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Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

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Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#31

Post by Lammy »

protocolture wrote: post #17
vpShane wrote: post #3

'We'll never require you to need an online account to log in to your system' Look how that changed. Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing. Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S. What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it l…

>on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine? Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space. Windows 11 is really there as a checkpoint to force people to upgrade to more secure hardware. If you dont care about security, you probably dont care a…

> If you dont care about security

Microsoft's idea of Security is security from me, not security for me. They use this overloaded language because it's so hard to argue against. It's a thought-terminating cliché. Oh you must not care about being secure huh???

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#32

Post by fao_ »

lax4ever wrote: post #9

Autounattend files are about to become far more popular... And on that note, have to recommend this tool for them: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

All the lamentations of having to tinker with Linux to get it to work properly are rapidly approaching a nuclear level irony bomb...

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#33

Post by badc0ffee »

vpShane wrote: post #3

'We'll never require you to need an online account to log in to your system' Look how that changed. Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing. Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S. What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it l…

> Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'

If it has a passcode and you remember the passcode, you should still be able to wipe the device with Apple Configurator?

If the situation is that you don't have a passcode, but you do have an iCloud account where you don't remember the password and can't access the email address, and either don't have access to the recovery phone number or never specified one, then yeah. You might need to find your receipt and bring it to an Apple store to be reset.

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#34

Post by qu4z-2 »

lax4ever wrote: post #19
mindslight wrote: post #4

Is there a worry that torrent packagers won't be able to work around these, or what's the actual concern here? I mean if you're using Windows for anything beyond a VM binary compatibility layer for some software you must use, aren't you kind of asking to be abused at this point?

If you are getting your OS from some third party torrent packager you are doing it wrong. There are far easier ways to get around this without trusting that some mysterious third party hasn't embedded some malware in their custom Windows deployment.

You're already putting your trust in some mysterious first party to not embed malware...

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#35

Post by fao_ »

richardfey wrote: post #10
vpShane wrote: post #3

'We'll never require you to need an online account to log in to your system' Look how that changed. Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing. Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S. What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it l…

> with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months. Where do you get these figures from? Is there a sensible % increase? I've been using Linux desktop for a decade now and I am certain it still used by few, and nothing has changed recently. Or you're telling me 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop?

Probably not 2026, but sure, by 2030. A fair chunk of the younger generation do give a shit about privacy (see also: torrenting on the rise again), Linux is mostly unattended with respect to configuring things these days, and things like "sound" and "games" are for the most part a thing of the past outside of 4 or 5 specific games that require kernel-level anticheat.

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#36

Post by Modified3019 »

marak830 wrote: post #15

I am getting so tired of this MS push to have me use their systems. I already purchased windows, if I wanted to use their other stuff - I would buy it. Seriously considering the move to Linux - I've heard it's getting better, but it would cost me a bit of time getting used to it. The pain is really starting to seem like a lower cost every day.

These days I find Linux and windows have a roughly equal amount of issues to deal with, and because I have decades of experience learning how to work through those issues, they are equally painful so I can happily choose Linux over windows.

What makes Linux especially painful to windows users is they basically need to relearn how to solve the same sort of problems they’ve forgotten they’ve been solving all the time in windows, but in Linux. Which makes the effort novel and thus especially noticeable.

Basically it takes accepting one is going to get smacked with fractal side quests of searching how to fix problems for a bit, but it does get better fairly quickly.

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#37

Post by protocolture »

Lammy wrote: post #31
protocolture wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine? Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space. Windows 11 is really there as a checkpoint to force people to upgrade to more secure hardware. If you dont care about security, you probably dont care a…

> If you dont care about security Microsoft's idea of Security is security from me, not security for me. They use this overloaded language because it's so hard to argue against. It's a thought-terminating cliché. Oh you must not care about being secure huh???

Microsofts idea of security is security from being blamed for large scale breaches. I dont think they think about you or me at all tbh.

My point was, if you dont care about Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0, then you probably dont also care about security updates. Not whatever insult you thought I was making.

If your thoughts were terminated, that was entirely self inflicted.

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#38

Post by jazzyjackson »

Havoc wrote: post #7

Had to edit a .docx today to refresh my CV today...and realised oh...I don't have any more windows machines on hand anymore. Interesting how smoothly that faded away psychologically after 20+ years of windows use without me even overtly noticing. Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on…

You're forgetting business critical software outside of office that's windows only or windows/macos.

Stuff like Quickbooks, AutoCAD/Autodesk, off the top of my head

Re: Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

#39

Post by wyldberry »

incompatible wrote: post #21
wyldberry wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will depend on if gaming studios continue to invest in a Linux Desktop experience. It's common to run your game server on Linux, but MS, partially through DRM support to the big media companies, creates an environment very strongly suited towards shipping your game binary to a hostile environment. This is partially why major (effective) anti-cheats have migrated to the Kernel. Windows allows the big-budget games,…

If you have to play games, just have a separate Windows computer for that, and do everything else on a Linux box.

It's really easy for people who work in tech, or tech adjacent to recommend this, but in my experience, getting anyone to try nearly anything on Linux is very rough. Friends who wanted to "take control of privacy in their life" never made it beyond a week of trying to use a Linux distribution.

We have decades of training in the consumer market for very simple install patterns using UIs, and minimal messing with configurations. The people in gaming who overclock and tweak their settings are a huge minority in gaming. Those people are the ones most likely to be able to grok switching to Linux, but when they get there and find that most of their favorite apps don't work like they are used to, they go back to Windows or Mac.

My hypothesis is that for Linux Gaming to truly take off, you'll need a true desktop (not steamdeck which i use weekly) that makes it a handful of "clicks" to get whatever they want installed working. That means you'll need a commercially backed OS where developers maintain all the things needed to support near infinite peripheral connections for a variety of use cases, clear anti-cheat interfaces, and likely clear DRM hooks as well.

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