[kwlug-disc] Am I being dumb?

[Ron Singh]

Hello all,

On 3 of my laptops running Mint 20(based on Ubuntu 20.04) and 11 Thinkpad
P50 laptops at a client's place, I ripped out all of the Intel and AMD
Microcode updates.
Why would I do this?
Well, since neither my client nor I runs any sort of hypervisor/VM on the
hardware and hence no VM server instances on the laptops, why take the CPU
hit?

I noticed a measurably faster response time for just about everything on
these 3 laptops with the exception of SSD disk I/O.
I am awaiting the client's feedback next week as to their findings.

My 3 laptops are used in a very restricted way with a restricted list of
URLs visited. The same sort of end-use applies to my client.
Life is lived with JS turned off except when needed by trusty sites.

I am not a "sky is falling" kind of guy and resent the microcode updates
that just slow my device down so much. The mitigations to not apply to my
use cases and most folks' use cases, it would be nice if the updates would
be presented in a triaged format where one can select these non-security
updates as needed. The easiest way I found was to hold back the packages in
the Mint update manager.

Am I being dumb beyond tears for doing this? Should I have greater
respect/fear of the possibility of a future system hack/compromise?

Thanks,

Ron S.
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