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Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand. My first experience with Windows 11 was figuring out some dumb workaround to use a local account.

When I think back to Windows 7, the good feeling isn't nostalgia. It was the last user-focused Windows.

Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs. Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will realize very important parts of Windows are going downhill and remember what made Windows great.

I'm not convinced Microsoft cares about the Windows market share in consumer PCs or the small amount of money they make from selling Windows licenses to regular consumers.

If they did, Windows wouldn't be so usable unactivated and the MassGravel activation stuff would have been patched already.

They built up their almost-monopoly when it mattered in the 90s and the 2000s, and now their market position is basically secured.

For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

If something displaces Windows in the consumer PC market, I wonder how long it is before those new OS consumers start to want to use what they're comfortable with in the business as well.

> compatible with Windows programs

It seems with each passing year this becomes less important, as more and more apps are either web based or cross platform.

To the average consumer, Windows doesn't matter much anymore.

To enterprises, Microsoft has them under lock and key with Office 365, basically forever. LibreOffice is nowhere near a replacement for Excel in an enterprise setting.

I wouldn't say it's Office365 as much as "What are my other options?"

MacOS is good option BUT cheapest laptop option is 1000 bucks. Dell has 16 inch with 16GB of RAM for 600.

There is Linux but Linux Desktop still is not ready and mass management of it is very painful.

So you default to Windows. It works-ish, won't break the bank and just about every piece of software you need works with it.

I work in a large enterprise and I see more and more people move to macOS every year. We use Office 365. I run the Office apps on my Mac. We backup with OneDrive. We collaborate with SharePoint. We use our AD accounts to login on macOS, use InTune to manage endpoints. My Mac even has Defender on it now.

Microsoft is still getting their money, just slightly less from Windows itself.

Ah, young people. This is the company that innovated a brand new style of monopolization and then lost a monopoly case about it.

I'm not sure if Microsoft knows it, but it doesn't care about or need Windows anymore. Office has native apps and is on the web, Xbox is doing its own things, dotnet has been freed from Windows, and Azure doesn't need Windows. Computing is generally moving away from the personal computing model, so Windows is just less relevant.

I was with you until you listed Xbox - their consoles are dying in the market.

They've adopted a strategy of calling everything "gaming" Xbox, and seem to be going all-in on Gamepass subscription revenue along with making their first-party games available on other platforms. I'll be surprised if there is another flagship console following the Series X.

We'll see how that works out for them.

There's always ReactOS[1], a project for a bug-for-bug compatible Windows clone. It used to mostly aim at Windows 9x compatibility the last time I'd checked, though, but that could probably change. And if anyone wants to create a Win7 clone, at least some of the groundwork has already been made.

[1]: https://reactos.org/

Sorry, but ReactOS is not seriously usable. Not to insult the work done on it but it is an experimental OS.

As a .NET developer for 20+ years I’m down to my last Windows box - a gaming rig I pretend I have time to play on. Everything else is a Mac.

> Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand.

Microsoft realized after Windows 8 and Windows 10 that literally nobody, outside of niche tech circles, has positive associations with the Windows brand, or views "Windows" as a selling point beyond "runs my old software." As such, it doesn't matter to them anymore.

It's like being the PR department at your local electricity provider or oil refinery. Keep the politicians happy, but people on the ground is a pointless endeavor.

I liked Windows 7. I also liked Windows XP SP2 before that.

But you’re right that since Windows 8, Windows is just something I’ve tolerated.

That being said, Windows 11 seems nice, but it looks like Microsoft is pulling the same stuff again.

Not true. I like Windows 11, and I think it's the best desktop OS out there.

Sincerely curious about why do you think it's the best desktop OS and/or where it excels.

I understand that the Windows kernel is pretty advanced but I find difficult to find that it ends up in a good desktop OS (e.g. UX)

> Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs.

Nothing as user focused as linux, and it's mostly compatible with windows programs with wine. Important to note though that user focused is not the same thing as easy to use.

I'm a linux fan but calling linux user-focused is insane.

It's user-focused in the sense that the user's goals drive the design. The good non-profit distributions, such as Debian and Arch, would never even try to require or push an online account, since that is contrary to the user's interests.

Developer goals drive the design, not users. It's how we ended up with such navel-gazing insanity as GNOME 3.

Not disagreeing with you, but your comment brought back memories of Ubuntu One, and the amazon spyware(?) search thing. Ubuntu is kind of the Windows of the GNU/Linux world in that they repeatedly do user-hostile things that test everyone's limits.

Yeah, I would not use Ubuntu if I can help it. I'd still rather use it over Windows. This is why I specifically said "The good non-profit distributions," and not "Linux distributions" or some other broader phrase.

I'm sure that's why they weren't included in the examples of "the good non-profit distributions". It's not like Ubuntu is going to be overlooked. But they are malicious.

I think in Linux developers drive the design more than users.

Linux developers are the primary users of Linux if you think about it

Linux is user focused but not user friendly. Of course there are exceptions, anyone can use a steamdeck without ever having to leave the steam app.

I think perhaps you are conflating user-friendly and user-focused.

Linux, and open source in general, is infinitely more user-focused than anything from Microsoft, since open source is often built for users and by users.

But if you don't have great computer skills already, Linux can be extremely un-friendly the moment you step off the beaten path.

I beg to differ. There is less corporate BS on Linux than any mainstream OS.

The software if largely by users for users.

Obviously it caters to the power user, but it also works well for extremely novice users. It’s those savvy with Win/Mac that get screwed switching. I’d encourage them to put a bit more into trying.

Two weeks ago, after Microsoft reset my default apps twice in a week, I bought an external drive, backed up all my stuff and wiped Windows.

I’ve got Linux all over the place, in many cloud envs, and on older hardware. But I finally committed to it on my big, meaty, main desktop. The one I use for coding and banking and accounting.

I’m running a Linux distro full-time. I had to hack a few minor hardware things. Nothing ChatGPT couldn’t solve.

