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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

#471

Post by abacadaba »

m0zg wrote: post #327
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

>> getting worse and worse at an alarming rate That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.

Not putting effort into making Windows better is different than telling all the .9 billion Win10 users to go f themselves.

But still, if all those .9 billion Windows users still decide that FOSS is too hard, who am I gaf?

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

#472

Post by z3t4 »

This is what the market wants. There are good alternatives like BSD, Solaris, various Linux distributions for those that want more control. And for those that enjoy the lock in there is also Apple devices and Chromebooks. It would be interesting if Intel and others would create an open Linux core enterprise pre installed OS with decentralized options for support and services.

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

#474

Post by yyyk »

viraptor wrote: post #216
tanr54ok wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t just one app, there are plenty. Excel and adobe cs are the obvious ones. If you’re not in programming (exclusively) you’re stuck on Windows or Mac.

Latest excel has gold level support: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... I know there are plenty of things that don't work with wine, but realistically, how many of them does each person need to work, and how many are "defaults"? For example if you spend 90% of your time in illustrator, do you need excel specifically, or "an app with text in cells"? And if you're crunching market data in e…

If I had a penny for every time a 'Gold level' supported program simply failed to work properly or required some nearly undocumented workaround* , I'd be rich.

* No, I don't consider having to search bugzilla 'documentation'.

Edit: Note that I'm talking about Wine here. When wine is wrapped by people who know what they're doing it works well - Crossweavers/Proton etc. - for the specific subset of programs they're tuned for. Otherwise you have all the wine-typical issues outside that subset.

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

#475

Post by archi42 »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #100

...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic. Here’s a true story that happened to my family. My son is the only person in the house who uses Windows. For his game machine. He set up a Microsoft online account. It got hacked - someone set up a fake family and managed to get my son’s account listed under it as a child. As a consequence, he couldn’t install any new software. I’m not sure wha…

It seems to me MS customer support is incapable of doing anything meaningful with your account, except making it easier to be hacked via social engineering.

My MS account had my desktop's Win 10 Pro N (the one with less crap) license attached to it. When I bought a new laptop with Win 10 Pro (regular, non-N), my desktop would suddenly claim that its license was invalid. Great. Called support, but nothing they could do except recommending to reinstall Windows. No guarantee the other system would then not go into that "your license is invalid state" if I use the N license again. Solution: Screw them, I'll install kmspico.

I'm probably lucky I use that sh*tshow of an OS only for gaming, and Linux for everything else (including work - we're essentially a Linux company even though most of our customers (embedded devs) still use windows.

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

#476

Post by ah- »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #461
dave7 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sadly Linux is not really an option because I like my PC gaming. This is changing and very quickly with Valve Proton. I would advise you try your gaming collection in Steam on Linux. It is getting to the point where one can purchase a game and it will likely just work, with the exception of a few DRM nasties.

It really depends on your video game tastes, I think. There are now essentially three types of games which I enjoy playing: 1) Indie games; 2) Big studio releases (some of them); 3) Competitive online 3D shooters. My experience is that 1) usually work well on Linux and the small studios these days usually make sure it works on Mac and Linux, which is great. I do not know of any games in the 2) category that really do…

Most of 1) and 2) works, check https://www.protondb.com/

If you're into those things 3) is an issue due to various anticheat systems that don't yet run great on wine.

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

#477

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

localhost wrote: post #83
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #42

Microsoft is clearly taking moves that enable "PC as a service". I imagine the end game is something like you pay Microsoft so much a month on a subscription, receive hardware that is preconfigured with and tied to your Microsoft account details or your company's Azure AD configuration and locked down with InTune, unhackable with properly implemented Class 3+ UEFI and Secure Boot, etc. You then purchase additional so…

Just like Apple makes the iPhone a "Mobile computer as a service". It's a managed device that makes life much safer and easier for most people. There will likely always be the DIY solutions for folks who prefer that. And that's good too.

However, OP is not talking about a mobile device, but a PC. The PC is in the same device bracket as Macs. And Apple does not provide Macs "as computer as a service". Everything works with a local account. I don't even need to have an Apple ID. The OS also remembers your choice of disabling telemetry, without resetting it after the next update.

Apple provides managed and unmanaged. Microsoft appears not to provide unmanaged in the near future. This would remove the entire Windows PC bracket from the list of unmanaged options. That would be an enormous loss, and not just for some "folks who prefer DIY".

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

#478

Post by rtisdale »

input_sh wrote: post #300
mastazi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look up Bitwig studio as a replacement for Ableton Live. I know it's an expensive tool to replace, but its workflow is very similar to Ableton Live and it supports Linux.

Producer here as well. I currently dual boot.

I've considered bitwig for Linux production but a big issue is you end up losing a lot of VSTs that aren't native to Linux (Serum and Massive, both wavetable synths, are a good example).

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

#479

Post by rtisdale »

fnenrjfkdke wrote: post #466
mastazi wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh of course, I like Bitwig very much! The modular engine ("Grid") is great! But I have a lot of material from the past in Live so, even if I switch to Bitwig, I may still need to use Live from time to time. But I guess a Win VM would suffice for that type of usage.

Can confirm, was able to run Live 9 on W7 in VirtualBox on ~decade-old hardware earlier this year. It was easy and worked like a charm. Was running Arch Linux at the time, and used the VM images from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

How was the latency?

I'd like to achieve sub 10ms latency and I feel running in a VM would make that very difficult?

Did USB passthrough for MIDI devices work well?

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

#480

Post by rbanffy »

theclaw wrote: post #421
moontear wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that search problem link I am exactly one of those users and start menu search just isn’t working. I have switched to Launchy as an alternative after years of being happy with the start menu search. I can finally look for a solution now, nice.

May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view. [1] http://keypirinha.com/

Don't use Windows, but I love the name.
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