Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything

338 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by josephcsible
(windowscentral.com)

230 Comments

My_Name

26 minutes ago

I really did not want to change from 7 to 10. I did it begrudgingly partly because "It is the last version of windows".

Well, they were right in one sense. It is the last version of windows I will have. I now have an old box set up with Linux Mint, so I can get familiar with it before switching over all my main PCs

mancerayder

12 minutes ago

I found Fedora Workstation 'mature' and an easy thing to switch to - there are a few Gnome conveniences like taskbar and menus that can be easily turned on (Claude helped me there).

krater23

13 minutes ago

Exactly my turn. Win 10 is clearly the last Windows for me. For private I still use Win 7, for work I used Win 10, but the driver support for my old dell laptop(2014) is so shitty, that it's overheating and throttleling as soon it has to do some normal things.

When the last bastion of Windows, the driver support is falling, I can switch to Linux. Since 2 month I use openSuse on this device and be happy. No running fan, no problems. Windows is dying.

cm2187

4 hours ago

I enjoy windows 10 hugely now that it is out of support. It became way better when microsoft started tormenting the users of win11 instead of win10, and now that windows update doesn't bring new catastrophes and unexpected reboot, the OS is finally not interfering with usage anymore.

tommica

4 hours ago

You are not worried about 0-days and other malware?

cm2187

3 hours ago

The computer is not exposed to the WAN (behind a firewall), the main way it could get infected is via a vulnerability in a browser, but these do get updated. And OS updates don't really protect you from malware in executables you install anyway.

tommek4077

3 hours ago

A simple trade off. Guaranteed malware from microsoft, or potential attacks that you can mitigate with firewalls, airgaps or Anti-Virus software.

krater23

2 minutes ago

From definition, a 0-day is not patched in any system because it's not known. But back to your real question.

The biggest attack vectors are the browser, the mail client and direct network access. I would never use outlook, edge or connect my computer directly without NAT or firewall to the open internet. And would never open a website without a add blocker.

You can count all other known big attacks(on unpatched Windows 7!!!) on one hand.

1) Remote execution via Wifi Stack

2) Remote execution via True Type Fonts

3) 0-Click code execution via USB Stick Icon processing

Windows update instead gives AT LEAST Microsoft a steady remote code execution on your and millions of other computers.

sviruz

3 hours ago

Running Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC still gives you updates until 2031 with the added benefit of no app store. I run it as my main OS since last October and have yet to encounter any issues.

Lanrei

an hour ago

Only downside I've encountered using W10 IoT LTSC is that I had the temporarily change the currentbuild key (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion) in registry to 19045 to be able to install docker and WSL2.

jasode

2 hours ago

>Running Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC [...] have yet to encounter any issues.

It depends on the type of software a user runs. I installed Windows 10 LTSC on a friend's computer last year thinking she could run it for at least 5 more years and just ignore the newer Windows 11/12/whatever.

But she needed Intuit TurboTax 2025 and it requires Windows 11 and it's a hard requirement. The installer aborts on Windows 10. It's not a soft requirement like Adobe where they only support Windows 11 but their installer still runs on Windows 10. Autodesk Fusion 360 is another example that requires Windows 11.

I'm guessing if there's a future Windows 12, Intuit TurboTax will be aggressive about making it a requirement that forces the issue even though nobody wants to upgrade to it.

krenzo

an hour ago

Fusion 360 complains about Windows 10, but it still runs fine.

keyringlight

an hour ago

I'd say that comes down to the difference between requirements (i.e. will it run at all, does it use features only found in win11) and support, and the developer's decisions around that. I can appreciate not supporting win10 even if it runs as they have a written or implied burden to make sure it keeps operating correctly for the lifespan, and that may include keeping test systems around or handling bugs that turn up in the OS that's getting reduced support itself, or other factors like drivers. Then there's the question of whether people would be willing to pay for a "your mileage may vary" level of support on something commercial.

BallyBrain

2 hours ago

I thought it was 2032. I use IoT LTSC as well and I can second that this is a great OS and everything runs without issue.

I would add that I've also used Windows 11 IoT LTSC and that experience is very similar to Windows 10 IoT LTSC.

WithinReason

2 hours ago

I have Win11 Pro and have yet to encounter any issues

bad_username

3 hours ago

I use Windows 10 with a relatively obscure firewall software with a per-process/per-service whitelist, and try to not be stupid on the Internet. I also do regular backups. This should cover most of the risk model applicable to me. Has worked so far.

sensanaty

2 hours ago

Microsoft already handles infecting their users, how many times have they broken Windows 11 through patches?

OoooooooO

an hour ago

ESU updates are free for private users.

So till november 2026 or so everything is fine. Then I will probably have to switch to Linux.

samiv

an hour ago

Why would they need to be any more worried about those now than before?

The same holes exists and have existed for some time already. If he was not worried about them before why be worried about them now? And if you're worried about security holes why not be worried about the ones that exist now?

In general I find it funny that some people think that system is "secure" when it's on the latest version. At time t0 version N is considered "secure" then an update is made at t1 with version N1 and suddenly N is no longer secure. But it didn't change... it's the same version it was before.

Fact is a computer system is never going to be 100% secure.

ChrisRR

an hour ago

Because the longer software is out in the wild, the more vulnerabilities are found. At least when they're found in windows 11 they should be patched

ozim

2 hours ago

Man 0-days are expensive stuff no one throws them at random people.

olyjohn

3 hours ago

Not really. The odds are way higher that an update will hose your system and data.

gib444

3 hours ago

You mean Windows 11, or 10?

I joke

LtWorf

2 hours ago

It's still bugging me about windows 11

xg15

10 hours ago

> "To avoid the next problem: 'Microsoft locked my data behind bitlocker, and now I can't get it back.' they need to store that key on the MS account."

Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?

iamnothere

7 hours ago

I don’t see what the problem is. Just don’t get into any business that MS considers shady, or disparage the company publicly, or piss off an executive, or get sanctioned because your work with the UN is at cross purposes with the current US administration.

exploderate

an hour ago

You are probably talking about Kahn. The international Criminal Court is not part of the UN. It is distinct from the International Court of Justice.

As of October 2024, there are 125 states parties to the Rome Statute, which are represented in the court's governing body, the Assembly of States Parties. Countries that are not party to the Rome Statute and do not recognise the court's jurisdiction include China, India, Russia, and the United States.

Member states represent around a third of the world population.

SXX

5 hours ago

Or anything that random LLM might consider shady...

protocolture

7 hours ago

>Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?

Depends. The average user would be more afraid if its not backed up online.

pndy

2 hours ago

My rather distant friend has a tendency of not reading what happens on the screen. She uses her computers for years only for browsing the web and writing papers. Whatever else obstructs her way is dealt with "next next finish" approach. Despite I told her many times, she should read and look up for solutions online if there's any doubt.

She locked her W11 laptop. Disk was encrypted and she couldn't recall neither login or password for MS account.

LtWorf

an hour ago

Encrypting disk by default but giving the password to microsoft makes no sense.

I'm way more scared of airport security stealing my laptop and getting access than I am of someone breaking into my home with the purpose of accessing my data.

Basically it hassles people like your friend, protects against the very unlikely scenario while leaving the more likely scenario unprotected.

