Linux

accidentally

Right.

How would they know if you're dual booting or not?

Windows, as any operating system, is best run in a context most useful to the user and appropriate for the user's technical level.

• Need to run Windows apps/games and aren't afraid to tinker around if and when something doesn't work as expected or your software simply isn't supported? WINE/Proton.
• Need to run mostly light Windows apps and don't want to tinker around? VM.
• Need to run Windows apps/games that don't rely on Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat, want direct hardware access and aren't afraid to tinker around, especially if you only have one GPU, and when something doesn't work as expected? KVM
• Need to run any Windows app/game without things constantly breaking or the need to tinker around and staying on top of things? Dual-Boot from different disks, utilize LUKS/FDE and be done with it.

I actually tried it before for my TV PC that I wanted to also use as a miniserver, with gpu pass through and everything. It was painful to get it working properly, was like 30-40% slower. I also had constant problems with USB peripherals not connecting properly, or going in a sleep state and not waking. Many games didn't work properly.

Then I decided to just buy a cheap second second hand PC and never looked back.

Well I have my Linux partition encrypted with a unique password. But I don't dual boot anyway ...

I don’t trust them in literally any manner at all.

Same. It can't even work correctly when I try and put it into a specific box.

The ultimate issue is a distaste for giving any corporation any control over hardware that I, alone, own.

I have been entirely M$ free for a while now with the exception of one machine which basically acts as a server at this point just hosting hard drives, a thermal label printer and the network scanning applet that my mfp talks to. Every machine I actually use is Linux and I’ve never been happier with the performance of my tech.

Linux distros could've prevented this problem by fixing their vulnerable signature when the security flaw was found two years ago. All they needed to do was regenerate the SBAT when the security update came in, but as far as I can tell the broken systems just patched the code (allowing anyone to still exploit it by replacing the Grub executable with a broken version). This is hardly a Microsoft conspiracy. Microsoft gave Linux users two years more than they gave Windows users (and, more importantly, system administrators) when they had a vulnerability like this last year.

Windows users aren't going to switch to Linux, they use Windows because they want Windows. If they don't want to make it easy to get infected, they can buy critical security updates beyond the 10 years of standard support Microsoft provided Windows 10 with (the ESU program) or they can keep using their old Windows 10 install without security updates.

Realistically, as long as Google maintains Chrome for Windows 10 (so all those Chrome derived browsers still receive updates), most people are going to be fine when it comes to viruses. The 4% using Firefox may receive even more support through the ESR programme.

I'd expect Microsoft to care more about ChromeOS Flex than they do about Linux on the desktop. Would be nice if Linux would become usable enough for normal people, but it's still a pretty rough experience if you don't have a Linux expert around. Maybe one day!

Shocked, I tell you!

Windows assuming it’s the only OS on the machine

That's not the case. The update was only meant to go out to Windows users. But Microsoft messed up and accidentally released to all users, or at least some who weren't supposed to receive it. My guess is that Microsoft usually doesn't update secure boot stuff for dual boot users and instead waits for the distro to push the update.