I’ll never do Microsoft again. I will prob add Apple MacBooks to my life, but my main grunt machine is likely to stay Linux. I’m fully vested.

I know I’ll never engage with Microsoft shenanigans in my home environment ever again.

I had a similar issue, after cleaning up a Windows machine for someone else, making sure Firefox with uBlock was running. I took a look at it a few weeks later and there was some bullshit Microsoft Bing search bar or AI thing on the toolbar. Wiped, installed Linux.

Microsoft is setting fire to the bridges and those will be users which they will never be able to get back again.

Linux works great for gaming except some anti-cheat stuff which probably won't be legal anymore anyways in Europe under the PLD.

That's an interesting point. To what extent does AI support make Linux on the desktop more viable? Reminds me of a discussion recently that said something similar, that developing in Rust is easier now that you can have another machine do battle with the borrow checker, haha.

To extend, maybe someone could build a "SysAd AI" distribution that administers itself given natural language directions? Let me know if anyone wants to invest. ;-)

LLMs have probably trawled through ArchWiki+StackOverflow and can enough content to help you debug your system. That plus a few “are you sure” responses to LLM hallucinations have gotten me far.

I do remember to have read a couple of years ago that the Windows Ui team got replaced and now only consists of Mac users, never having used Windows themselves.

If that is true, it's now wonder that they do not understand all the value that Windows NT has brought, why having a standard on menu structure, a standard for all UI controls etc made sense. And to understand that while Apple's mission is to provide a walled garden, Windows has been and is used in a million different scenarios. Taking away options will ALWAYS hit some of your customers. And there are a gigantic amount of applications where you want local system accounts only. Yes, Dear Microsoft, computers without an Internet connection do exist and are a common thing.

For us it's Win10 IoT LTSC so we have updates for a couple of more years, and by then hopefully the last remaining software and hardware we have will be usable with Linux.

I think this change (and everything in Windows 11) is being driven by the MS Account PM watching telemetry and making number go up.

Had to edit a .docx today to refresh my CV today...and realised oh...I don't have any more windows machines on hand anymore. Interesting how smoothly that faded away psychologically after 20+ years of windows use without me even overtly noticing.

Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on linux anyway and gaming on linux is rapidly becoming usable. And mac side is obviously competitive on various fronts too.

It will depend on if gaming studios continue to invest in a Linux Desktop experience. It's common to run your game server on Linux, but MS, partially through DRM support to the big media companies, creates an environment very strongly suited towards shipping your game binary to a hostile environment.

This is partially why major (effective) anti-cheats have migrated to the Kernel. Windows allows the big-budget games, which are often competitive games, to operate with a higher level of game integrity, which leads to more revenue generation.

MacOS is not an attainable gaming support platform in general, as the people who are interested in the AAA games are going to need a Pro series or similar quality device which prices a large part of the current windows gaming audience out.

As an example: it's not too expensive to buy a laptop that runs valorant, and then be funneled into the skin shop. You can get a lot more sales that way than you can through the crowd of people who are on MBP, though perhaps the MBP crew is more likely to be a whale.

note: Valorant is not supported on MacOS due to the anticheat requirement, but the hypothetical still stands.

IMO the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck has a decent chance of pushing big publishers to consider releasing for Linux/Proton. These handhelds fit the niche between smart phone and console gamers [1] that might have some potential growth left in it. Even the availability of Windows first handhelds was not as bad for Linux gaming as SteamOS and other gaming handheld focused Linux distros have been ported to them.

On the other hand the anti cheat side has been really ratcheting up with newer releases requiring Win 11 and Secure Boot. I somewhat hope and fear we might get a blessed version of SteamOS for the Deck that is heavily locked down and has kernel/hypervisor level anti cheat functions added to it. Essentially allowing for a boot mode similar to current consoles. While it goes against the open spirit of SteamOS, it might serve as an argument to invest a bit more into the Linux side, potentially improving the ecosystem as a whole.

Or all of it might be the usual "year of the Linux desktop" pipe dream.

[1] leaving out the Switch which is heavily focused on Nintendo IP and has comparatively weak hardware

I have a Steam Deck and run Linux on all my machines and I am a pretty big Gamer. Typically I have no problems.

Same, but I mostly play indie, older and/or singleplayer games. I now often don't even check ProtonDB when buying games, it has gotten that good. Anything AAA, multiplayer and new tends to cause problems due to anti cheats though.

> MacOS is not an attainable gaming support platform in general, as the people who are interested in the AAA games are going to need a Pro series

The M5's GPU cores are expected to pick up the same 40% performance boost we just saw in the newly released iPhones.

AAA games written for the M4 already work just fine, the extra performance is needed when you are also emulating other graphics APIs and CPU instruction sets to run Windows games.

Windows on ARM has the same issues, but Prism isn't as good at x86 emulation.

Attainable isn't about benchmarks and performance, it's ecosystem such as supported kernel hooks for AAA games to invest the time in maintaining their anti-cheats and other parts of the game-as-a-service platform.

It's also about the market accessibility and penetration. When the base level MBA at it's lowest RAM settings is reliably running AAA games is when you might see more interest in the platform from those studios because much like the iOS market, people running Mac tend to be more readily monetized, especially through things like in-game cosmetics.

The cheapest base M4 Mac Mini has 16 Gigs of RAM and plays AAA games written for Mac today.

The performance boost is needed when you are running Windows games under emulation.

Emulation overhead is also an issue for Proton on Linux or Windows on ARM.

> Emulation overhead is also an issue for Proton on Linux

Nope because Proton is based on WINE, which stands for Wine Is Not An Emulator. Windows executables on Linux are running natively at full speed like any other Linux program.

Wine implements the Windows ABI and is just here to answer the system calls those executables are making.

In fact, most Windows games are running faster under Linux.

If you have to play games, just have a separate Windows computer for that, and do everything else on a Linux box.

It's really easy for people who work in tech, or tech adjacent to recommend this, but in my experience, getting anyone to try nearly anything on Linux is very rough. Friends who wanted to "take control of privacy in their life" never made it beyond a week of trying to use a Linux distribution.

