Using Windows with a Microsoft account introduces all sorts of issues that only power users tend to come across, and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles.
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
I do the same thing on Linux. I have multiple different users I use for various purposes. One for Work, Personal, Side Business, and an emergency "break glass" user.
I install most applications in my home XDG directory if possible. It helps me have pure separation between work and home life. If I'm on my personal user, I do not have access to work tools, etc.
If you're already going to these lengths to compartmentalize, you might as well just run Qubes. It's really not much more mental overhead.
Plus you get nice features like different color window borders for applications running in different profiles, properly permissioned inter-profile RPC, virtualized networking ('personal' gets networking from clearnet 'sys-firewall', 'work' gets networking from 'work-vpn', 'project1' gets networking over Tor from 'sys-whonix', etc.), and much, much more.
Highly recommended way to use any flavor of windows going back to way back when - give your admin account a long fancy password and then just rarely logon as that account. Your daily driver is an account with normal priviliges. Also good for Grandma so she can't install a bunch of spyware
That's interesting and seems like an easy work-around. Just create the first account with a Microsoft account, and then create your real account afterwards as a local account. Then delete the first account you created and you have no more links to the Microsoft account. Seems too easy.
Theres an assumption here the deleting the online account will not cause any other issues. Id like to think it is so, but it hasn't been so easy at all times in the past.
If they’re linking the pro license with the logged in Microsoft account, it may be difficult to remove it or one may need to provide a different Microsoft account with a valid digital Pro license.
> For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult.
I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
> RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier
Only if you use the same account on both computers. What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine.
... because they're at home without their work machine and need to check something at work?
Because their colleague wants to let them drive?
Because my sister wants some help installing a program?
There are so many situations where using a computer doesn't involve strict security protocols and heirarchies. Sometimes MS gets a little too caught up in their corporate environments.
I was asking more about your "What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine", which doesn't make any sense to me. Why would they have to use their work account on their personal machine to RDP? Just use the account you're wanting to log in as. So if you're on your personal machine and want to log in to your work machine, just log in to the RDP session with the account INSERTWORKDOMAINHERE\username and your user account, and you'll be able to RDP. This works the same with local accounts or cloud accounts or other domain accounts or whatever. You don't need to have the account locally on your computer to be able to log in as that account with an RDP session.
And then all your hypotheticals speak to issues which don't involve RDP, at all, which I think shows where this disconnect is. RDP is not about sharing a currently active desktop session between two or more users, so all the hypotheticals you shared aren't the use case for RDP. RDP will transfer that console session to the new RDP connection. So say Alice is signed in to her computer locally, and then wants to ask Bob for some help. She shares the hostname for her computer, and tells Bob their login (a terrible idea regardless of it being a local or Microsoft account). Bob fires up RDP, connects using Alice's account, and now Alice's machine gets disconnected from that desktop session and is sitting at the login screen while Bob now has Alice's desktop session.
This doesn't matter if its a Microsoft account or a local account, this is just how the RDP protocol works on Windows. If you're wanting to have a screen share with the built-in Windows tools, the tool for that was Remote Assistance or Quick Assistant. The usefulness of that tool doesn't change whether using local accounts, domain accounts, or Microsoft accounts. Or just use a different tool altogether, of which there are many.
RDPing from a user in one domain into a computer with a user in another domain seems to be very broken.
So, the OP is either having problems using a cloud user RDPing into a domain, or connecting his computer into the work's domain and using the same user all the way.
It's not really broken, you just need to define the domain if it's not your current domain. Broken means it doesn't work, but it works exactly as defined. You need to tell it where you're wanting to authenticate against.
And only if you logged it at least once with the password. If you log in with the pins or other hello stuff, the computer won't have the password cached locally and won't let you in.
>RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier
Here is where it gets complicated, what you say is true for personal accounts and Hybrid Azure AD accounts, but it becomes super difficult with pure Azure AD accounts.
I haven't used pure Azure AD accounts from a management perspective before, and I've used it for less than a year as a user. However, I've yet to experience any sync issues personally. What kind of issues can crop up, and how?
You have to use AzureAd\john@contoso.con otherwise it interprets as a UPN and fun ensures. Just deployed 30+ Azure AD only devices in a clinic and that took some getting used to when elevating with UAC.
100%, and trying to train users that they need to add AzureAd\ to their login....
Also with pure Azure AD accounts you have to add each users permissions manually to each machine they need to login to since Azure AD groups don't sync down to each machine.(Correct me if I am wrong here, it could have changed since I last did a pure Azure AD install 3-4 years ago)
My issue is that my Microsoft account has a long, random password that is saved in my password vault. I never have to manually type this in because I have it linked to the Microsoft Authenticator app. But if I try to RDP to a computer with a Microsoft Account, I have to use the password to connect with the RDP app (unless I'm missing something?). My local user accounts on my home LAN have complex but easy to remember passwords so this is not usually an issue for me.
If you're already signed in, you've got access to your vault, so it's not too hard to get your password from that when doing your login for RDP. Then you can have it remember your account, or just use the password vault each time. On the plus there, then all your computers are then protected by this complex password instead of weaker passwords. Then you can use PIN, Hello, or security keys for easier sign in locally. Your account is still protected by your complex password, the alternative login methods are local only and have short guess attempts.
I haven't tried but I think these days you can actually authenticate RDP with a security key associated with the account.
I am convinced Power Users are not the target market for Windows 11 (or maybe even windows). I mistakenly updated to it and have regretted it. Did you know they turned off animations when using Virtual Desktops [1]? A power-user feature on all the other OS' that took Microsoft till 2019 to adopt was crippled in little over 2 years after release.
Color me confused. Why would I ever want animations when I change virtual desktops? I know what keys I pressed. I pressed them for a reason. The animation just gets in the way.
In general, animations don't seem like a "power user" feature at all. Animations hint at new users ("hey, where did that window go when I minimized it") but aren't useful once you understand the abstraction.
Being a power user does not make you infaillible or unable to press the wrong keys. A subtle animation is a trivial visual cue that they keys I pressed did something, the wrong keys resulting in the wrong cue. I am not looking at my keyboard when I switch desktops.
Look at tools, for example. Tools for power users do not have fewer cues and affordances than tools for neophytes. They have more, because they have more features, more power, and using them can be more dangerous. You can also see it that way: a newbie using a feature once a day will be wrong (and needing to be nudged to the right direction) once a day. A power user who is wrong 1 times every 100 they use a feature will still be wrong more often than the newbie if they use it more than 100 times a day.
Also, this:
> We’ve turned off the animation when switching Desktops using the keyboard shortcuts as it was leading to flashes and hangs
is fucking ridiculous. If your compositor is so bad you can’t animate desktop switching without “flashes and hangs”, it means you have some serious work to do on your display subsystem. Fix your OS already!
Maybe I just have exceptional cognitive and motor skills issues, but even though I spend pretty much all my time in front of a screen and consider myself to be a power user, I press wrong keys by mistake very often, and I do appreciate (fast) animations for feedback. There definitely should be at the very least a toggle though.
When going "two to the right" over empty desktops it is nice to see it was triggered two times maybe? I have a habit of putting the same stuff on the same virtual desktop number, so the other are ofen empty.
The main problem with a MS account is if you have alot of documents and you log onto a new machine, you better have good internet speed otherwise you will be waiting hours for the documents to come down. Its not so noticeable with windows server (at least since server 2000) and workstations because office network speeds are good but if you also had exchange, then local copies of exchange mailboxes also tied up office networks for ages especially if users had exchange/outlook mailboxes in excess of a several Gb in size. Usually at least 10/100 speed but usually faster, you dont get that over the internet hardly anywhere.
You can disable auto sync for onedrive and/or outlook. You can also mark your connection as metered so any background transfer will only be initiated on user approval.
I doubt it, considering that Microsoft only gives you 5GB of storage for free. Anyone with non-trivial amounts of documents will quickly blow through this. What the parent poster is talking about is probably the onedrive folder, which probably gets automatically set up when you sign in with your microsoft account.
They have some dirty tricks they use to “convince” users to put all their files in OneDrive. The main one is making it seem like a backup or something the user forgot to set up (“protect your files”), so a lot of users fall for it.
Files on demand is a way to make people dependent and the low quota is to get them onto a subscription.
And everything defaults to saving files in that folder. Saving locally is made intentionally difficult, and the setting is regularly reset to one drive after updates.
So yeah, Microsoft basically saves all your documents to the cloud, even after trying very hard to disable that possibility.
Windows 11 is the proverbial straw for my camel. It's hostile and aggressive, and I don't need to fight with my computer.
AD with roaming profiles was a nightmare if for some reasons the workstation couldnt connect to the server when they logged on, somehow users managed to create multiple roaming profiles which jammed up the network when their massive ms exchange/outlook files 5Gb+ size early 00's downloaded for "offline" working.
And with the windows 10 accounts where its nigh on impossible to get onedrive to stop copying your files. If when setting a new computer, you dont create a ms account when you configure your first user, its easier to get rid of onedrive, but if you have or create a ms account which is used to add a user when setting up a new computer to log into windows, then onedrive just keeps coming back like a virus. Absolute pain in the backside.
I'm at the stage of looking at Linux now but not ubuntu because even ubuntu phones home with meta data and that had been reported some years ago in the press, there just isnt any privacy from these devices anymore. I dont even own a mobile phone now its got that bad with being tracked. I've gone from early adopter to last person on the adoption curve line.
