Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fedora is quite capable of doing absolutely nothing but opening Chrome and going to Facebook.
And it looks completely different from Windows. The icon is in a different spot. The task bar looks different. DOA.
Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
401–410 of 464 posts
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#402One thing I disagree with the article about is that drives should not be encrypted by default. For the vast majority of people an encrypted drive is just data loss lying in wait. I prefer to use non-encrypted drives so I have the option of popping out the disk and reading it from another system with ease, which also means that I can recover files from drives of otherwise dead systems just as easily. This is a trade o…
Is there some problem with setting a passphrase for recovery, beyond just the risk of forgetfulness or loss?
I'm not sure how BitLocker compares with LUKS, but the ability to set (or revoke) multiple keys in the drive header gives a lot of flexibility.
For example, The same drive could be unlocked multiple ways:
* A passphrase that you memorize or metaphorically throw in a vault somewhere.
* A key tied to the hardware so that it is automatically supplied, or requires a lesser input like a PIN.
* Same as above, but added to support another computer you anticipate swapping the drive to.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#403I don't know what the disconnect is. I'm running Windows 11 Arm right now on the best laptop I've ever owned -- an Asus Zenbook A16 with OLED screen and 48 GB of RAM (all for $1699). It's super fast -- it beats a 2026 Macbook Pro rendering Blender "Classroom". I have a Microsoft account, I don't know what the big deal is. I follow the happy path. It's nice to have settings (and I can control which ones) sync across m…
Do you like coming back to your work and finding that it rebooted on its own schedule and lost your context? That's my biggest frustration. If I only had one computer, it would be fine, but I manage an organization that's too small for enterprise and so I have to deal with the silly ads and gizmos on a dozen computers, managing group policy requires a domain and a lot of expertise I shouldn't need, and I'm not even sure I can turn some of this stuff off using group policy.
By contrast, I got a few Chromebooks and all my employees prefer them. If it weren't for a few legacy things, I'd switch entirely to ChromeOS or ChromiumOS.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, specifically about the tax info concerns. All my drives are encrypted with either luks, veracrypt, or native zfs encryption if my server data. My primary concern is a robbery while I'm not home. It's trivial to break in, steal hard drives, and then go pop them into another machine on your own time to scan the files looking for tax or other sensitive docs. While encryption keys are a risk, you can always save…
Curious: Are you specifically worried about a robber who is targeting your tax information in particular? Home breakins are relatively rare, and when they do happen, for the vast majority of them, the robber grabs whatever cash, jewelry, and other small, easy-to-pawn valuables, and are probably not going to care about computers. And for those rare robbers who actually grab your computer, what percentage of them are r…
I think it's a mistake to assume that just because the initial burglar is technically unsophisticated, that's the end of the story. Crime can become surprisingly complicated, with its own supply chains, service providers and tool vendors, specializations, middlemen, etc. (Credit card fraud is a good example.)
Imagine how your threat-model can change if the thief—still incurious and unsophisticated—just happens to "know a guy":
1. A thief steals your computer, with no thought to who you are or what you might have on it.
2. The computer is passed to a fence for a predictable immediate cut.
3. The fence sees a lot of these computers (or phones), and knows that there are ways to extract more profit.
4. The fence has a relationship with a data extractor, and runs a provided program that gleans as much exploitable data as possible before reselling the hardware.
5. The data-extractor sees those tax files pop up, and sells those details to another criminal group that specializes in tax fraud.
If a system exists to "use every part of the buffalo", then pretty much anything can cause you damage. I'm sure somebody is already developing tools to scan a drive trying to determine likely names of your first-pet for those stupid account recovery questions.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the typical user, this is far far far more likely to happen than that they would “pop out” the drive and read it in another machine. Defaults should be safe for most users. Power users are exactly the people who can deal with changing a setting. It’s constantly surprising to me when technical people insist that defaults should be optimized for technical people.
