Asus bombards Windows 11 with christmas.exe malware-like Christmas wreath banner
Asus bombards Windows 11 with christmas.exe malware-like Christmas wreath banner
The Christmas.exe in Task Manager and the Christmas theme wreath banner that covers half of your screen on Windows 11 are not malware.
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It is a part of the ASUS Armoury Crate software that is pre-installed on some ASUS PCs.
Always flash new OS if you buy a computer.
That won’t get rid of it unless you also manually go into the BIOS and disable the install ASUS Armoury Crate setting as explained in the article.
If you don’t do this it will automatically reinstall even on a fresh install of Windows. Some of these bloatware programs will even install without an internet connection! This absolutely ludicrously stupid feature is called WPBT and is used by lots of manufacturers. Luckily it doesn’t work on Linux (at least for now…).
That's wild that it's a BIOS setting. Just an extra level of fuck you.
It’s for the more novice users who can assemble a PC but don’t ever think go download / install drivers afterwards.
Most of the motherboard OEMs do this. I get a lot fewer tickets where the root cause of the issue can be boiled down to “never installed drivers afterwards installing Windows”, which is also helped by the fact that many drivers are also served through Windows Update.
Operational drivers, sure i can see some valid use there.
But this is crapware.
I’m quite happy to install it, disable its startup background functions, and then use it to install / update drivers periodically. Much less tedious than doing it the manual way, especially when managing 10-20 systems per week.
There’s a bunch of other potential functions but I simply don’t bother with them.
I don't think it reinstalls itself if you install Linux
For now...
Yup. And here i am, always telling people to first read the linked article, before they write.
automatically reinstall
The user is prompted to install the application.
According to this article: https://www.techpowerup.com/248827/asus-z390-motherboards-automatically-push-software-into-your-windows-installation it has already installed services on your computer that persist restarts by the time you are prompted to install Armoury Crate. In my opinion that is not acceptable at all.
I understand and respect your preference.
A “power user” is typically going to go through the UEFI/BIOS settings immediately after assembling their machine to configure them to their liking. Having that preference, you likely fall within that category. I would add that, at this point, this practice is about 6 generations old at this point and in use by most motherboard vendors.
As the article mentions, the feature could be considered useful. These products aren’t designed specifically for power users. Having network access and a frictionless path to driver deployment is ultimately beneficial to the majority of consumers who are going to interact with this hardware.
I would completely agree with you if that was what this feature was being used for, however most manufacturers use it to install bloatware instead of drivers which is not acceptable in my opinion.
Not to mention the huge security risk of running exe files at boot up that could be exploited by malicious people. I’m sure manufacturers aren’t releasing a new bios update every time they update their software so old versions could have unpatched vulnerabilities…
This will be executed even on new fresh installation oob.
Yet another vendor-bootkit?
He didn't say to flash Windows. 😉
Which distro do you recommend?
If you want minimal hassle, Mint is the deal.
Universal Blue is my go-to. Their OSs feel like the future. They are so easy to use and low maintenance. The upgrades happen in the background and apply automatically when you restart your computer.
There are three flavors: Bazzite for gaming Bluefin and Aurora for basic workstations and developers
I went with Aurora for myself because I like the developer focused stuff. But I also do a lot of gaming. Even though it's not gaming focused, it's still great for gaming.
My wife uses it on her laptop, too. She doesn't give a shit what her OS is as long as it works and she can use the browser.
Aurora works very well on my dell laptop
EndeavourOS
Even for beginners it's got a fantastic starting layout and default packages, but it's still basically "just Arch Linux" where it counts so you get the best of both worlds.
+1 for EndeavourOS here. For 90% of what I do, it was a virtually seamless transition. Only hang up is a few games, VR, etc.
Linux Mint or de-snapped Kubuntu.
Hi there. I just installed Kubuntu on a spare machine, but I ran into a problem with the snaps. How would one "de-snap" it? Can you point me in the right direction?
- Remove Snap packages
snap remove <package-name>(To check snap PKG installed, run
snap list)
- Uninstall Snapd
sudo apt purge snapd- Remove leftover files
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/and/snap`.- Optionally install Flatpak if you want an alternative.
sudo apt install flatpak. Don't forget to visit flathub.
Lemmy Gold 🥇
This cracks me up that everyone has a different distro to recommend... But I've tried many and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was the standout that I've decided to stick with indefinitely.
Depends on your skills and what you want. I'm currently configuring a setup on Void, to learn about login, Wayland & Flatpak. Is that up your alley?