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Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

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Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#191

Post by hatthew »

glenstein wrote: post #122
hatthew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my development work on linux. I have a self-hosted linux server. I used ubuntu as my main desktop computer OS for a full year, and in that time I struggled with compatibility issues, games that wouldn't run as well as people said they would, driver update issues, necessary tools that simply don't exist on linux, and various configuration failures that simply don't exist on windows. Saying that you can game o…

What you're describing sounds like the Linux gaming experience of 4-5 years ago. Steam and Proton have been complete game changers though, bringing the normal gaming experience with thousands (tens of thousands?) of games to Linux. It's not like it used to be.

There are a lot of games that work well on linux. Maybe even most games! But there are also many games that do not work on linux. It's not fun to tell my friends "hey I'll be sitting this one out, let me know when we move on to another game"

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#192

Post by Propelloni »

hatthew wrote: post #189
Propelloni wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to do all my corporate work on Windows. I have a self-hosted Windows server. I used Windows as my main work computer OS for three years, and in that time I struggled with compatibility issues, applications that wouldn't run as well as people said they would, driver update issues, necessary tools that simply don't exist on Windows, and various configuration failures that simply don't exist on Linux. Saying that…

I'm not sure what your point is? Coding works well on linux, games work well on windows. Neither works as well on the other.

I think I'm lampooning the hyperbole. Both, Linux and Windows, have their own issues, and some shared issues, but none are making one or the other unusable or even hard to use. I, for one, am more comfortable with the issues Linux throws up than with those Windows throws up, which I often find vexing, but I guess that's habituation. It's important to realize your own biases, isn't it?

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#193

Post by decide1000 »

technofiend wrote: post #188
decide1000 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to 100% linux (PopOs, Suse) and the only app I really miss is Scrivener.

A mac mini is cheap if it's worth in investing in a platform to buy an app ala buying an Apple II to run Visicalc.

I don't want to run a closed source OS anymore.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#194

Post by glenstein »

z3ratul163071 wrote: post #133
WD-42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. The very few games I play work great on Linux. As a professional dev, there's absolutely no reason to choose Windows (or any OS, for that matter) over Desktop Linux at this point. I'm convinced Windows is mainly for people that buy computers at Best Buy and corporate IT that are unfortunately funneled into the ecosystem (hats off salute to all you).

What a time to be alive. I used to be certain Linux will always be crap for the desktop. And here I am now typing this on Wayland KDE :)

And to be fair, I would say the success for Linux in this case is increasingly approximating what we have come to understand as an optimal desktop experience without screwing anything up rather than outcompeting by necessarily achieving a noticeably higher standard.

I personally would say Linux does desktops objectively better both in the higher standard but also in the not screwing up sense but I am willing to accept that it might be a little bit opinionated about that and for some people it amounts to too much customization.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#195

Post by glenstein »

anal_reactor wrote: post #153
WD-42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. The very few games I play work great on Linux. As a professional dev, there's absolutely no reason to choose Windows (or any OS, for that matter) over Desktop Linux at this point. I'm convinced Windows is mainly for people that buy computers at Best Buy and corporate IT that are unfortunately funneled into the ecosystem (hats off salute to all you).

1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it. 2. Once a month I have a task of checking 100k images for duplicates. Strangely, the only app that actually works is VisiPics from 2013. It does something smarter than just binary comparison, it works very fast. I guess I'll be running a Windows VM forever just for this one app, unless someone explains to m…

>1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it.

Office 365 is web-based and Linux accesses the web. If you're deep enough in the weeds that your survival hinges on desktop only features that can only be accessed from Windows then you're in a use case that can be resolved by getting a laptop for that purpose or being furnished one by your work.

And while your use case is fascinatingly specific, my understanding is that the paradigm there is what might be called visual hashing or perceptual hashing, which is more than mere file size comparison, but kind of hashing a more generalized notion of image similarity.