We have decades of training in the consumer market for very simple install patterns using UIs, and minimal messing with configurations. The people in gaming who overclock and tweak their settings are a huge minority in gaming. Those people are the ones most likely to be able to grok switching to Linux, but when they get there and find that most of their favorite apps don't work like they are used to, they go back to Windows or Mac.

My hypothesis is that for Linux Gaming to truly take off, you'll need a true desktop (not steamdeck which i use weekly) that makes it a handful of "clicks" to get whatever they want installed working. That means you'll need a commercially backed OS where developers maintain all the things needed to support near infinite peripheral connections for a variety of use cases, clear anti-cheat interfaces, and likely clear DRM hooks as well.

For myself personally the moment I stopped tweaking linux endlessly was when I installed the universalblue images (bazzite/aurora/bluefin). They made upgrading / using software so painless by providing sane defaults that I no longer feel the need to time my upgrades after the bugs have been patched out, or look up random commands to fix something. They are reliable enough that I feel comfortable recommending / installing them for family members, something which I would not have done before.

Dual boot seems like a more obvious recommendation? Or better still, play games on linux, except those that require kernel AC?

I find it annoying not to be able to run things at the same time. I've used dual boot many years ago but ran into the issue that one thing required one OS, another thing another OS. Kept having to close things down and reboot, reboot reboot. Nah, thanks. I'll use Linux with an offline Windows XP VM for Age of Empires and call it a day. One day, maybe I'll use a Windows 10 VM without Microsoft account to run modern software if the need arises

If you can make it work, sure, but somebody will probably complain that it's too hard for the general population.

I agree, but I'm not sure that's acceptable to the general population

Fine, but the general population will have to accept whatever fate Microsoft has in mind for them.

Edit: I'd guess a lot of them just follow whatever instructions they are given, and create the online account. If Microsoft thought there was a chance of serious rebellion, they wouldn't be doing it.

> And mac side is obviously competitive on various fronts too.

After a lifetime of Windows use, I'd even say MacOS is almost on par with Linux for development, while Windows' best feature on this front is WSL so you don't have to use Windows.

I agree with you here, as someone who uses all three (mostly Linux).

IMO the two biggest pains with MacOS is (1) brew is not as good as any other package manager in my experience (mostly in bugs that need manual fixing) and (2) Docker naturally is much worse (not just for performance, but for requiring 'Docker desktop'.) All the other pains are just the myriad niceities I miss from a lifetime of mostly Linux that MacOS just can never have.

> IMO the two biggest pains with MacOS is (1) brew is not as good as any other package manager in my experience (mostly in bugs that need manual fixing)

I've been happily not using brew for a couple years now. Nix can function as a brew replacement without much fuss. However it lacks a simple alternative to brew services (for that you have to enter the rabbit hole which is home-manager).

Also macOS UI is stuck in the past but not in a good way : they never fixed their windows management which is still stuck on the old paradigm that the user is using an application and not only a window of an application.

The Dock is the biggest illustration of this : good luck if you have opened more than two windows of the same app.

You're forgetting business critical software outside of office that's windows only or windows/macos.

Stuff like Quickbooks, AutoCAD/Autodesk, off the top of my head

I've never worked at Autodesk, and I don't use CAD. But I see they have a Web version of AutoCAD. I assume there are a bunch of Autodesk employees on Hackernews who can correct me, and I know there's probably a boat load of issue for a huge legacy project like that. But how long until AutoCAD web is just AutoCAD? Or some competitor a'la Figma is in the web?

It will _never_ get to that point unless they port the original codebase to WASM or something. Or another product comes around that's so market upsetting that it takes the crown. The same can be said for Adobe products.

All of which are very easily replaceable. That list is laughable for an example of lock in.

I used to run AutoCAD on a 80286 with a maths co-pro with 1 MB RAM. It has changed somewhat since!

Who gives a shit about QB? - you could just run it in a VM and it probably runs under Wine. You can also just switch accounting vendor - there are quite a few. Double book keeping is a good 600 years old and can be considered pretty open source these days.

You may even do some real good to your business (if you think you need QB) by going old school and really getting to grips with the numbers. Buy three huge ledgers and label them: "Sales" "Purchase" and "Nominal" or "General". Also grab an exercise book to act as a cash book and a couple of notebooks to document the system. Now, you will need to do docs too so you will need a drawing board to design your forms ...

Now CAD is not the most common business software in use by anyone which is probably why you went for AutoCAD (which you have heard of), rather than, say, Solidworks or Catia. Autodesk is a vendor and not a stuff.

Moving to cloud, or very rare for the general public to be aware of them.

Well, I wasn't trying to dispute that general home uses can get by on Linux, just that industry is a large user base that isn't going to switch because the software they depend on is tied to an OS. QuickBooks is used by a lot of people, and their web product is not an alternative to the desktop app

If it isn't it will be, as non-subscription software is phased out by big companies.

They've been saying this for years now.

The problem is there's no real alternative.

Your grandma is not going to use Linux. So the choice is between windows and mac.. and the truth is a lot of apps people use are windows only.

I don't see windows losing desktop share anytime soon.

The average grandparent isn't installing an OS, they're using whatever comes on the device. If you had Ubuntu pre-installed and automatically updating, there isn't going to be that much of a difference for how many less-tech-savy people use the computer.

Microsoft has a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows", but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.

If someone who uses their computer to browse the web and check the email picked up a laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu, they'd likely be perfectly fine with it.

>a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows",

>but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.

Eroded even more so by the user-hostile approach of Microsoft itself.

Exactly with things like being a complete failure to recognize a strong valid need for general users to only opt-in to an account according to their own personal needs alone. Not with Microsoft or Google or anybody else known to be a source of unwanted ads or anti-professional annoyances.

Why abandon a remaining security element that can protect against PII compromise like no other?

It's just sad to lose an essential feature that has always been built-in to Windows since the beginning, which helped make Windows into a far better business machine than would have been otherwise possible.

