101–110 of 270 posts
I'm definitely not one of those people who thinks Windows should stay frozen forever as Windows XP, I appreciate we're finally getting 15-20 year old features like search filtering in the task manager. But whoever's bonus metric is tricking people to sign in with MS accounts is really making it a gross experience. I managed to finally get my new machines install on a local account using "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" although none…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we crossed the point where Linux is less shitty than Windows. KDE and XFCE can compete.
That could very well be, but less shitty is the wrong metric. Can get shit done is the right metric, regular users don't care about corporate telemetry and adware so long as it doesn't get in the way of getting their stuff done. A good example of what I mean is a work event I attended a year or two ago. We had a bunch of guys up on the stage and between the lot they probably had over a century of combined Linux exper…
I installed my old projector ages ago, on a 1st version PPC Mac Mini running Debian and the Freevo media player (if memory serves, Kodi didn't even exist as XBMC back then). No problems whatsoever setting up the whole thing, aside the atrociously loud BONNNG! the Mac Mini played when turned on, but that's another story. I think setting up hardware is a hit and miss, and sometimes crap happens also under Windows where drivers are packaged according to brand, not chipset, and often bring all sort of junk with them.
Okay then, I'll just switch my gaming rig to Ubuntu and fiddle with Wine or whatever to get my Quake Champions running. Might take a small performance hit but I'm not going to use Windows with a Microsoft account. Not ever. Not going to happen.
People who are making such things possible are doing great piece of work, but I would say it's more about gaming industry isn't ready for this. Developers still don't case about linux, performance hit is too big, anti-cheat systems have issues and Linux desktop is too fragmented.
OOBE\BYPASSNRO still works at least
Other than being able to gobble up user data and being able to associate it with a person (or at least an email address) and later sell that information, what is Microsoft reasoning for refusing local accounts? This whole obsession with forcing users to create a Microsoft account is really weird. It may provides some features for certain types of users, but I really don't see any reason for forcing a Microsoft accoun…
Before they can do that, they first have to get everyone dependant on the on-line account and services, because most would not voluntarily knowingly agree to be charged a subscription just to use their own computer, not intentionally using any external services.
So step 1 is do not charge for the basic account combined with force everyone to use it.
Most will go along with this because it's free this exact minute and most people follow strictly the path of least immediate resistance. You can make most people do anything you want by just making anything else 0.0001% more difficult. This is not cynical, this is studied.
In the olde dayes, if you wanted to sell a subscription service, you created a service and then convinced people to become paying customers.
MS is tricking everyone into becoming customers first, and then when the deed is done, inform them they are now paying customers.
And of course also data.
Other than being able to gobble up user data and being able to associate it with a person (or at least an email address) and later sell that information, what is Microsoft reasoning for refusing local accounts? This whole obsession with forcing users to create a Microsoft account is really weird. It may provides some features for certain types of users, but I really don't see any reason for forcing a Microsoft accoun…
Two reasons I can think of to force the creation of a MS account is to a) make it easier to get started using MS products (e.g. Office), since you don't need to go through the hassle of creating an account; it just works and b) once (almost) everyone has a MS account, using MS oauth may become the default login mechanism for many third party services (although Google is already starting to take up this space).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we crossed the point where Linux is less shitty than Windows. KDE and XFCE can compete.
That could very well be, but less shitty is the wrong metric. Can get shit done is the right metric, regular users don't care about corporate telemetry and adware so long as it doesn't get in the way of getting their stuff done. A good example of what I mean is a work event I attended a year or two ago. We had a bunch of guys up on the stage and between the lot they probably had over a century of combined Linux exper…
Other than being able to gobble up user data and being able to associate it with a person (or at least an email address) and later sell that information, what is Microsoft reasoning for refusing local accounts? This whole obsession with forcing users to create a Microsoft account is really weird. It may provides some features for certain types of users, but I really don't see any reason for forcing a Microsoft accoun…
> but I really don't see any reason for forcing a Microsoft account. Microsoft has ties with many governments. I wouldn't be much surprised if the reason they amass user data had nothing to do with selling that data to companies.
I just recently had to reinstall it a second time because my first image didn't let me past the account registration. It specifically stated that an internet connection is required and there was no way around it. On a notebook where neither ethernet nor wlan worked out of the box btw, I had to install them manually. That wouldn't have been possible with the old install. While I had an adapter to enable networking jus…
Whats the issue with Secure Boot? That's an actually good idea security wise.
And instead most use cases are levelled against you. For example some computer games now require Windows 11 and secure boot to be enabled for remote attestation. If the mechanism becomes more pervasive, we will see more of that. That is very likely the main motivation of Microsoft here as well.
And while there are enough methods for device identification and fingerprinting, I don't want my device to be cooperative here. I do not have evil maids either and the whole trusted computing stuff is badly designed, intransparent and mostly security fluff.
I do understand the security benefit for enterprises and disk encryption, but I use alternatives for security. Also Microsoft defacto has control about allowed and allegedly secure distributions. Yes, you can add your own key, but that will probably be as viable as running your own CA at some point.
Overall it just makes open computing more complicated and the security gain is negligible.
edit: No idea why you were downvoted. Many believe trusted computing to "just" increase security. But the intentions and mechanisms behind that aren't as neutral as some would like you to believe.
There are also other fights like AMD Pluton, which really lowers the desirability of AMD hardware for me. I though they could have been an alternative for Intel, which is fairly needed. But their developments aren't attractive if they invest in such technologies.
I also forgot that a TPM has an endorsement key that is used as a hardware ID. It cannot be changed by the user. The whole setup is a scam and scams are a security threat.
Secure boot and trusted computing should die, there are better ways to secure system integrity.
So what would be a good laptop for Linux these days?
I wouldn't recommend fedora as it uses RPM and SElinux which can be tricky, especially for beginners.
I am mid-advanced Linux user, I would went with Linux Mint, no matter is it for me or for somebody totally new.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we crossed the point where Linux is less shitty than Windows. KDE and XFCE can compete.
That could very well be, but less shitty is the wrong metric. Can get shit done is the right metric, regular users don't care about corporate telemetry and adware so long as it doesn't get in the way of getting their stuff done. A good example of what I mean is a work event I attended a year or two ago. We had a bunch of guys up on the stage and between the lot they probably had over a century of combined Linux exper…