Not to mention of course the bitlocker backdoor that was discovered last month.

mulquin

6 hours ago

I'm not sure there's anything I dislike more than "the average user" because so much good software has been destroyed because of it.

bee_rider

5 hours ago

The actual average user is fine. The problem is most companies seem design for some hypothetical average user, who they hate and/or think is a dumbass.

DaSHacka

4 hours ago

> The actual average user is fine.

I'm afraid i have some unfortunate news..

>t. someone who deals with "average users" on a daily basis.

mjevans

4 hours ago

Have you seen the user of median (average) intelligence? That's who you seem to describe. The users of even lesser intelligence make me question the survival fitness of our species.

bluecalm

3 hours ago

I've dealt with users for a few years. Those were already selected to be a bit more technical than your average person because of a niche I am in. I can tell you an average user is in fact a dumbass.. Vast majority doesn't understand concepts like files. People have all kind of crap on their computers as they randomly click around and download everything. They save information in the downloads folder and complain it disappears. Their computer is 10x slower than yours because all the crap that runs on it.

The are also very aggressive when it comes to not reading error message or in fact learning anything about how computers or their OS works. Add to this usual entitlements and not seeing a problem with being dumb on purpose and you get a picture of an average user.

The companies know that and the dumbed down design we get is a diret consequence of it.

hyperhello

2 hours ago

Reading this feels like a calculator manufacturer trying to explain why it doesn’t matter that the calculators don’t do every operation exactly right.

protocolture

6 hours ago

I mean thats absolutely a take. Sometimes I like to think about how great a network I could build if I didnt have to service any customers.

mulquin

5 hours ago

It would be the most beautiful, elegant, well-designed and thoroughly hardened network I'm certain. I get it, the software I'm complaining about was designed for profit.

The point I'm trying to make is imagine you have to tell a customer that they can't keep using the network design they have, which fits their requirements almost perfectly, because it's too much burden for your network engineers to maintain. Instead, the customer can use this other network design that is suitable for the average customer. So it works, but not as well as before, and the customer will probably need to find some workarounds or shift other processes to accommodate. It's just shit.

pmontra

4 hours ago

I'm afraid that the average user still does not think about backup. Sharing with other devices, probably yes, but the two concepts are only distant cousins.

themafia

6 hours ago

Having helped more than a few users with down PCs. They're mostly not even aware these backups exist. When you explain it to them the result is a mixture of relief and then fear that this was occurring without their awareness.

protocolture

3 hours ago

Yeah exactly.

I remember how many people nuke their iPhone and then call support about getting all their babies photos back. iCloud is largely a support call reduction feature first and foremost.

mynameisvlad

5 hours ago

You can save your recovery key in different formats (printed, on a USB stick, etc). The online recovery is just automatic.

vladvasiliu

2 hours ago

I think that when you have an MS account with the automatic online key backup, BitLocker is actually turned on automatically, and the user isn't presented with the option to back it up elsewhere. You need to know about this, and manually back it up.

superkuh

8 hours ago

Very much so.

And it's even more scary that MS uses dark patterns to trick older non-technical users into enabling MS online accounts. When the bitlocker activation automatically happens during tricking the user into going from a local account to online account it is without the user's consent or real participation. They don't print out a copy of the key or move it to a usb drive becuase they aren't aware their drives are being encrypted. And afterwards they can't set up recovery keys because the computer itself only shows the blue aka.ms screen. It's effectively dead until they follow the demands.

This is not theoretical, it actually happened to my mother on the local account Win 11 computer I set up for her sewing applications. I had to drive across town in order to figure it out since the weird URL I'd never heard of (aka.ms) and demand for pasting private info sounded so much like ransomware. And in fact, it was effectively ransomware, it was just demanding online activity rather than money.

hurtigioll

5 hours ago

it does look sketchy, but microsoft used aka.ms since forever, especially for short links to various SDKs (aka.ms/pwsh7)

pluralmonad

5 hours ago

The actual URL was the least sketchy part of that story.

_carbyau_

4 hours ago

It does seem a lot like ransomware.

listenallyall

7 hours ago

Regardless of account type, there are many things that could require you to need those Bitlocker keys to get your data. Don't just associate them with an account, have Windows save the keys to a text file, and save that text file somewhere external, on a NAS or Dropbox or email itnto yourself or whatever, and print out 2 or 3 hard copies and keep them close by. I'm 1000x more worried about losing my data to a Windows crash/error than to theft or any other external actor.

password4321

7 hours ago

I was in a hurry trying to log into my kid's Minecraft account, wound up clicking something to associate it with the Windows account... now the PC is in restricted mode and I'm having a hard time restoring the previously associated Microsoft account (among other things, have to ask permission to open the browser and approve the requests logging in on my phone)!

Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.

Jordan-117

6 hours ago

I ran into this trying to set up a new Dell laptop for my mom. It shipped to her in "S mode", meaning that among other things I couldn't install arbitrary software from the web. I assumed there'd be some straightforward way to disable it (even if it might be a little buried to discourage normies). But after several hours of searching through tutorials and mucking about in Windows settings, the command prompt, BIOS, and even the system registry, and I flatly could not do it. Never seen anything like it before. Ended up wiping and replacing Windows with Linux Mint, which she was happy with.

adrian_b

3 hours ago

When I worked at a very big US company some years ago, I received for work a new Dell laptop with Windows also in "S mode", to replace an older Dell laptop.

However, at that time I had no idea about the existence of the "S mode". I could not install on the laptop some applications that were distributed and used internally in the company and which were essential for my work.

I requested assistance from the IT department, but at that time not even they had any idea about the existence of the "S mode", so they were equally baffled why on my previous Dell laptop I could easily install any application, while on its new replacement I could not. For a couple of weeks, various IT support people from teams located on several continents had repeatedly connected remotely to my laptop every day, trying to solve the problem, but without any success.

left-struck

3 hours ago

That’s crazy, surely it would have been cheaper to buy a new laptop at that point. I mean if you combine all the costs of those people trying to problem solve, plus the opportunity cost of you not being able to do your work…

xigoi

4 hours ago

Microsoft keeps being the best advocate for Linux.

pjmlp

3 hours ago

Except normies don't have the option at computer stores.

Even the OEMs that do offer the option to have Linux pre-installed keep pushing for "Works best with Windows".

What is a non technical user to do, the choice ends up being macOS, Windows, or ChromeOS thin clients.

Kwpolska

3 hours ago

First DuckDuckGo result for "windows s mode": https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of...

adrian_b

3 hours ago

For that, you must know that there is such a thing like "Windows S mode".

As I have mentioned, in another comment, some years ago I had the same problem when replacing an old corporate laptop with a new one, but at that time nobody from the IT support knew about the existence of the "Windows S mode".

At that time, seeing that none of many IT support people could do anything, I assumed that there was some kind of miscommunication inside the IT department, and there was some administrator who had configured some kind of secure Windows mode on my laptop, but the others were not aware about this.

Now I know that the laptop had come like this directly from Dell, but for some reason the IT department did not know about it.

Jordan-117

3 hours ago

You're responding to a comment talking about hours of tutorial dives and advanced config tweaks, my guy. You really think the official fix isn't the first thing I tried?

