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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

#61

Post by wilsonnb3 »

jacquesm wrote: post #27

At this point if you are still willingly part of the MS ecosystem I'd say that's a case of Stockholm Syndrome. At the time of the SCO lawsuit I decided enough is enough and I haven't looked back. Software development is actually easier on Linux, there are good enough alternatives for most applications so unless your job demands that you use a particular package you might as well bite the bullet. Microsoft will never…

shrug life as a developer in Microsoft-land is pretty nice these days. I quite like Azure Functions and Azure SQL Server, C# is great, Visual Studio is kind of slow but better than anything not made by JetBrains.

Really my only complaint is the lack of a nice, modern desktop UI framework but you can’t win them all.

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

#62

Post by weikju »

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…

The problem is the protection against malware is rolled in with protection against the end user. This leads down a dark path and it seems we collectively have decided end users are less important than the corporate profits and protection against malware.

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

#64

Post by browningstreet »

Two weeks ago, after Microsoft reset my default apps twice in a week, I bought an external drive, backed up all my stuff and wiped Windows.

I’ve got Linux all over the place, in many cloud envs, and on older hardware. But I finally committed to it on my big, meaty, main desktop. The one I use for coding and banking and accounting.

I’m running a Linux distro full-time. I had to hack a few minor hardware things. Nothing ChatGPT couldn’t solve.

I’ll never do Microsoft again. I will prob add Apple MacBooks to my life, but my main grunt machine is likely to stay Linux. I’m fully vested.

I know I’ll never engage with Microsoft shenanigans in my home environment ever again.

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

#65

Post by rolph »

fao_ wrote: post #35
richardfey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

yes torrenting is on the rise, and a lot more people seem to be aware of private torrents.

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

#66

Post by avazhi »

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…

> and gaming on linux is rapidly becoming usable.

I hate Microsoft and Windows just as much as the next self-respecting nerd, but this is no less a lol right now than it was 20 years ago. It’s like Linux users all play the same 15 titles that have Linux support and think those 15 games reflect broad ecosystem support.

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

#67

Post by protocolture »

weikju wrote: post #62
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…

The problem is the protection against malware is rolled in with protection against the end user. This leads down a dark path and it seems we collectively have decided end users are less important than the corporate profits and protection against malware.

Microsoft wants you to have a laptop with the goal that you will use it to log on to work services or play games.

Apple wants you to have a tablet to spend money on apps.

You need hardware built outside of that paradigm to have a hope of avoiding a mess of locked down anti consumer nonsense.

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

#68

Post by gerdesj »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #38
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

All of which are very easily replaceable. That list is laughable for an example of lock in.

I used to run AutoCAD on a 80286 with a maths co-pro with 1 MB RAM. It has changed somewhat since!

Who gives a shit about QB? - you could just run it in a VM and it probably runs under Wine. You can also just switch accounting vendor - there are quite a few. Double book keeping is a good 600 years old and can be considered pretty open source these days.

You may even do some real good to your business (if you think you need QB) by going old school and really getting to grips with the numbers. Buy three huge ledgers and label them: "Sales" "Purchase" and "Nominal" or "General". Also grab an exercise book to act as a cash book and a couple of notebooks to document the system. Now, you will need to do docs too so you will need a drawing board to design your forms ...

Now CAD is not the most common business software in use by anyone which is probably why you went for AutoCAD (which you have heard of), rather than, say, Solidworks or Catia. Autodesk is a vendor and not a stuff.

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

#69

Post by lucb1e »

linguae wrote: post #43
typpilol wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been saying this for years now. The problem is there's no real alternative. Your grandma is not going to use Linux. So the choice is between windows and mac.. and the truth is a lot of apps people use are windows only. I don't see windows losing desktop share anytime soon.

I don’t know…for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable. The people who will have the hardest time switching to Linux are those who need proprietary software products that are unavailable for Linux and whose needs are not met by open-source alternatives. Microsoft Office is still the standard for office software, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is still the standard for…

> for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable

That sounds reasonable, given that

> ChromeOS is built on top of the Linux kernel. Originally based on Ubuntu, its base was changed to Gentoo Linux in February 2010 (--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS)

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

#70

Post by tracerbulletx »

ahmeni wrote: post #40

MS owes people a working basic Windows ecosystem. We need to find the Middle Manager Driven Development that's responsible for this nonsense and put an end to it.

You think a shift like this is coming from middle management? Feels like an executive driven strategy shift towards recurring revenue, subscriptions, advertising, data collection, app stores, and away from the old OS licensing business model to me.
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