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

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

#231

Post by ztjio »

jamie_ca wrote: post #188
paulcole wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What company are you talking about?

Apple, with the new Mac Pro. Mac starting at $6k, Screen starting at $5k, but the monitor itself is only good on a (I hope) VESA mount, if you want an ordinary desk stand it's an extra $1k. https://www.cnet.com/news/1000-apple-mac-pro-display-stand-s...

It's ridiculous to call it an "ordinary desk stand" it's anything but. A 100% perfectly calibrate weightlessly counterbalanced stand is a godsend for those who need it. The rest can get the VESA adapter instead.

Furthermore, this is a product targeting a market that normally spends over $40,000 on a monitor without any mounting gear or stand to do the same work. Apple's display a bargain in context.

If you think this is "an ordinary desk stand" then you are, without one iota of a doubt, absolutely not the consumer who needs or wants the device or even understands it.

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

#232

Post by phendrenad2 »

Everyone knows the saying "If you're not paying for it, you're the product, not the customer". Well, when companies I've paid good money to still go against my wishes, I just assume I'm still partially the product... meaning I'm not paying them enough and they've sought other sources of income (or have removed features to simplify the product and devote less human-hours to maintaining it to cut costs).

So what I'm saying is... Who out there is willing to make an OS at a $xxx/license price point that will just fucking do what I want? Any takers?

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

#233

Post by mastazi »

viraptor wrote: post #179
mastazi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM…

What about C: use Linux for the main desktop, use Wine for things that require Windows, use a VM with windows exclusively to launch that one annoying app which won't work under wine?

Oh yes of course that’s the cheapest option and probably good for most use cases, in my specific case I was thinking about a Mac Mini because some of the proprietary SW that I use (Adobe Suite, Ableton Live) probably wouldn’t run very well in a VM (but I may be wrong and I will of course test before spending money)

Edit: besides the VM, I hear Wine supports many apps nowadays so it’s worth trying as well

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

#234

Post by jammygit »

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…

I’ve always been confused about this too. A couple of big open source contributions and the world turns a blind eye to massive privacy invasions

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

#235

Post by jammygit »

pxc wrote: post #198
stOneskull wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you love features, KDE Plasma is fantastic, the environment with Kubuntu or KDE Neon. I think it has more features than Windows. And then there is like antiX or MX Linux where it runs so quick and smooth, using minimal resources, like Windows 2000 with its services disabled. Linux is great and everyone can find the distro that suits them well.. even if it might take a few tries to find it, ha.

Seconded. I've been using Plasma since the KDE 3.4 days, although I've dabbled in other desktop environments. I love it. I honestly miss the experience when I'm using other operating systems on machines other than my own personal ones. And other Linux desktop environments are also honestly pretty good. Plasma's just my favorite, not the only good one. I hope some people do try Linux on account of stuff like this and…

If I was going to set up an older person who struggles with computers, would you say plasma is decent, or should I stick with cinnamon?

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

#236

Post by mastazi »

mappu wrote: post #127
mastazi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM…

If your proprietary product is in any way niche (i.e. not the usual adobe/autocad example) I would suggest petitioning the company to support Linux (or web) clients. Software developers are often pro-Linux and a few customer suggestions might be enough to force the issue.

Oh yes that is always a good thing to do, even though Linux is not currently my main OS, I always tell devs they should support it.

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

#237

Post by mastazi »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #230
mastazi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM…

Maybe is not appropriate to "convert" you here, but I recommend self building so you get good Linux support, and then running Windows in a VM. Usually you can run program in WINE, but VM should always work.

Thank you. I’m hearing from many other comments in this thread that Wine works very well nowadays, I’ll give it a shot (alongside a Win VM) before investing in a Mac Mini

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

#238

Post by mastazi »

craftyguy wrote: post #126
mastazi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM…

> A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux What software is this? Perhaps it runs under Wine?

Adobe Suite, Ableton Live with various VST plugins. I’m going to investigate the Wine route, as I’m hearing that it supports many applications nowadays

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

#239

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

mancerayder wrote: post #86
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…

If only the Linux on the desktop dreams of a decade ago - along with those Linux-installed PCs they tried to push at Walmart - had a more optimistic outcome...

It might have, if Linux evangelists had pulled their heads out of their asses and actually made what people wanted instead of assuming everyone was too dumb too use a computer and only needed a pretty web kiosk and email. If they had made the OS function in a sane way instead of the Rube Goldberg machine of cobbled together systems that it is. To this day I still hear people blame Linux Desktop's complete and utter failure on pre-installs and lack of prettiness, ignoring completely the complaints of all the ways Linux Desktop just plain sucks, even when they were made by Linus himself.

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

#240

Post by brain5ide »

userbinator wrote: post #128
ekianjo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source contributions for Microsoft are just like charities for big corporations with despicable practices. They can use it to say "hey we are not that bad, after all we support FOSS!"

MS has been open-sourcing a lot of stuff in the past few years, which I see more as meaning that their IP has little intrinsic value anymore. MS used to sell software, so code was sacred and not meant for others to see; now it's more about services, so code doesn't really matter much anymore, and if it's code that can help people use their services, open-sourcing makes sense. You can see this with Google, Facebook, a…

Yes! This shift of business was somehow perceived by the public as the win of open source, but has actually amazingly been an actual loss on the control that you have with the money that you spend.
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