That button simply doesn't work. I forget the exact error message, but it was something generic and unhelpful. (Spoiler: none of the other solutions in the first few pages of search results worked, either.)

chadaustin

6 hours ago

God, that's the worst. Minecraft is also what led us to accidentally bind my child's account to the administrator account on my TV PC, and because he's a minor we can't actually unbind that account. I've tried for hours and have not succeeded.

"Just make a new account." It's possible but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over and ugh.

Freak_NL

2 hours ago

> […] but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over […]

Every single game save? Why? I get it if you are deep into a month long Factorio game or have a huge Minecraft world, but on the whole games are ephemeral entertainment. If it's not worth backing up, it's usually fine to just start a new game.

TacticalCoder

3 hours ago

> Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.

Not everything. I say: use the option to switch to Linux.

I installed PopOS and Steam for my 11 y/o. She games either on her Nintendo Switch (not Microsoft) or on her iPad (not Microsoft) or on Linux (not Microsoft).

Wife works from a Debian desktop PC, so do I.

Microsoft is not allowed in this house.

pjmlp

3 hours ago

An option only available on households with UNIX skills, and work that has zero dependency on using Microsoft products.

Something that isn't available to everyone.

LtWorf

an hour ago

If you need office open a browser, in the unlikely case that libreoffice doesn't do.

pjmlp

an hour ago

Says someone that never used native Office versus Office Web.

Yeah Web version will do, if everything you need is doable with Microsoft Works, and no collaboration with others is required.

Google docs serves my word processing needs, then again I don't do anything at home that wasn't already possible in Word 2.0 for Windows 3.1, Wordpad, or AmigaWriter.

bleh

6 hours ago

Good luck. I lost access to 3 of my 5 Minecraft licenses due to Microsoft login, and I’ll never forgive Microsoft for it.

ivell

5 hours ago

Same here. That's when I switched my kids' machines to Linux. That was just 2 months back.

And was Windows 11 bug free, no. Was it easier to use, no. Absolutely irritating OS.

itsboring

5 hours ago

I switched my kids to Linux too. They have a multi-seat setup so now they can both use the PC at the same time. With the state of Linux gaming, we have yet to encounter a reason to boot back into Windows.

mjevans

4 hours ago

As a feature, the games that refuse to work under Linux tend to be the type that sell cosmetics or other things you probably don't want to deal with anyway. Or infuriating salty MOBA types.

FridgeSeal

4 hours ago

Amusingly enough, I’ve had certain EAC games work _better_ under Linux than windows.

I used to dread seeing the EAC splash because it inevitably meant frequent crashes on windows, with no such issues on Linux.

gedy

5 hours ago

Kinda inverse for me but abandoned Windows after having a local account for my kids, and I bought them MS Flight Simulator on my Microsoft Account from the MS Store.

There was no way to use this expensive purchase from the kid's account on the same machine! Stupid bullshit - I gave up on Windows from then on.

Havoc

2 hours ago

Pretty sure I’ve got multiple copies of Minecraft thanks to Microsoft login bullshit.

Recently moved desktop to Linux though so hopefully don’t need to deal with them again

endymion-light

an hour ago

Lifelong windows user here - gave up last year, switched to macos for laptop & ubuntu for desktop - haven't turned back since

giancarlostoro

4 hours ago

I ditched Windows in 2022. I'm not going back to Windows unless Microsoft makes an OS for professionals that is stripped down out of the box to show how serious they are. No ads of any kind, no garbage online account features, nothing, just core offline-ready Windows. I bet it would perform drastically better too.

cafebabbe

2 hours ago

Same (2024), but i wouldn't come back in a hurry if they did so. Basically everything works now in Linux world, including my obscure devices, music & video editing, and my whole steam library... with better performance. It's sort of insane.

GordonS

2 hours ago

I just installed Bazzite-DX, and have been really surprised with how easy it was to install, and how well everything "just works". It even tells me when my wireless keyboard batteries are running out, something Windows couldn't do without running proprietary Logitech software.

My_Name

an hour ago

Which distro do you run?

marak830

3 hours ago

Yup, Windows 10 LTSC here. It's a lot faster and smoother, but I'm already transitioning to Linux on my other boxes. Will probably move before LTSC runs out as well.

edit: I realised I overplayed how much faster and smoother it is. compared to standard win 10 or 11. Example being my login screen sometimes struggles to come up when the computer is locked (work around double mash CTRL-ALT-DEL)

tenderfault

3 hours ago

I switched to Windows 10 as my main development machine few years ago after 25 years of continuously crashing Linux with an enormous pleasure. FreeBSD, well, there's nothing to crash there, that's the problem with it. Nothing. I didn't know almost anything about this Windows OS so I just started playing some sort of whac-a-mole game with it. I don't know what I did but right now I'm a happy (windows 11) user. I use Hyper-V with great success for driving my Linux and FreeBSD development. I like powershell and the dotnet platform and storage spaces and ntfs and many other. Good technologies, it feels good using. Windows terminal is almost OK. I stay away from crap like WSL and Code. I still use mutt for mail, not Office. And I can just play a game without any problems.

There's no Microsoft creep anywhere inside my daily flow. Actually, as of late, I feel more creep in Linux and FreeBSD than in Windows. Everything just works. Sometimes it tells me it has some updates for me. I let it install them and that's it. I'm back to my game, no weird stuff.

No account problem, no copilots, just my shit and myself and no Irene.

When I read about other users having trouble with it I get pretty sad. I wish I could say "do this and that" but I have no idea how my whac-a-mole game drove me to this happy situation. I must have (de)activated some (attack) vectors by mistake. But I whacamoled it head to end, from bios to wallpaper. I kept hitting and hitting, backuping, restoring, backuping,restoring, until i won. I'm on Windows 11 Pro in testing mode right now. Getting back to a linux desktop as my main? Nah, not right now. I have my i3wm running on a gpu partition inside hyper-v and sometimes I drop to it... I can't do all my arcane linux stuff in windows yet but i'm getting there. For now, I'm enjoying it. Been a while now. I just hope they don't notice me...

ptx

an hour ago

> I like powershell and the dotnet platform and [...] Windows terminal [...] There's no Microsoft creep anywhere inside my daily flow [...] I just hope they don't notice me...

Did you make sure to disable telemetry in .NET, and also separately in PowerShell, and also separately in Windows Terminal, and also of course in Windows itself? Otherwise your machine is sending your data to Microsoft by default.

Of course, even if you do disable all of those, there are likely to be other Microsoft programs with their own telemetry enabled by default. And even if you disable those, they could at any moment add more telemetry that you don't know about.

madduci

5 hours ago

Windows has reached the point where it deserves only to run in a virtual machine for some needs.

Otherwise leave it behind and move on to Linux, BSD or whatever doesn't require a cloud account to work

left-struck

3 hours ago

Oh man, unfortunately all the things I need windows for doesn’t work well in a VM:

Solidworks, needs special license to work in a VM that my company is not willing to pay for

DAWs, need real time access to low level audio stuff

Games, well, lets just say the experience is better with wine on linux

With the exception of work, at some point I decided that not only is windows dead to me, but any application that can only run on windows is also dead to me.