This is not the correct model. For a typical user, they can bring the laptop to someone knowledgeable, who will pop out the drive for them. The main question is: What is the biggest risk: theft or data corruption. In my experience, corruption and ransomware is more common so FDE should be off for households desktops or laptops, as these rarely leave the house. A business tends to have managed devices and data loss is…
There is a happy medium. Encrypt the user directory/s and leave the rest of the disk unencrypted. There is still a risk that the user loses valuable data due to corruption, but there is much less of a risk of the entire system being unusable or unrecoverable because of corruption or ransomware.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows does give access to the key. The issue with Microsoft account and especially Windows Home onboarding is that it doesn't tell you that it encrypted the drive and there is a backup key (which it uploads to Microsoft account, often readable by authorities with a court order). Many normie users not only get locked out of their laptops but they also forget their Microsoft account password causing complete loss of…
Not your key, not your crypto. => Not your key, not your data. Why would anyone want to encrypt their data and then hand their private key to anyone is mind boggling.
Well they are not told. Our culture and Steve Jobs cult were magic-ifying computers as way to sell trivialized, unethical and anti-intellectual software (compared to earlier home computers). Software nowadays aim to give barebones information, doesn't encourage for making educated decisions while extracting as much as possible from users.
Microsoft was once made "intermediate" or "power user" possible. I know many tech literate GenXs and millenials who were able to learn to do relatively complicated things with computers, even when they could outsource the job to others. Now Microsoft is in the same bandwagon to shove crappy undone and idiotic software riddled with ads. It generates better revenue than designing better interfaces that educate the users while not looking down upon them.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moving 15 years back puts you into glory Win7 days. IIRC, the spam started with win8 which was released ~13 years ago and was very mild at first
That's an interesting dividing line, and I think also needs to be compared against big companies setting opt-in/out defaults or the "Yes/Maybe later" patterns. What I find curious is that there's been the opportunity for spam for a lot longer, in a way the Win8 live tiles were an evolution of the widgets that first appeared in Vista, and they introduced active wallpaper along with IE4 (or was it Win98?) although that…
> "Yes/Maybe later" patterns
I wish I could understand the managers that insist on these patterns.
Are they completely out of touch and don't know that people hate them? Are they aware that people hate them but don't care? Or perhaps they've drank their own Kool-Aid so much that they truly believe nobody would actually want to say "No" and think they just need more opportunities to say Yes?
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other potentially obvious question is why bother using an OS that’s out of support when Linux is so good? I left Windows 11. The last straw wasn’t Microsoft accounts or Windows updates. I actually thought the OS was fine, most OS updates actually added great new features, and anything I considered an annoyance was easy to disable permanently. Toss your Windows 11 ISO into Rufus and disabling things like Microsoft…
> The other potentially obvious question is why bother using an OS that’s out of support when Linux is so good? I'm in the process of setting up a Linux desktop to replace my Win10 one, and for me it's these (if anyone has suggestions for migration or replacement, I'd love some opinions!) - Lightroom. If anyone knows how to either run this under Linux, or migrate an entirely catalog of photos (plus edits) to somethin…
Musicbee works fine in Wine (in my experience). It's annoying I have to use it that way, but I'm not expecting it to be ported any time soon.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537350
I responded because your solution was to use Linux Mint which I have installed a few times on older hardware. My experience getting older relatives to use Mint has not gone well. The most common is their reliance on Microsoft Office. Windows S mode and having to use the Microsoft Store might save me time supporting them.
"My experience getting older relatives to use Mint has not gone well. The most common is their reliance on Microsoft Office"
I was asked by an older friend to put Linx on their computer because they were too frusterated with MS Windows. She also used MS Word and Powerpoint a lot. I said that I had installed a different version of Offce because it was all I had at the time, so the menus would be slightly different. It was three years before she discovering that LibreOffice was not Microsoft Office. By that time it didn't matter.
Re: Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
#410Well now, let's not get our knickers in a twist! The beatings will continue until morale improves.