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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

#71

Post by wyldberry »

GeekyBear wrote: post #55
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,…

> MacOS is not an attainable gaming support platform in general, as the people who are interested in the AAA games are going to need a Pro series The M5's GPU cores are expected to pick up the same 40% performance boost we just saw in the newly released iPhones. AAA games written for the M4 already work just fine, the extra performance is needed when you are also emulating other graphics APIs and CPU instruction sets…

Attainable isn't about benchmarks and performance, it's ecosystem such as supported kernel hooks for AAA games to invest the time in maintaining their anti-cheats and other parts of the game-as-a-service platform.

It's also about the market accessibility and penetration. When the base level MBA at it's lowest RAM settings is reliably running AAA games is when you might see more interest in the platform from those studios because much like the iOS market, people running Mac tend to be more readily monetized, especially through things like in-game cosmetics.

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

#72

Post by hollandheese »

avazhi wrote: post #66
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.

You clearly haven't been paying attention or are being disingenuous. Most games released now just work on Linux thanks to Proton. There's a reason the Steam Deck is blowing away any other PC gaming handhelds.

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

#73

Post by jacquesm »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #61
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.

I don't care about convenience, I care about the ethics of the companies that I work with. Convenience is what got us in this mess in the first place, it certainly isn't going to get us out of it. And if you don't want to implicitly support Microsoft Windows V 267 (now with more advertising, DNA samples for access and a free psych evaluation), then 11 is as good a time to break with them as any.

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

#74

Post by fuzzfactor »

0xTJ wrote: post #29
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.

The average grandparent isn't installing an OS, they're using whatever comes on the device. If you had Ubuntu pre-installed and automatically updating, there isn't going to be that much of a difference for how many less-tech-savy people use the computer. Microsoft has a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows", but that has been…

>a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows",

>but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.

Eroded even more so by the user-hostile approach of Microsoft itself.

Exactly with things like being a complete failure to recognize a strong valid need for general users to only opt-in to an account according to their own personal needs alone. Not with Microsoft or Google or anybody else known to be a source of unwanted ads or anti-professional annoyances.

Why abandon a remaining security element that can protect against PII compromise like no other?

It's just sad to lose an essential feature that has always been built-in to Windows since the beginning, which helped make Windows into a far better business machine than would have been otherwise possible.

And why now when security is more important than ever?

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

#75

Post by packetlost »

MaximilianEmel wrote: post #58

Search for "Local-only commands removal" on the page for the relevant section: Local-only commands removal: We are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE). While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured f…

The requiring internet part is particularly egregious, wow.

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

#76

Post by p_ing »

Xelbair wrote: post #41
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…

>Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space. nope. only useful for corporate setting. We should be able to run anything we want, however we want, without any arbitrary requirements by MS. Especially if it was proven already that it isn't a hard requirement to run the OS - just an arbitrary setting. It just paves road for more invasive DRM and even more locked d…

They're not "arbitrary requirements". They're requirements to enable VBS, one of the largest leaps in kernel security history.

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

#77

Post by Simulacra »

I hate to say it, but the vast majority of users are going to just adapt and keep going. Probably north of 70% of computer users see these and just automatically accept, sign up, all of that. It's not that they don't care, they just don't understand.

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

#78

Post by 87967646537543 »

avazhi wrote: post #66
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.

[flagged]

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

#79

Post by mixmastamyk »

browningstreet wrote: post #64

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. Nothin…

That's an interesting point. To what extent does AI support make Linux on the desktop more viable? Reminds me of a discussion recently that said something similar, that developing in Rust is easier now that you can have another machine do battle with the borrow checker, haha.

To extend, maybe someone could build a "SysAd AI" distribution that administers itself given natural language directions? Let me know if anyone wants to invest. ;-)

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

#80

Post by major505 »

packetlost wrote: post #75
MaximilianEmel wrote: post #58

Search for "Local-only commands removal" on the page for the relevant section: Local-only commands removal: We are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE). While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured f…

The requiring internet part is particularly egregious, wow.

Because it seems that microsoft could not shitify windows experience anymore.

I like windows, Its a great system specially for being productive, but the godamn start menu using react and edge and the online requirements are a pain in the ass.

Sometimes it just hangs while you click the windows key. All I want is to open notepad++...

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