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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

#891

Post by magicalhippo »

potwinkle wrote: post #317
magicalhippo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RDP. Simply nothing in the same league on Linux. I prefer having a beefy workstation at home and connect to it remotely from a cheaper laptop, as I find laptops are noisy and weak unless you spend a sizable fortune.

why not just use sunshine/moonlight? RDP (and the other junk like X11 forwarding/VNC) has always been too slow for my use-cases. Movies or gaming would bring it to a halt. Meanwhile Moonlight gives me a clean 4k60fps with only ~25ms latency across the country.

RDP uses h.264 for rapidly updating regions. I've played near-fullscreen YouTube videos over RDP via the internet without realizing I was doing so remotely.

I've also gamed over RDP. It wasn't the best experience, though to be fair I was on an island literally on the opposite side of the globe, and ran the game fullscreen. But I'm sure a dedicated solution like Steam or Sunshine/Moonlight would fare better for such.

Though at least with Steam the console has to be unlocked, which is a problem if I'm away.

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

#892

Post by p_ing »

yxhuvud wrote: post #434
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.

Essentially, the only games that doesn't work nowadays are the ones that intentionally break it by adding Linux-incompatible anti-cheat. This is common among the big AAA-games that are multiplayer (think Fortnite).

> ones that intentionally break it by adding Linux-incompatible anti-cheat.

That's an interesting way to phrase it. It's like you're implying the company intentionally did not want to run it on anything but Windows (aka software is incompatible with non-Windows OSes) rather than trying to implement an effective anti-cheat (arguable) that works for their customers.

Pre-Wine, would you have argued that a software vendor is intentionally preventing their software from running on any non-Windows OS?

Or was it just that their audience wasn't on said non-Windows OS?

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

#893

Post by k3nx »

ta12653421 wrote: post #515
npteljes wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows can live in a VM no problem. But, depends on your use case. For GPU heavy usage, you can do GPU passthrough, and that needs a dedicated video card exclusive for the VM. If you only have light usage, like office tools, you can get by the mostly default settings. I suggest that you just try - it's a couple of hours to install Linux and install Windows in a VM. You can try Linux dual-booting, so, no need to impa…

OK, in my case its just boring business & CRUD apps, no GPU stuff nor gaming (btw: I find most business apps, esp. payment & accounting systems, everything else than boring - feel free to flame me for that :-D ) And can I also use MSSQL server? (which I could ditch anyway then, I guess, since we are using mainly ORM and no database-specific features)

MSSQL server has a Linux build - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux...

If your CRUD apps are Winforms I had success with Wine, but you might want to try something else. I've heard good things about avaloniaui.net but never liked XAML so I haven't tried it.

Good luck!

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

#894

Post by tomrod »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #598

My biggest annoyance is that I specifically bought a Windows 11 license, from the MS store, using my MS account. I did this because I assumed that if something went wrong, I would always be able to recover it. I could never 'lose' the key if it was tied to my account. Well unfortunately, MS screwed me. When I upgraded my PC I was apparently supposed to transfer the license before deleting the old PC from my account.…

This appears to be endemic at Microsoft.

I have two Minecraft accounts, several Live.com accounts accrued over the years, and a smattering of Github accounts for various reasons (professional, self-employed, personal),

Logging into Minecraft java a week ago took me 7 logins across various different accounts -- and then it ALSO uses Xbox for auth, which I never set up. And then, the endpoint is blocked for my ISPs IP range so I had to use a VPN and try from a few locations. Bless you, Ohio.

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

#895

Post by tracerbulletx »

ahmeni wrote: post #204
tracerbulletx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

middle management driven development is the mindset, not the people. it is the core of number go up at all cost

I don't really agree with that. The infinite growth mindset is just capitalism and the current market realities being executed by the board and the C-Suite.

Dysfunctional middle management is motivated more by protecting their job, kingdom building, and promotions.

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

#897

Post by queenkjuul »

b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #804
observationist wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. If Microsoft can't do it, if Apple, Google, Facebook, X , OpenAI can't do it, then maybe we shouldn't allow companies to operate at scales which inevitably lead to widespread consumer harm. They should be required to provide human customer service, with some sort of legal liability to ensure thei…

How can the government regulate companies into providing good customer service when they can't even provide good customer service to their citizens?

How can the government regulate car manufacturers when it produces no cars itself?

How are the two at all related

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

#898

Post by jiggawatts »

mrmuagi wrote: post #782
noirscape wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs just to get rid of MS's garbage (arguably already the case if you use Rufus, which customizes the OOBE setup to already reject checks and tracking if you tick the boxes. They also have a checkbox to iirc disable the TPM check that's killing a lot of older device support because there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificia…

Is not supporting TPM an issue in terms of some app compability though? I was investigating whether to upgrade an old computer from windows 10 to 11 and that was said somewhere online. I don't know if its true or fearmongering.

Office and some other “modern auth” apps can store MFA-equivalent tokens in the TPM to minimise the number of “tap the thing on the phone” prompts during single sign on.

I discovered this when I recovered a dead laptop’s disk image to a VM and the sudden absence of a TPM killed all of my cached Office credentials.

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

#899

Post by tombert »

sky2224 wrote: post #867
tombert wrote: post #585

I doubt it’s going to happen, but a part of me prays that people will eventually get sick Microsoft’s increasing bullshit and it really can become the Year of the Linux Desktop. Gnome has genuinely gotten pretty great in the last couple years, and I think a lot of former Windows would genuinely like it if they gave it a chance, and virtually any Linux you install will have less tracking bullshit than Windows. I suspe…

A huge problem is driver support, especially for gaming. Yes, it's significantly better than it used to be, but it's still a problem and it's not something the average user is going to want or know how to deal with.

I feel like your knowledge is a little out of date. Drivers on Linux are generally pretty decent now, especially if you use AMD or Intel graphics.

I had to do some recovery stuff on my mom’s laptop recently, which has an Intel GPU, and I just had it boot off an Ubuntu flash drive into Ubuntu desktop, and it worked fine, including WiFi.

On my main “game console”, I have an Nvidia card running in an eGPU case, and that was a pain in the ass to set up, so fair enough I suppose.

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

#900

Post by queenkjuul »

jama211 wrote: post #847
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…

Speak for yourself, I tried again to switch to Linux last year with standard Ubuntu and had multiple issues, the machine wouldn’t wake from sleep, would lock up with a grey graphics glitched login screen when locked, I tried to upgrade the OS and it broke all my graphics drivers, after I spent another few hours trying to fix it (and seeing a lot of very unfriendly and unwelcoming “help” from the Linux community), and…

Linux is generally a rock solid delight on any AMD desktop, but insists on being at least an occasional pain in the ass on basically every laptop in the world and anything with Nvidia.
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