These people dont understand privacy and the security services/law enforcement are loving all this surveillance, they have never had it so easy before, being able to place virtually every individual in a country at the push of a button.
I don't believe this is the case. On my corporate account stuff only uploads if you drop it in OneDrive. If you use “Documents” on OneDrive then yeah they get uploaded. Use it in the local folder, and it's local. Otherwise, I'm a Linux man.
> Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
I might get downvoted, but I like windows as an OS. I used it for years and it was pretty stable and easy to modify. Now that they are going the way of Google they really have nothing to keep me. Linux has been my main OS for years anyway. Windows I used for office, adobe products, and games. I guess I'll just keep a network gapped VM around for those on my linux and buy some extra memory to handle the VM.
Most of my work life has been focused on Microsoft products, so I've been using Windows for a long time as my primary OS. I upgraded to Windows 11 as soon as I could and despite me creating a local account initially, I then linked it to a Microsoft Account which has caused me no end of pain. There have been lots of other niggly issues with Windows 11 that I've been living with, e.g. I prefer having my taskbar on the right-hand side of the screen but that feature went away with Windows 11; and the start menu search has been playing up recently where I couldn't just start typing after the menu coming up - although it seems to be better at the moment.
I switched my laptop over to PopOS a while back and have really been enjoying that, although I miss not having the Office desktop apps available. I also purchased a OneDrive sync app for Linux which works very well.
You might want to try WinApps or something similar to run your MS Office in Linux. I haven't try it myself, but it seems a nice way to run Windows apps in Linux.
It’s hard to beat windows native office. MacOS version stinks and the web version is pretty slow on complicated stuff. That’s why I use windows on my work PC ans WSL for the dev stuff.
It's not everyone's favorite answer, but LibreOffice works fine for me. I've set a number of documents with it (including my own resume) and it works perfectly fine. It's not the most intuitive program ever made, but it's nothing if not comprehensive.
You're not going to convince hardcore Office users (like me) that LibreOffice is good enough. I try it occasionally on my Linux laptop, and I have nothing good to say about it.
That's interesting, I have the opposite perspective. I'm not a power user in the sense that I use it to write documents, but at work we generate docx files from code (not a good idea) and a significant amount of the time we have perfectly fine files that render as we expect on LibreOffice but break unexpectedly on Word. Sometimes it even renders fine on the web version, but still incorrectly in Word itself.
Edit: I should clarify that I don't mean to contradict you. Just thought it would be an interesting perspective to read about.
Personally I deal with word templates and decades old xlsx files. OG office is my only go to and honestly it’s great. I don’t buy office for home so for kids projects it’s great. But not for payday stuff.
Pretty much everything. I've used both Linux and Windows extensively over the last decade plus and am very familiar with the available alternatives and find those that exist for what I use lacking. Trying to list them off just invites people to pick suggestions off whatever list they have ready without regard for the needs of the person they're suggesting at, and it gets tiresome.
This is exactly what happened to me. I just had enough with all the anti-patterns emerging for each larger update or Windows iteration. I now do all work which require windows in a VM, and using PopOS as host and couldn't be happier.
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
Wow, this comment just crossed 50 replies. I think the fundamental issue is that Microsoft platforms have never maintained the invariant that knowing your username and password is enough to log in.
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
The RDP issue is only a problem because the UI doesn't make it clear that you need to have password sign-in enabled to RDP, when setting up a PIN during initial setup disables password sign-in.
> and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
Never again windows with Microsoft accounts. I have two windows 10 licenses, one home and one pro. I made the mistake of associating the licenses to my Microsoft account and now there is no way to move the pro license from the old PC to the new one. The Microsoft support site is a complete joke of unpaid chatterers that send you on wild goose chase, the web is full of SEO bullshit site that keyword-dance around the issue... Windows 11 for me is Windows Never, and I am well under to way to ensure that the 100 odd laptops at $company run Ubuntu next thank you very much.
This is not true at all, you can transfer the license. Unless it was an OEM license and is tied to the hardware. It has nothing to do with your MS account. I've done this many times when upgrading hardware for myself and my family using different combinations of Home/Pro licenses.
I actually added mine to my Microsoft account specifically because it made it easier/safer to move the license to a new installation (new hard drive, in my case). You just do a base installation with physical media, sign in, and you’re good to go.
Thank You nightski. These are not OEM licenses, I bought the Windows Pro one fair and square and full. Can you send a link to an how to? I do confirm that I could not do it there was nothing on the MS license site that lets me do the switch. Nothing I confirm.
Also no warning or any information to the effect that something is being prevented because of an OEM situation. Just no way to switch the two licenses between the two PC's.
Abou nine years ago I bought a Windows 8 Pro license that was upgraded to 10 and now 11 for free. It was transfered between 4 or 5 machines including one virtual machine.
Can't you just deactivate the Home license and then install Pro? Or just try installing Pro then deactivating the Home license? I only have Pro keys attached to my account but I've shuffled them about between different computers.
Congratulations, you've just created an IT nightmare. By forgoing the easy configurability of Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory, you've added an untold amount to the TCO of your laptop fleet and IT infrastructure! You've also created problems down the line as it's more difficult to procure endpoint security and whitelisting solutions for Linux than for Mac or Windows. There's a reason why enterprises choose Microsoft time and time again: it works, it's easy to configure and administer at scale.
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
Agree about not making decisions when mad but aren't there good options beyond MS for the things you mentioned. Gsuite or any number of other office + mail providers can replace outlook. AD is useless these days unless you have Windows machines to administer or may be with azure cloud which by all accounts sucks when compared to gcp/aws.
So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.
Outlook, Exchange and Active Directory?
These are buggy software packages from the 1990's right?
We've been off the lot for the longest time now. The PTSD is even almost gone.
Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues, but I run them in a virtual machine not connected to the Internet where I need things like iTunes and MS Office. Some games don't run in a VM very well because of the overhead and abstraction (unless they're lightweight or not resource intensive). I have a separate Alienware laptop for gaming on Windows however.
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
For gaming? Ditch virtualbox and migrate your VMs to libvirt/KVM/qemu.
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
>Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
I'd love to, and support the project with my bucks, but that seems a bit optimistic in the short term. Getting more and more work done with linux in the meantime.
With these efforts, at least my craving for sovereignty is mostly satisfied. With windows I feel like a crofter living on someone else's land.
Well, clean-room reverse-engineering something as complex as Windows will take time. I'm sure most are fine using their machines (virtual or otherwise) while they wait however more years until ReactOS reaches feature parity.
I hate it, not because it requires an account, but because Microsoft is nightmarishly bad at account management and has been since I was a little kid in the 90s. They somehow make it possible to have multiple different unsynced accounts across different services, so you constantly forget which is which, and resetting or gaining access is always an incredible hassle. I find myself having to reset my password literally anytime I want to log in to something owned by Microsoft.
If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
These morons at MS decided to force a very confusing and friction-ful Minecraft account migration from Mojang to MS just as all the kids are migrating from Minecraft to Roblox. I'm sure this is only accelerating Minecraft's demise.
This one absolutely kills me. Why do my kids need Microsoft accounts for this? Their official instructions ask for DOB and require checking some box about allowing my kids to sign into "third-party applications". Not to mention all the legal crap I'll have to agree to, settings to scrutinize and opt-out of to ensure privacy, etc. I am this close to just telling them that they're going to have to abandon their favorite game for something else.
I can't think of anything more off-putting when purchasing a game than having to create another account.
I have yet to migrate any of our family's 6+ Mojang accounts to Microsoft and I'm not sure that I will. Migrating to a Microsoft account also coincidentally creates an XBox Live account which is a hassle I don't need. If Minecraft needs to die in order to make way for the next creative, social, non-FPS game then I can accept that.
And I'm not convinced that Microsoft's forced migration from Mojang to MS accounts is legal.
I stopped playing Rocket League for several reasons; discontinuation of a native Linux version, and then forcing you to register an Epic account (which I refused to do).
It probably is legal because of a "we can change the terms and conditions at any time" clause, but just in case I'm not going to migrate my account until they really shut down Mojang accounts.
It seems weird to me that they give people capes as a "reward" for migrating, as if that's the only way they can legally get people to move over.
Have you given Minetest (AFAIK the biggest Minecraft FLOSS clone) a try? Maybe your kids like it and you can stop hassling around with Microsoft's shenanigans.
This account migration was bizarrely difficult. I lost access to Minecraft when I followed their procedure. I got hold of support, and they had me move back to an older version of the launcher, which recognized my new account, while the new launcher didn't. I assume I'll lose access again someday because they'll force an upgrade.
On the plus side, I was able to contact support. MS is a lot better than some other tech companies that way.
Also, if you have multiple Minecraft accounts, the official launcher is much slower to switch between them than it used to be with the old Mojang accounts. It was so annoying that I finally bit the bullet and switched to the MultiMC launcher, even though it's really frustrating getting the various plugins like Optifine working with it every time the game updates.
What's the problem with MultiMC? That all plugins are lost when you move from 1.18 to 1.18.1? I sometimes workaround that by symlinking the plugin/world/screenshot/settings folders together, but occasionally plugins are incompatible between patch versions.
Forget across services, I somehow have at least three Microsoft accounts all tied to the same email address, with no way to know which account any particular service wants on any given day. Teams is particularly bad, signing me into one of the three seemingly at random so that I have to keep logging out and back in until it miraculously gets me into the correct account, guessing which password it wants each time. Any support avenue I’ve tried has no idea what I’m talking about and offers no fix. Thankfully I don’t much rely on my Microsoft accounts.
