Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 800 posts

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#111

Post by ryan-allen »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

I am! I reckon it's a neat OS. They've improved it dramatically (except for that... Candy Crush auto install, that is annoying).

I have used WSL a lot, and now I use VS Code Remote to develop on a Debian 10 VPS. It's glorious.

Being able to build a custom computer that I can do work on, and that I can play games on, and that run the Adobe suite of software, and not pay through the nose for high specs is wonderful.

After 10 year of using Apple and OS X, I felt patronised having to pay double the price for performance. The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store.

Windows 10 updates are far more seamless.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#112

Post by manigandham »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

The very first comment on that Reddit thread shows that this is a UI change. The functionality is not removed but only hidden if you have an active connection.

What Microsoft is doing with this dark pattern is bad for everyone, but we must accurately represent the situation.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#114

Post by EugeneOZ »

saghm wrote: post #78
mentos wrote: post #2

“They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet. Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.”

I think it's been that way for a while? Maybe six months ago I wanted to add Windows to a Linux box I had, and I ran into this

No, last time I was installing Win10 was 23/09/2019 and there was an option to use offline account.

Although, some system settings already require ms account.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#116

Post by manigandham »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #55
egdod wrote: post #26

>Windows is a service Windows used to be a fucking operating system. That’s all I want it to be.

Its pretty much the McDonalds of operating systems these days, I do not know how people put up with it.

What else is any average user going to switch to exactly?

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#117

Post by ryan-allen »

nickjj wrote: post #81
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pre…

Check out the VS Code SSH remote, if your internet is good enough or if you have a spare computer lying around, you can develop as if it's 'on the desktop' but you get none of the friction and all of the bare metal speed, I switched from terminal VIM a few years ago and the intellisense makes it worth it. There is a VSVim plugin that is... pretty good if you haven't gone too far down the VIM rabbit hole (my usage was and still is pretty basic).

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#118

Post by ColinWielga »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

Quick poll: https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#119

Post by dewitt »

This is problematic even for people who don't mind linking to an online Microsoft account (I'm one of them). There is a long-standing Windows bug where local user directory names are created using a truncated version of the online account's name. This is rarely what you want. The work-around has long been to create an offline account first to name your own local directory, then convert it to an online account.

This will break that work-around, and this is universally bad.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#120

Post by userbinator »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

there were no forced updates

I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back. This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malware.

I too preferred the Windows GUI, and have been a Windows user since the 3.x days, but the gradual destruction of options (especially in appearance preferences) and increasing user-hostility has pushed me towards experimenting with Linuxes and BSDs more. I've always liked the Unix CLI and filesystem layout, however --- sh/bash is so much more powerful and consistent than COMMAND.COM/cmd.exe (and PowersHell feels more like an overengineered obese clone of the Unix shells), and the "everything is a file" metaphor and single-rooted filesystem is very elegant. I guess my ideal OS would be a combination of a Linux/BSD kernel with a Windows GUI.

Post reply on HN