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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

#351

Post by 0rdinal »

mythz wrote: post #300

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is Windows 11, with perfect timing too as modern Linux has been a joy to use as a daily driver. Normally I'd be unhappy when a sleazy corp forces me to give up on 25 years of muscle memory of using my preferred OS, but I'm thankful they gave me the push I needed to rip off the ad/spyware laced Windows Band-Aid that I only need to do once in my life. It's been over a year sinc…

I daily drive Ubuntu, the user experience is comparable (in many cases better) to Windows 11. The only sticking point for me is display drivers. HDR on Wayland is barely functional (in my experience), and getting things like hardware accelerated AV1 encoding, full Vulkan API support etc to work has been extremely difficult. Every time I login using a Wayland desktop, only my main monitor is detected and it defaults to 60hz. I have to go through a whole process of unplugging the "undetected" monitors and plugging them back in. X11 doesn't suffer from this, but of course does not support HDR.

Yes, this is almost entirely Nvidia's fault, and yes I should know better than to use NV graphics cards on Linux distros; but frankly, the barrier to entry should not be having to replace an expensive piece of hardware to achieve feature parity. (Obligatory "Nvidia, f*k you!")

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

#352

Post by dev_hugepages »

naldb wrote: post #344
mythz wrote: post #300

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is Windows 11, with perfect timing too as modern Linux has been a joy to use as a daily driver. Normally I'd be unhappy when a sleazy corp forces me to give up on 25 years of muscle memory of using my preferred OS, but I'm thankful they gave me the push I needed to rip off the ad/spyware laced Windows Band-Aid that I only need to do once in my life. It's been over a year sinc…

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is not that it has improved but that its biggest competitor has dropped the ball? That’s not really praising it.

Linux desktop has improved a lot, but the huge momentum of the competitor has prevented many people (including OP) from switching or even remotely considering it. Anything that decreases the momentum of Windows lets the improvements of Linux show.

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

#353

Post by Propelloni »

mac-attack wrote: post #242
mixmastamyk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a catch-22 in that the average Linux user is pretty loudly opposed to AI and so it appears hard for pro-AI software to gain footing in the space. Granted, most AI tools are Linux-friendly ATM, but my uneducated guess is that a larger % of Apple/Windows users use AI daily than Linux users

Agreed. We, the Linux crowd, are pretty big on understanding what our machines are doing, which is hard with LLMs. But I'd wager that a distribution that brings a local open source LLM for system administration tasks would find interest. Train it on man-pages and off you go ;)

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

#354

Post by 0rdinal »

windows2020 wrote: post #94

Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand. My first experience with Windows 11 was figuring out some dumb workaround to use a local account. When I think back to Windows 7, the good feeling isn't nostalgia. It was the last user-focused Windows. Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs. Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will realize v…

Their reputation is irrelevant, at least whilst they maintain an OS monopoly. Enterprise customers don't care because all the issues you described are not present on Enterprise editions. The vast majority of users want a machine that "just works".

I would never use a machine running Windows 11 S mode whilst a good chunk of the home PC market would likely not notice a difference.

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

#355

Post by Vipsy »

The saddest part is, Windows 11's MS account lock-in feels like the logical next step for an OS designed by committees and PMs playing metrics games. The user-hostile design isn't isolated––it's just another symptom of a company where stock price and engagement numbers trump every other concern. What I miss is the era when engineers seemed to have more say, and features existed because they were actually useful. At this point, moves like this are basically an advertisement for Linux and Mac. Every time MS doubles-down, the free and open alternatives get that much more appealing.

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

#356

Post by BallsInIt »

mwest217 wrote: post #314
eimrine wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to run anything from apple without any accounts?

Both possible and trivially easy. Just don’t sign into an Apple account.

Works fine for macOS, not so much on iOS where you need one for the App Store

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

#357

Post by wolvesechoes »

f1shy wrote: post #326
gambiting wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, as a developer there is no beating Visual Studio. Microsoft still makes the best developer IDE that unfortunately only runs on their worst OS. But as a C++ developer there is just no substitute(imho). Not to mention some development toolchains only work on windows(for playstation/xbox/switch) so if you work in games there is very little choice.

I use Emacs. It does need some fine tuning, tree-sitter installation, etc. but after that, I cannot understand colleges using VS. I have seen no feature in VS not available in Emacs. Some colleges have switched from years VS to Emacs and after a week won’t look back.

> I have seen no feature in VS not available in Emacs.

Guys, please. I am all for FOSS, but such delusions can only be harmful, for they prevent from actually improving stuff.

Did you sir ever use debugger in your life?

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

#358

Post by high_na_euv »

mythz wrote: post #328
gambiting wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, as a developer there is no beating Visual Studio. Microsoft still makes the best developer IDE that unfortunately only runs on their worst OS. But as a C++ developer there is just no substitute(imho). Not to mention some development toolchains only work on windows(for playstation/xbox/switch) so if you work in games there is very little choice.

I left Visual Studio for Rider long before I gave up Windows, IMO it's far superior to VS for everything other than GUI Apps or Blazor hot reloading (which is basically broken in both). JetBrains seem to have the best IDE for every language I've tried: Rider / IntelliJ / Android Studio / PyCharm / PhpStorm / RubyMine. Never tried CLion though, but given they all share the same base I'd thought it would be of a equall…

>but given they all share the same base I'd thought it would be of a equally high standard?

Such a naive assumption

Parsing cpp fast and reliably may be significant differentiator between languages

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

#359

Post by krige »

mythz wrote: post #350
naldb wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is not that it has improved but that its biggest competitor has dropped the ball? That’s not really praising it.

Linux is the better OS. Windows 11 just forces people to evaluate other OS's to experience the latest Linux for themselves. I didn't have the time as a working Adult for distro hopping and Gentoo compiles, but the thought of having to live with Windows 11 made me try out modern linux again, glad I did.

Linux is now the better OS, after the other one got significantly worse than it used to be, and even that is close call depending on what you need Linux to do.

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

#360

Post by CalRobert »

naldb wrote: post #344
mythz wrote: post #300

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is Windows 11, with perfect timing too as modern Linux has been a joy to use as a daily driver. Normally I'd be unhappy when a sleazy corp forces me to give up on 25 years of muscle memory of using my preferred OS, but I'm thankful they gave me the push I needed to rip off the ad/spyware laced Windows Band-Aid that I only need to do once in my life. It's been over a year sinc…

The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is not that it has improved but that its biggest competitor has dropped the ball? That’s not really praising it.

Modern Ubuntu, for me, is akin to Windows 7 (peak Windows), but with some added benefits like real package management and mnemonics (the underlined letters in menus you can access with alt+underlined letter), and other cool things like middle-click anywhere on the window to resize.

Even Mac is pretty bad by comparison.

Again, this is just me, but I wonder if people saying Linux is bad are really just complaining it's different? It does help that I only buy hardware I know works.

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