You may already know this, but from checking with chatgpt, there's something called DupeGuru which appears to be cross-platform. And also, it looks like there's some powerful Python and Perl libraries. Again, I'm sure your use case has some specific wrinkles to it, and you may very well know all of that already, so those might not help. But I suppose the interesting thing here is that the more idiosyncratic a use case is, the more closely it approximates things solved by programming languages which puts you back in the paradigm where Linux is not merely usable but I would argue the friendliest option.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#196

Post by anal_reactor »

glenstein wrote: post #195
anal_reactor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it. 2. Once a month I have a task of checking 100k images for duplicates. Strangely, the only app that actually works is VisiPics from 2013. It does something smarter than just binary comparison, it works very fast. I guess I'll be running a Windows VM forever just for this one app, unless someone explains to m…

>1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it. Office 365 is web-based and Linux accesses the web. If you're deep enough in the weeds that your survival hinges on desktop only features that can only be accessed from Windows then you're in a use case that can be resolved by getting a laptop for that purpose or being furnished one by your work. And while…

Could you point me to some more information about "visual hashing"? I'm a bit tired of "try this tool because it worked for my set of 100 pictures", but if I could read an explanation why given tool/library does what I want, that would be fantastic. The biggest issue of my use case is the sheer number of files.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#197

Post by glenstein »

anal_reactor wrote: post #196
glenstein wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it. Office 365 is web-based and Linux accesses the web. If you're deep enough in the weeds that your survival hinges on desktop only features that can only be accessed from Windows then you're in a use case that can be resolved by getting a laptop for that purpose or being furnished one by your work. And while…

Could you point me to some more information about "visual hashing"? I'm a bit tired of "try this tool because it worked for my set of 100 pictures", but if I could read an explanation why given tool/library does what I want, that would be fantastic. The biggest issue of my use case is the sheer number of files.

Right, you're looking for things that work at the scale of 100k separate files or so. Moreover you seem pretty used to getting bad recommendations, and I know the feeling. Important caveat is that all I know about these are what I've chatgpt'd about them.

There's the aforementioned DupeGuru program which is cross platform and wields a handful of algorithms. Then there's aHash (average hash), dHash (difference hash) , and pHash (perceptual hash). They each make assumptions about which subset of image data is important, pull it out, compare it, and are meant to do it quickly and at large scales. They are all accessible from within Pythons' imagehash library and require getting your hands dirty with python. My understanding is that Dupeguru uses its own custom perceptual hashing methods.

And although it seems like you need something more specific, the very very lazy choice is md5 sum comparison which is super fast but is only testing whether files are identical copies.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#198

Post by hatthew »

Propelloni wrote: post #192
hatthew wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is? Coding works well on linux, games work well on windows. Neither works as well on the other.

I think I'm lampooning the hyperbole. Both, Linux and Windows, have their own issues, and some shared issues, but none are making one or the other unusable or even hard to use. I, for one, am more comfortable with the issues Linux throws up than with those Windows throws up, which I often find vexing, but I guess that's habituation. It's important to realize your own biases, isn't it?

Yeah, I agree that bias is an important factor here for general day-to-day usage issues. But even beyond subjective bias, there are things that are _literally impossible_ to do on an OS without manually porting some tool from its original OS to the new one. And generally, if a tool is only designed for one OS, it's windows for gaming-related tools and linux for coding-related tools.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#199

Post by anal_reactor »

glenstein wrote: post #197
anal_reactor wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point me to some more information about "visual hashing"? I'm a bit tired of "try this tool because it worked for my set of 100 pictures", but if I could read an explanation why given tool/library does what I want, that would be fantastic. The biggest issue of my use case is the sheer number of files.

Right, you're looking for things that work at the scale of 100k separate files or so. Moreover you seem pretty used to getting bad recommendations, and I know the feeling. Important caveat is that all I know about these are what I've chatgpt'd about them. There's the aforementioned DupeGuru program which is cross platform and wields a handful of algorithms. Then there's aHash (average hash), dHash (difference hash) ,…

dHash sounds like a good starting point if I ever get to the situation where VisiPics doesn't work anymore for some reason. It's horribly difficult to replace software that is "just good enough", and all of its problems have known mitigations.

Re: Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account

#200

Post by averagefluid »

anal_reactor wrote: post #153
WD-42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. The very few games I play work great on Linux. As a professional dev, there's absolutely no reason to choose Windows (or any OS, for that matter) over Desktop Linux at this point. I'm convinced Windows is mainly for people that buy computers at Best Buy and corporate IT that are unfortunately funneled into the ecosystem (hats off salute to all you).

1. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, and for many people it's a hard requirement that they specifically need it. 2. Once a month I have a task of checking 100k images for duplicates. Strangely, the only app that actually works is VisiPics from 2013. It does something smarter than just binary comparison, it works very fast. I guess I'll be running a Windows VM forever just for this one app, unless someone explains to m…

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