And why now when security is more important than ever?

Have you tried it? I see where you're coming from but don't think it would work out that 'no grandma can use it'

My plan for years has been to install Linux Mint + Cinnamon for my grandma when she next needs a new laptop... but she still hasn't needed one :(. And she's slowly getting too old for any new computer

Every Windows upgrade was a big change again. The UI would change each time, Windows Live Mail got discontinued, Office got ribbons, etc. Why reinvent the wheel each time? I've replaced:

- Windows Live Mail with Thunderbird, that has been stable.

- Microsoft Office with Libreoffice, that has been stable.

- The next item on the list was going to be Windows itself, since Cinnamon hasn't significantly changed since I started using Linux over ten years ago. It still has a start menu, system tray, window list at the bottom (without the windows collapsing and hiding!), everything made for usability and working as you expect.

The only exception is (grand)parents that need custom software. E.g. my mom has custom software (from Hema I think? Or Bruna maybe?) for editing photo albums to then send it to a print shop and get a real photo album. That will be web based nowadays I imagine. I should ask her but that could still be a barrier to switching

Edit: Similar issue on Android btw. There isn't one function that my (grand)parents use, that Android 16 has that Android 4 did not. The only thing that keeps changing under them is UI. Sure, developer APIs got nicer, support for dual-frequency GNSS is there, screens got taller... none of that needed to touch the UI. Sadly Google does a phenomenal job of obsoleting old OS versions quickly so you need to keep buying new. EU law for longer device support doesn't even help because you still need to upgrade that OS and can't simply use an LTS with security updates

I don’t know…for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable.

The people who will have the hardest time switching to Linux are those who need proprietary software products that are unavailable for Linux and whose needs are not met by open-source alternatives. Microsoft Office is still the standard for office software, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is still the standard for many creatives.

If LibreOffice ever reached 100% compatibility and feature parity with Microsoft Office, and if the Adobe Creative Cloud ever got ported to Linux, then this could spell trouble for Windows.

> for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable

That sounds reasonable, given that

> ChromeOS is built on top of the Linux kernel. Originally based on Ubuntu, its base was changed to Gentoo Linux in February 2010 (--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS)

> and gaming on linux is rapidly becoming usable.

I hate Microsoft and Windows just as much as the next self-respecting nerd, but this is no less a lol right now than it was 20 years ago. It’s like Linux users all play the same 15 titles that have Linux support and think those 15 games reflect broad ecosystem support.

Except for games with anti cheats, can you quote from your head three games the last 10-15 years that aren’t running perfectly on Linux ?

Because from my ~1 500 titles steam library, I can think of one game that I had issues with. And even this particular game (which is Tomb Raider 2013, btw) worked perfectly fine after a little hack. And ironically the "hack" was checking a checkbox in Steam to force using the Windows version of the game instead of the official Linux port.

You clearly haven't been paying attention or are being disingenuous. Most games released now just work on Linux thanks to Proton. There's a reason the Steam Deck is blowing away any other PC gaming handhelds.

Your delusions are pathological.

Even though the article says that Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” workaround earlier this year, I just used it earlier this evening to set up a new Win11 PC for a neighbour successfully (she didn't have a Microsoft account on her previous Win10 laptop, and wanted it the same way).

At the part of the initial setup where it asks to connect to a network, press Shift + F10 to open the Command Prompt. Then, type oobe\bypassnro and press Enter. The system will reboot and start the initial setup again in a non-network mode that allows you to create a local user account.

The new HP PCs I've deployed recently did not have current Windows 11 builds installed. I tend to think OEMs are being slow to update their master images.

I wonder which teams are working on these features. I'd like to meet with them in person. There are a lot to discuss.

They probably know exactly what your thoughts are about this change.

You could discuss how huge their salaries are.

Search for "Local-only commands removal" on the page for the relevant section:

  Local-only commands removal: We are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE). While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use. Users will need to complete OOBE with internet and a Microsoft account, to ensure device is setup correctly.

>While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens

Poor people. Surely Microsoft is fixing this by giving them a proper local skip that doesn’t bypass the other critical setup?

Presumably the business/enterprise editions still do?

The requiring internet part is particularly egregious, wow.

Because it seems that microsoft could not shitify windows experience anymore.

I like windows, Its a great system specially for being productive, but the godamn start menu using react and edge and the online requirements are a pain in the ass.

Sometimes it just hangs while you click the windows key. All I want is to open notepad++...

Sounds like more lies: you can still use autounattend.xml as far as I know. If they broke this it would break almost all the top corporate enterprise stuff

(same reason they still have network printer driver vulnerabilities because they refuse to fix old shit in the name of backward compatibility)

"critical"

Autounattend files are about to become far more popular...

And on that note, have to recommend this tool for them: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

All the lamentations of having to tinker with Linux to get it to work properly are rapidly approaching a nuclear level irony bomb...

I understand the desire to get out from under the MS umbrella, as there are definitely legitimate gripes. But I also see the irony that if you have the technical ability to install a Linux distro, you definitely have the technical ability to use an autounattend XML.

you would also be perceptive enough to realise, you are resisting an openly hostile actor, and the apron strings should be cut.

I don't know about openly hostile. Definitely making moves that the user base openly disagree with and think are, at best, very bad decisions, but I don't think they have crossed the "hostile" line. And MS is not alone with those kinds of decisions.

Apple may not "force" you to use an iCloud account for their devices, but they sure push it hard.

As far as Linux communities go, Red Hat, Arch, Cisco, and even Ubuntu have also done their fair share of "bad decisions".

everybody else is doing it doesnt excuse the issue.

when users make a technical effort to workaround these bad decisions, and you keep chasing after them, subverting said technical measures, in order to enforce said bad decisions, this has gone far beyond being bad decisions; it is being done on purpose to prevent users from opting out of a Hostile ecosystem.

It doesn't excuse the issue, but it certainly makes it harder to step away from them solely on that argument.