I love how whenever I log into Outlook with SSO, I'm immediately taken to a page that says I've logged out, and then have to go back 2-3 steps in my browser to a previous view of the calendar (or mail). It's like whoever rolled that out has never had to use it. It's _infuriating_, and is a daily occurrence (in two browser tabs, since I have calendar + mail open in different ones). I wish I knew of a solution.
Yammer is the worst for that. And the worst, just in general.
Login -> 2FA -> Loading state for 20 seconds -> Content pops in -> Whoops, back to login.
This cycle repeats 3-4 times before it settles down. Then all the other Microsoft apps decide I’m no longer logged in and have to do the 2FA dance for every. Single. One.
Some days I end up running out of 2FA tokens and am unable to log into essential systems. It’s maddening.
I'm not sure what to call it, but the shadow tenant they set up for Teams is a nightmare. A random person can sign up for Teams with their work email and all of a sudden they become an important part of the process if you want to set up MS365 for the same domain. I would describe it as them owning the shadow tenant.
Ah we never saw that one coming. What really bugs me is why people keep defending these companies: this is straight up abusive, and we - all of us - should not accept these tricks. Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
> Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years.
It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.
Well when the commitment was made for Windows 10 to be the final version of Windows I guess they were right in costly ways that weren't anticipated.
Windows 11 is turning out to be less & less of the kind of Windows people once knew & loved.
Power users may feel like it's completely hostile but it's overall just less to love for everyone.
Failing to live up to the Windows 10 commitment before it had a chance to decently stabilize, with all those resources, is a major failure but without the continued follow-through now you've got to figure there's going to be a different force at work if Windows is to be all it could be or even kept relevant in some ways.
And if the force starts to depend on direct licensing fees from everyone for it's survival, which haven't been in place for a while that's just screwing the pooch that much more.
With Windows 10 & 11 so far you need to be really sharp with the numbers to keep from getting the feeling that users are costing Microsoft money somehow. If that happens inherent pressure may arise naturally to reduce the number of users in response and the overall actions of the company could become unstoppable in this direction. Once underway, overall corporate momentum could tend downward uncontrollably with very little chance of a turn-around for an entire bureaucracy.
Even worse a small part of the bureaucracy could be getting new income that was not there and they could be rewarded for devising the system, this will push a further group of users away since anyone who doesn't like going from tolerable to intolerable will be in the same group.
There is some appearance of the Bureaucratic Failure Mode.
I didn't downvote him, but I can see why some people would. Many of us aren't going to be coerced into making Microsoft accounts or eating bugs no matter what. Now I've got to take my flip phone out of my faraday bag and return a page from my beeper.
Most people using Windows probably already have an MS account. Those that don't may flee to Linux. But honestly I subscribe to Office 365, use OneDrive even on my iPhone, and enjoy Game Pass. It just doesn't matter that much. If anything having 2 factor auth for my computers is a benefit.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
Can someone explain to me why Microsoft migrating my Minecraft account to my Microsoft account is not a huge security anti-pattern, given that this is the same account I use to access my high-importance Azure account? Do we really believe that the Minecraft launcher presents no additional attack surface and handles authentication material with the same rigor as the Azure login process?
I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token. So everyone is actually authenticating through the same secure interface, and even if one application's credentials get leaked, all they would give access to would be your Minecraft profile, and nothing else. Hopefully.
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
Do not make a second Microsoft account, it'll just end in frustration.
Story: I have two Minecraft accounts (I used to do plugin work and it made testing easier to have an alt.).
I migrated my main one to my MS account (one that's been in use with xbox and O365 for a decade+ at this point), no problem.
I migrated the second one to a new account a few weeks back after they pushed that it'll be mandatory after 10th March; usied a gmail address for the new MS account because I'm done dealing with outlook.
It all worked, for a week....
I'm now locked out of that second account, with them demanding a mobile number to "verify" it's me...
I haven't had the energy to go yell at them yet. It's the same bullshit I hear happens with twitter accounts where they also demand a mobile number.
The truth is I think my "primary" account has my mobile number already attached... and I'm scared that I'll lose access to that as well if I try to use it to unstick my second account, getting "auto-banned" in much the same way they described my second account (which ONLY ever got used to login to Minecraft) for suspicious automatically detected activity and violation of TOS.
Perhaps you can just solve this by getting a cheap prepaid SIM? Although that opens up a potential attack vector if the number expires after a while and gets recycled… and having to spend money to fix a problem MS created is stupid.
> I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token.
Benefits really depend on your threat model. Login process uses same credentials which can access everything. But afterwards, the credentials stored in Minecraft has limited access, if third party has a way to steal them.
To be fair, I've found that Microsoft have the best security for their accounts - much better than Apple ID or Google Accounts. Excellent 2FA support and if you have it set up with the Authenticator app, you will almost never need to type in your Microsoft account password. Unlike Apple or Google where I find that I often need to type in those passwords which forces me to pick easier passwords.
If you can spare the expense ($5/mo/user and a domain) you really should be putting Azure resources in a Microsoft 365 tenant instead of using MSA/live.com accounts. Microsoft will act as a 'processor' instead of a 'controller' of your data in this configuration.
Dialing up the annoyance level to a 11. Microsoft has spent the last 6 years or more glacially gravitating its OS-developer features towards Ubuntu. Because they couldn't do better - VSCode being the one crowning glory - and not an insignificant one. The side annoyances of a barely functional Cortana & Edge, were things I looked past, now add one more, a required account - we'll be led into unknown realms of integration (not of tools) but of 'marketing identity' and SSO .
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
> Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture,
Not if you're a back-end coder or a system admin/DevOps. You might tolerate some level of torture, but you for sure won't be happy about it. Ripping out Cortana, Edge and the Windows 10 start menu are literally the first items on my "setting up a new machine" checklist.
Aside from that, I have never been okay with Teams (beyond voice calls, that's the one thing I'll defend them on) or SharePoint, even if I do have to use both occasionally. It's not like I have any say, but when I have a chance to say my piece, I complain about them openly.
So far, doing most of my work on a Linux VM on a laptop that was well managed by the internal IT team (and with local admin permission granted as needed) was the only reason why I put up with the nonsense that was Windows 10 anywhere.
VSCode is great, Github only got better under Microsoft, and I'm actually one of the people who likes Teams... But even as a general fanboy (Win98 was the system that really got me into computers), it is just too much bullshit at this point. While before I had a Linux partition for specific work, and my main "digital life" on windows, I'm going to switch this around now.
And it sucks so much, there is no good reason but short-sighted greed to push for this, I'm happy to pay for a windows version I own and feel like an owner of, this kind of product just isn't developed anymore apparently.
In WinXP there was something about WMP checking for the rights to MP3's that were already on your computer to verify that you were legally allowed to play them.
I don't think users of Windows have been the primary focus for a long time.
That's a common misconception. What it would do was when indexing a folder with DRM'd music files, it would automatically try to add the rights to the store on your local computer. They weren't using that specific functionality to scan and report. And, it was opt in (when you first started wmp)
Getting track titles automatically (gracenote, etc) might be what you're mixing in - and that was also opt in, and even open source software has that functionality now (VLC, for example)
Misconception? It's what it said during installation. I guess you can pretend it was for whatever reason you want, but never forget the Zune.
I just looked it up for fun. "Enhanced Content Provider Services: Send unique Player ID to content providers [ ]"
At the time, the RIAA was ruining the lives of MP3 downloaders. Trying to pass laws like the DMCA. And here's your buddy Microsoft asking you to voluntarily identify yourself to those bastards. It's even grosser than I remember.
It's a code editor, not an IDE... they never claimed otherwise.
Sure, there are extensions now that almost make it an IDE (integrated debugger, support for some build systems, etc.) but if you need the real thing, get the real thing.
For debugging native code I always bring up Visual Studio or WinDBG, but as an editor, VSCode is significantly lighter and faster (despite it being built on Electron) than full VS.
The I in IDE is key. Modern Visual Studio, the IDE, will even provide a fully integrated development environment for open source stuff. Trying to do this with a code editor like VSCode is like trying to carry plywood on a VW Beetle. It can do it, but it looks kind of funny, and maybe you should have just rented the truck/IDE from the store...
It is really good for remote coding and collaborative coding. Seems okay for everything else. It doesn't really compete with JetBrains IDEs, but I'm sure it's competitive with other free IDEs.
And it's all due to how Code is both open-source in spirit and in truth, and aren't beholden to silly sales targets. You can see what this sort of thing does to a project when the Visual Studio 2022 team tried to move `dotnet watch` HMR functionality to Visual Studio 2022[0] instead of leaving it in VS Code.
VS Code binaries might be under a different license that governs auto update and telemetry, but the code for all of VS Code itself is OSS. VSCodium is explicitly just a build of VS Code without any MS extras, and it's a stark difference from licensing the code so that there's zero competition in hosting the product as a managed service.
“The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup.”
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
My last round of Windows 11 installs, I just created a new MS account for the install, created a local admin user, and then deleted the MS account from the machine and built local accounts out normally.
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
MS is using the boiling frog strategy. They will likely increase the difficulty of creating/using local accounts in the future, with the end game of completely removing support in a couple of years. Then you will either need an MS online account or an enterprise AD account.
Well it's all a part of them trying to turn Windows into iOS like device management system, including the "family" aspect of app store and subscriptions.
When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?
Have you actually used the device with that choice? Pretty hard when every app and functionality expects some sort of cross device or global identity tie in.
