning that you could very easily run a malicious piece of software that would fuck your entire computer up because there was no distinction on what a given process can do. By the time Windows Vista rolled out, Microsoft introduced UAC, which basically introduced a restricted access mode for processes. So if a process doesn't need full admin access, it won't ask for it, but if it does you will get the UAC prompt asking if you're sure you want to give it admin access.

It also introduced .exe signing, meaning that if it was, let's say a Google Chrome installer, it will show you that it's not signed by Google, meaning it was most likely tampered with and you shouldn't install it. Of course, if you try and run something older than that, let's say an older game, it won't have a signed .exe and it will require admin access to run properly because that's how some games were designed back then. It all boils down to you having common sense of when to be suspicious when a UAC prompt pops up.

 

[Pee Cola]

They do mention the updates removal, but Anthony says that beyond this he doesn’t really know what else AtlasOS does as he hasn’t really looked into it.

So much for Anthony's alleged "expertise".

Meanwhile I think I'll stick with Chris Titus' Windows 10 debloater. The default settings are quite tame yet still quite effective in easing CPU and RAM load, and there are plenty of warnings if you decide to go full retard take an aggressive approach towards the pursuit of minimum bloat and maximum speed.

 

[Susanna]

So much for Anthony's alleged "expertise".

While I agree in principle that Anthony is much overrated, this really shouldn't be considered damning. "AtlasOS" and things like it are 100% for and by retarded gamers. I think it's to his credit that he's never heard of it, because you'd never see a professional use anything like it. It would be like calling a dentist incompetent because he doesn't wear one of those retarded "grills".

 

[Pee Cola]

While I agree in principle that Anthony is much overrated, this really shouldn't be considered damning. "AtlasOS" and things like it are 100% for and by retarded gamers. I think it's to his credit that he's never heard of it, because you'd never see a professional use anything like it. It would be like calling a dentist incompetent because he doesn't wear one of those retarded "grills".

True, he's the least retarded member of LMG's on-camera team. But that's like being the only student in a Special Ed class that can manage to go a whole day without shitting their pants.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

which got remade into Windows Defender and made a part of the OS by the release of Windows 8

Ackshually Vista was the first OS to bundle Defender. The implementation of Windows Firewall resembling what we have today came in XP SP 2 IIRC. In Vista & 7 it was at least very easy to turn off Defender, I can't remember with 8 as that's all a blur now.

One issue here is that the "Defender" brand encompasses dozens of components which may be available as part of the Defender that gets shipped with Windows, or may be offered as a separate installation and licensing scheme for enterprises and sometimes just altogether totally different products that happen to have the Defender branding. It's all so confusing, especially when MS shuffles the naming around every other year.

It also introduced .exe signing, meaning that if it was, let's say a Google Chrome installer, it will show you that it's not signed by Google, meaning it was most likely tampered with and you shouldn't install it.

Authenticode support has been around since at least 98 but users still blindly click through dialog boxes.

I've noticed that code signing has become a lot more popular in the last few years, even with small open source projects, and it's a welcome change. Unfortunately Let's Encrypt still doesn't support code signing but it seems code signing certs are relatively cheap nowadays. (sub $100)

 

[BowsersRectum]

Debloat scripts are far better than AtlasOS. The security concerns are kind of ridiculous. I don't see a valid use case for this over normal win10, win10 ltsc, or Linux.

What is the audience for this? People dumb enough to try it? A computer too low spec to run windows 10 has a much better chance running Linux.

Imagine spending years of work on something that's completely fucking pointless, lol

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Imagine spending years of work on something that's completely fucking pointless, lol

You've basically described most of the open source community. Sure, there's genuinely good products out there, but for every actual useful niche being filled by something like Notepad++, you have a hundred low effort clones of something that nobody really wants or needs, that only appeals to one pocket neckbeard with a fetish for shaky dependency chains in his own useless projects.

What is the audience for this? People dumb enough to try it?

People too dumb to try all the other solutions. Which is amusing, because if your too stupid to know how to run the existing debloat scripts, settings and deletes, you are quite literally the reason mandatory updates exist in the first place, to protect yourself from your own incompetent stupidity, so that fixes for exploits actually get pushed to you regardless of your ignorance.

There's nothing wrong with being a computing pleb - For many, all it needs to be is a glowy box to write emails and word documents on for the dayjob. If you want to take them seriously, do so if you can, its gonna be difficult. But whatever you do, don't fucking larp as a poweruser and think that downloading an open source project makes you some expert on anything.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Edit: He also cheaped out big time and threw in a WD Blue SATA SSD. I wonder how much difference getting a cheap NVMe would've made without screwing up your security at all. Brand new low end NVMe drives are dirt cheap nowadays, I rebuilt my old 6th gen system for my nephew and put in a sub $100 Samsung NVMe drive and it was insanely fast.

The modern ones can be perfectly fine and 95% of what matters to the personal computer user is the read speed, not the write speed.