PeterStuer

2 hours ago

At least on Proxmox the Solidworks and DAW latency problems are solvable.

krige

2 hours ago

Linux hasn't reached the point where it can be the main driver, not for my usecases. Everything works until very suddenly it doesn't and there's no budging.

ramon156

an hour ago

The only limiting factor for me is - some games using anticheat (rainbow 6 mainly) - some programs that will never port (FL Studio, Adobe, etc.)

Apart from that, I have no desire to keep my home PC on windows.

globular-toast

4 hours ago

I installed it on a VM the other day, and trust me it was only because my job, which pays me, required it. I couldn't believe it was trying to get me to sign in to a Microsoft account to finish installation. I had to look up some arcane way to skip it. The article I read listed other methods, many of which no longer work so it seems they really want you to log in.

Then it was showing me shit like the FTSE 100 price right on the desktop, and some stupid thing about the football world cup. All totally unsolicited spam. I couldn't believe people put up with Windows some 15 years ago when I ditched it. Now I'm convinced some people are just conditioned to being in an abusive relationship and can't imagine any different.

VTimofeenko

an hour ago

Moving 15 years back puts you into glory Win7 days. IIRC, the spam started with win8 which was released ~13 years ago and was very mild at first

Dachande663

an hour ago

I recently set up a new gaming PC, made from cannibalised parts of other machines. I installed Windows 11 as there was no point starting on an older OS (and Bazzite etc really struggled with the nvidia GPU so Linux was a non-starter even though I love my Steam Deck and Proton).

The one saving grace for all of this was Win11Debloat[0]. I cannot recommend this set of configuration changes etc more highly. It kills _almost_ everything that irked me about 11. Use at your own risk, but it's now part of my standard install practice.

[0] https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

h4kunamata

9 hours ago

Yet they use it, they do not really care, they even install Windows games that requires kernel level spyware read anti-cheat.

There are Linux distros that are newbie friendly and looks like Windows.

An end user that does not depend on Adobe, if you are still using that for whatever reason, they have no excuse to don't move to Linux distro OS.

Cider9986

9 hours ago

People don't know about the stuff you're describing. They use the OS that comes with their PC or is the one everyone else uses.

Animats

5 hours ago

This may be changing in Europe. Entire governments are fed up with Microsoft.

Neywiny

8 hours ago

^^^^^ https://xkcd.com/2501/

Just like how Linus from LTT (just trust me bro on the source) said one day he needed a tool (hammer?) so he walked into the hardware store, found what looked like a hammer, and bought it. End of journey. And then he finally realized how a regular person buys tech. Most people do not care, do not know they should care, and do not care enough to know if they should care enough.

wincy

8 hours ago

Yeah but they could have gotten a Makita XWT15Z 18V LXT Lithium Ion Brushless Cordless Impact Hammer instead?

(This is like my niece buying a $5000 Alienware to play Roblox because she thinks she “needs a gaming PC”)

Cider9986

6 hours ago

At least she can play Minecraft with shaders.

amlib

5 hours ago

I bet that $5000 PC came only with a 3050 and some high end shaders lag on it lol

m463

5 hours ago

palm hammers are kind of cool, but they require air.

Sort of like how most water cooling requires RGB. ;)

bigyabai

7 hours ago

Ignorance isn't a good excuse. If you do backbreaking work in the worst shoes and complain about your foot hurting, you might want to start shoe shopping.

yndoendo

6 hours ago

Shoe shopping and learning about new / different technology are not equivalent.

Shoes have a near uniform interface that is easily learned by parents or trial and error. Loading an alternative OS is foreign to most people.

People learn from others the best. Teaching others is the only means for them to realize there are better solutions than sticking with techo-fascist Microsoft.

I'm say this as someone that grew up on MS-DOS and used Windows OS up to Windows 7. After personal exploration, other OSes actually are easier and more stable. You now have to pay me to use Windows OS.

Microsoft is the baddy.

themafia

6 hours ago

> they do not really care

What would their choice be anyways? It's like saying "yet people still die, they do not really care, they even engage in activities which hasten their deaths!"

stodor89

6 hours ago

> they have no excuse

That's irrelevant, because they don't owe you an excuse to begin with.

noah34

8 hours ago

good luck getting ol' grandma to flash her desktop with Fedora/equivalent

willis936

8 hours ago

Flash it for her. The result will be a more stable (in terms of not shitting the bed randomly one day or changing the entire UI) and decluttered portal to whatever website she uses it for.

lenerdenator

8 hours ago

Let me provide you a preview of how this will go:

"You moved my Chrome. I liked my Chrome. Put it back. I can't get to the Facebook. I want to talk on the Facebook and I can't because you moved my Chrome."

sndgndgndgndy

12 minutes ago

Someone who is 75 years old today was 49 years old at the peak of the dotcom craze, and is probably a lot more computer literate than you're giving them credit for. What you're saying might have been true 20 years ago, but it isn't today.

arcfour

8 hours ago

1. It's probably not hard to put her Chrome back where it was and set her homepage to Facebook.

2. These users wouldn't be the people referred to by the article though, right?

wpm

5 hours ago

Fedora is quite capable of doing absolutely nothing but opening Chrome and going to Facebook.

hurtigioll

5 hours ago

can you lock fedora down such that a few bad clicks dont disable the desktop manager and boots it into the terminal?

this is the real problem with Linux on the desktop for non-power users

SXX

5 hours ago

If you talking of users who dont install their own software and just use browser only then Linux was better for them for decade.

Now you can even install something with read-only system partition with snapshots so not even a power outage can corrupt anything.

For non-power users who do need to install something it was never perfect, but now these immutable distributions are here. They have their own downsides though.

opan

5 hours ago

Guessing this is just a hypothetical, but if you really can do that (disable the DM via the GUI by accident), I'd be curious. If you told me to do that on purpose, my first instinct would be to uninstall the package.

blahlabs

5 hours ago

Which few bad clicks would put a fedora install in that state?

SXX

4 hours ago

If you do have permissions to install packages you can end up with a system in messed up state pretty easily.

1 - Enable wrong ROMFusion because you need these damn video codecs for VLC. I have like 20 years of Linux experience and I still messe up Fedora in 2025 trying to make video work.

2 - Just forget that big update going in background and shutdown system when not appropriate. Boom. On Windows its just much harder to accidentally do it.

Only solution is really distros with immutable root and snapshots.

imp0cat

4 hours ago

I guess you could use something like Fedora Silverblue if you feel like doing some initial explaining.

TacticalCoder

3 hours ago

> good luck getting ol' grandma to flash her desktop with Fedora/equivalent

My kid's grandma (my wife's mom) brought me one Windows laptop too-many to fix "because there were ads everywhere".

I confiscated her laptop (I'm now using Linux on it) and had her buy a Chromebook.

People aren't using Windows under my watch / friends don't let friends/family use that mediocre piece of turd that Windows is / etc.

zubspace

2 hours ago

Just last week I installed Windows 11 by downloading the ISO from Microsoft and creating a bootable USB stick with Rufus [1]. Rufus has options to make the Windows installer skip the Microsoft account login. Worked great!

There are reasons to install Windows. For one, I had to install it for my wife, and making her switch to another OS she isn’t used to would be quite a hassle. I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.

But I have the Pro version, and, AFAIK, there is a stark contrast between Pro and Home. Even though there is a push in Europe to make software Linux-compatible, there are still many, many companies and government institutions fully entrenched in the Microsoft world. Going Linux-only just for the sake of it sometimes does not make much sense business-wise.