BTW, the choice still exists but is only readily shown on enterprise sku
There are so many (and so simple) workarounds that it almost feels intentional. My favourite one is typing "a@a.com" as email, literally anything as password, and this will throw an error and viola, prompt you to create a local account. Been using this in the latest Windows 11 Dev builds, no MSA required. Even Microsoft Store works without MSA!
I've encountered machines with Windows 11 preinstalled that by all appearances were not going to let you proceed with setup without connecting, but Alt-F4 would get you past that step. More recently I've seen some machines that have a "Continue with limited setup" option similar to what Win10 offered.
I don't understand Microsoft's product strategy. The push for WSL, PowerToys, a new powerful Terminal, was obviously a ploy to attract developers after Apple's hardware (2016-2019) and software (2011-) decline.
Now what? More telemetry, more cloud-as-default, required Microsoft accounts, Edge sabotaging Firefox and constantly making itself the default browser. I actually like Windows, I understand its flaws and how to configure it to get out of my way. But this is plain creepy. Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff? With VSCode? Their strategy makes no sense. I know they don't care about making money from Windows anymore, but surely they want to keep/attract power users and devs?
Bit late but no, one business unit makes the kernel, libraries, dev tools, frameworks, " ♥ 's Linux" (only on azure or in wsl though), the other makes the end user experience for Windows NT
>Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff?
Well look at how many people are fooled. Appearances matter, not just matter, make and break an entity. So PR is ramped up to 11. Propaganda works even if, and in a certain case, especially if there are contradictions like that.
>this is plain creepy
Always has been. For one example, which was a major turnoff for me from Microsoft, was them pushing the idea of Trusted Computing, back in the mid 2000s. Always-on internet was getting widespread adoption, so they tinkered with the idea: what if we would always check the software's and files' authenticity, every time they are opened?
Make no mistake, they're past the point where they need people to like them. With enough clout, all they (or any other large corporation) need to do is offer competitive prices while they retain their influence. The rest will take care of itself.
May the stars, the galaxy and all forces of nature combined push me away from any Windows OS from now on and, at the same time, pull me towards Debian and its likes.
I'm not a MS hater, but WTF with all the ever growing telemetry, spam and the Edge enforcement efforts. Esp. what they do with Edge drove me over the edge.
A couple of weeks ago I made the first step. Still running Windows 10 as base but with VMWare Workstation running Ubuntu LTS. I do all serious work in Ubuntu. Before that my whole dev setup was on Windows.
Still hesitant to move to something like ESXi (also because of the limits of the free version). But something like this is the next step, I guess.
Or Windows in a Linux VM. I haven't discovered that enough yet. Linux still needs more setup and maintenance IME.
Debian is extremely opinionated. I swore them off after they made it extremely difficult for many years to install Firefox because of some ideological purity bullshit.
It's not quite right to portray it entirely as "ideological purity bullshit".
Mozilla's trademark policy forbade using their trademarks with custom builds that weren't Mozilla binaries, or at least with ones that might contain non-Mozilla modifications. (I can't remember the exact details of what was allowed.) In addition to that kind of creating a bit of a conundrum with the idea of free or open source software, it would also have forbidden Debian from custom-patching Firefox with their own security fixes.
The Debian policy was to keep stable releases static and only make security and bug fixes to packages in the stable release. Firefox didn't have extended support releases at the time, so the only ways of keeping the browser patched were to constantly update to new releases or to backport patches to older releases, so Debian was still patching Firefox by themselves. The Mozilla trademark policy made it impossible for them to keep doing that, or to even maintain their freedom to do that, and keep using the Firefox trademarks.
Debian is just generally very strict about licensing and playing by the rules. (They're also strict about adhering to their free software guidelines, which might be considered ideological. And yes, the distribution is opinionated, but that doesn't mean the rationale is always ideological.)
Some other distributions, especially smaller and less formal ones, might have just ignored the entire trademark policy and kept doing whatever they wanted despite it being potentially in violation of the conditions of Mozilla trademark use. Or they might have just shrugged and decided they didn't care about being able to patch the browser themselves anyway, especially if they were a rolling distro.
They insisted on being able to patch firefox. Firefox insisted if they did they couldn't legally call it firefox without being sued. In the meanwhile it was entirely possible to download an archive of the latest firefox release and drop it in a directory on your home and add its directory to PATH. It could even update itself from there if you liked.
My opinion stays unchanged: run from Microsoft like you're fighting for your life. They want nothing but to ensnare you into a web of proprietary languages and services until you can't do anything in your computer that is not controlled by them.
Yes, which is exactly why you should be fighting against those two as well. I'm doing my bit by not putting much valuable data besides YouTube playlists into my very ancient Google account, and using Linux on the desktop.
Why is that? I know people who run large businesses on OVH hosted email. Own domain, SMTP/IMAP goodness, everything just works, cheap and portable. Why would I ever want to ensnare me or my users to a Microsoft owned service?
I actually didn't know that, thanks. Then I'd change OVH to Migadu, which works well too. And in my book it's already a good start if something is not hosted by Microsoft :)
Just checked out Migadu. Their support page is pretty sparse, but it looks to me like they fail on the same criteria Fastmail fails on, which a sibling commenter mentioned and I replied to here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30397414
Believe me, I am also a big proponent of open software and standards. But when the open options all seem to be inferior, then it doesn't make sense to go with them, especially when they have to support a business.
(also, the name is pretty funny to me, as 'mi gadu' is slang for 'oh my god' in the Netherlands :P)
I've been using Zoho for personal email with no issues for almost a decade, IIRC. But depending on what kind of business you're running, there are certainly more options than just those three.
If you know any other options that satisfy the constraints in the comment I linked, I would be interested to hear about them. I haven't been able to find any in my research.
Just checked them out. Looks to me like they don't offer 'real' shared mailboxes (where every user authorized for the mailbox has the same view of the mailbox), just 'distribution lists' (in essence, forwarders).
Consider the following scenario: Alice and Bob jointly manage a mailbox sales@acme.co. An email from a customer arrives and Alice replies to it.
With a real shared mailbox, Bob should be able to see the e-mail Alice sent, as they both have the same view on the shared mailbox. IIUC, with a simple distribution list this is not the case (the sent e-mail just resides in Alice's personal mailbox).
I'm a big proponent of open standards, so if anybody on HN knows e-mail providers that can sanely do this and store your data within the EU (Fastmail says they don't [1]), I'm definitely interested to hear about them. We would also have to find decent alternatives for other parts of MS365, though (file sharing and single sign-on (currently our users have different logins for various systems, causing them to write their passwords on sticky notes...)).
For the last few years I've been trying to change the billing address of my Microsoft and Office 365 account and it's still wrong. Microsoft account management is so feckin' stupid that I feel sorry for all Windows 11 users who will be forced to use it.
BTW before people come and try to tell me how to change my billing address, I know how to do it. I did it everywhere. It shows correctly everywhere on the websites, but as soon as Microsoft creates the PDF invoice that I need to send to my accountant it has the old address on it, despite it being updated EVERYWHERE. I gave up on it. I basically doctor the address myself and then take a screenshot of the pdf with the corrected address and send the image to my accountant so he stops annoying me that the billing address is wrong.
>For the last few years I've been trying to change the billing address of my Microsoft and Office 365 account and it's still wrong. Microsoft account management is so feckin' stupid that I feel sorry for all Windows 11 users who will be forced to use it.
My minor example of Microsoft address stupidity is that when I make a purchase at the Microsoft store, and provide a shipping address that I only want to use for that purchase, that address becomes the new default for subsequent purchases even if I specifically turn off the checkbox asking if I want to make the address the default. (I've had dozens of opportunities to test this.)
The referenced blog post is still not clarifying whether this requirement will only apply to current and future "Window Insider flights" (which require a M$ account anyway to join the program in the first place), or be released to public builds as well. Everyone is kinda assuming that this requirement is going to apply to actual Windows 11 Pro releases, but the way they're phrasing this does not seem to imply that at all.
I feel like I see this exact article every year or two and then it always comes out that you can easily get around this with some type of easy loophole. Of course that might still get the majority of people switching to an online account but..... if you are practically giving away an OS for free is that really so bad?
Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?
For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.
LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029
LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)
Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.
LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.
LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.
If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.
LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).
The "easy loophole" last time was to install windows without an internet connection and then repeatedly try/fail to create an account until the option appeared.
You can hammer the keyboard to make a Microsoft account and then delete that account. Microsoft won't have learned much about you except that your name is wduwbe73ne7cn47wh.
I still wouldn't call that "easy" though. Sure it's a small number of steps, but they aren't trivial or immediately obvious and don't escape the basic issue that we're having to evade the operating system here.
They definitely did at one point, I still have a LTSC key from before my school decided to be too lazy to renew Azure Dev Tools for Teaching (Imagine). IIRC the keys were per edition, so a 2016 key wouldn't apply to the newest LTSC release.
Another annoying thing about this wrt them discouraging it, you need a Microsoft professional/enterprise account (I forget what they call it) to see the sha256 hashes, which they used to make publicly available until a few years ago
>LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)
>LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported for the same amount of time as LTSC 2019[1]. Maybe you're talking about LTSC 2021 IOT? That's the one that has 10 year support[2].
Can you use Apple products without an account? If not*, what version of Linux should I get setup with. Casual web development. I mostly use my personal machine for gaming.
