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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

#961

Post by pcchristie »

Neil44 wrote: post #310
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 switched to Ubuntu on my main machine this year and even as a heavy 365 user it's better. Battery life is massively improved. I even still run the odd game on cs2. 11 feels like toy town in comparison.

How do you run 365?

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

#962

Post by jonathanstrange »

hobs wrote: post #601
jonathanstrange wrote: post #590

I don't care about a Microsoft account as long as they don't force me to log in, remember some kind of password,or use some Microsoft email. If they locked me out of my machine or transmitted data to their servers violating the GDPR, then that would be a problem. Windows 11 is a paid product, it's quite expensive, and that alone means Microsoft is fully liable for damages from negligence and failure.

Check the shrink wrap - in most localities you are leasing a license for which they tell you that you accept all liability and failure upon yourself.

These ToS are fairly meaningless outside the US. Clauses that limit legal liability make a contract void in many (if not all) EU countries. That's especially the case for any kind of wavers of customer rights since these are plain illegal.

Not in the US, though, so you're right insofar as the US is concerned.

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

#963

Post by arcfour »

behringer wrote: post #675
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.…

Sail the high seas and you'll never feel cheated again.

Use free software from the get-go and nobody will feel cheated.

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

#964

Post by Timwi »

jama211 wrote: post #955
d3Xt3r wrote: post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Ubuntu” is the largest and most popular distro. Saying it’s the worst one I could use is ridiculous. If your community’s biggest distro is “the worst one you can use” then that is actually a bigger problem than everything else.

Replace “Ubuntu” in your comment with “Windows” and “distro” with “operating system”. (Maybe also “your community” with “the world”.)

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

#965

Post by oblio »

dp-hackernews wrote: post #676
oblio wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. I found that website today and thought it was named "mass grave".

The website IS called that; https://massgrave.dev/

The Github account is "mass gravel" :-?

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

#966

Post by bmicraft »

jama211 wrote: post #951
d3Xt3r wrote: post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

lol, “you used the wrong distro” was number 3 on my Linux response bingo card, right after “you did it wrong” and “your hardware is wrong”.

I can't really blame anybody for using Ubuntu, and many ways of "doing it wrong" should even be possible in the first place. But there definitely is badly & unsupported hardware you can really blame Linux for. That's on hardware manufacturers.

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

#967

Post by 63stack »

nebula8804 wrote: post #378
fao_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the lamentations of having to tinker with Linux to get it to work properly are rapidly approaching a nuclear level irony bomb...

There is no comparison. Linux suffers from "not my department" syndrome. If some component in the stack borks the install you are in hell trying to fix it and risk breaking something else. Windows for all its faults still has some semblance of the majority of the OS being developed under one roof so things actually work together.

Bullshit. If you try to troubleshoot your windows problems by looking for answers on the internet, you get "certified microsoft experts" giving you tips like "update your antivirus, flip the power cable, and defragment your hard drive" to fix your driver issues.

Searching for problems about linux is going to yield much higher quality results.

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

#968

Post by TheWookieDavid »

sharts wrote: post #850
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…

If customers just start bugging Microsoft devs directly as though they are customer support (which…technically they should be since they built the product) then maybe productivity would grind to a halt. When all the MBAs running the show start seeing all their JIRA dashboards full bad news then perhaps they’ll think twice? Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product…

Building a product doesn't magically change your role. Devs are not customer support.

What you're saying is basically that the ability to do a task means you technically should do that task. I can definitely mop, but that doesn't make me a janitor, not even technically.

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

#969

Post by TheWookieDavid »

pcchristie wrote: post #961
Neil44 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Ubuntu on my main machine this year and even as a heavy 365 user it's better. Battery life is massively improved. I even still run the odd game on cs2. 11 feels like toy town in comparison.

How do you run 365?

Not OP but 365 has web apps for every software offered. The only disadvantage is that the web apps require an internet connection and the native windows apps don't.

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

#970

Post by naikrovek »

noirscape wrote: post #604
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…

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…

> there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware

untrue; bitlocker, an important thing for businesses, is far more secure with a TPM. Lots of things are more secure with a TPM, but people who think that Microsoft requires a TPM to sell more copies of Windows will never, ever, believe that to be the case.

Windows is a relatively small portion of Microsoft's revenue generation these days. Windows used to be the main breadwinner for Microsoft, but that has all changed now that Office is a subscription and Azure exists. That smaller portion of the revenue pie is why Windows has stupid shit like suggestions and tons of preinstalled crap: it matters a lot less who is put off by Windows than it used to.

The TPM is a genuinely good thing. Windows DOES use it. You can write applications which use it as well, if you want to. Short of any hardware bug in the TPM (which did happen once) it is capital-S Secure, as I understand it.

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