N3M

Privacy or security hardening?

If you're just using Windows for gaming, and you're only on game markets like Steam and maybe video/audio streaming services while gaming then you're probably pretty secure. As far as if you're just installing games, then there's not really too many inroads for malware outside of a market like Steam or the particular game company getting compromised, which would have issues regardless of which OS you're using them on. Windows 10 already has anti-virus built in and UAC so you're probably just about there already. I say this as a die hard Linux advocate: the idea that Windows is wildly insecure when compared to Linux/Mac/BSDs is incorrect as far as I know and is just a myth from back when nobody cared about writing malware for anything other than Windows.

If you're also web browsing, I'd say having a well configured browser would be good to do, and making sure you are regularly updating/auto updating Windows and other software. Also, if you play a lot of online games and end up opening up port forwarding or something similar just be conscious of it and make sure to do something like that right and limit what kind of attack surface you're opening up.

If you're thinking privacy, I did just do a blog post about Win 11 which is similar, but I have a feeling if you're on Lemmy you're already familiar with what the basics the post includes: get a decently configured browser, toggle off as many privacy invasive settings as you can, disable the telemetry service, and try to limit the bloat Microsoft likes to include during or after installation.

I'd also very carefully vet any sort of scripts, custom ISOs, and the like if you choose to use them. You'd be putting a lot of faith on whoever made them. And probably don't worry about VPNs and such, they're not going to do anything to hide the fact that you (presumably) purchased games under your name and you're using your account to play them.

I'm typing this up on the fly and by no means the leading expert in the field, but these would probably get you a good 95% there. Happy gaming

Thanks, just ran my latest post through grammerly and it caught a few.

Sorry I'm a bit late to reply, I don't disagree, virtual desktops are great in a business setting. Microsoft already offers that for businesses, but the proposed product in the works I was talking about was for regular consumers. I doubt that they'll force it anytime soon in the sense that they'd quit offering local versions of Windows, but I still didn't wanna pass up a chance to complain about it :)

Nice catch, and thanks for the feedback. I'll have to try to remember to edit that too next time I regenerate the site

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah I'm under no illusions I'll change the world, or anybody's mind about much. I'm perfectly happy just having a mini soapbox to share my thoughts. But yeah, lol, as a Debian user running LibreWolf (a Firefox fork) on my personal machines I'm probably preaching the choir here.

Thanks! Yeah I am definitely glad I went with the static site path instead of Wordpress or something for a simple site like that. I do definitely agree with your point on disliking Microsoft (and other companies) grabbing private data and doing similar stuff on both the cloud and on local OSs.

Thanks! I didn't even think of that, I can't imagine it would be a good experience trying to copy large files, flashing a device, or anything like that. Even if things like flashing a device isn't something that would be done by the target market of MS 365 I'm sure everybody at some point has had a backup drive or thumb drive with files from a friend that they want to get onto their computer and that could probably be a real pain if it's online.

Thanks! Found the spots you mentioned, next time I re-generate the website I'll try to remember fix those typos.