You can't access stuff in the App Store without an Apple account. And there is a chunk of Apple software that's only available in the App Store. On Windows, I can't think of any worthwhile software that's not available outside the Windows App Store.
ios devices must hook to internet to activate. they must phone home. That said you can navigate the dark patterns and don't need to use apple id (but you also can't install apps, etc)
for mac you can say this device doesn't connect to the internet. but as soon as you do it phones home.
I believe you need one to download apps though. for instance, I think the apps that come with the mac from the store don't reappear if you recover the OS unless you sign into the app store.
That might well be true. I only use the Mac App Store to download Xcode and update first-party software, so I'm not sure (and, at any rate, I'm signed in to an iCloud account, so I wouldn't know if that part doesn't work without one). I seem to recall non-logged-in ones having all the built-in software in the past, but it might not be true anymore.
A lot of the replies here are recommending Ubuntu - I'm going to recommend PopOS.
It's built on top of Ubuntu, but comes with a newer kernel (better new hardware compatibility), graphics drivers, and some sensible defaults.
Some optimizations for laptops with graphics switching is great too.
Come on. That's like still bringing up the Sony CD rootkit incident as a valid reason to boycott them so many years later. Ubuntu reversed course on ads pretty quickly, and if any of the past 4-6 years worth of LTS releases included ads, then they were so unobtrusive I literally didn't notice anything was there.
If you want to hurt Linux adoption by discouraging the most Just Works distribution for normal people, be my guest. But please at least figure out if it's still got any actual problems that are as bad as the ads in the past, like snap or systemd or something (which IMO aren't even such huge issues - most users won't care).
Secretly installing malware on millions of customers' computers then releasing an uninstaller that installs additional malware is such a cartoonishly evil/ridiculous thing to do that I have nothing but respect for someone still boycotting Sony 17 years later. It's not like anyone at Sony spent time behind bars because of it.
Fair enough, but Sony have been consistently evil afterwards. If they cleaned up their act since and didn't do very many questionable things, I'd count that as a win.
I'd recommend Ubuntu also. However I can't stand their default desktop environment, so I'd either recommend Ubuntu mate, or (what I did) the latest and greatest Ubuntu, and then just sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop-environment which will give you a desktop with a start menu more akin to windows.
It's been a few years but I tried to use mac OSX without signing into an apple account and eventually I was forced to do it to get updates from the app store IIRC. So it's probably possible, but almost certainly not common or advised unfortunately.
Thus at least you can have a local account without any attempt of Apple trying to force you not to, and then login to the app store with an apple id, if you want.
>Works, is easy to use, and help is everywhere for it.
It's so easy you can't even be smug anymore using nearly any linux distro. Damn their eyes, I worked hard in the 90's getting my linux cred. Now, grandma is using it. Time to switch to Gentoo I suppose.
Put Linux in a VM on your (windows?) gaming machine. It'll be much smoother than trying to run on real hardware, and if you're not gaming on it Linux anyway then you probably don't need direct hardware access (not for web dev, certainly). Use VirtualBox or whatever Windows calls their hypervisor they ship with Windows these days. If you hate it you can just delete the disk image and it's gone.
Depending on your hardware, you may be able to utilize Looking Glass[1]. It’s software for running games in a virtual machine that has a dedicated graphics card. I do not meet the requirements myself (and will not anytime soon with current graphics card prices), but the concept looks somewhat solid.
I'm tied over this because noone can predict how future govts will go, so having a manufacturer account could be useful, but at the same time when that happens who can you trust, you dont know who is accessing your data at the manufacturers, privacy is the biggest loser eitherway.
This past summer I bought a copy of Windows 10 Pro when I built a new PC. Prior to that, I used Linux on my personal machines for 10 years. Though I knew I'd eventually regret it, I didn't think it'd be so soon. I've been very content with it, and then these idiots go and do this. It's a complete show stopper.
I still have to use Windows and other MS stuff for work, but I have work-supplied machines for that. For personal use, no more MS anything, not even VS Code or .NET, I'm done with them.
As a Microsoft-focused developer since 1999, I feel so badly for the developer division. They make quality tools and have extremely smart people working for them--people that do care about open source and philanthropy. To be part of the same company that makes Windows is sad. The profit-seeking areas of Microsoft give the rest of the company a bad name.
I will likely get rid of all Windows installations in my house (about six at last count) and replace them with Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution as soon as Windows 10 goes out of support. If I'm still writing code at that time, and assuming the developer division at Microsoft are not corrupted, I'll switch to Rider to be rid of the commercial Visual Studio and Windows dependencies.
No way in hell am I logging in to my operating system with a cloud account.
Since it's not clear from the article: will this affect people who already setup Windows 11 with a local account? Will I one day be confronted with a "Create a Microsoft account to continue using your computer" screen?
Guys, Microsoft doesn't give two shits about home users. Their bread and butter is businesses. And M365 is amazing for business.
If you think M$ suxors, you're not the target demographic. I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.
There's your error - why use Slack, Google, Dropbox? Why not host a Rocketchat, Jitsi, Syncthing/sftp share and manage that using OpenIPA or some other LDAP server suite? This mindset makes me so sad. We have all the tools we need, yet people still insist on the proprietary cloud garbage.
At this point a lot of the times microsoft will just keep updating the OS anyways even if you never activate it - I guess it is not worth the potential blowback to leave machines unpatched? There will be a small watermark in the corner and they do lock you out of some settings
Gaming is not so bad on Linux but I wish I'd never bought any pro audio plugins for my home recordings. It's going to be a colossal waste of money and unfinished recording projects when I decide to get rid of Windows for good.
If you are worried about gaming or other apps, Win7 won't be much better than Linux (won't have latest DirectX or anything), and may end up far worse by then.
Absolutely false. It may not be for you, but it is not remotely a mess. I do everything from DevOps work, to gaming, to audio production in desktop Linux. It absolutely is a viable alternative for millions of people.
But I concede, not for everyone. But your hyperbole is plainly false and likely to deter folks who would otherwise thrive in Linux.
Heavy Linux user since about 2000, was my main desktop (and laptop!) operating system from about 2002-2011. Mainly Mandrake (mostly early on), Ubuntu, Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro), and Debian. I most recently gave it a serious go about a year ago (Fedora and Ubuntu, plus some Void [Void was pretty nice!])
Can confirm it's a mess and there was no hyperbole in the original description. The only reason I didn't realize it back in the 00s was because I was only comparing it to Windows and pre-X macOS (well, and BeOS, but I was under no illusions that was a viable alternative). And, spyware and adware aside (not to dismiss those, they're why I still consider it unsuited for serious work) Windows got a lot better over that span.
In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to, and a week later I'd have told you "no, Linux isn't that hard to keep up!" I'd trained myself to avoid doing a bunch of stuff with my computers because it would rarely work and often trigger glitches or crashes (like drag-n-drop operations). Now, when I periodically go back to it, that stuff slaps me in the face so hard it's impossible for me to miss, now that I'm not used to being slapped in the face daily. Missing functionality and software doesn't help either.
This really seems hard to credit at face value. The thing that most strikes me is
> Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro)
> In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to
Gentoo really isn't as much a distro as a personal distribution construction kit given that you can trivially swap out major components and put the resulting pieces together however you please rebuilt with any set of options you most prefer. If you were losing a lot of time its possible that this experience wasn't worthwhile meanwhile other people were using gentoo with the just the software they needed and not constantly messing with it and it was presumably working for them.
Having used a derivative of Gentoo I can say with confidence that it IS a lot more work and things that are set up for you rely on YOU to set them up including even building software with options that will enable the feature you desire to actually work. I multiple times ran into software that didn't work as expected because I hadn't built it with that option and started reading the use flags on software before installing it.
Because Linux is a large ecosystem with software provided by groups ranging from professional companies and excellent amateurs all the way to your cousin bob and his 3 friends you are going to see a variety of differing experiences as I'm sure you are aware. I have several times over 18 years installed distros to realize that something was holy shit wrong with the way they were run but as it comes out I was out a few hours and moved on to one of many better run software projects.
If you find software including distributions/desktops/browsers/tools that you have to work around random crashes consider installing different software. There is plenty of functional, stable, useful software for Linux. Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't.
As noted, I used other distros, also for years at a time. They weren't much better, just harder to fix when they broke (usually on upgrades... or when trying to use new hardware... or because I tried to do something that should work, but it didn't). The time on Gentoo just means that I'm pretty good at fixing the "just works" distros when they "just don't".
> Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't.
Fedora and Ubuntu both served me soggy noodles and burnt meat about a year ago.
It's difficult to 'confirm' something that's just your experience. I, conversely, can confirm it's not a mess in that case.
I will admit there are times when I have dig into the system a little to resolve a niggling issue but I consider that the price I pay for avoiding telemetry, vendor lock-in and a mostly proprietary ecosystem. I have not experienced 'drag and drop operations crashing'. '30 minutes' or a 'whole day fucking with dumb shit' hasn't been my experience for many years.
I maintain it is not a mess. It is not ideal, but a 'mess' IS hyperbole.
Not sure when or what you have tried. Linux on desktop is rock solid often not even needing to install anything to support latest hardware. Unless you want to there is no reason to even open terminal.
For those wanting to try Linux coming from Windows, I recommend latest fedora with kde. You will get good support for latest hardware and kde is close to Windows and just works.
You couldn't be more wrong. I made the leap to Ubuntu 20.04 late last year and haven't regretted it. This after a quarter decade of being a Windows guy. There's a couple rough edges, but overall? I'm home.
I've been using macOS for 10 years. Can't fathom going to anything else at this point. Especially anything that requires as much maintenance and DIY as desktop Linux does. I'm fine with running Linux on my servers though — it's robust, simple and reliable for this purpose.
