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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

#511

Post by suby »

jammygit wrote: post #243
lone_haxx0r wrote: post #154

Meanwhile, the Linux world is wasting its biggest opportunity to take over the desktop space. IMO, Unintuitive interfaces (e.g. Gnome shell), forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps) and lack of care for graphic design are the biggest things keeping the masses away from the Linux desktop, because in other areas (speed, robustness, privacy, control) it just blows Windows out of the…

I love gnome personally. It’s really easy to avoid using the mouse. Linux desktop certainly has problems, but I’m excited how usable it’s been for me the last couple of years for everything but certain games

I usually don't have my mouse hooked up to my desktop and I've found Cinnamon better to work with without a mouse. I tried Gnome out under Ubuntu (both the latest LTS release and non-LTS) and while it's better than Windows, there were some issues for me. Some reasons off the top of my head

* The default theme no longer outlines which ui element you've selected when pressing tab to jump to the next element. Made it very hard to navigate program menus

* Some windows don't respond to keyboard commands, ie: minimize or move to side. If memory serves spotify was one of the programs this didn't work for but every window I've tried works without issue in Cinnamon.

* Mouse keys has no options provided under accessibility. You can customize the speed and startup delay to make for a nice experience, but the options were simply not there. I googled how to do it through the terminal but all of the top results wanted you to use a package that I couldn't find in the software store. I gave up.

The default speed for mouse keys is unusable. It takes minutes to move from one end of a 1080p monitor to another. Even Windows provides options for this, though the gui options are better in Cinnamon (best in KDE).

* I like pressing the windows key and launching an app by navigating with arrow keys. You have to type to do a search in Gnome?

Perhaps I'm just not familiar enough with Gnome, but I've people say that it's good for use without a keyboard and that's just not been my experience.

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

#512

Post by klingonopera »

kyberias wrote: post #387
klingonopera wrote: post #101

As someone who uses Windows for industrial PCs, I'm pretty appalled. We've been hanging on to Windows 7, including side-loading drivers into the installation image for modern hardware, because this kind of stuff that Windows 10 does is in these cases simply unacceptable (random tip: Go for AMD, their Windows 7 support is way better than Intel, do not use Intel chipset series 300). I can't have PCs bogged down downloa…

You should use the appropriate edition of Windows 10 for your use case: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. You can disable all the updates and everything you want.

Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword (who are they selling too?).

Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives?

Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested in making the jump to Linux, because unlike Windows, chances are, that that will be indeed just a one-time investment. Linux also has a plus of making ghosting hard-drive images much easier, since there are no licensing issues to consider, and therefore could also be done completely offline (PCs are hooked up to local network for remote VNC connections, but are blocked from the Internet).

It may be wishful thinking, but I hope that just like servers are 99% running Linux, the same may one day be said for industrial applications... looks like I'm on the front line, lock and load!

[1]: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/86c34...

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

#513

Post by GordonS »

nipinium wrote: post #411
inferiorhuman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement. At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enfor…

> I've used chocolataey (ugh) use scoop instead.

Chocolatey had so much promise, but it just doesn't deliver. At least in my experience, software tends to be outdated, and the packaging often of dubious quality. There are also multiple packages available for a lot of software, so you don't know which one to choose. Oh, and the Chocolatey website is pretty awful too.

I do like scoop, but of course the selection available is much smaller than Chocolatey, at least for now.

Come to think of it, it's kind of strange that Microsoft never created a packaging system for Windows (aside from the Store; I mean for non-UWP apps).

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

#514

Post by gurkendoktor »

navigatesol wrote: post #481
iforgotpassword wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if this is really the right move as in "desktop is definitely going down and everything will be web based". In that case sure, why bother throwing money at it. But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.

> But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate. Windows still claims nearly 80% of desktop market share, while OS X has less than 15%. Linux is around 2%. Assuming people in any significant number care about having to use an online account is naive. Apple requires…

> Assuming people in any significant number care about having to use an online account is naive. Apple requires it.

macOS does not require a cloud account. Technically you don't even need one for iOS, but most people will create an Apple ID for the App Store (and I hope this distribution monopoly on iOS will eventually be broken up).

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

#515

Post by GordonS »

fortran77 wrote: post #137
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things. I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware…

Your internet searches are not part of the telemetry - it's nowhere near that invasive [0] (I still believe you should have the option of disabling it though).

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/privacy/configure-w...

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

#517

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

rvz wrote: post #346
ddevault wrote: post #33

Use an operating system which respects you as the owner of your computer, not as a commodity to be exploited.

I agree, but unfortunately, end-users just want to buy products that just work without fiddling around with settings, etc. The HN audience and generally programmers are usually pro-Linux which makes sense, but they keep forgetting that apps like Office, Adobe, etc are only on Windows / Mac which Linux has to resort to fiddling with hacks like Wine which is not enough for an out-of-the-box experience with end-users. T…

Arguments like this also ignore the success of Chromebooks. The "average" person doesn't actually care about the things you listed. Some professionals might. But the average person isn't a photoshop user, and libreoffice works well enough. A default Ubuntu install doesn't require much if anything in the way of settings mungery, and I recall many a nightmare of getting drivers working on Windows back in the day.

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

#519

Post by jplayer01 »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #308
jplayer01 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed this change months ago. Probably with the release of 1903 (with a 1903 ISO). It seems to be dependent on whether you have an active connection or not. If not, it shows the offline option. If you do, it makes it really hard to find.

In my case notebook was connected to the Internet.

I don't know what to say. I've seen this across dozens of computers since 1903. Were you installing 1903?

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

#520

Post by Nexxxeh »

hrktb wrote: post #425
iforgotpassword wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if this is really the right move as in "desktop is definitely going down and everything will be web based". In that case sure, why bother throwing money at it. But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.

The contention might be on the time frame. Desktop OS and apps won’t go away for the next 10 or 20 years by sheer inertia of the corporate market, and the halo effect on home users. And I guess the past month/years issues don’t affect business users (corporate managed desks will have any problematic feature disabled from the start) “Everyone” migrating to OSX/linux won’t happen for many many years, even if they keep…

PC gamers won't be switching to an Xbox, and so we require a desktop. It won't just be halo effect on home users, but ironically also Halo effect. The remastered collection being ported over as we speak, starting with Halo: Reach iirc.
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