Windows N, Mulvad VPN, Debian Testing: ttftw 2023w12

Three things from this week.

No real theme in the three things from this week. Even if it looks like it. Really. Let’s dive into it.

Windows N editions

Apparently there are editions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 with the suffix “N” which are distinct software products from the non-N editions. Why a product would be launched with such a minor tweak to an existing product name is a mystery. It’s kind of hard to even search for things a name like “Windows 11 Pro N” without getting a lot of results which are not about the version with “N” in the name. For example, Wikipedia redirects the page “Windows N” to this page where it’s easy to find lots of places with the letter N but finding Windows XP N in the middle of the page takes some time.

Anyhow, the N editions leave out some of the things nobody asked for in Windows, like Groove Music and Skype. It’s only sold in Europe though. So it can only be activated in Europe. Even though it might be possible to make a legitimate installer elsewhere.

For the rest of us, there are still ways to reduce the excess distractions and unnecessary dependencies included in Windows. JayzTwoCents recently covered some ways to set up Windows 11 with just a local account. The Rufus bootable USB tool is recommended elsewhere to make an installer that boots with a local account and no extra sign-in requirement. Both these methods use only supported mechanisms from Microsoft. It may not be a mechanism that all the product teams like, but local-only accounts still function perfectly fine on Windows.

Mullvad VPN

Consumer VPN services targeted at the general public are generally pretty sketchy. There are lots of unrealistic claims of privacy or the user just is left to hold on to some incorrect assumption that they already formed.

The fact is that internet traffic goes through a lot of computers and even if it is encrypted it can be saved by some intermediary for a few years and then today’s encryption will be trivially undone.

A VPN just tunnels your traffic from where you are to another place. The service provider (or someone with unauthorized access to their systems) may also do some other stuff with that data. Who knows. Just don’t expect that it’s impossible for people to see what you’re doing down in that tunnel.

Anyhow, Mullvad seems to do a pretty good job of tunneling traffic from where you are to another place. The apps are apparently open source, so that’s nice. The interesting thing here is that the apps aren’t necessary though. If I were to use the service I’d have it generate a Wireguard config.

Wireguard is general purpose VPN tunnel software. For example, Wireguard can be used for setting up a VPN tunnel from your laptop or phone back to your home computer. On Linux and Linux-like systems it makes VPN tunnels look like network interfaces, similar to wlan0 or eth0.

Mullvad can generate a config which you simply import into Wireguard. Using Wireguard you can then turn on or off connections to various Mullvad endpoints.

The real upside of using Wireguard instead of a dedicated app shows up if you have the time and interest to build more specialized configurations. Typical consumer VPN services send all traffic from your computer through the VPN. So if you’re trying to help your uncle go shopping on a site that restricts IPs to his country, you can turn on the VPN and all your traffic is sent to that country. That’s kind of overdoing it though, you really only needed to send traffic from the one web browser off to that country. Wireguard configurations can be complex and should integrate well with other routing rules.

Debian Testing

Since I’m rebuilding computers, setting up a new desktop with Windows 11 Pro (non-N), and repurposing my old desktop as a lab/home server, I’m in the market for a shiny new Linux. My default was Ubuntu for desktops but lately on my desktop I only run Ubuntu under WSL.

Enter Debian Testing. Debian Testing is “the current development state of the next stable Debian distribution”. So, as I understand it, it’s a branch of the Debian distro with software which has been pretty well tested and will probably be in the next stable release. To be honest, I haven’t really read much about it yet but someone suggested it when I said I wasn’t sure what Linux to install on my server.

As I type this, the Debian Testing installer completed on the other machine. Linux installers are so friendly and so fast. The old machine is still pretty capable, I’m lucky to have a good second machine to play with. I could do some desktop work on it if I wanted but the primary goal is to run the always-on services like home automation, backups, and maybe a media server.

• ttftw