Besides, I simply don't like the approach Linux takes to desktop. The desktop should be part of the system, not a bunch of loose add-on components that you can mix and match and pray they work together.
I can appreciate your POV, but your experience is not the same as mine. DIY and maintenance is a thing of the past. At least the kind that I think you're referring to.
If you buy hardware that's well supported and proven, that isn't a thing anymore. You already have to do that with MacOS, so why should Linux be any different?
That's what I like about my (l)ubuntu, I literally don't have to do any kind of maintenance or DIY. It just works. And it keeps working even when I don't restart my PC for months.
So far, I find macOS to be more maintenance and trouble than Linux. Plus if there's something I want to change in Linux, it's usually a configuration somewhere, while on macOS I need to buy an app, which is pretty frustrating.
Software is something that you have to fight constantly, but Windows 10 and later are unique in that they fight you back. Linux doesn't do that. Once you hammer it into obedience, it largely stays that way until you upgrade to the new LTS releases.
Posting someone else's single opinion to back up your own is no less anecdotal than your original post.
Whilst I'm not accusing you of this specifically, I have noticed a trend toward folks being so ingrained in the 'Windows way' that anything else is broken if it doesn't act the same. I was the same way for a long time. Started using Windows in 1994 and when I found Linux for myself, I just got angry that it wasn't working the same way Windows did. Took 10 years or more to realise that is a good thing.
Either way, I don't need to read that article. It works well for me and countless others, better than Windows ever did. Can it improve? Of course it can, drastically. But so can Windows, MacOS, BSD and everything else.
So far "Linux works well for you and countless others" but almost all these people fall under the category of IT specialists or people with a high IQ.
There are many anecdotal stories how Windows doesn't work but considering a majority of organizations run Windows (and we are talking about literally hundreds of millions of users) just fine with little to no maintenance while Linux is nowhere to be seen, speaks volumes about the validity and the breadth of your statement. BTW, what's the decent alternatives for AD, GPO, CIFS and something as simple as MSTSC/RDP in Linux/GNU? Pretty much none? Just don't talk about LDAP, SSH, NFS and VNC. There are nowhere near in terms of features and simplicity. 99.9% of people on Earth won't be able to configure them let along install them. I could continue for hours about the things Linux distros are lacking.
When talking about tech and IT it is pertinent to look beyond one's nose. Linux works for me as well. How much time have I spent fixing its bugs and quirks? A hundred times more than reinstalling Windows.
How many issues have you helped solve in the Linux kernel? Zero? I'm over a dozen now. Some of them took literally tens of hours of painful debugging.
There's just one OS where Linux indeed works: Android. Only Android doesn't use the vanilla Linux kernel. Only Android runs on very specific devices. And the Android userspace has/uses zero GNU components.
Meanwhile, I got sick of fixing my brother's laptop and threw Ubuntu on it quite a few years back. I didn't hear from him again about it until the screen physically broke. Ubuntu "just worked" for him in ways that Windows didn't, and he's not in IT at all (he's a mechanic), and isn't very patient either.
I showed him how to install software on it through the Synaptic store or whatever it was at the time, and he just ran with it.
Why would I want to choose software based on how well it worked for unintelligent people? Lets take installing software on Ubuntu. If you are used to downloading exes and msis a software store is an additional detail worse it doesn't have absolutely everything you could ever want right off the bat so you now need to learn about software sources.
On net I think the benefit of both is massive over simply downloading exes and msis but for some degree of user you have already crossed the threshhold of complexity they will sit down for. Isn't it ultimately OK to have different software for Grandma to watch netflix on and for techies to have on their desktop?
I've dual-booted Linux for many years now but I can never get fully comfortable. I always get the creeping sensation that there's too many layers between what I'm seeing and what the computer is doing, like some button will just stop working and there's no way for me to ever figure out why, or I'll hit some truly baffling design choice and the only way to change it is to throw out my whole configuration and use a different distro.
I feel that way after being on OSX for a year. At least on Linux you can access the magical underpinnings. OSX and Windows have all the same problems to me and far less ability to fix them.
Windows feels similarly, but it's more that the OS contains a malevolent presence that's watching your every move and waiting for you to slip up. All so it can steal a little bit more of your sanity/privacy by exposing yet another bit of data, or restricting yet another option, or resetting yet another default until you're tired of changing it and leave it on factory settings.
Linux as a desktop workstation is not better. Not even close. It's a barely working mess, and a majority of applications don't work on it. And good luck doing any kind of game development on it using something like Unity or Unreal Engine; that is the stuff of nightmares.
There will likely be versions with longer support and updates just like microsoft has done with basically every OS (usually they charge for this). Of course there are loopholes around paying for this.
When Windowds 10 is EOL you may want to look into acquiring a legal version of Windows 10 LTSC (or whatever they decide to call it at that point).
This makes me wonder. Google has been known for a while to ban accounts semi-randomly with very vague excuses and no recourse, so people would lose access to gmail and other services. Is Microsoft going to do the same? "Sorry, we spotted you voicing an opinion that doesn't align with our corporate interests, so we decided to lock you out of all your PCs".
It appears they don't care about those people. Windows is not the product.
If you are not consuming their cloud product AND providing a stream of your telemetry data for them to monetize, you are of no value to MS and so invisible.
Microsoft will give them whatever they request. When you spend that much money you can just ask for a custom build. I would imagine that NSA TAO and other such parts of the USG are provided access to much of the Windows source already.
Microsoft and US intelligence and the US armed forces are practically vertically integrated at this point, they are the Lockheed of software.
I remember seeing "Windows is a service" update popups in my Windows 10 VM. That was the last straw before I went out of my way and disabled the deliberate RCE^W^W Windows Update services completely.
They will force it, probably. I think for enterprise edition, they will allow it.
Also, guys be ready to make your phone number ready because Microsoft seems to require it. They have successfully impinged their tentacles on people's privacy.
Click "Setup for Work or School", then click "Domain Join instead". Since they don't want to figure out a way to expose DNS settings in OOBE (that you might need to discover a domain controller), they just ask you to set up a local administrator account and assume you'll complete the join at the desktop.
This is how I've always setup 10 and 11 Pro, I never knew about the whole unplug the ethernet method. I knew that was required for Home, but not Pro.
There are two reasons why I continue to use a personal Windows machine - PC Gaming and Microsoft 365 Family. On the gaming topic, almost all of the games that I play are also on console which is where I spend most of my gaming time anyways. On Microsoft 365 Family, OneDrive backup and sync is the top reason why I have it. I use it to sync all of my family photos between my phones, PC, Macbook, and iPad for myself, my wife, and my kids. It is extremely convenient and hard to argue otherwise. Beyond data backups, the biggest reason why we have the subscription is because my wife really really wants to use the Office Apps because it is what she is used to the most (Word, Excel, Publisher). So to my family and I, Microsoft 365 = value and convenience.
For me, if a good OneDrive linux sync client was out there that would be a good reason for me to finally jump ship off of Windows. I suppose I'm just waiting for the right push to move away from Windows. Maybe this is that time. Hell, I already know that my personal PC (which I built early January 2021) "fails" the Windows 11 upgrade readiness check anyways so I already feel burned. All of the reasons why I used Windows for decades was because of its "value" for me. Lots of convenience, tons of community support and tons of software, etc. But not anymore. In my opinion, what Microsoft is doing with Windows is similar to what Disney is doing with their parks. "Value" is being removed while increasing prices and limiting "choice". Maybe I still do have _some_ "convenience" in using Windows. But I'm losing more and more reasons to stick with Windows over time as more of Microsoft's business decisions are impacting you and me, and not necessarily for the better.
This was inevitable to be honest. They've made it harder and harder to use a local only account, probably to drive the adoption rate of Microsoft account sign ins up so that they eventually can stay "no one uses local accounts any more". Give it a little more time and they'll require Microsoft accounts for everyone.
You can use Apple ID voluntarily to sync all your settings and data across macOS, iOS on iPhones, iOS on iPads, watchOS and Apple TV.
Microsoft:
We have no tablets, watches and not even a phone. You just have a PC and we force you to use a Microsoft account so you can sync all your data with our marketing and sales department and the government if need to be.
I'm signed into an Apple ID on my one Mac machine so that I can use the App Store and to use iMessage/FaceTime despite my lack of an iPhone. I unchecked all the iCloud stuff as fast as I could because I wasn't prompted after adding the Apple ID on what I wanted to add, and there's no clear "Turn off iCloud" button.
Updated to Monterey, and suddenly 3 or 4 of the iCloud items were checked. Maybe there was something buried in the Monterey OOBE, but I honestly don't remember even getting a new EULA, and I'm usually VERY careful about looking for the anti-patterns that push cloud stuff.
Just popped System Preferences back open to see what the current state is, and it says I have 4.99 GB of 5GB available in my iCloud (presumably because of the iMessage stuff). Private Relay (Beta) has no checkbox and is spinning a spinner that says "Loading". No idea if that means it's turned on, or how to make it stop loading.
Not defending MSFT, this sucks, and I say that as someone who uses W11 Pro as my daily driver. But between them, Apple, and what Google does on Android, it's very frustrating that my only _reasonable_ option for truly offline local accounts is a Linux machine. I WANT TO PAY MONEY TO HAVE A WELL-SUPPORTED MACHINE
I'm on Monterey with a local account and have never signed into iCloud, although I'm signed into the app store with an Apple Id.
