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Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

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Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#311
post #209

I feel like I see this exact article every year or two and then it always comes out that you can easily get around this with some type of easy loophole. Of course that might still get the majority of people switching to an online account but..... if you are practically giving away an OS for free is that really so bad? Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft…

I don't get why they make it so god damned difficult to get LTSC. If they just sold it openly it would be popular.

Then nobody would use the Windows Store or all the other stuff they want you to use!

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#312
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the replies here are recommending Ubuntu - I'm going to recommend PopOS. It's built on top of Ubuntu, but comes with a newer kernel (better new hardware compatibility), graphics drivers, and some sensible defaults. Some optimizations for laptops with graphics switching is great too.

Does it come with ads? Because that's my favourite part of Ubuntu

Come on. That's like still bringing up the Sony CD rootkit incident as a valid reason to boycott them so many years later. Ubuntu reversed course on ads pretty quickly, and if any of the past 4-6 years worth of LTS releases included ads, then they were so unobtrusive I literally didn't notice anything was there.

If you want to hurt Linux adoption by discouraging the most Just Works distribution for normal people, be my guest. But please at least figure out if it's still got any actual problems that are as bad as the ads in the past, like snap or systemd or something (which IMO aren't even such huge issues - most users won't care).

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#313
post #307

Can someone explain to me why Microsoft migrating my Minecraft account to my Microsoft account is not a huge security anti-pattern, given that this is the same account I use to access my high-importance Azure account? Do we really believe that the Minecraft launcher presents no additional attack surface and handles authentication material with the same rigor as the Azure login process?

I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token. So everyone is actually authenticating through the same secure interface, and even if one application's credentials get leaked, all they would give access to would be your Minecraft profile, and nothing else. Hopefully.

Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#314
post #164
post #62

Using Windows with a Microsoft account introduces all sorts of issues that only power users tend to come across, and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for. For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sy…

I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles. I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for…

You can still create local accounts - it sounds like it is just during initial setup they require a Microsoft account and internet access.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s 2022, accept that everything is now a subscription and learn to eat bugs.

Why is he downvoted?

I didn't downvote him, but I can see why some people would. Many of us aren't going to be coerced into making Microsoft accounts or eating bugs no matter what. Now I've got to take my flip phone out of my faraday bag and return a page from my beeper.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#316
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles. I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for…

> I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities Well, shit me. I've not used Windows since 8 came out. However, I would have loved to have had that workflow for a multiple desktop type thing. Why didn't I think of that 20 years ago? (for a long time, windows has internally supported multiple desktops, but it's not quite the same)

Highly recommended way to use any flavor of windows going back to way back when - give your admin account a long fancy password and then just rarely logon as that account. Your daily driver is an account with normal priviliges. Also good for Grandma so she can't install a bunch of spyware

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and Ubuntu hasn't included ads in like 5 years.

Some stink you just can’t wash off.

That's like saying that Linux was bad in 1991, so it can't possibly be good enough to use 30 years later. Evidently, stink can wash off just fine.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about your hypothetical. Why would they have to do that? Could you explain that issue more?

... because they're at home without their work machine and need to check something at work? Because their colleague wants to let them drive? Because my sister wants some help installing a program? There are so many situations where using a computer doesn't involve strict security protocols and heirarchies. Sometimes MS gets a little too caught up in their corporate environments.

I was asking more about your "What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine", which doesn't make any sense to me. Why would they have to use their work account on their personal machine to RDP? Just use the account you're wanting to log in as. So if you're on your personal machine and want to log in to your work machine, just log in to the RDP session with the account INSERTWORKDOMAINHERE\username and your user account, and you'll be able to RDP. This works the same with local accounts or cloud accounts or other domain accounts or whatever. You don't need to have the account locally on your computer to be able to log in as that account with an RDP session.

And then all your hypotheticals speak to issues which don't involve RDP, at all, which I think shows where this disconnect is. RDP is not about sharing a currently active desktop session between two or more users, so all the hypotheticals you shared aren't the use case for RDP. RDP will transfer that console session to the new RDP connection. So say Alice is signed in to her computer locally, and then wants to ask Bob for some help. She shares the hostname for her computer, and tells Bob their login (a terrible idea regardless of it being a local or Microsoft account). Bob fires up RDP, connects using Alice's account, and now Alice's machine gets disconnected from that desktop session and is sitting at the login screen while Bob now has Alice's desktop session.

This doesn't matter if its a Microsoft account or a local account, this is just how the RDP protocol works on Windows. If you're wanting to have a screen share with the built-in Windows tools, the tool for that was Remote Assistance or Quick Assistant. The usefulness of that tool doesn't change whether using local accounts, domain accounts, or Microsoft accounts. Or just use a different tool altogether, of which there are many.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#319
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend Ubuntu also. However I can't stand their default desktop environment, so I'd either recommend Ubuntu mate, or (what I did) the latest and greatest Ubuntu, and then just sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop-environment which will give you a desktop with a start menu more akin to windows.

Ubuntu is a must have in every masochist’s toolbox

Use pretty much any other distro and let us know which one is as useful for beginner users.

Re: Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

#320
post #52

Can you use Apple products without an account? If not*, what version of Linux should I get setup with. Casual web development. I mostly use my personal machine for gaming. Edit - Typo

Put Linux in a VM on your (windows?) gaming machine. It'll be much smoother than trying to run on real hardware, and if you're not gaming on it Linux anyway then you probably don't need direct hardware access (not for web dev, certainly). Use VirtualBox or whatever Windows calls their hypervisor they ship with Windows these days. If you hate it you can just delete the disk image and it's gone.

That's how I got started. Then I progressed to Wubi and dual booting, and afterwards only ever booted up Windows for games or MS Office.
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