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

extremetech.com

631–640 of 657 posts

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

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have over 2TB's of data. While yes I can read them on linux, it it's always perfect and there are issues regarding permissions on occasion or an issue where it doesn't recognize the directory for some odd reason. No idea if it's a linux issue, the standard ntfs reader I have on my distro, or what. But, I figure if I'm going all out linux, might as well make it difficult to jump back out :)

2TB is not much at all. Tip from experience: Don't touch your important ntfs data with the linux drivers, instead get an ext/btrfs driver for windows. winbtrfs[1] is stable and works great for that purpose. [1] https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs

Hey thanks! I'll have to look into this more but would you recommend ext4 or btrfs? I just want something that will last, not necessarily the latest and greatest.

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

#632
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing few of them? I use fingerprint reader on my phone and laptop, is there a reason I shouldn't? Face recognition is something I have a problem with. I don't like cameras, especially those you cannot unplug.

Biometrics are typically immutable. If your password gets compromised, you can simply change it. You can't change a fingerprint.

That's actaully the problem. You can't change a fingerprint, but you can fake one.

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

#633
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows just works. I can't remember the last time I had a driver issue with wifi or had an issue with new hardware working. Every game targets Windows first, so they all work without any extra work. My computer is a tool, and I don't want to spend any of my free time configuring things, like I have when running Linux in the past. I spent enough of my time at work doing that!

Every time I install windows, I spend easily half a day hunting down drivers. All of this is installed automatically with linux, and especially Ubuntu installs. The last time I installed windows, I got two black strips on either side of the display. No amount of GPU driver shenanigans would fix it. It worked first try on linux.

We're all talking anecdotes, but all I have to do is install the NVIDIA driver updater and I'm good to go.

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

#634
post #342
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This. 100 times. > The main compute device people as a population are familiar with is the cellphone/tablet, and usage patterns that differ from this are becoming the odd man out. (Smart)phones and tablets are not computing devices any more than a refrigerator. You cannot do any real work on them. Even finding a text editor, let alone editing, is a challenge. Other stuff like SW development or CAD/CAE is the same.…

> (Smart)phones and tablets are not computing devices any more than a refrigerator. You cannot do any real work on them. Nonsense, of course you can. 'Real work' isn't just programming or whatever. Writers, painters and musicians do plenty of 'real work' on tablets and such.

Agreed. However I would just like to point out that since Apple refuses to provide a proper file shell or means to manage your files across applications on iPads (and iPhones as far as I'm aware) without resorting to some type of cloud situation, I prefer to use DAWs that run on native os systems like windows or macOS.

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

#635
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK many mail providers have disabled password authentication via IMAP/SMTP. They force you to go through oauth flow (ie. opening a webview to log in).

IMAP does accept plain text passwords, but this is not a real security threat either because of TLS. I hate all the FUD security blogs that tell you otherwise. This "industry" has become extremely useless and doesn't even give sensible security advice anymore. Yes, of couse 2FA is theoretically better. Until facebooks leaks half a billion phone numbers + account information. That is a vastly more serious threat. I do…

>I don't know a single case where TLS was compromised from an IMAP client. Perhaps if it is 15 years old? I hate this industry so damn much. People should be homeless, not security advisers...

You're thinking of the wrong threat model. They're not concerned about passwords being stolen being in transit, but rather using the IMAP endpoint for credential stuffing attempts. An IMAP login attempt contains very little zero metadata, so it's very hard to judge whether it's legitimate or not. With a web login you can get tons of stuff to judge the authenticity of the user, eg. fingerprinting.

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

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2TB is not much at all. Tip from experience: Don't touch your important ntfs data with the linux drivers, instead get an ext/btrfs driver for windows. winbtrfs[1] is stable and works great for that purpose. [1] https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs

Hey thanks! I'll have to look into this more but would you recommend ext4 or btrfs? I just want something that will last, not necessarily the latest and greatest.

Although I don't feel qualified to answer this, I'd recommend ext4. It just works. They are trying to achieve the one fs to rule them all with btrfs, but I'm not too sure how stable it is at the moment. It had a lot of issues in the past, and if you don't plan to use subvolumes, screenshots etc you're better off using ext4.

Fun story: I once had an issue where I couldn't do anything with my btrfs volume because it ran out of metadata space and I couldn't even tell it to allocate more. The solution wsa to grab a usb drive, format it with btrfs, make a volume group so more metadata space would be available to the filesystem, then make it allocate more space on the normal ssd. Everything was fine after removing the flashdrive from the volume group. It was a scary evening.

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

#637

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…

pop os seems to work better out of the box than ubuntu. i use pop myself and screen rotation works ok (x1 yoga gen4) but i get screen taring every once in a while.

zorin os is another one to check out. ui is more like windows and i think it has a tablet mode

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

#638

After watching this fiasco unfold I have a hot take: We need to stop judging these decisions based on our needs and consider the everyday computer user. Yes, these decisions annoy myself and most users on this site, but we are in the minority here. Most people do not care and just want to be up and running. They want security/configuration to be easy. They don't want to have to think about it. I think that a lot of t…

that argument doesn't make sense to me. the decision that MS has made is everyone needs an account. couldnt they have just kept the opt-out option as it was and the 'minority' would be content and everyone else could use an account?

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

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not user hostile, I love gnome. It might slow down if you don’t reboot (could be a hibernation or suspend issue?) but the Ux is great. Windows is a nuisance after using gnome. You do need to install some addons that should be built in

I could not find any add-on (that still works) to give me back my tray icons. Not even Apple would take this feature away.

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

#640
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need Windows? Our family laptop runs Linux, it does Teams for school, MineCraft, Netflix. You could do Office365 from a browser, although I admit, it is less than ideal. But it seems like you are almost at the emotional state make the jump... what's holding you back? I bought a Dell Latitude E5450 for 350 eur about 2 years back. It was used but looked new. It came with Win 10 Pro, which sits on my NAS a…

Windows just works. I can't remember the last time I had a driver issue with wifi or had an issue with new hardware working. Every game targets Windows first, so they all work without any extra work. My computer is a tool, and I don't want to spend any of my free time configuring things, like I have when running Linux in the past. I spent enough of my time at work doing that!

I agree with the sentiment of not wanting to waste time on your OS, but I disagree that Windows solves the problem. A computer that reboots without my permission is not usable.
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