Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”

The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.

The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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    3 months ago

    Y’all, help a dummy out. I dual boot windows and Fedora. I only keep windows around for a very few college classes that require for screenwriting software. I have not booted into windows in months. I have a screenwriting class coming up in a week.

    How worried should I be? I am not great with computers, I run fedora mostly because I support the philosophy of Linux, less for the techy stuff. Please advice, Linux people. I’m scurred.

    • Iapar@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      What do you use? Maybe there is a Linux alternative to that so you don’t have to bother with a VM.

    • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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      3 months ago

      Which screenwriting software? Have you tried running it under WINE?

      And do you HAVE to use that one in particular? Or can you use something like Trelby, Manuskript, or Scrite?

        • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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          3 months ago

          Ah. I did love final draft when my school paid for it. I’ve never used fade in, but the three I mentioned are all free, too. I’m not sure what version of final draft you’re using, but it doesn’t really matter for this, as its support under WINE is pretty lacking. Good luck!!

        • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          Depends if you care more about performance or ease of use. Based on the fact that OP hadn’t considered VM as a solution, I assume they aren’t super familiar with hypervisors.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            Virtualbox is a pain. Virtual manager is much easier and natively supported. You just click new and then follow the wizard

            • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              That’s not at all the case in my experience. Sure virtual box modules can be harder to install, but libvirt has so many issues that the average user has no idea about. I’ve had networking issues, display issues, and so on. At one point it read the display scaling information and scaled down the VM display instead of scaling it up. Furthermore RedHat don’t even support virt manager anymore. They want you to use Cockpit. Honestly the all around best virtualization solution is probably VMWare or something like Gnome boxes or QuickEmu.