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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

#641

Post by grishka »

raxxorrax wrote: post #626
gruez wrote: 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…

On a related note: people like criticizing Telegram because its encryption is "not industry standard". Except Telegram has existed for 8 years now, and MTProto encryption still hasn't been compromised.

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

#642

Post by encryptluks2 »

sounds wrote: post #590
encryptluks2 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a separate Android device for that though. That was the point. You can do that with third-party extensions, websites, etc. Last but not least, in order to create a Google burner account you likely need a real phone number. Whenever you sign up for a Google account it asks you to verify a phone number.

I've successfully created numerous new accounts, on an Android device, with no SIM card. It looks like there's no proof either way. Are you testing without a SIM card?

Yes, I've tested without a SIM card and was asked for phone verification. Seems like it may be hit and miss.

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

#643

Post by gorjusborg »

skohan wrote: post #425
gorjusborg wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS is making me sad. I like what they are doing in some areas, like WSL2, but on the other hand, they are taking cues from Apple on how to treat computing customers. The "we'll protect you, but you need to login and install everything through our store" paradigm is an awful trade, in my opinion.

I don't know, I think they are bad in a different way from Apple, and in my opinion this way is worse. Apple enforces what is and isn't allowed on their platform with an "Apple knows best" attitude, but besides this the UX basically respects the user and gets out of your way. Microsoft uses dark patterns to actively bully the user into doing what they want you to do. Also WSL2 is fine, but I have the feeling they are…

Your last point is probably correct. Until WSL2 (and really WSLg) I didn't really consider having my dev machine run windows.

I also agree that the dark patterns garbage has to stop. If you want to shape my behavior, convince me it is in MY interest. If you are forcing my hand for your interests, I'll find someone better.

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

#644

Post by bkallus »

patrick451 wrote: post #607
pradn wrote: 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.

I had this same problem. Was it an old Radeon card? I don't remember the model, but Microsoft's website said it was too old, so it only has basic support from Windows 10. That means black bars. Drove an ultrawide monitor in Linux just fine.

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

#645

Post by teekert »

f1refly wrote: post #636
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ra…

If you ask me, btrfs had issues in the past and it caused them some reputation damage but it's getting there. And many distros started using it as their default, as does Synology.

It's a safe pick if you ask me. Still, I would go for ext4 if you don't specifically want or need things like storage pools, snapshots and such advanced (ZFS-like) features.

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

#646

Post by jurgemaister »

nonameiguess wrote: post #579
teekert wrote: post #155

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…

Still haven't found a way to digitally sign a pdf with a smart card on Linux, unfortunately. If anyone knows how, I'd love a tip. Last thing I absolutely can't do except on Windows, and it is required by a lot of DoD processes I have to follow.

Perhaps this[1] is a solution?

[1]: https://signer.digital/SignerDigitalBrowserExtensions

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

#647

Post by badsectoracula »

okamiueru wrote: post #167
badsectoracula wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoying bit with those is that they are Steam only. I try to avoid Steam and instead buy from GOG because they are DRM-free and i keep offline copies of all of my games, but Wine still (just tried yesterday the version Void Linux installs in a VM) seems to have issues even with slightly older games. There used to be a way to run Proton outside of Steam but i think it is now discouraged.

It's not impossible to run gog games through the proton compatibility layer of steam. In short: 1. Download gog install files into the same directory 2. Add the install executable as a non-steam game, and enable proton compatibility before starting it up. 3. Run the installer and complete the installation. Gog installers typically give the option to run the game from the installer, but that will only work once. 4. Fi…

This requires Steam to be there, as i wrote i try to avoid using Steam.

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

#648

Post by badsectoracula »

marlowe221 wrote: post #412
badsectoracula wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoying bit with those is that they are Steam only. I try to avoid Steam and instead buy from GOG because they are DRM-free and i keep offline copies of all of my games, but Wine still (just tried yesterday the version Void Linux installs in a VM) seems to have issues even with slightly older games. There used to be a way to run Proton outside of Steam but i think it is now discouraged.

In that case, please give Lutris a solid look. It's a great app that eases the pain of installing games via WINE (and makes it easy to install particular versions of WINE on a per game basis). It's how I run my GOG games on Pop OS.

Doesn't Lutris download and execute random scripts written by random people online? I'd rather avoid that and do it myself.

TBH i do not think things are completely unsolvable, it is just that i wish Proton, etc wasn't tied to Steam.

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

#649

Post by raxxorrax »

jptech wrote: post #221
shantnutiwari wrote: post #119

Microsoft has been using this dark pattern for a while now. Around 1-2 years ago, I upgraded MS Office on my Windows laptop. It asked me for my username/password-- which I didnt think strange, as I assumed it needed it to upgrade. And thats when I got a message "Good news! Your Windows machine now uses your Microsoft to login." W.T.F. I was never asked, never warned, just tricked into replacing my local login with an…

Even without an MS account, when using Microsoft Store with a local account, I won't be surprised if they used some hardware fingerprint such as MAC address to assign a unique ID to that account.

Don't know why you are downvoted, they do exactly that. Probably since a decade. They connect license and hardware ids.

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

#650

Post by andyana »

Retric wrote: post #115
rovr138 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also did say ‘software’.

Your monitor has software, as does basically everything built lately significantly more complicated than a fan.

My fan is quite advanced. It has "night" and "natural breeze" modes, for example, and it was the cheapest one at Costco last year.
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