[1] https://github.com/pbatard/rufus

LtWorf

an hour ago

Would make perfect sense if your competitor does it and automatically every customer is saving a microsoft subscription per employee.

zubspace

an hour ago

In some industries, Microsoft subscriptions are a drop in the ocean. Switching out things like Entra ID, Office, and print/scanning solutions would cost so much more, and come bundled with enough risk that no sane project manager would take it on lightly.

As a C# software provider, making something Windows- and Linux-compatible is easier than ever. So giving up on Windows is effectively the wrong move, because you would miss out on the behemoth companies that are simply too large to transition easily.

I know the majority of HN readers are fed up with Windows. That is completely understandable. But not everything about it is bad.

esalman

7 hours ago

I have used a Windows OS almost every day of my life since 1999 or so. Last December I had a choice and switched to MacOS for work laptop. Since then I seldom use Windows and I don't really regret.

I still use an Xbox almost every day so there's that. In the last couple of weeks there's been some good news coming through for Xbox so we'll see.

m463

5 hours ago

Did you create an apple id?

At least macos doesn't require it to install software.

ios is a different story.

esalman

4 hours ago

I didn't create an Apple ID. The MacBook is from work and I use AD account to access it.

Agentlien

6 hours ago

What news are you referring to? The only news about Xbox I've caught is that it's declining in profit because they removed Xbox exclusives.

pjmlp

2 hours ago

Asha is doing some good decisions, or it seemed so until the XBOX Reset blog post.

However beyond XBOX, Microsoft is one of the biggest publishers as per amount of owned studios especially since ABK acquisition, so even when XBOX is doing bad, Microsoft Publishing is doing great.

alkonaut

an hour ago

Without the MS account, it is _much_ harder to sell OneDrive, Copilot, Office365-whatever subscriptions etc to their users.

I get it. I get that they need to upsell their customers OR their product would be more expensive. I'd be happy to pay that premium though, and I'm not going to buy any of those additional things.

But let's not pretend that this is purely an evil or thoughtless design choice that isn't economic in Nature. Windows has a cost and that cost gets subsidized by all the people who buy additional services.

bayesnet

an hour ago

I do not think that it is as well-reasoned as that. Far more likely IMO that teams are being evaluated on upsell uptake and so push these requirements to make the number on the dashboard go up.

Anyway, I’d be more sympathetic to this way of thinking if windows wasn’t getting worse over time. But it seems like investment in the OS is being disfavored for investment in AI-in-things-no-one-wants-AI-in, which is inverse of the subsidy direction you propose

3stacks

3 hours ago

And what are you going to do about it, Windows 11 users?

jwr

an hour ago

A couple of years ago Microsoft bought the SwiftKey keyboard app (for iOS). Recently the other shoe dropped: they introduced a requirement to be logged in "for data backup", you get a banner on top of the keyboard that cannot be permanently turned off.

I am so tired of this relentless user-hostile push for accounts, logins and pervasive tracking.

INTPenis

2 hours ago

It wouldn't be so bad if they could manage proper SSO, but they keep forcing you to re-authenticate for some reason.

freediddy

5 hours ago

I was forced to switch to Windows 11 despite promising myself that I would never do this.

WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I INCREASE THE WIDTH OF THE TASKBAR? I have a 30" monitor, I can afford to have 3 or 4 rows of windows in my task bar. But I can't, not because it's technically feasible but because a human at Microsoft that believes they are more important than their customers made a decision to remove that option because they think they know better.

Whoever you are, I hate you.

mdavid626

4 hours ago

The new taskbar was written by an intern on his first day using Copilot in Javascript. Zero fucks were given that day.

moi2388

4 hours ago

Product owners are the worst thing to happen to products since sliced bread.

BuyMyBitcoins

4 hours ago

Check out Start11. I’m forced to use Windows 11 for work but I’ve managed to get the Windows 10 taskbar and start menu back. It only cost $8.

I literally hate the Windows 11 taskbar.

xeyownt

2 hours ago

You don't need an online account to back up your encryption key.

All you need is your password.

And a well-designed disk encryption tool.

deepsun

2 hours ago

Don't MacOS users all have apple.com accounts? I hear no complains though.

BTW, where do I create an account to for my Linux?

askonomm

8 minutes ago

Most probably do yes, but it's not a requirement to use any of Apple's devices. You don't need to do some command-line kung-fu to get around online account requirement like on Windows, you can just click "Skip" at the online account step, and that's it.

Perhaps you hear no complaints because unlike on Windows, MacOS does not spoon-feed you 10 screens of dark-pattern-riddled upsell ads with options of "Remind me later", "Yes" during set-up. It quite literally feels like being spat on, considering Windows is not a free operating system, and yet it still riddles you with ads and dark patterns as if some horrible shareware from the mid 2000s.

zuhsetaqi

2 hours ago

They might have all an Apple Account but thats not a requirement at all on macOS. Thats the difference between complaining customers and customers thatuse it because thez choose to use it.

Gud

2 hours ago

No.

throwaway81523

7 hours ago

There's a similar thing with Google accounts and Android, amirite? I've avoided having a Google account but it hasn't always been easy.

tick_tock_tick

24 minutes ago

You can do that just fine. Huge swaths of people just use the Amazon app store or the Samsung One. F-Droid is also an option if you don't want to make any accounts.

as1mov

an hour ago

Surprisingly no, you can use an Android phone without an account. Though you cannot install any applications from the Play Store, tbf I'll count that almost as a positive.

opan

5 hours ago

I've mostly just used LineageOS for several years now, but I believe the first time setup pushes you to sign in to a Google account, but you can easily skip it. If you do sign in, it's sticky/permanent and I think may require a reinstall to get back out of it.

m463

5 hours ago

you can use an iphone without an apple id.

- you have to dodge dark patterns to get through setup without one

- you can't install software

liotier

an hour ago

... And that is the straw that broke the camel's back - and convinced my elderly father to accept my offer to migrate to KDE.

Also, I can now shield him from most of the incomprehensible unsolicited dialogs that triggered support calls. I haven't had to field a single complaint since I tuned his desktop !

awesomeusername

4 hours ago

Linux succeeded in the datacenter because of some atrocious choices MS made early on.

Now it's going to succeed on the desktop for the same reason

Bye bye windows

pmontra

4 hours ago

Random bits out of my memory in no particular order, except the first one:

First and foremost Linux was free, no money, no licenses, no procurement procedures, download and install.

Windows insisted to have a GUI even on servers and you had to remote desktop to them and click click click. That was how most of the world was using those NT 3.51 boxes.

It soon became PHP vs ASP and Java run on both OSes equally well.

There were still many Unix developers around and they picked up Linux at least as a deployment target.

Web servers were developed for Unix first. Porting to Linux was trivial. Porting to Windows not so. We had to wait for IIS.

simianwords

3 hours ago

> Windows insisted to have a GUI even on servers and you had to remote desktop to them and click click click. That was how most of the world was using those NT 3.51 boxes.