I just checked in Preference and under Apple Id it shows: iCloud -not signed in- Media & Purchases -email_of_apple_id_account-
(also it nags you with a persistant notification on the Apple Id icon in Preferences root, and a "start using iCloud" link too, but for now I can vaguely tolerate that)
Microsoft is still kicking themselves that they didn’t think about making internet access a subscription service until the XBox, this will be the first step toward making windows a subscription service, since at this point they can’t do it just for the internet.
A few months ago, I had a non-feature update to my laptop running Windows 10 Pro (OEM) kick me to an OOBE-looking "finish setting up your computer" screen where the only way I was able to move forward and log on was to add an online account. Believe me, I spent an hour trying various things, and googling like a madman but I didn't manage to get around it.
So I did it with a temporary email address. Then I removed the account. Still on Windows 10.
Now and then I do a web search to see if other people ahve had this happening to them, but I've not been able to find anything. Then again, <insert the "search engines are crap" today discussion here>.
I don't love this move (I think people should still get the choice) bit do get it a bit more after doing IT support for the in-laws. My sister in law, who is not super tech savvy, has forgotten her password and also been prompted for the Bitlocker Recovery Key and called me on both occasions all upset.
Given she had signed in with a Microsoft account, we were able to get the password reset there as well as retrieve the key from there. If it was a local account then I imagine both would have been much harder. So for 'most people' it is probably a good thing.
> If it was a local account then I imagine both would have been much harder.
Suprisingly I needed to hack into an old admin account password on a laptop (that I setup on a family member's laptop) and it was suprisingly easy. After installing some software on a USB stick and choosing it as a boot device I was able to bypass the login password completely. Forgot the name of the software I used -- but there are literally a bunch of competiting alternatives.
Every single Linux live USB can access the underlying partitions freely. Or if you prefer, you can instead use it to remove the local password and reboot onto an unlocked OS.
I should have mentioned she lives 2.5 hrs away. I am sure I could have done it if it was local and I'd have driven there (I've run Fedora for ages on a laptop focused on containers as one of my machines so know my way around things) - but in this case it was as easy as going through the Microsoft Account password reset process. And I was able to mostly just point her at that/MS rather than need to do anything myself - which was nice.
Also my subsequent experience with the Bitlocker recovery key is that the machine is encrypted so I may have stuggled with mounting it from a Linux LiveCD and using the tools you describe. I doubt she turned this on herself so maybe the vendor (Lenovo) did?
I also think they are now turning Bitlocker on by default on all Windows 11 installs as well (it is why they want the TPMs as a requirement). Which is likely part of the reason they are now forcing this issue a bit so as not to have people all over with bricked machines and data loss if they can't recover the key. If you are AD joined it puts the recovery key on the computer account in AD - but for these home users they don't have that benefit and the cloud is a good place for it.
Maybe the right thing to do here was to not apply Bitlocker if she wasn't trained on how to use encryption. Or, you know, if she wanted to set up encryption anyway and you're already helping her with tech, the backup key could live in your password manager in case she ever needed it.
This news about Windows 11 Pro "requiring" a Microsoft Account is a bit of sensationalism. You can still bypass it and create a local account if you know what you're doing, as has been the case for several years with Windows 10. Here is how:
When you see the “Let’s Connect You To A Network” page, hit “Shift” and “F10” simultaneously. This will bring up the Command Prompt to which you type the command:
taskkill /F /IM oobenetworkconnectionflow.exe
When Windows 11 setup detects networking is not possible, it will let you create the local account as always.
I’m not sure whether to take this as a joke or not. Not using a Microsoft account requires using a terminal to kill a process? Is there seriously no other way?
If so, I suspect that Microsoft have succeeded in their goal to get everyone to use their accounts, because I don’t see the vast majority of users going down this route.
> as has been the case for several years with Windows 10
It was not mandatory in Windows 10, thus there was nothing to bypass (on Home maybe you had to ensure you are not connected during OOBE though, at least on some versions)
IIRC in the official specs of Windows 11 Home they specify that you must have an Internet connection and an MS account for the initial setup.
I doubt killing processes during OOBE is officially supported...
No, the news is that they are extending the online account requirement from Home to Pro. This means that when Windows 10 goes EOL in 2025, the large majority of (non-enterprise) Windows users will be using an online account. And then it will only be a small step to completely drop support for local accounts (maybe for Windows 12). At least that’s my theory what Microsoft is aiming for.
Yes, our comments don’t contradict each other, right? Here’s what MS themselves wrote [1]:
> Similar to Windows 11 Home edition, Windows 11 Pro edition now requires internet connectivity during the initial device setup (OOBE) only. If you choose to setup device for personal use, MSA will be required for setup as well. You can expect Microsoft Account to be required in subsequent WIP flights.
Tweakers.net reported that they already blocked the Shift + F10 workaround in Home [2], so I can only assume they’ll be bringing that to Pro too…
Really, who didn't see this one coming a mile away? Or did you actually believe that MS was now some kind of benevolent open source company that meant to do right by their users?
He is. He is PR savvy, knows how to present stuff in a way that it gets lapped up and because Ballmer sucked at this he looks so much better. But Nadella was there during all of the bad tricks that Microsoft pulled, he's as much a part of the old guard as Ballmer was.
From UX perspective Windows 3.11 was the peak of Windows and it went downhill since then. Every time time I use Win7 or later for more than 10 min for anything other than browsing my blood pressure goes up.
I wonder why Microsoft thinks they can continuously get away with abusing their customers like this. I like the idea of -optional- SSO for stuff, however I hate hate hate forced accounts. Not everyone wants to be online 100% of the time and tracked by Microsoft, yet they seem to just not give an f. They WILL get your data so it can be mined and sold. It's so ludicrous.
Might as well switch now, you can always run your win 10 install in a little VM. Ubuntu and PopOS are great and a nice step up from windows subsystem for linux if you're doing mostly development work.
I've been using a Microsoft-based OS since MS-DOS, but this hard requirement to use a Microsoft Account will finally be it for me. I'm not going to be coerced into making a Microsoft account, let alone linking my personal, home PC to one. Thankfully Valve has made some good progress in Linux compatibility.
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbour.
Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
As such it is impossible for systemd to make the user do anything. If it did, the user could simply modify the code and share his improvements with similarly minded individuals.
Are there any simple domain server emulators out there which I could just run on a Raspberry Pi or whatever, like the fake KMS servers? That would be a decent workaround.
This week I installed samba on a raspberry pi running Ubuntu server to provide active directory domain services to my home network. The Windows computers in the house are now joined to the domain. It was easy and quick to setup. There are a ton of guides to setting up samba as an AD domain controller on Ubuntu out there.
Removing the network connection might still work? Windows 10 could be installed and activated fully offline (activated via "slui 0x4" command that gives you 9 six digit numbers and tells you to call a number based on your location; after you enter them, you get 8 six digit numbers back to activate).
From another comment it sounds like you might not actually need to join a domain, it will just let you make a local account so that you can join a domain later.
A fake local KMS server has been the way most activation hacks have worked for years actually
If you want to get creative you can run your own KMS server and anyone who connects to your local network can now be assigned whatever microsoft license you want. You don't even need to fake it or use the hacked version - just run a real one and get a bunch of edu licenses for whatever products you want to activate for whoever connects to your local network.
I guess I will finally have to move to that free macbook pro I was offered couple of times
now (we are 3 Windows / WSL2 users and 30+ MBP, which is sad).
Fedora is great, and very stable for me. I don't think you'd miss much. I'm a kernel developer and most of the people I work with also use Fedora (most of the them work for RH), and want it to just work. Ubuntu is probably just as good. I'd recommend asking for the nicest Thinkpad you can get.
It's been a number of major releases since consumer Windows really cared about piracy (for end users at least, obviously if you start a business selling illegal licenses they'll still care about that). The more direct answer would seem to be this helps them push all of the cloud hosted services that are integrated into the default install now, easier for someone to pay for OneDrive or apps on the Microsoft Store or use the O365 app if they were already forced to create/sign in to a Microsoft account for those to load with.
This just pushed me 100% to Linux. I’ll not sign up for a Microsoft online account to use my local computer. Whoever thought this up at MS needs to be fired.
Windows Pro is aimed at business users. Most of them will have moved or are moving to Office 365, so they will have (or need) a Microsoft Account anyway.
while just about all my computing I can do elsewhere. There is one aspect where I feel more confident in windows: VR. Sure you can run off an oculus - but the applications are still significantly better on a dedicated machine. I may be wrong though now (what is the linux or Mac way of doing this?) or later (Apple, c'mon don't disappoint).
Still up to their old tricks. So much for the caring, sharing, Linux-friendly, open-source M$. I remember the Microsoft of the 90s and they haven't changed much in 30 years if you dig below the hype. Anyone remember SCO and Suse being sued by M$ for undisclosed patents? Why would anyone who has ever experienced being locked out their Hotmail/Outlook/Live account ever trust M$ with anything related to security, logins or personal data?
Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys. Never sign into an operating system with a cloud identity.
You should have stopped using windows years ago. There is no excuse, especially thanks to Valve for their work enhancing wine ecosystem and making your games work.
> There is no excuse, especially thanks to Valve for their work enhancing wine ecosystem and making your games work.
While Proton is great, it helps no one to suggest it's a solution to making all games work. There are absolutely enormous multiplayer titles still unavailable
on Proton, if you can't play the games your friends play who cares if 99% of the rest of the Steam library works?
