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

#321

Post by adolfojp » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

codecalec wrote: post #2

This requirement just does not make sense to me. Why would Microsoft even have this requirement? Do they want to force users into an account so it is easier to lead them into Office packages? It can't be for greater data profiles on users since they could do this in other less explicit ways. Microsoft just doesn't have the ecosystem like Apple to make this worthwhile from their point of view or the users.

In addition to what others have said, Microsoft accounts back up your full disk encryption keys to the cloud.

Microsoft ships Bitlocker with every OS and given the TPM requirements one can speculate that it will be turned on by default on every Windows 11 computer.

I've seen an increase of tech support posts where people boot up their computer after an update or motherboard change and they're asked for Bitlocker decryption keys and they don't know what those are. Their data is lost forever. Their computers are bricked.

The experience of working in IT and modding online tech communities has taught me that computer literacy is very poor even among those who use computers every day. They're just appliances to most people. And this is OK. The problem is that the people who can't figure out what a right click does will never figure out how to back up their full disk encryption keys or even what they are.

Forcing a Microsoft account on Home SKUs eliminates this problem.

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

#322

Post by toastercat » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #117

I know the post is about Windows 11 but I installed Windows 10 for someone on a laptop about 2 months ago and it had the most crazy dark pattern I've ever seen to be able to proceed past the installation screen without a Microsoft account. Short of not connecting to the internet first the only way I saw where it was possible to create an offline account was to first attempt to sign in using an incorrect password with…

Stuff like this makes me scared to upgrade from Windows 10 LTSC (1809).

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

#323

Post by swiley » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

vimacs2 wrote: post #244

swiley wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>fit the developers needs, not the user needs. This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software.

> This is why I qualified open source with "community maintained." When there's a strong partition between the community and the developers then FOSS looks a lot like closed software. I'm just going to come out and say that I think Gnome and Firefox are two of the worst offenders of this.

Right. At least with Gnome even distro maintainers struggle to keep up with the churn and build it, users have little hope of success there. The result is a partition between the community and the developers who spend a lot of time in the code.

Firefox has a similar situation although I would argue it isn't quite as bad.

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

#324

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

whosaidwhatnow wrote: post #87

pjmlp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading it since Vista.

I've been using Windows on the desktop since 3.1. I dabble in linux on the desktop from time to time, and I use it on servers, but I've never made the switch. I was recently spurred to action by two things. 1. The forced news widget in my taskbar. 2. Being forced to sign into a Microsoft Account to setup my father's laptop. The onscreen prompts promised me that I could disable the account later if I wished. We all se…

[deleted]

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

#325

Post by zorrolovsky » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #102

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…

I'm a long-time Linux user and my job is to develop open source software primarily used on Linux. My suggestion to you is to get a Mac. I'm not aware of any Linux distros that are suitable for non-developers. I wish it was otherwise, but it just isn't.

> I'm not aware of any Linux distros that are suitable for non-developers

This is quite a bold statement. I'm not a developer and recently installed a number of linux distros to try which is best. Some of them were actually easier to install than Windows or MacOS. For example Linux Mint was a breeze, and I used full disk encryption and other 'advanced' settings.

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

#326

Post by skohan » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #102

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…

I'm a long-time Linux user and my job is to develop open source software primarily used on Linux. My suggestion to you is to get a Mac. I'm not aware of any Linux distros that are suitable for non-developers. I wish it was otherwise, but it just isn't.

I think it depends on what you do with it. I have a linux machine which I use primarily for Steam and watching movies, and I feel like anyone could do it (except for the install of course, you would need a technical friend for that)

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

#327

Post by voakbasda » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #292

HeckFeck wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a shame to watch the decline of Windows. There isn't much I can recommend to non-technical users looking affordable computing relatively under their control. Manipulation and user hostility is unacceptable. Any of these possibilities would be nice: * The market presents a kinder (and equally-affordable x86) solution and users follow. * ReactOS lurches leaps and bounds ahead. * Microsoft realises this trajectory…

Why does Apple make it so difficult/borderline impossible to run MacOS on non-apple computers? Would it cut into their computer sales that significantly? I would imagine most people who want (and can afford) a Mac would still buy one.

No, they wouldn’t. My last “Mac” was a PowerComputing clone, because other manufactures were doing hardware better than Apple. Jobs killed the clones, and I became a Linux user that never looked back. Apple maintains their walled garden because they know that their users would quickly realize the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

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

#328

Post by OhHiMarkos » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #34

It is sadly part of a dark pattern called "stickiness". You can dress it up as functionally useful or even important but ultimately it is about companies wanting to create enough of a dependency that you have to continue using them, which is anti-competitive. Gone are the days where you bought something from a shop with no stickiness other than good service brought you back. Now there are far too many Marketing Manag…

I would love to see a stickyness map for the top companies that apply these patterns to their customers.

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

#329

Post by arp242 » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #278

HumblyTossed wrote: post #269

> I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own PC Yes, you will. Eventually. They'll continue to beat you down until you submit. Because, here's the secret. Even though you built the machine from the ground up, hand selecting all the parts, once you install Windows, the machine belongs to Microsoft. No, really, it does. They certainly think so. And they're a rich powerful organization, so it must be so.

Windows isn't anywhere near as ubiquitous as it used to be. Once W11 requires a MS login I'm not installing it for any friends or family - they're getting on the Linux express or working it out themselves. I won't be party to this BS, this isn't the future I wanted to facilitate.

Both Android and iOS require an account to be practically useful for most people, and have for years. Microsoft is "only" following suit, and I'm afraid that a bunch of hackers here aren't enough to stop the tide :-/

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

#330

Post by maltalex » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

leppr wrote: post #179

maltalex wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just work out of the box" is an overstatement. I ran Manjaro for about half a year recently, including using it for gaming. Very few games actually worked out of the box for me, including games with so called "native" Linux support. I ran into multiple games with "official" Linux support that were simply broken or became broken by an update. Some of those that weren't broken had significant performance issues (that…

Many Linux games are only tested on Ubuntu. I personally haven't had more issues running Linux native games on Ubuntu than Windows native games on Windows. Playing games on Windows often requires fiddling as well. Either having to lock the mouse to one monitor, fiddling with V-sync and FPS limits (often only possible through graphics card drivers, launch arguments or text config files), disabling Windows malware scan…

It's possible that some of the issues I ran into were due to Manjaro not being Ubuntu, but they could also have been due to drivers or some random setting somewhere in the system.

Plenty of people on protondb reported zero issues with the same games on their Manjaro/Arch boxes.

> Playing games on Windows often requires fiddling as well. Either having to lock the mouse to one monitor, fiddling with V-sync and FPS limits (often only possible through graphics card drivers, launch arguments or text config files), disabling Windows malware scanning, fiddling with Windows compatibility settings for older games

Maybe it's the type of games I play, but this is extremely rare in my experience. I don't remember the last time I had to fiddle with anything outside the game's own settings despite having a multi-monitor setup.