No way. Why didn’t they have the foresight to see this was a bad idea?

cjs_ac

3 hours ago

Microsoft is called Microsoft because they make software for microcomputers. Networking and multi-user systems aren’t in their DNA.

simianwords

2 hours ago

Didn’t you just need one person to say something like requiring human intervention to provision servers is not scalable? It doesn’t require an expert to think of this really.

pmontra

2 hours ago

To be fair to them, one or two servers were enough for basically every single service back in the 90s when consumers started moving to the internet. Microsoft sold what they had. Their customers bought what they were used to. The usual stack was a mainframe or an AS400 exporting a file full of records. A Windows NT PC imported the file in either Oracle or SQL Server and served HTML pages either with ASP or Java. Then export from the local db, import into the AS400. The internet facing system was a bolted on afterthought.

Of course it was still a pain compared to command line, unless you grew up with only a Windows PC or a Mac under your fingers. No CLI on Macs until Apple rebuilt the OS on Unix so you didn't even know what a CLI was.

sixseven

an hour ago

Now that Words/Excel are losing their battles against online documents, gaming is the only thing that's keeping me on Windows. Though I honestly enjoy using Windows 10, no way in hell will I upgrade my OS to Windows 11.

oefrha

an hour ago

I wouldn’t mind so much if it didn’t automatically create the user folder based on real name on the MS account, with space in it, fucking up and complicating all sorts of things.

anorphirith

11 hours ago

they also force you to give a recovery account. i’m thinking microsoft’s hands are tied in this matter, it might be the government forcing a kyc strategy

xg15

10 hours ago

"KYC" simply for operating your own PC?

lenerdenator

8 hours ago

Of course. How else are they to know that you posted criticism of the President on the internet?

DaSHacka

4 hours ago

So far there haven't been any instances of that, from what I'm aware of.

A particular foreign nation, on the other hand...

notavalleyman

7 hours ago

Which government? And what's your evidence

tupac_speedrap

7 hours ago

It's an open secret that Windows is backdoored for the NSA to be fair and that isn't even including the truly dodgy stuff like Intel Management Engine being a backdoor on a BIOS level with remote access

DaSHacka

4 hours ago

Do you have a source for literally any of those allegations?

I'm as big of a Windows and ME hater as they come, but I'm not aware of any proven backdoors in either. Especially ME, which has been thoroughly reverse-engineered by the security community by this point. The only 'backdoor' discovered was the undocumented killswitch command that disables it after initialization.

Telemakhos

8 hours ago

Apple doesn't force you to create an AppleID unless you want to use Music and the App Store. You can still run macOS as a standalone local user. So, it's not government-forced KYC.

opan

5 hours ago

I believe on my Mac (non-primary machine, FWIW) I ended up signing into an Apple account, and I doubt I did that for no reason. I don't rely on iCloud or spend money on apps. Is it required to get Xcode, which is required for some things from homebrew to work? You did mention the App Store, which maybe applies here. Is the App Store the only way to get Xcode?

mjevans

4 hours ago

Yes, it's that. Xcode is the only reason I've ever touched an Apple account.

moomoo11

5 hours ago

godspeed for anyone still using windows in 2026

i’m happy on mac even with its ux regressions, and my ubuntu workstation.

johnea

10 hours ago

It does make me wonder why people keep running this OS...

stubish

8 hours ago

It is too intimidating to change for one. Most users I deal with are terrified and bewildered by settings and can't even take the few steps to install an adblocker (and they want the adblocker!)

And from the article: "Technician's know how to get around this, but not everyone using a computer is a technician."

To use an alternative, you need to know someone with the knowledge and ability and able to request their time. Backing up data, burning USB sticks, installing, setup new backup solution, resyncing bookmarks, creating shortcuts to their email, replacements for the apps they use... all the details takes a lot of time, and it is ongoing work. Someone has to become 'the technician' and provide support. Otherwise, people have no option except to keep bumbling along with the default or somehow become 'the technician' themselves without any guide but web forums and ChatGPT.

CamperBob2

5 hours ago

To use an alternative, you need to know someone with the knowledge and ability and able to request their time.

Fortunately, my old pal Claude Code is always there for me. Need something installed/fixed/changed? Just ask... in plain English.

I don't need him for Windows, but man, that dude can make Linux walk and talk.

_carbyau_

4 hours ago

> Fortunately, my old pal Claude Code is always there for me

Is this just a form of changing one subscription for another?

CamperBob2

3 hours ago

No, because pretty much any model and harness could be used as a robotic Linux admin instead of Claude Code. I haven't tried Codex or Gemini for that, but I'm sure they'd be fine. Ultimately that particular Linux box is going to be used to host local models, which should also work.

An account with an AI provider gets me the ability to submit prompts and run agents with their model. I pay them, I get a useful service in return, and I can stop or switch providers anytime. Conversely, I get absolutely nothing in return for logging into my own machine with a Microsoft account. It benefits Microsoft -- somehow, I guess, who knows? -- but not me.

tgsovlerkhgsel

8 hours ago

Because when I want to play a game, I want to play a game, not debug someone's hacky attempt to make it work on Linux.

Implementing a strict "no fiddly shit on my game machine" policy was one of the best choices for my mental health that I've made: It's a dedicated machine for gaming, with nothing really sensitive on it aside from gaming related accounts, and its only purpose is to play games with the least amount of immediate hassle. In other words, if the choice is installing something ugly or fiddling, that launcher, kernel level anticheat or whatever it is gets installed.

denkmoon

7 hours ago

FWIW, with minor exception, Linux is better at "no fiddly shit on my game machine" now. I feel strongly about this too, to come home from work and debug some shit going wrong on my gaming system is no bueno, I'd rather just not play games. It has to work without fucking around.

Windows is now the OS that fucks with me and causes grief, since moving to cachyos the experience has been so bloody blissful it's not funny. I can, amazingly, just come home and launch a game and play the game and not deal with bullshit like taking 30 minutes to install some random update. Nothing randomly breaks. Nothing updates unless I let it. Nothing randomly pops up asking me to do some bullshit I'm not interested in for a result I don't care about. etc.

charleslmunger

38 minutes ago

I mean this is sort of true in that windows is constantly introducing trash, but I've run into all kinds of nonsense:

1. Amd HDMI 2.1 fiasco and adapter workarounds -> debugged the adapter compared to the displayport spec pdf, emailed the company, got a firmware update, patched my kernel. Fixed! This one is going away for good with FRL support upstream soon.

2. Game stops responding to controller input after playing for a bit. Debugged, turns out the service for doing something fancy with shaders has shared fate with the steam input process. It launches a zillion threads and OOMs from virtual memory exhaustion which takes out steam input; fixed by adding a wrapper script for steam that reduces thread stack sizes to the windows default size.

3. Xbox elite series 2 controller back buttons not supported in 2.4ghz wireless mode; reverse engineered the USB packets, contributed support to out of tree xone driver.

4. Flydigi controller software not supported on Linux; find random GitHub project that reversed their hidraw protocol. It's got bugs, so fix them and use it.

