Thanks, I was familiar with encryption but not with bitlocker.
So this only affects a particular mode of bitlocker in which the drive is automatically decrypted on boot without the user providing any secret. Meaning the key is basically stored in plaintext on-device, albeit in a convoluted way.
To me it seems intuitive that such a mode isn't secure. It's a bit like protecting your door with an unpickable unbreakable lock, but then putting the key in a lockbox on the wall with a flimsy padlock that can be raked or cut off in seconds.
It seems roughly equivalent to not encrypting the drive at all so it doesn't seem surprising that there's a way to bypass it.
If I was releasing a laptop with Linux support as a key selling point, and the battery life was bad on Ubuntu 24.04 but good on the pre-release 26.04, then I'd advertise the good figures and write "tested on Ubuntu 26.04 beta, requires Linux 7.0 or later" in the footnotes.
I definitely /wouldn't/ rely on just Windows figures for a machine that's otherwise advertised as "Linux first". If the battery life was the same on both, I'd prominently mention that.
Can’t believe HN has become so afraid of generic probably-unenforceable “plz don’t reverse engineer” EULAs. We deserve to know what these tools are doing.
I’ve seen poor results from plan mode recently too and this explains a lot.
The other advantage of fibre is subtlety if you can't (or don't want to) run it through walls. 0.9mm diameter and light enough to attach it with occasional dots of glue instead of needing cable clips.
I can second this 0.9mm transparent stuff, I've run it successfully and it's very subtle.
Depending on the media converter pair you're using, you probably want UPC instead of APC. I also found that the cheapest generic bidi media converters tend to be SC, so I want with a 30m pre-terminated SC/UPC cable. Total cost (cable plus media converters) was about £30.
Anecdotally, everything works flawlessly on my work machine: Optiplex Micro, Intel iGPU, Fedora KDE 43, 4K 32" primary monitor at 125% scale, 1440p 27" secondary monitor at 100%. No issues with Wayland or with anything else.
Everything actually feels significantly more solid/stable/reliable than modern Windows does. I can install updates at my own pace and without worrying that they'll add an advert for Candy Crush to my start menu.
I also run Bazzite-deck on an old AMD APU minipc as a light gaming HTPC. Again, it's a much better experience than my past attempts to run Windows on an HTPC.
As with everything, the people having issues will naturally be heard louder than the people who just use it daily without issues.
So this only affects a particular mode of bitlocker in which the drive is automatically decrypted on boot without the user providing any secret. Meaning the key is basically stored in plaintext on-device, albeit in a convoluted way.
To me it seems intuitive that such a mode isn't secure. It's a bit like protecting your door with an unpickable unbreakable lock, but then putting the key in a lockbox on the wall with a flimsy padlock that can be raked or cut off in seconds.
It seems roughly equivalent to not encrypting the drive at all so it doesn't seem surprising that there's a way to bypass it.