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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

#921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's with the hideous cartoonish desktop? Have have you used a version of macOS made in the past 5 years? Fischer-Price is the new Jony Ive.

I have, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Macos looks sleek and professional, always has.

Yosemite looked sleek and professional, Catalina looked sleek and professional. Big Sur and Liquid Glass look like Windows 8 design rejects. If you can't see the writing on the wall... good luck.

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

#922
post #630

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.…

Just use Massgravel and problem is solved :) https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

Even better, just switch to Linux. F** Microsoft.

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

#923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I upgraded my PC I was apparently supposed to transfer the license before deleting the old PC from my account. Doing it in the wrong order lost the license forever - no way to transfer it. This happened to me too! It's absolutely insane that a license I bought through my account can't be transferred somehow... My newest NUC is somehow recognized by Windows 11 as being entitled to a copy, and I can reinstall on…

I so wish I could move to Linux, but I extensively use Windows computers via RDP and the Linux RDP clients are just so bad on my eyes. I tried Remmina, rdesktop and FreeRDP. Maybe NX would be a good option but I can't install NX on all of the computers I use. I guess I should shut-up and try to contribute to those projects to make them better.

When did you last try Remmina (which uses FreeRDP as the backend btw)? Ever since FreeRDP got updated to V3, the RDP experience improved significantly. I use it every day for work stuff and it's been great - folder sharing works, clipboard works, so does audio forwarding and DPI scaling. Oh and RemoteApps too. Honestly I've got zero complaints with it.

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

#924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I upgraded my PC I was apparently supposed to transfer the license before deleting the old PC from my account. Doing it in the wrong order lost the license forever - no way to transfer it. This happened to me too! It's absolutely insane that a license I bought through my account can't be transferred somehow... My newest NUC is somehow recognized by Windows 11 as being entitled to a copy, and I can reinstall on…

I run Linux at home too. Its annoying, but I sometimes need to run Windows in a WM for Word, as the online version is crap on large complex documents where formatting matters, and interoperability with colleagues keeps me from using LibreOffice Write.

Have you checked out OnlyOffice (not to be confused with OpenOffice)? It's MSO file format compatibility is vastly superior to LibreOffice, I use it work on files shared by colleagues using MSO and it works fine for the most part.

The only issue I faced is with embedded ActiveX/VBA, like forms in a Word doc that might use radio buttons will get converted to static images. If you don't have weird stuff like that in your docs then you should be fine.

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

#925

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…

Might happen. I told my entire family I would not support their windows installs past 10 and 11 is full of spyware. Half bought a mac and half opted to install Linux. IF all you want to do is a browser. Linux is honestly very easy to use.

I pretty much said that to my wife; I told her that I will buy her a Windows computer if she wants, but I will not play sysadmin for it.

If she called my bluff I probably would have still helped her, but she was happy enough to use a Mac.

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

#926
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…

Unfortunately you tried the worst possible distro out of them all - Ubuntu is infamous for being the Windows of the Linux world (for all the wrong reasons), and Canonical is getting worse every year. Still nowhere as bad as Microsoft, but they're getting there.

I would highly recommend using a sane newbie-friendly distro which bundles all relevant drivers, like Aurora[1]- they even have a developer edition which may be of interest to you. If you're a gamer though, Bazzite[2] may be a better option - comes with drivers for all popular game controllers and hardware and includes Steam and other stuff so you can get gaming in no time at all.

My 70yr old mum uses Aurora and she has zero issues. She surfs the web, edits documents, prints and scans, backs up and organised photos etc. Pretty much all your basic PC user stuff. If my mum can use Linux, so can anyone else.

[1] https://getaurora.dev/

[2] https://bazzite.gg/

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

#927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Getting a 5090 and 5k2k monitor is what forced me back off of Linux last time I switched. I'm used to crappy "cutting edge" hardware support in Linux and routinely bounce back and forth between Windows and Linux as the different annoyances build up. Yes, I know Linux has issues with NVidia. But AMD doesn't make a comparable card period.

Which distros have you tried? The new nVidia open drivers work so much more better in Linux these days than the fully proprietary ones (still not as good as AMD, but it's pretty decent).

Also there are distros which handle cutting edge hardware much better than others (like Fedora/based or Arch/based), and some are infamous for always lagging behind (Ubuntu/Debian based). Choosing the right distro can make a huge difference to your Linux experience.

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

#928
post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a 5090 and 5k2k monitor is what forced me back off of Linux last time I switched. I'm used to crappy "cutting edge" hardware support in Linux and routinely bounce back and forth between Windows and Linux as the different annoyances build up. Yes, I know Linux has issues with NVidia. But AMD doesn't make a comparable card period.

Which distros have you tried? The new nVidia open drivers work so much more better in Linux these days than the fully proprietary ones (still not as good as AMD, but it's pretty decent). Also there are distros which handle cutting edge hardware much better than others (like Fedora/based or Arch/based), and some are infamous for always lagging behind (Ubuntu/Debian based). Choosing the right distro can make a huge dif…

This was literally about three months ago on NixOS. The upgrade also toasted the boot from USB linux distros that have smaller and older kernels to reduce file size.

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

#929
post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask, why even bother paying some key site? It is violating the terms of the license agreement anyway, so why not just pirate?

Who is violating the terms? The seller or the buyer? If it’s the seller, would Microsoft go after the buyer?

Both. Microsoft would probably never go after the buyer, but I just wondered the justification people buying from the grey market are - legally speaking in many places, you're just paying money to pirate it - it's not a valid license.

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

#930

I do remember to have read a couple of years ago that the Windows Ui team got replaced and now only consists of Mac users, never having used Windows themselves. If that is true, it's now wonder that they do not understand all the value that Windows NT has brought, why having a standard on menu structure, a standard for all UI controls etc made sense. And to understand that while Apple's mission is to provide a walled…

> And to understand that while Apple's mission is to provide a walled garden, Windows has been and is used in a million different scenarios.

You're conflating the vertical integration of hardware and software (Apple's walled garden) with Microsoft's current direction (you can't use Windows without MS online services).

Microsoft has never given a damn about customers being free to use the software the way they want to. In light of how the company is behaving today, the "openness" of Windows WRT to hardware was clearly only about market share.

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