They've been marching towards this since Windows 8. Sysadmins have said this was coming since then. As soon as they added Microsoft account login integration this is what we all knew they were going to do.

Bit the bullet and deleted the Windows partition from my Fedora dual boot. Good riddance. Will never give Microsoft another dime as long as I live

Time for me to go all in on Linux. Ubuntu has been my daily driver on dual boot with windows since MS started using dark patterns to opt in to OneDrive.

My next build will be solo boot!

My work machine is a Mac though I don't get any say in that.

Good choice! I've been solo boot Linux for years and absolutely love it.

I recently tried out Kubuntu and am pleased. It's as Windows-like as I want it to be. The extra work to deal with drivers so far has been minor.

I wish people had this same enthusiasm for ios and andriod.

Nice. Make an online account so that your data are uploaded to a different country, and they can ban you from your own computer at any moment for any reason or without one (for example, President woke up in a bad mood).

I am surprised that somebody agrees to that terms.

Are we sure this is the case for all Win11 builds? Or does this change only apply to users in the insiders program on the Dev channel (I presume you just be logged in with your Microsoft account to configure a machine with an insider build of Windows)

I recently was able to purchase a Win11 pro license from Newegg to upgrade a Win11 home machine without creating a MS account, that's probably an easier hole to patch if they truly want to prevent offline use entirely.

I've switched to Linux. It's easier at this point. It's less slick, but I absolutely do not trust MS any more.

Why is _anyone_ still using Windows?

A lot of the corporate IT workforce is heavily invested in Microsoft systems. It creates somewhat of a co-dependency.

I only run Linux at home. My mom also runs Linux, though she doesn't really know a lot about it. If I could I would have run only Linux at my previous corporate jobs. But the IT people balk: how will windows defender work in Linux? At one point they did install windows defender on Linux and it ground a fine machine basically to a halt.

> But the IT people balk: how will windows defender work in Linux?

They don't think that at all. They probably know more about Linux than you do because I guarantee half the systems they manage are already running it.

What they think about are the applications that the people who actually make the decisions at your companies refuse to migrate away from. They know the cost of hiring Linux sysadmins vs Windows sysadmins. They think about everyone in every other company and how much harder they are to hire when suddenly none of them know how to use their office computer when they're hired. They think about the half dozen or so business critical applications which genuinely don't have Linux equivalents. None of the executives, nobody in HR, nobody in accounting or business. Nobody in sales. Let alone... nobody in the actual non-tech industry that most businesses operate in.

And it's not the college graduates they're worried about. It's the people with 5, 10, or 15 years experience who will just not want to work at a company where they have to compromise and use non-standard software.

It's still not economically viable for any corporation outside of exactly a small tech industry start-up to switch away from Microsoft, and it has nothing to do with the cost of operating system licenses or support.

In my example they literally demanded to run Windows Defender on a Linux server that I requested. There was no Linux experience on the IT team whatsoever.

Can't make a custom gaming rig with Mac. Linux gaming isn't quite there yet too.

> Linux gaming isn't quite there yet too.

The game industry uses the same argument that other industries use as well; tiny user base and the distribution is a mess.

I understand those arguments; they are valid, to a point... but if Autodesk uses mostly NodeJS and Python and OpenGL for Fusion360, why can't they ship a linux version, too?!?

The biggest category of games that don't work on Linux are those that demand a root kit (where they attempt to justify it as anti-cheat), and not letting a root kit on one's computer is desirable for many reasons.

At this point, there are very few games where I've personally had to switch back to windows. I don't play online though so not impacted by Anti-cheat systems

Yeah it really comes down to online gameplay. The _only_ thing keeping me in microsoft's orbit is online gaming.

Device drivers.

A lot of industrial/embedded hardware only ships with Windows drivers. It's super annoying.

There are a few applications that simply do not run well enough on Linux. It's easy enough to find a list with an internet search. Mostly graphics and video editing packages, and DRM protection. However I think for a majority of people Linux should work just fine.

Altium and other dinosaurs that are still getting used to this newfangled "Windows" fad.

Because my job makes me

Same. But at home, I have a desktop (Linux Mint), a NUC server (Proxmox w various VMs/containers) and a MacBook Air M2/iPad that wife/kids use. I am starting to see them use the Linux Mint desktop more and more (main web browsing, word processing, etc) since I dropped Windows about 4 years ago. I did maintain a separate Win10 install for games but SteamDeck (and Win10 becoming EOL) made that obsolete but I am starting to get my feet wet in Linux gaming with my nvidia GPU but haven't really tried all the distros to pick one yet.

Is this the year of the Linux desktop? Unlikely, but I've started to donate more regularly to the Linux Mint team and same with any OSS that helps me maintain our privacy which I suspect is driving more and more to look into options instead of accepting the status quo.

Games with anti cheat :(

Well at least you should then have that on a dedicated gaming machine - treat it like a console. Not the same box you do your surfing, socials, banking and coding etc on. I think the intersection of people who can afford a rig for competitive online gaming but can't afford to keep it separate should be very small. Or at least put the gaming in an isolated Windows VM with GPU passthrough. Git gud.

All I need is to (easily) enable hibernate to work on Linux when booted with secure-boot, and to be able to set the scroll speed of my touchpad!

Surely, at the lowest level, there needs to be some kind of a local account. I would imagine ripping out the very concept of a local account to be totally infeasible. As long as that's true, I'd expect there to be a way to create one, even if that way ultimately no longer comes from Microsoft.

And what’s your point ? Surely the users can continue to be treated like that ?

Continuing to use an operating system, the only software that have full control over your digital life, from a company that have so much disrespect for their users and that is actively hostile against your choices, at one point that’s Stockholm Syndrome.

With Proton in Steam, my last need for windows is gone, couldn't have happened soon enough.

This is a bad idea. Now, with that established...

Microsoft has many intelligent people who work there and certainly do many risk vs. reward calculations for each modification to Windows. From Microsoft's perspective, they have much more control over the OS when everyone's linked to a cloud account. I morally disagree with that approach, but the security issues with Windows come from unpatched systems. They tried to win over software developers by creating WSL, but the privacy- and security-minded software developers never really bit.

