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

extremetech.com

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

#451

Post by techrat »

bserge wrote: post #347
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…

Year of Linux on desktop, it's coming home boys! I'm joking but secretly hoping it happens.

The 'desktop' is an outmoded concept anyhow. More is being done on Mobile to the exclusion of the desktop. Who needs a big machine with a monitor when you can do just about everything on a Chromebook or iPad?

As far as Linux on ________, Let's look at where we're at now.

Supercomputer. Linux runs the entire Top 500.

https://itsfoss.com/linux-runs-top-supercomputers/

Severs/Websites. 75% are Linux or variants.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/operating_system

Mobile. 72% is Android alone, which counts for Linux IMNSHO.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

ChromeOS now exceeds MacOS market share. Apple had already been making (painful) attempts to move away from the Desktop.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/the-worlds-second-mo...

And, of course, there's the Linux Subsystem for Windows.

Linux won. It's over. Windows might be holding onto a majority if you only count desktops, but given even Microsoft has moved towards supporting Linux directly on their own OS... and moving towards Cloud As a Service and hosting, yep, Linux on Azure... Even Microsoft knows that Windows has found itself facing the once unthinkable: support Linux or find yourself increasingly irrelevant. Windows on ARM failed. Twice. Windows Mobile in all of its variants are dead now. Microsoft released an Android device. So given everything that we use today, something that ISN'T running a *ix type kernel is, in fact, the minority.

Microsoft is grasping harder with Windows 11... and in their shortsightedness, they ended up excluding huge chunks of systems that were still being sold even as recently as 3 years ago. It's quite unthinkable to me because the one and ONLY one major killing feature of Windows in general was that you could install it on decade-old hardware. Win10 ran pretty decently on my Phenom II x4 desktop which had 16GB Ram. Why shouldn't it?

And now Win11 is looking to exclude first gen Ryzen.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/324157-windows-11-may-...

The tighter the grip, the more that will slip in between their fingers...

At this point, it's becoming easier and easier to support Linux... thanks to Proton on Steam, more native binaries (BlackMagic, for example, with DaVinci Resolve), more apps becoming webapps and only needing a web browser. At this point, I think what we're waiting for is for legacy companies like Adobe to shit the bed and render themselves irrelevant. (And boy have they gotten close.)

Yeah. The year of Linux on the Desktop is a meme... but should it actually happen... the concept of 'desktop' won't matter anymore, IMHO.

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

#452

Post by Silhouette »

wrs wrote: post #421
dgan wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misleading, as you can always turn on security updates, and turn off applications upgrades. I don't even know that's possible on Windows (I guess answer is a loud and clear NO)

For a few years, until that version stops getting security updates. E.g., about three years for Debian. [0] [0] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

Debian Stable typically gets ~3 years of official security updates, but then in reality the LTS project is excellent and probably gives you two more years, and now there's also the ELTS project that might give you two more beyond that.

Which major commercial OS has a realistic expectation today of getting security updates for so long without being forced to change other parts of your system that you like as they are? Windows did, if you go back to the days when Microsoft published product lifecycle information many years into the future, before 10 deliberately broke that whole model and the stability that came with it.

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

#453

Post by gigel82 »

gabereiser wrote: post #316
CSMastermind wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of requiring a phone number for emails it's to try and cut down on spam / bots abusing their service.

you would think, but that's not the case. It's used to correlate data sharing between data brokerages. Facebook has your number, Twitter has your number, Microsoft has your number. What better FK to link all this data together than that? Now Microsoft knows what you searched for. Twitter knows what you bought on Amazon. Facebook knows who you hung out with. It's all about the data brokerages.

I'd be very surprised if these companies actually share the private data with each-other (or any external party for that matter). I worked at a FAANG and they take private data handling very seriously (you can't even access it internally without a very involved approval process and always partially).

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

#454

Post by hilbert42 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #267
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…

Microsoft have become the best advertisement for Linux on the desktop. This kind of advertising actually worked on me.

Yeah, unfortunately that kind of advertising only works on the likes of you, me and other HN readers. The rest, even quite savvy technical people (as I've found), simply put up with the problem—that's if they recognize it as such. Microsoft knows this and writes us off as our numbers are in the noise. Essentially, to MS, we're irrelevant.

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

#455

Post by geranim0 »

While we're at it, windows fakes letting you install qbittorrent, then flags it as virus and silently deletes it. Only way to install it is either disable realtime protection forever or make an exception. If installed and re-enabling realtime protection, it deletes it again...

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

#456

Post by dolmen »

tinus_hn wrote: post #417
alpaca128 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft really is one of the worst examples in the dark pattern department that I've ever seen. Same with their email service, where you can register an account without issues and after a few weeks of use I was presented with an unskippable input field for my phone number. Don't want to give MS your phone number? Too bad, better hope you don't need those emails anymore.

Google paved the way for that trick, Gmail does exactly the same.

And now Gmail does it for the birth date.

After login I have to reload https://mail.google.com to skip the form.

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

#457

Post by techrat »

grumpyprole wrote: post #400
gentleman11 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux needs killer app equivalents. Many of the foss versions of windows programs have pretty painful UX or are missing key features (eg, smart select in gimp is really frustrating to use vs photoshop or affinity). Foss really needs to start tempting designers to participate more

It's worse than that. The desktop efforts are heavily fragmented and arguably the leader, RedHat's "Gnome", while quite polished, is actually quite user hostile (e.g. works very differently to anything else, perhaps to dodge patents; and constantly changes/removes popular features). Linux needs to have a standardised "platform" with stable APIs.

Good luck getting anyone to agree on anything.

It's why everything is so fragmented to begin with. "Oh, I don't like what X is doing, so I'll fork it and make Y."

If I were in a position where I managed several distros... I could say we could just suck it up and universally use XFCE, but then there's always someone who won't like that and they'll respin a distro to have some other DE instead.

It seems with every decision we end up with another fork.

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

#458

Post by wbsss4412 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #441
wbsss4412 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run LTS versions of Ubuntu and receive support for 5 years.

Non-server Windows editions, at least before 10, had security updates for almost 10 years. And new software often continues to function on old versions of Windows for far longer.

I wasn’t trying to imply that Ubuntu has longer support than windows, only that it doesn’t constantly make breaking changes. If you want you can use it and update once every five years and have a fairly stable desktop.

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

#459

Post by vetinari »

jptech wrote: post #157
iwasakabukiman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can set up and sign in to MacOS without using my Apple ID though.

Correct me if i'm wrong but I think you still need to go online to finish the setup process?

No, you don't need to.

There is zero-touch enterprise provisioning available, that requires you to be connected to a suitably configured local network (if learns about what it needs from dhcp tags), but this is not something that normal users need to be concerned about. For a non-MDM-managed mac, you can do everything offline just fine. Or you can be online, if you do not want to use iCloud account (I'm not using it either), you can finish the OOBE wizard and everything will be just like the user wants.

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

#460

Post by r00fus »

maskedinvader wrote: post #446
r00fus wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I did: create a Google voice number on my google account, then used that GV# as my Gmail account. It's an ouroboros of Google.

Thats a bad idea I think, if you get locked out of your gmail account, you might not be able to get a reset code on your GV number either.

Been locked out several times and I could always get by with my backup email and/or providing account details. They never sent anything to my phone.
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