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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

#81

Post by nickjj »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #69
nickjj wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available. 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. I happen to have a few tech courses on programming a…

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be.

In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available.

As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.

For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware.

Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot.

Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed.

In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use

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

#82

Post by snagglegaggle »

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…

It is bad, but I do not think you are stuck. But there are two fronts -- business offerings are going the same way. There is lots of pressure to use almost exclusively MS hosted services. And, in that market, not everything has a good replacement.

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

#83

Post by localhost »

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.

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

#86

Post by mancerayder »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

If only the Linux on the desktop dreams of a decade ago - along with those Linux-installed PCs they tried to push at Walmart - had a more optimistic outcome...

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

#87

Post by jmkni »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

I use Windows on a day to day basis, and you might sometimes find me defending that.

However, I hate stuff like this. You are right, it is user hostile.

Windows 10 under the hood is solid, but this kind of thing really pisses me off. It’s the same issue with ads or bing in the start menu, you literally can’t turn it off anymore (you used to be able to with the Registry Editor or GP).

I use MacOS as well regularly, and you just don’t get this kind of crap from Apple (just different kinds of crap).

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

#88

Post by greggman2 »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #60
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.

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games, and given HN's userbase (mostly young men), I think a lot of people here use Windows.

Windows is also the arguably the domain of GPU related dev. I see lots of Razer laptops. They are small and same weight as a MBP but you can get a 2080 RTX (previously 1060 GTX). Even the newest MBA's GPU is not 1/2 as fast as the 3 year old Razer (and its peers)

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

#89

Post by mastazi »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #82
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…

It is bad, but I do not think you are stuck. But there are two fronts -- business offerings are going the same way. There is lots of pressure to use almost exclusively MS hosted services. And, in that market, not everything has a good replacement.

The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things:

A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux

B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me

With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM switch etc., would not be the best in terms of UX

(Edit I had mixed up “A” and “B” in my sentence)

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

#90

Post by cl0ckt0wer »

shakna wrote: post #31
michaelmrose wrote: post #19

This seems like it is preparatory to removing it entirely. It wouldn't be shocking if in 10 years you need a Microsoft account to use windows on a computer you don't have root access to that isn't allowed to run a non ms os or to distribute software that ms gets a 30% cut. If it isn't so it will be because they don't think they can get away with it.

> to use windows on a computer you don't have root access to that isn't allowed to run a non ms os or to distribute software that ms gets a 30% cut. That's basically how the SurfaceRT worked, isn't it? So they've already attempted this once.

That's what Windows S mode is https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/s-mode
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