5. Terrible banding in Silksong. Set up gamescope to apply dithering; this breaks steam input, figure out all sorts of incantations with LD_PRELOAD

But all of these are very much off the beaten path problems, lots of people have fun with normal controllers, no VRR, etc. My steam deck has been just perfect with zero effort, and I assume that's because I'm not treating the system configuration like a puzzle game.

etdznots

2 hours ago

I’ve long ago learned to ignore people that pretend that the system they use just works, go look at any mac user or windows users workflow, for most people there are dozens of hacky BS things they do to work around the inherent problems of the system they’re using they (naturally) just make excuses for their existing tools ignoring all of the workarounds and arcane knowledge they’ve accumulated while acutely feeling the pain of any new arcana that they have to learn for a new system.

xigoi

4 hours ago

If your game is on Steam and does not use creepy “anticheat” software, you can probably just play it on Linux.

Root_Denied

an hour ago

Yeah, people who talk about how "fiddly" it is to game on Linux must not have tried recently, or have a very low tolerance for doing anything other than clicking play.

I occasionally have to right click a game and enable the compatibility in the settings - that's just a single checkbox. Steam handles the management of pulling whatever the most recent version of Proton-GE is for me and everything pretty much works. There's a setting in Steam itself that you can set a default compatibility tool.

The only games that do shaders preload are Marvel Rivals and Monster Hunter World/Wilds, and even those are quick and can be canceled if I cared to. Even modding is fairly straightforward using something like r2Modman for Steam games or Prism Launcher for Minecraft.

If that's too hard for some people then I bet they also don't run adblockers, which means I've written them off as actually knowing how to use a computer at the most basic level.

_carbyau_

3 hours ago

I have that one linux friend who is always recompiling shaders every game update. It's only 5 minutes, but's it's every game update which can be lot.

I'm waiting for that to go away before I consider the jump. I figure there'll be enough people sick of that behaviour it'll get sorted.

etdznots

2 hours ago

You can just skip the shaders compilation for close to 0 performance impact in most games, I wish they (Valve) would make this the default behavior

literallywho

3 hours ago

Go away? I've been replaying Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005) and it recompiles the shaders even on alt-tab (to clarify that feature has been there always since release). It's more on the developers to fix. After all, not even Windows games on winodws are free from shader stutter (with less ways to fix it than linux!)

abeyer

7 hours ago

Implementing a strict "no games on my no fiddly shit machine" policy was one of the best choices for my mental health that I've made

Windows can be just as bad, I'm quite happy to restrict my games choice a bit to run them on a console that someone else makes work.

sharts

5 hours ago

Do VMS not work for this?

ses1984

4 hours ago

There's one use case where VMs don't work, real time media processing. Mac is the preferred platform for this kind of think by most users but I use one application which is windows exclusive: rocksmith. It's theoretically possible to get something that's only marginally worse than the native experience, but I've never seen it done. Even if I could do it, I don't know if I could accept how the app behaves in practice.

CivBase

6 hours ago

Funny enough, I just switched to Linux for a game I play because it was a hassle on Windows.

My friends and I play Halo Infinite sometimes and I've had some performance issues with it on Linux so I've always booted into my Windows 11 partition to play it. It's about as vanilla Windows 11 install as it gets.

But over the last few months it has been crashing all the time. It started happening very frequently - like once every ~30 min. It was a vanilla install. Basically just the game and graphics drivers. And everything was up to date.

I started playing it on Linux and now it just works. There's still a weird performance problem, but I can live with that because it's at least stable.

1over137

9 hours ago

Some important software only works on Windows alas.

Not everyone does everything from a web browser.

keithnz

6 hours ago

a lot of the compatibility stuff on Linux runs windows software, so that's usually not a huge blocker. Having recently switched to Linux as my main (used to run it in a VM) the real issues are all these things that don't quite work out of the box (different distros might get different results). For instance my audio when playing dota2 would randomly cut out and not return when using discord. It took a bunch of fiddling around to get both to work. Then there's weird compatibility things depending on choices you make, for instance, I used RustDesk a lot in windows. But it doesn't really work well in linux with wayland. So while my overall experience is Linux is pretty good... I'm now in a world where I can end up with all kinds of random issues, all likely solvable, but all likely semi unique to my setup.

tcfhgj

9 hours ago

Alternative OS are not limited to browser software...

hoppyhoppy2

9 hours ago

Right, but that doesn't solve the problem they brought up in the first sentence of their comment.

BobbyTables2

6 hours ago

Try doing a full screen rdp session from Linux at 4K resolution.

The lag will be with you. VNC won’t be any better.

He’ll, even some YouTube videos are overly taxing from Firefox in Linux.

Also Stream seems to think Windows is more equal than Linux…

amlib

5 hours ago

> Try doing a full screen rdp session from Linux at 4K resolution.

You should be using Sunshine/Moonlight for that anyway. You will get ultra smooth low latency 4k@120fps streaming to and from linux.

I regularly play games streamed from my noisy big linux pc all the way across to the living room linux pc. It's brilliant.

Havoc

2 hours ago

Switching to something else is still quite intimidating to the non hn crowd

marcelox86

7 hours ago

the Linux distro I want does not yet exist.

noah34

8 hours ago

to many people, Windows, IS "computer"

14

6 hours ago

Uncertainty of how it all works is my opinion. Like how is it installed. What is making a partition and what are these warnings? What happens to all my pictures and documents? What distro is best? Do I lose all my paid for software? How do I now do all the things I am used to doing?

I remember the first time I partitioned my hard drive and did a dual boot and I was really unsure about so many things. It is intimating.

bigstrat2003

10 hours ago

Because they feel (rightly or wrongly) there is no viable alternative. It might be that they have software which requires Windows, it might be that they think it's too complicated to set up Linux, or it might just be that they aren't aware any other option exists. But those all boil down to the same thing: people think they have to use Windows, so they tolerate its nonsense.

themafia

6 hours ago

...don't look now, but, there's a trillion dollar gorrilla in the room right behind you.

toofy

3 hours ago

this is why ive finally ditched windows for everything.

ive been a dual boot linux user for years, but still booting into windows for games and work.

no more, i just couldn’t take the:

- constant nagging

- ads for all of microsoft’s other shit that i absolutely did not want to use. copilot, onedrive, xbox, and on and on.

- the nonstop “sign in to your microsoft account” etc…

- settings i very deliberately changed reverting back on update.

- how stupidly long updates would take.

i just finally went to linux for everything. i was concerned about work stuff, and i ahve to admit, its absolutely definitely not perfect, but it still … feels? … better. i’m not sure this is the right phrase, but it just feels more fun. i feel good when i diagnose a linux bug, like productive or something. that feels more like fun to me compared to the dark patterns of windows which feels frustrating. if that makes sense.

i’d rather spend 20 minutes fixing a weird quirk on linux than the deal with the assault microsoft is constantly throwing at me when using windows. and id absolutely rather put up with a feature that isnt fully complete yet on linux than deal with dark patterns on windows.

and gaming? at this point, if a game doesn’t work on linux, i just play something else that does. there are just way too many choices of rad games that run good on linux. it does help that the games i’ve been playing lately (like cyberpunk) run a bit better on linux anyway.

the only holdout for me at this point is video and photo editing, i have to break out my macbook for lightroom and premiere still. but from what i understand linux is moving very very fast in that area so i’ll just use my mb until those are caught up. the day i can ditch my adobe subscription will be the type of “let’s go to the bar and toast with shots” kind of day. and from what other people say, it’s very close.

the cherry on top for me is, weve moved our parents machines to linux mint. my gf and i jokingly wonder if they would have even noticed if we hadn’t told them, firefox just works for their facebook and amazon lol. huge bonus that i can update their machines with a quick ssh apt update which takes literally seconds vs windows which sometimes takes half hour plus.

ewoodrich

an hour ago

FWIW every one of those issues can be solved by running Win11Debloat one time (except update length which is variable based on hardware, but auto-update/restart can be disabled).

https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

Persists after updates, and is a straightforward easily auditable PowerShell script enabling/disabling Windows/app features via approved OS provided API interfaces without any hacky brittle workarounds that eventually stop working.