Again, I think Proton is great, and only getting better. It is not though a drop in replacement for a Windows gaming machine, for most people, yet.
And yet I know gamers who have fully switched to Proton. I’m too lazy, and have a windows box reserved for games; it would be PII-free if it weren’t for the darn Microsoft account. But for some, Proton is already a better Windows.
It's not a feature-complete solution, but a good 90% of the games you own will "just work" without any additional tinkering required. Some games (like Overwatch) are just straight-up smoother running through Wine/DXVK: https://youtu.be/voXc1nCD4IA
Agreed on all counts. Proton (and WINE in general, really) is an impressive piece of work that has done wonders to make software available on Linux Desktop, but it is not a perfect solution. Personally, I'm sick enough of Microsoft's shit that I'm now willing to put up with Linux Desktop's shit instead and if that means I miss a few games, I'll live with it. I don't play competitive online games anyway.
This approach is a lot more hassle to setup than Proton, but it does yield some really great performance and ~100% game compatibility. I've been planning to go this way for my next desktop build (Windows gaming VM with native GPU pass-through).
As i mostly play single player titles me. Have been using linux as my daily driver since 2010, I play game that work on my system if they have a multiplayer and my friends are interested fine I might multiplayer with them otherwise i am fine on my own. I wont support bulshit and put up with MS on my machine just for a game, there are plenty of other things entertain me.
Games that require certain anti-cheats that either valve doesn't support or the dev doesn't opt into. It seems to be mostly related to multi player online games.
Also games that have issues with patented codecs, although valve is working around that by transcoding them to a different format, so they can play locally without the relevant decodre
Games may have gotten better on Linux, but that’s not the case with some programs. Usually riddled with obnoxious DRM that throws a fit in a VM or wine like program. That and nvidia woes are the only thing stopping me from using Linux.
The only thing stopping me from using Linux at this point is piss-poor 4k support, combined with the crap market for building your own PC (thanks Bitcoin!)
I just couldn't beat the m1 Air for price/performance last year.
Hmm what do you mean by piss poor 4k support? I have a 27" 4k display and so far things have been great with debian/gnome at 200% scaling. From what I can tell at least integer scaling is pretty good in most Linux desktop environments.
Gnome is the only linux desktop environment that got 4k (sort of) right. If you don't like gnome then you are on your own. I use sway/wayland for work and i3/xorg for home and I got them to work in 4k after days of customization. Wayland, X, sway, each version of gtk, qt, and various apps all have their own configuration, each which need to be configured separately, often with conflicting results, and when finally functioning, still don't work very well.
I set base DPI to native. Then set GDK environment variables to scale up to double so UI and fonys aren't tiny in apps like chromium. QT scaling env variables, and the Trolltech conf for font size in apps like Beyond Compare. Then a HiDPI font config for Gimp. Each version of GTK has its own dconf settings. Then there's Firefox which requires an environment variable for HiDPI in wayland. Mouse cursor size must be configured in both Sway and X. Font size for terminals like Kitty. Display managers often have their own separate config, e.g. SDDM. Its a nightmare.
I know this comment is aging, but I had to configure every app individually in Linux Mint 18 (which I acknowledge is older), whereas macOS I just moved a slider.
That said, I didn't realize until just now it could have been due to being on such an older Linux Mint, so maybe I'm just way out of date.
Linux actually has excellent 4K support. If you primarily use KDE and QT applications under x11 what you need to do is virtually nothing or set DPI. GTK apps can be adjusted by setting GDK_SCALE=Integer. If you want to tweak text bigger or smaller set your default font size in GTK/KDE settings to be larger or smaller.
There is an entire section on handles you can tweak in different environments odds are you need few of them save for the above as things are increasingly automatic. For example GDK_SCALE is enough for firefox to look correct without also fiddling with anything internal to firefox.
It's a free software provided gratis by volunteers. Desktop Linux is mostly by techies and for techies despite any other aspirations. Things that work great but require configuration don't always get looked at or worked on. This is especially true if they only effect a tiny minority of users.
You should absolutely volunteer your time to address high dpi configuration out of the box across several of the most popular distros. I mean for example KDE software already works basically perfectly right out of the box. So all you really need to do is automate the process of choosing ideal font sizes, scaling settings etc.
Push out looks-right.sh to various distros to be run at installation.
Yeah I was -this close- to buying the Framework laptop when my 2017 MBP died (I'm not gentle with my electronics) but I needed a laptop soon and the M1 Air was ~200 cheaper than the Framework would have been. It's the best computer I've ever owned hands down. I do wish I got the Framework for Linux but I can work fine in macos.
The Nvidia thing is funny to me. I have never had any issues with them on Linux - NOW that said - my hardware is typically about 5 years behind so all the kinks have been ironed out.
Being the computer scrap man I am and using nothing but hand-me-downs and things I find people throwing out. It has worked out well for me from a compatibility point of view. ;)
If cryptocurrency bros hadn't made them ludicrously expensive, I'd have bought a new AMD based card by now to facilitate ditching Windows in the near future. Sadly, said bros continue to unashamedly make the world worse and show no signs of stopping.
> Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys.
I let my keys sync to my MS account. I mainly want to protect against untargeted theft of my computer, so having recovery keys online makes more sense than a recovery key printout or USB key in a drawer.
> Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys. Never sign into an operating system with a cloud identity.
Why does your trust model include "running a proprietary OS that can do anything at any time" but not "the OS explicitly requires a user account tied to an online account?" That doesn't make any sense.
To be clear: there are plenty of great reasons to dislike this change. But they all fall under "user-hostile" or "creeping surveillance capitalism," not "shady conspiracy to steal your encryption keys." They can already have the keys if they want them, and there's nothing you can do about it as-is.
My trust model absolutely abhors closed source software. I compile binaries myself. I would not use Microsoft software.
However the this isn’t about me. This is providing advice in such a way that the casual windows user might see the threat to their keys.
The only reason they were allowed to rollout BitLocker was if they stole the keys. Funny that encryption only became a “problem” in the age of the iPhone.
Which sim racing games? I'm more of a truck sim player than a racing player, but my wheel and pedal worked as controls out of the box. For FFB I had to install an extra package, but is that really that different to installing the logitech software on windows?
Can you not? I play Rockband on Linux with a real-ass guitar, I had no idea that random gaming HID didn't just get passed through like any other controller.
This is good to know. I still need to figure out which distribution of Linux to try out first. Having the ability to use my wacom tablet across a variety of software is a must.
Also missing is support for Pro Audio such as Nuendo and Dorico. If these would run on FreeBSD I would've swapped from OSX/Win years ago. At least there's some hope for Proton so gaming could work...
Sadly none of the free editors are as well developed as Dorico is at the moment including the new Musescore with it's Dorico "inspired" UI. Dorico's workflow just fits my needs perfectly at the moment.
Reaper and Nuendo aren't really comparable either. Nuendo just has so much engineering behind it for audio post and multichannel (e.g. Atmos) not to mention expression maps and excellent MIDI editing. I do admit Reaper, if it runs on linuxulator, could work quite well as a prototyping tool on the go. Then again Cubasis and Dorico iPad does it too and can import straight to the Desktop versions.
I do wish there were good open source options but, alas. Maybe some day...
Darktable is in the uncanny valley with its similarity to Lightroom. It looks like LR, so your habits kick in, only to get the cold shower that Darktable is not really LR and the thing you wanted to do you must do differently.
I'd like to thank Microsoft. Their constant bloating and nagging and hostility has finally convinced me to move to Mint and it's been just great. I don't think I'd have done it without their help, but now I'm glad I did and wish I'd done so earlier.
I've always wanted to see FOSS options become superior to Microsoft's offerings... I have mixed feelings about it happening by MS getting worse more than FOSS getting better. (Although it is both; Linux hardware compatibility is way better than 15 years ago, and software compat via Proton and webapps eating the world has put desktop Linux in a much stronger spot.)
Wishes: Microsoft just buy a linux distro. Bless it, so MS Apps only run on Windows. Make it free for home installs and remove these cloud login shenanigans. Friggin' keep charging Amazon and GCP for running it virtually (unless you actually want mindshare). I'd totally flock to Windows (and its paid services). I guess I just don't see why an operating system is still their cash cow. Feels like the stupid that is: buying your ticket and then paying for placement in an aircraft. Anyone remember when you could buy an airplane ticket and choose your seats because you're booking now vs later? 2020 on has been nothing but nickel and dime-ing.
The consumer licensing of the OS isn't their cash cow, the subscription revenue from tied services is, so changing the OS base doesn't change the subscription push.
A very small portion of the market is even aware a Windows license costs money. If they've bought a Windows PC since 7 it's pushed them for free all the way to 11 and the vast majority don't build their own to find out they need a license (and heck it really doesn't do much against you if you don't buy the license these days anyways).
The real money in the consumer side is in the services and data, O365/teams/onedrive/bing/edge(browsing), which is why they push these so hard on default installs. It wouldn't matter if they used Linux as a base, their push would still be to push users towards these services.
That a few people who even know what Linux is would be more likely to use thire services if they stopped pushing them to the average user isn't going to sound enticing to Microsoft as they'd be losing a lot more than gaining.
This is how they move away from the OS being their cash cow: using the OS as a gateway for all their cloud services. For that they want everyone to have and use a Microsoft account.
It's just like how airlines used to make money with plane tickets, but now they mostly lose money with the tickets and make it back with everything else (both nickel-and-diming you and frequent flier miles). Flying is cheaper now, but incentives were better aligned when tickets were the cash-cow.
For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.