Vista filesystem encryption an anti-Linux feature?

I don’t use my blog to defend Microsoft or any of its products. Even before I came to Redmond, I tried to stay away from any discussions/arguments related to Linux vs MacOS vs Windows. I started using Linux back in ’92 or ’93 and it served me well during my PhD work. I always supported that everyone should be using the tools that make them more productive. I really don’t understand the religious wars around technology.

However, after reading this post on Slashdot and the quotes in this Register article, I felt that I had to say something. Microsoft is not innocent for many of its practices by any means but suggesting that a technology which encrypts a filesystem is anti-Linux is ridiculous, even more so a technology that you don’t have to use if you don’t want to. So let me see… you decide to encrypt your filesystem but then you expect to boot to a different operating system and have access to the files without a problem? Com’on!!!

If this was a discussion about how the technology was implemented, perhaps about how filestores could be encrypted in a cross-platform manner I would have understood it. Perhaps a constructive discussion. But this is just Microsoft bashing. Statements like these are not only misleading but also demonstrate an eagerness to create false impressions, to spread FUD.

Many Slashdoters are reacting in the same way as I am. In fact, a comment points out that Linux implements TPM-based security as well.

(For what is worth, I would have said exactly the same thing as above if the statement was made about MacOS vs Linux).