It's the first thing I install on any fresh Windows 11 install for the past 4+ years. I get more ads on MacOS thanks to their lovely Apple TV, iCloud, etc push notifications than I ever see on Windows 11 (≈ 0) after running it.

I've updated hundreds of times across multiple machines and it's never stopped working. I'm only reminded it exists by its absence whenever I use an out of the box Win 11 install on a new PC which is painful in comparison.

I actually prefer debloated Win 11 to plain Win 10 because I get all the benefits like vastly superior multi monitor support on 11 with basically zero negatives.

everyone

6 hours ago

I'm doing more and more on Linux Mint these days, but there are a few niche things that still only work good on Windows.

Windows 10 LTSC 2021 IOT is great tbh.. Install it without internet and you dont need a MS account at all.

oreally

3 hours ago

double recommend it for those who still want to stay on windows and are doubtful about linux

DANmode

4 hours ago

Do they still offer this ISO officially? Link? Thanks

DaSHacka

4 hours ago

I think massgrave has a link to the iso on the Microsoft website in their listing of windows versions.

everyone

4 hours ago

I have no idea, I just have a copy from TPB. Its still supported tho. Still getting security updates. I think until 2030 ish? I'm not sure, I think the older versions of LTSC had longer guaranteed support than the newer ones.

donkeylazy456

4 hours ago

asking account for insider program is evil.

ActorNightly

6 hours ago

This may get buried here, but there is one important distinction missing from all these articles.

Win 11 Pro allows you to enable local login, and disable all the intrusive microsoft stuff. Ive been on win 11 for the past 5 years and don't even remember my microsoft password at this point. IIRC you still have to set one up when you first install, but then once you switch to local login, any time you open up a microsoft app it makes you login in the app.

Its not a "good" solution, but given that Win11+WSL2 pretty much lets you run any software out there, its worth while doing.

halfcat

6 hours ago

You don’t have to login with the online account. Before you install:

- Disable the network cards in the BIOS

- Install

- When prompted to setup the network press Shift+F10

- Type: start ms-cxh:localonly

- Setup the local account

- After install completes re-enable the network cards in the BIOS

Nothing could be easier. Truly the most user-friendly OS.

yndoendo

5 hours ago

Microsoft is even trying to get Windows IoT / Embedded to be MS accounts vs local. The same method for disabling ease of local user accounts are being enabled there.

Windows IoT still forces all the useless trash to be installed ... such as XBox game bar. I have to spend every few months going through the means to disable this trash via the registry so it can be automated in air-gaped systems.

Original Window Embedded, pre-IoT branding, allowed full customization. Now it is near equivalent to standard desktop.

You have to pay me to use Windows OS ... even with gaming.

t0bia_s

4 hours ago

There is easier method. Set up local account during creating Win bootable install device via Rufus. During actual Win install it skips all steps about crating local account. Done.

thewebguyd

5 hours ago

If you have Pro edition you don't have to do any of that.

Click "Sign in options"->Domain Join Instead

That's it, it''ll have you create a local account.

jmclnx

11 hours ago

If only Windows users fully understood why M/S wants you to create an account, people would leave en-masse.

The ID along with their telemetry, M/S can map you to what you do and from where. That pretty much makes their builtin disk encryption useless.

tredre3

7 hours ago

> That pretty much makes their builtin disk encryption useless.

Does the encryption keep the user's data safe if the device is lost or stolen? Yes? Then it fulfills its main purpose.

jmclnx

6 hours ago

We need to define "safe".

Safe from coffee shop people or in a dorm, probably yes. If you lock your laptop with a good screensaver and have a decent PW, those people are not getting in anyway.

Plus with smart phones hardly anyone carries their laptop around these days.

But with what M/S is doing with Windows 11 "security" any ad company with $, lawyer with a warrant or alphabet soup agencies, can get a decent idea with what is going on even if they cannot get to see your data in Excel or Word.

But most M/S office data is now in the "cloud", so all bets are off for those files in many cases.

themafia

6 hours ago

Non technical users still write down their passwords. So: no.

Do technical users have the option to install something better? Yes? Then this has no purpose.

davkan

4 hours ago

For the vast majority of users bitlocker just means that if someone steals your laptop or you leave it on a bus then short of a concerted effort by someone with technical ability, no one will have your photos or tax documents. It absolutely serves a meaningful purpose even if it has significant shortcomings.

halfcat

6 hours ago

Except for the bitlocker vulnerability that lets someone with the physical computer bypass it. Other than that, it works flawlessly.

m463

5 hours ago

They also upload what you do

listenallyall

6 hours ago

Most people do all their Windows activity from one single specific location. It's Android and iOS that know you just drove down and made a stop at your city's most popular drug marketplace, or that you and your secretary were in the same hotel at 7pm yesterday.

stodor89

6 hours ago

Windows users don't care. The MS account is some set-and-forget BS for the most part.

zer0zzz

6 hours ago

I have not needed to use windows for anything productive for 15 years.

sharts

5 hours ago

At this point it sounds like you can’t use windows for anything productive for the next 15 years

hurtigioll

5 hours ago

some people do more than just write code

opan

5 hours ago

What are some common hold-ups you know of? I don't program but have still used GNU/Linux on my main machine for over a decade now. It can browse the web, play games, listen to music, watch TV and movies, you can draw, you can edit video, you can stream to Twitch.

Telaneo

3 hours ago

Adobe.

Games with kernel anti-cheat.

Office 365 (I think this mostly applies to overly complex Excel spreadsheets with lots of macros? There are also a bunch of people here who say LibreOffice has bad UI, or that they (somehow?) have documents that are complex enough that LibreOffice can't display them properly. Openoffice is somewhat better on those fronts, but neither are good enough if it's for actual work).

zargon

3 hours ago

It's mostly professional software that is the issue. CAD, CAM, BIM, GIS, DAW, PLC, accounting, graphic arts, etc. etc.

DANmode

4 hours ago

Mostly hardware with previously-shipped drivers,

and no updates planned.

hollow-moe

10 hours ago

That's a long article ridden with ads just to say "a redditor complains about shitty Windows OOBE requiring a Microsoft account (this has been the case for 10 years already)". Alternatives exists and are viable, now people still prefer pouring energy into complaining to a wall instead of actually moving. Getting abused is deserved at this point, it's been more than 10 years now, get a grip.

usea

8 hours ago

> Getting abused is deserved at this point

Nobody deserves to be abused.

blooalien

7 hours ago

> "Nobody deserves to be abused."

I beg to differ; Most people don't deserve to be abused, but those who dish out abuse on those who never asked for it, or on other such "innocents" absolutely deserve a full measure of abuse, since they clearly don't understand (or care) how it feels to be on the receiving end of it.