Also, consider that Microsoft's future is obviously pivoted toward cloud infrastructure. Yes, they smartly have other ventures, but all those ventures will rely on Microsoft cloud infrastructure in some way. Server farms are a much better business model, from Microsoft's perpective, especially because it pulls Microsoft into the domains of true wealth: land acquisition, energy production, and data mining.

Proud Linux user here.

How will this work for government clients that need a secure environment?

There's actually a group policy to disable Microsoft accounts. No idea how well it works, but it's there

They will probably charge extra for it. I asked a public school IT person how he was handling FERPA with the new privacy violations on windows 10, and the answer was paying exorbitant fees.

They will likely log into a domain. If they need something offline/air gapped, I'm not sure either.

[dead]

ive had two people ask me today, for "that linux thing"; "the one that lets you use your computer for free"

that is visceraly hilarious.

I only need Microsoft to run airgapped TurboTax, which for 2025 will require Windows 11.

Maybe it's time to switch tax return software.

FreeTaxUSA is great and web based.

Web-based isn't airgapped? Working in tech, I know what absolute slimeballs pretty much any tech company is about privacy and user data today.

So out of all options you use turbo tax?

I know your stance on piracy. But I will bet that whatever check for Windows 11 they add will be completely superfluous, and that the patcher for TT2025 will patch it right out. Just sayin'.

Hey Microsoft, are you trying to force me to NOT use Windows? Because that is what this feels like.

'We'll never require you to need an online account to log in to your system'

Look how that changed.

Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing.

Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S.

What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine?

People jumped to Windows 7 out of spite; with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months. Windows 7 is EOL and no longer receives security patches, so security wise people are a lot worse off than what was anticipated.

Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'

I own this iPad, as in: it's mine. Why should I, and why would I want to put MY device's access and security on the whims of company?

They want to own our hardware, and our software.

I for one preach Linux Desktop, Manjaro XFCE for me. I think people are sticking with Windows 7 despite it being EOL because games and their software will for the most part not run in to issues linux gaming may be facing.

That ain't the way. Your computer. Your choice. No cloud accounts/everything being logged on the desktop that people do, no 'requirements' to utilize the new software, and no 'requirements' to connect people to cloud backup systems to later coerce and push people to buy.

This should have been the EU approach to Apple. Instead we got third party "App Stores" to install software Apple still approves and controls. It could have been a three paragraph law.

> People jumped to Windows 7 out of spite; with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months. Windows 7 is EOL and no longer receives security patches, so security wise people are a lot worse off than what was anticipated.

If you saw the same report of that, it turned out to be a UA anomaly. Most likely very few people actually went back to Win 7, which now has quite bad compatibility with newer hardware and software.

> Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'

If it has a passcode and you remember the passcode, you should still be able to wipe the device with Apple Configurator?

If the situation is that you don't have a passcode, but you do have an iCloud account where you don't remember the password and can't access the email address, and either don't have access to the recovery phone number or never specified one, then yeah. You might need to find your receipt and bring it to an Apple store to be reset.

> I own this iPad, as in: it's mine. Why should I, and why would I want to put MY device's access and security on the whims of company?

Great question! You did configure it that way, so it might be worth asking yourself.

It is impossible to configure recent ipads in any other way. There are no established 3rd party OSes that you can install, even with great effort. IOS does not respect user freedom. As an example, see the restrictions on running code that Apple didn't approve of (directly, or, in the EU, indirectly).

> with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months.

Where do you get these figures from? Is there a sensible % increase?

I've been using Linux desktop for a decade now and I am certain it still used by few, and nothing has changed recently. Or you're telling me 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop?

Probably not 2026, but sure, by 2030. A fair chunk of the younger generation do give a shit about privacy (see also: torrenting on the rise again), Linux is mostly unattended with respect to configuring things these days, and things like "sound" and "games" are for the most part a thing of the past outside of 4 or 5 specific games that require kernel-level anticheat.

yes torrenting is on the rise, and a lot more people seem to be aware of private torrents.

2025 is surly the year of Linux desktop this time!

Last time I saw stats Linux desktop marketshare, somebody said it was up to 6%. That's astonishing. Imagine it getting to 15-20%. Imagine that many people owning their own computers again. Then all that's left is keeping IBM/Redhat's grubby hands off it.

> Last time I saw stats Linux desktop marketshare, somebody said it was up to 6%. That's astonishing.

I wouldn't get too excited about that. That might just be because people are moving off of desktops entirely and now only own mobile devices, a market where Linux may as well not exist (excluding Android). The number goes up, because at large, the portion of people who run Linux desktops are less likely to pivot to using only a mobile phone as they tend to be hobbyists/enthusiasts.

I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, personally it is astonishing to me that is only 6%. I do buy the corporates explanation. I even buy the gaming explanation ( despite only heavily online games being 'better' on Windows -- from developer's perspective ). But everyone else? I can only assume it has to do with how little personal computing is done today not on smartphones.

I'm guessing that's 6% increase in users not 6% market share

>on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine?

Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space. Windows 11 is really there as a checkpoint to force people to upgrade to more secure hardware. If you dont care about security, you probably dont care about security updates, you can remain with Windows 10.

Thats not to say that they went about this in a pro consumer way. Its been bungled. But specifically on the point of hardware upgrades, for your average windows user the hardware isnt really "fine" as you put it.

>Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'

On the apple front, they get 10x the amount of flak for "enabling" stolen hardware to be reformatted and reused, than they get for bricking people who lose access to an account.

Recovery is expendable in Apple town. Recovery of iCloud accounts enabled identity theft and personal photos of celebs to be released. Recovery of hardware enables theft. Its a losing proposition.

>That ain't the way. Your computer. Your choice.

We really need a hardware path without conflicting priorities.

