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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

#421

Post by tjpnz »

mh- wrote: post #156
dehrmann wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if Microsoft knows it, but it doesn't care about or need Windows anymore. Office has native apps and is on the web, Xbox is doing its own things, dotnet has been freed from Windows, and Azure doesn't need Windows. Computing is generally moving away from the personal computing model, so Windows is just less relevant.

I was with you until you listed Xbox - their consoles are dying in the market. They've adopted a strategy of calling everything "gaming" Xbox , and seem to be going all-in on Gamepass subscription revenue along with making their first-party games available on other platforms. I'll be surprised if there is another flagship console following the Series X. We'll see how that works out for them.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." - Don Mattrick

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

#422

Post by kelseydh »

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…

Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.

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

#423

Post by cess11 »

An intern of mine recently took the jump from Windows to Linux Mint. She managed to figure out the installation and configuration, and now she's very, very pleased with having passed that hurdle.

Everything feels faster, and to her it was a wow-experience to have office software without the hassle of payments. According to her the only drawback is that some games and gaming clients don't work, notably the Riot client, but enough do work that she's satisfied anyway. She found she prefers Thunderbird to Outlook and the package catalog is much nicer than both the MICROS~1 application store and ye olde 'download and double click this binary, hope you won't forget to uncheck the spyware checkbox!' style of program management.

Next project is to get my CEO to make the switch.

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

#425

Post by ticoombs »

kelseydh wrote: post #422
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…

Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.

Yes. Nearly every game is compatible. Checkout protondb.com and check the games you play.

Anything that has a kernel level anti check (Valorant) will always be a resounding No. But besides from that, everything is pretty damn nice.

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

#426

Post by pjc50 »

pndy wrote: post #414
jeroenhd wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, Microsoft did plenty of user-hostile stuff back then. Games for Windows Live with its weird DRM and making games unplayable after shutting down, for instance. And the push for using all kinds of "Live" services. Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days. .NET framework applications had their own special kinds of installers, Microsoft Silverlight thrived for a short momen…

> Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days That's essentially Microsoft Account nowadays, which went thru few rebrandings on the way. In XP it was promoted via Windows Messenger with popup message which for less experienced people would suggest that in order to access the Internet they need this "passport". Considering how many sites now offer (still optional) logins with apple/meta/…

There was for a few years a South Korean national identity scheme which linked your national ID card to .. an ActiveX control. Making it not only IE-only but effectively tying it to IE6.

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

#427

Post by sophrosyne42 »

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.

As with anything, there are transition costs. If your current solution becomes worse, those transition costs become relatively lower. So it says a lot more an issue of moving over than anything about linux

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

#428

Post by romanovcode »

kelseydh wrote: post #422
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…

Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.

Yes, it works great, actually. But you have to have specific hardware, for example AMD gpu instead of Nvidia.

Also, nearly anything with anti-cheat (many online games, esp shooters) won't work.

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

#429

Post by Filligree »

romanovcode wrote: post #428
kelseydh wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.

Yes, it works great, actually. But you have to have specific hardware, for example AMD gpu instead of Nvidia. Also, nearly anything with anti-cheat (many online games, esp shooters) won't work.

Nvidia works great, and has since this summer. So long as you’re on a recent release you shouldn’t have issues.

Nvidia on a machine with an AMD iGPU requires you to blacklist the amdgpu module.

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

#430

Post by pndy »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #285

I have said this before and I'll say it again. I am happy to pay 3x prices for a "Windows Optimal" version. 0 telemetry, 0 unwanted apps, 0 bloatware, 0 shady tactics for privacy bypass or making things intentionally hard to tweak, 2x the performance of Windows 7 as promise. If the hardware has gotten better since the era of windows 7 , why do I feel the software is going backwards. If I had a million dollars, I woul…

Each commercial OS during OOBE phase should come with two choices paths: express settings for majority and experienced for advanced users, professionals where you can tweak everything before system is ready to use, incl. telemetry and any sort of privacy settings, additional software and "recommendations" in whatever form.

Both paths should be industry standardized with UI as much as possible so no cat-and-mouse play with hidden settings would happen, and both should be configurable at any part so even inexperienced user could benefit from disabling "recommendations" or bundled software. Such OOBE configuration should be also persistent - once the choice is done it stays and doesn't require "additional steps" hijacks every other large update. And at any points given user can re-run the OOBE if for whatever reasons changed mind about e.g. sharing data.

This might be relatively simple to implement as a standard but would require actual commitment from consumer protection organizations, regulators that would push on companies. But somehow seems no organization care about these pushes - Microsoft goes each year further in limiting what uses can do on Windows. Perhaps as I said here already, there's some agenda of becoming the identity provider and going ahead with govt's ideas for online identification. Or perhaps it's just a plain greed for data.

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