Microsoft-Activation-Scripts VS libarchive

LTSC eliminates so many antifeatures present in 11 and 10 Home, and also solves the problem of the EOL for 10 next year - Win10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is good through 2031.

Grab the "en-us_windows_10_iot_enterprise_ltsc_2021_x64_dvd_257ad90f" ISO, sha1 begins 76c3c10e, from Microsoft:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

(Note that you have to set your user agent to something other than Windows.)

Run the activation script from Github:

https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

And enjoy a Windows that feels like your own PC again, not Microsoft's.

I have to run a number of CAD programs and proprietary IDEs in a Win10 VM, this is the only way it's usable for me.

I upgraded my Windows 7 to 10 (due to Chrome-based browsers weren't being updated anymore for Windows 7, and there was the WebP exploit) using DISM, and I learn that you can also upgrade Windows 10 to Enterprise, which is a little less car-salesman-ly than Pro (no web stuff on the Start Menu/search for example):

https://woshub.com/upgrade-windows-10-edition-without-reinst...

On this Windows edition I haven't seen any nudges to upgrade to 11.

There's even a "curl $URL | sh"-esque command to get Windows activated, hosted on Microsoft's own Github: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

Or MAS[0]

[0] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

this GitHub tool will do it for you in like a few mouse clicks

>! Hey you, want to activate your windows quick and safely? Use MAS https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts I’ve used it before and my computer hasn’t exploded, look it up if you’re worried. !<

Wild. All of these carefully inserted “seemingly innocuous” changes in the ecosystem to end up contributing to a wider exploit.

This comment sums it up nicely with a gif: https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/pull/1609#issuecomm...

29. October 2021 At this point Jia Tan pops up, and the first thing we see from him is an innocuous patch to the xz repository, and while a lot of people believe he started out trying his luck with another library also known as libarchive, this is not the case, I would bet it’s more of a backup looking at the dates, being that there are a few days in between as shown in this commit.

Potentially malicious commit by same author on libarchive: https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/pull/1609

Full agreement, and with the addition of xpk¹/xfd² as natural extensions to that extensibility too. I see things like xfd supporting xz¹, and I'm simultaneously amazed that it exists and happy that I don't need to do xz {,de}compression on 68k ;)

I guess we have something similar-ish with libarchive⁴, but nobody(including me) has pushed the extra mile to get file dialogs to support random compression and decompression formats.

Beyond OT: I didn't realise how much stuff was still going on at aminet, but I love love LOVE that people are still dropping new car sets for Geoff Crammond's F1GP.

¹ http://aminet.net/package/util/pack/xpk_User

² http://aminet.net/package/util/pack/xfdmaster

³ http://aminet.net/package/util/pack/xfd_lzma.lha

⁴ https://www.libarchive.org/

I don't have a preview channel install handy to check, but apparently they're using libarchive so here's the full list assuming they expose everything it supports:

https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveForm...

As announced at the Build conference back in May, this build adds native support for reading additional archive file formats using the libarchive open-source project such as

LibarchiveFormats · libarchive/libarchive Wiki · GitHub