The problem is the protection against malware is rolled in with protection against the end user. This leads down a dark path and it seems we collectively have decided end users are less important than the corporate profits and protection against malware.

Microsoft wants you to have a laptop with the goal that you will use it to log on to work services or play games.

Apple wants you to have a tablet to spend money on apps.

You need hardware built outside of that paradigm to have a hope of avoiding a mess of locked down anti consumer nonsense.

>Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space.

nope. only useful for corporate setting. We should be able to run anything we want, however we want, without any arbitrary requirements by MS. Especially if it was proven already that it isn't a hard requirement to run the OS - just an arbitrary setting.

It just paves road for more invasive DRM and even more locked down systems.

If they have issue with crashes, and taking blame for corporate AV failures - don't give out kernel level access to them.

>Recovery is expendable in Apple town. Recovery of iCloud accounts enabled identity theft and personal photos of celebs to be released. Recovery of hardware enables theft. Its a losing proposition.

I don't care as a customer. I want my data, I don't care about corporate profit margins - and I shouldn't need to. Data theft is pure service issue of them not vetting recovery enough - due to cutting costs on it.

They're not "arbitrary requirements". They're requirements to enable VBS, one of the largest leaps in kernel security history.

>nope. only useful for corporate setting. We should be able to run anything we want, however we want, without any arbitrary requirements by MS. Especially if it was proven already that it isn't a hard requirement to run the OS - just an arbitrary setting.

Right, crazy I swear I hung a lantern on that, implying you could just keep using Windows 10.

>I don't care as a customer. I want my data, I don't care about corporate profit margins - and I shouldn't need to. Data theft is pure service issue of them not vetting recovery enough - due to cutting costs on it.

Right, crazy again I swear I thought I wrapped up by saying we needed a hardware path without conflicting priorities.

> If you dont care about security

Microsoft's idea of Security is security from me, not security for me. They use this overloaded language because it's so hard to argue against. It's a thought-terminating cliché. Oh you must not care about being secure huh???

Microsofts idea of security is security from being blamed for large scale breaches. I dont think they think about you or me at all tbh.

My point was, if you dont care about Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0, then you probably dont also care about security updates. Not whatever insult you thought I was making.

If your thoughts were terminated, that was entirely self inflicted.

These so-called security features have wildly different threat models than other security features.

Secure Boot and TPM are ways to attest that what is running is what Microsoft signed. This is only useful if I think that non-nation-state attackers will have physical access to my hardware. Nation-state attackers can probably get something signed with the public secure boot keys. TPM is just more of the same — it lets the software running on a computer verify that it has not been changed from what Microsoft signed. If I controlled the signing key (perhaps every manufactured device has its own key that is sold with the device, which I can then sign whatever OS I want with), then I could gain some security without this control loss, and that would be useful.

Regarding bitlocker, I can encrypt my drive just fine with no TPM as long as I do not expect my OS to be tampered with (which requires physical access or running something untrusted as root). I can simply use a long password with many hash cycles, so if someone stole my drive they could not decrypt it without the password. But, if the key were in the TPM, then nation-state actors could probably get it back out, depending on exact implementation (for example for biometric unlock). So, in this way, using a TPM is less secure.

We should also do away with TPMs in most cases, since all that they serve to do is attest that the corporation with the keys to the TPM decided what was running and that no one interfered with that. It's DRM, plain and simple.

There are other security updates that I may want, however, even if I am not concerned about giving an attacker root of physical access. For example, Windows has had vulnerabilities which can be exploited over a network.

> if you dont care about Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0, then you probably dont also care about security updates

Huh? I certainly care about the latter but not the former, and I doubt I'm in the minority.

Why, if you dont mind my asking?

And how long would you expect Microsoft to write updates for computers with insecure boot chains, and secure boot chains? How much should they spend on mitigations for classes of attack that you can shut down just by updating? Why would they risk being seen to support a platform, that they consider a potential vector of incredibly bad PR, just for end user convenience? They have been browbeaten into being extremely security conscious, especially after the SMB stuff.

Personally, my Win 10 laptops are becoming Debian laptops as god intended.

For secure boot and TPM, I'm not worried about someone breaking into my house and hacking my bios. I'm worried about getting a virus. Secure boot is useless but updates are important.

For bitlocker, I like it. But I use the password version that doesn't need any particular hardware.

How long do I expect updates? Well for starters, not even ten years of support for processors that were state of the art in 2018 is very bad. And windows 10 stopped being the newest option in 2021, so would ten years from that be so burdensome for security updates?

And no it's not a PR risk to release updates for windows 10. You don't need to stretch that hard, please.

> Why, if you dont mind my asking?

Because I care that I'm secure, but I don't care that my computer isn't secure from me.

> how long would you expect Microsoft to write updates for computers with insecure boot chains, and secure boot chains?

Forever, because the same code works for both unless they go out of their way to do extra work for it not to.

> How much should they spend on mitigations for classes of attack that you can shut down just by updating?

There are basically zero attacks against ordinary consumers that SB/TPM protect from. The kinds of attacks regular people need to worry about are resolved through regular updates that don't need those things.

> Why would they risk being seen to support a platform, that they consider a potential vector of incredibly bad PR, just for end user convenience?

What are you talking about? There's no bad PR in allowing SB/TPM to be off. The bad PR comes from requiring them to be on.

> They have been browbeaten into being extremely security conscious, especially after the SMB stuff.

SB/TPM aren't actual security. They're DRM masquerading as security.

> Personally, my Win 10 laptops are becoming Debian laptops as god intended.

That's good, but it doesn't invalidate any of the above.

Rufus and or Massgrave. It's all you need.

Laughing in Arch Linux.

Seriously, though, now that Win10 is being phased out, it’s time for people to wake up and join us in the free world. M$ wants you to throw away your hardware and buy a new computer with Win11. Give them the middle finger, format and install Linux instead.

If you like playing video games with your friends and working in a normal job you'll likely be using Windows 90% of the time even if you loathe it.

