I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC • Hacker News Board

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#221

Post by jptech » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

shantnutiwari wrote: post #119

Microsoft has been using this dark pattern for a while now. Around 1-2 years ago, I upgraded MS Office on my Windows laptop. It asked me for my username/password-- which I didnt think strange, as I assumed it needed it to upgrade. And thats when I got a message "Good news! Your Windows machine now uses your Microsoft to login." W.T.F. I was never asked, never warned, just tricked into replacing my local login with an…

Even without an MS account, when using Microsoft Store with a local account, I won't be surprised if they used some hardware fingerprint such as MAC address to assign a unique ID to that account.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#222

Post by diogenesjunior » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #200

GuB-42 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does that too.

Twitter also. You can create an account without a phone number but in about 2 weeks it is locked unless you supply and verify one.

Yep. Main reason why I do not use Twitter. I'll stick to HN.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#223

Post by jp0d » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

I shudder at the prospect of going back to using a PC! I've been using a Mac from work. My wife and I are both pissed off at Microsoft for doing this to our home PC. I built that PC for her to do some Photoshop work. So I can't really get rid of Windows. If she switches to a Mac, I will happily forget about the money wasted on that Windows license and format that hard drive and put a Linux on it immediately.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#224

Post by FpUser » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

acapybara wrote: post #133

When Windows 10 came out, the telemetry, MS account features, forced auto updates/reboots made my computer feel like it was no longer my own. Having used Microsoft OSes since DOS, this was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. After dabbling in Linux for years, this was motivation to commit 100% to using Linux as my main OS. It was mildly painful at first, but after sticking with it, I would never go back.

I would love me to move to Linux completely. However healthy share of my income comes from my desktop products. And since I have tens of thousands of customers for those it would be a business suicide trying to convince them to use Linux. Even without it there are programs I use on Windows that are not available for Linux. So no, moving completely to Linux is currently unrealistic for me.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#225

Post by fouric » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

I have a candidate for an even better reason:

I have no reason to believe that Microsoft will not pull a Google and start spuriously locking people out of their accounts (as happens every few months on HN), which may then prevent me from logging in to my own computer.

In fact, I've already been locked out of my Microsoft account for "suspicious activity" (which was literally just purchasing Minecraft) and was required to enter a phone number to unlock it. Literal theft - I was compelled to either give up additional personal information or lose access to the software I paid for.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#226

Post by forgotpwd16 » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #76

SamuelAdams wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like comments like this gloss over the many UX issues many Linux distros have. For example the file picker. When you open a new file from the web browser (Firefox usually) you navigate to your file and pick it. Now if you open up another file, it forgot your last opened directory and takes you back to your home or default. On windows and Mac I believe it remembers your last directory. Also saving files in Debi…

Right but your comment glosses over the many UX issues windows has. For example, virtual desktops are associated with all your screens, not with individual screens. Never had this issue in any linux distro. (I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though, that is mildly annoying).

>I'm all ears on how to solve that file picker problem though

Use the for long time available patch for GTK file chooser, use an XDG portal to open KDE file chooser instead of the GTK one, or use a Qt-based (KDE or Deepin) rather a GTK-based environment. And for any interested programmers, a maintainer recently has outlined some steps[0] to introduce that functionality in a way that probably GNOME devs will accept.

[0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233#note_1106706

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#227

Post by haolez » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

I wonder if ReactOS[0] will eventually catch-up in business environments where this kind of bullshit is less/not acceptable.

[0] https://reactos.org/

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#228

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #200

GuB-42 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does that too.

Twitter also. You can create an account without a phone number but in about 2 weeks it is locked unless you supply and verify one.

I got my account reported and locked on twitter and they would only unlock it if I supplied my phone number. Now I have no twitter and am honestly happier for it.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#229

Post by FpUser » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

brushfoot wrote: post #73

This makes me want to move back to Linux, but last time I tried Ubuntu (2020) there were lots of little annoyances. Off the top of my head: - Screen tearing. I Googled around and installed the Nvidia drivers for my laptop, but it never went away. - No detection of tablet mode. - No auto screen rotation. - Slow Blender rendering. Probably a PEBKAC with my driver setup, but it just worked in Windows and it was easy to…

Snap alone is enough for me not to use new Ubuntu. I am sticking to Linux Mint for now for my own desktop setups. Servers are a bit different story.

Re: I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC

#230

Post by scrooched_moose » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

83457 wrote: post #215

ukyrgf wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at a small business that gets maybe 2 dozen new computers a year but line 1 on my setup list is "DO NOT PLUG IN THE ETHERNET CABLE" I can't believe it's come to this...

I know no internet connection used to be solution, but I thought there was an option to bypass the ms account requirement during setup for the last couple years?

Its slowly became harder from update to update over the last couple years of updates, and completely removed under normal circumstances in one of the last major updates.

AFAIK leaving the ethernet unplugged is the only way to do it now.