You're right. Wow, what a unique and novel opinion that no linux user has ever heard before. You know what, you've changed my mind, I'm installing windows now

Can you use a Macintosh without an Apple account?

Sort of, but with similar limitations: The App Store, iCloud syncing, iMessage, FaceTime, and other Apple online services are unavailable unless an Apple ID is used.

What's the difference here?

IIRC:

What you can do:

1. At setup time, you are not forced to provide any apple ID.

2. You can login to your notebook without needing Apple ID

3. Install apps directly (i.e not from app store)

What you cannot

1. Install apps from App Store

2. Get Apple care etc.

Fewer people use Macs and those that do are disproportionately more likely to think privacy and freedom are unimportant

This is anti-consumer.

I am glad I have habituated myself to the pains of using Linux on the Desktop for the last 20 years.

MS owes people a working basic Windows ecosystem. We need to find the Middle Manager Driven Development that's responsible for this nonsense and put an end to it.

You think a shift like this is coming from middle management? Feels like an executive driven strategy shift towards recurring revenue, subscriptions, advertising, data collection, app stores, and away from the old OS licensing business model to me.

Switched to Linux for gaming. Getting more FPS on Linux too.

Windows for work. Linux and Mac at home.

The kids only get chromebook and Macs.

I use Linux at work and at home. I give Linux running Cinnamon to non-technical family members. I would not give a Chromebook. They're extremely locked down, and I don't want such things to have market share since that forces others to engage with such locked down nonsense.

Thanks Microsoft!

Without your help I'd inadvertently skip some critical setup screens and potentially exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use and that would be a huge disaster. You literally saved my device!

At this point if you are still willingly part of the MS ecosystem I'd say that's a case of Stockholm Syndrome. At the time of the SCO lawsuit I decided enough is enough and I haven't looked back. Software development is actually easier on Linux, there are good enough alternatives for most applications so unless your job demands that you use a particular package you might as well bite the bullet.

Microsoft will never change its ways, no matter how much windowdressing they use underneath it is the same evil empire that it always was.

shrug life as a developer in Microsoft-land is pretty nice these days. I quite like Azure Functions and Azure SQL Server, C# is great, Visual Studio is kind of slow but better than anything not made by JetBrains.

Really my only complaint is the lack of a nice, modern desktop UI framework but you can’t win them all.

I don't care about convenience, I care about the ethics of the companies that I work with. Convenience is what got us in this mess in the first place, it certainly isn't going to get us out of it. And if you don't want to implicitly support Microsoft Windows V 267 (now with more advertising, DNA samples for access and a free psych evaluation), then 11 is as good a time to break with them as any.

I hate to say it, but the vast majority of users are going to just adapt and keep going. Probably north of 70% of computer users see these and just automatically accept, sign up, all of that. It's not that they don't care, they just don't understand.

Well, Windows desktop/laptop market share is down to 70.2%, so it’s possible you’re correct.

In other news, Linux is over 5 now.

At some point we can use the Konami code to break out of the requirement right?

I am getting so tired of this MS push to have me use their systems. I already purchased windows, if I wanted to use their other stuff - I would buy it.

Seriously considering the move to Linux - I've heard it's getting better, but it would cost me a bit of time getting used to it. The pain is really starting to seem like a lower cost every day.

These days I find Linux and windows have a roughly equal amount of issues to deal with, and because I have decades of experience learning how to work through those issues, they are equally painful so I can happily choose Linux over windows.

What makes Linux especially painful to windows users is they basically need to relearn how to solve the same sort of problems they’ve forgotten they’ve been solving all the time in windows, but in Linux. Which makes the effort novel and thus especially noticeable.

Basically it takes accepting one is going to get smacked with fractal side quests of searching how to fix problems for a bit, but it does get better fairly quickly.

Is there a worry that torrent packagers won't be able to work around these, or what's the actual concern here? I mean if you're using Windows for anything beyond a VM binary compatibility layer for some software you must use, aren't you kind of asking to be abused at this point?

If you are getting your OS from some third party torrent packager you are doing it wrong. There are far easier ways to get around this without trusting that some mysterious third party hasn't embedded some malware in their custom Windows deployment.

You're already putting your trust in some mysterious first party to not embed malware...

You're doing that pretty much regardless of what OS you use. Yes, I agree MS has issues, but legitimate malware has not yet been a line they have crossed.

If I created a program that took screenshots and keylogged everything that you did, and then put it in your computer, you'd rightly call it malware. But, when Microsoft does this, it isn't? They aren't exactly trustworthy (as you said, it has issues).

With Microsoft allegedly trying to close down all those ways, it sure sounds like OS modification (or not using Windows) is the reasonable endgame here? I'm not sure how this comment, saying to not use modified OSes but use the "far easier ways", fits with the submitted article. Not everyone has the skills to modify the compiled code files that make Windows require a Microsoft account

If it's so easy, which are these ways, then? Do you think they'll remain available indefinitely?

Not that I don't underwrite the risks involved in getting your OS from untrusted or unreputable sources

The simplest remaining way that I am aware of is actually an autounattend file. This is a Microsoft supplied method that has been around for a long time and something that I truly believe will stick around untouched because it is pretty much a requirement of any enterprise Windows deployment.

Not only does it allow you to create a local admin account, but you can also skip all the other setup screens that you want by pre-supplying values. Throw this file into your Windows boot media, do a fresh install (which you should be doing when you get a new machine regardless), and away you go. I use this both personally and my work environment. Not only are you then not relying on modifying OS ISO's or compilations, but an XML file is relatively easy to verify that only the settings you have set are the ones being input into the system if you utilize a third party tool like the one available at schneegeas.de

I know there are more direct sources. But for the amount of mental energy I want to invest into Windows, discovery through torrents is far easier. My workflow consists of creating a VM, installing / updating everything, taking a snapshot, then removing network access before it gets access to Samba shares with any private information.

I suppose I might still be worried about targeted offline-acting malware if I were using Windows to control some enrichment centrifuges or something. But apart from that, I'm fine with it frolicking on its isolated jungle.