Well, Microsoft is getting ready to annoy its faithful Windows 10 user base with yet another prompt. This time, Microsoft wants Windows 10 users to switch from using a local account to their online Microsoft account.
It turns off in you install linux
Great success
Man, Microsoft really seems like they don’t want power users on their OS anymore. Forced AI junk, Ads, MS accounts, and all kinds of other junk. Waiting to see what the Linux Desktop adoption numbers are this fall.
Sounds more like they don’t want any users
they dont, they want subscribers
The modern software industry is a blight upon this world. I should know; I’m part of it.
As much as I like to see this sentiment, I think now as ever the people who actually follow through with moving to Linux will be few in number.
Most users who get fed up and decide the hell with it are likely to just buy a Mac instead, as revolting a development as that may be.
Adoption rate is increasing from what I’ve heard. But you’re right, Linux/a Linux distribution isn’t going to take over anytime soon.
But I think once those users truly switched to Linux, very few will switch back. Sure there’ll be the odd gamer who absolutely “needs” to play that one game which has anti-cheat that’s unsupported on Linux. But other than that, once you’re in, you’re likely in for good. And long-term you pass it on to your family, mainly your children (my first computer was a DOS/Windows machine mostly because my dad used the OS himself then).
Yeah, I switched to Mint back in 2019 and can’t imagine going back. I have a Windows dual boot for certain games, but whenever I use it it feels like such a terrible experience compared to Linux. I don’t think I’ve used it in a couple months because of that lol.
Which has the exact same issues, but they are presented as “ecosystem” so it’s ok
yeah this was me. swapped to Mac. Couldn’t bring myself to sign up to all the debugging that would go into having a Linux based laptop. I left windows due to the overhead of disabling the bloatware, popups and general bullshit. I didn’t want to swap that for other ongoing issues. Just give me something that works. It’s an OS, not a hobby project
Yeah, but Mac is actually weird and unintuitive. Like, I never figured out that to install programs you have to drag them in. I just clicked on the icon after opening the .dmg
It’s so funny that you use the word “unintuitive” and the describe the most intuitive way of adding a program to your computer. 😁
How would I know to drag anything anywhere?
How do you get new furniture into your house?
Our way, since I’m a Windows and Linux user, of adding applications is a remnant from the old times. We have left the age where computers are maintained by men in white coats and powerful computers took up while buildings.
Apples way is more intuitive since it mimics how it most often works in the real world.
Computers should adapt to humans, not the other way around.
I add the furniture to my
configuration.nix
and rebuild the whole house
My brother got a Mac for work. He couldn’t get used to the fact that a simple press of the Home key wouldn’t go to the start of the line; it goes to the start of the FILE.
Why??
Oh that would do my head in, i use home to go to the start of a line extensively
are likely to just buy a Mac instead
That’s fine, actually. I can talk to a Mac user. I can say things like “it’s in a folder under your Home directory” and they will know exactly where that is. Windows users will just stare at you, slack-jawed and drooling.
Windows user A will not know what their home directory is and will respond as described. Windows user B will assume that it is their “my documents” folder, which may or may not be the case, because: Windows user C will know that there are effectively three home directories in Windows (/users/username, /users/username/documents, and /users/username/appadata/local) but that won’t help anybody determine which one some program actually put the goddamn file in.
2023 was the year of the Linux laptop for me. 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the Linux desktop for myself as well.
Funny, I just picked up a Laptop for Linux. To help bring my self to a Linux Desktop.
What’s the tidiest distro these days?
I’d say that depends a lot on what you want it to do. Are you looking for a very simple and easy desktop experience? Go with Ubuntu or one of its many derivatives. Do you pine for the glory days of RedHat? Go with fedora. Do you want maximal control over every facet of your computer? Arch.
the only reason i wouldnt recommend ubuntu nowadays is snaps. they make the system so sloooow.
I recommend Mint Debian edition. It’s pretty easy to get into, without a lot of the nonsense Ubuntu comes with.
I personally use openSUSE Tumbleweed, which has worked pretty well for me for the last 5 years or so. However, it’s a really bleeding edge distro and not Debian based, so you may have issues finding help (I’m available if interested).
Look around and find something you like. Anything Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora-based should be pretty safe in the “getting help” department.
Mint Virginia. It’s easy distro to navigate. Has all the drivers. It’s quick and simple.
NixOS is the tidiest. Having all your configurations in one or two files is excellent
As a NixOS user myself, I wouldn’t recommend it to someone new to Linux.
The person never said they were new to Linux
Aye, I used Ubuntu back when I was working retail, as I’d put it on units which didn’t have Windows licences.
Every person is going to have different opinions as to what distro works best for them. What exactly are you looking for in an ideal operating system?
Best would be to try different ones and see which one works best for you, but if I had more of an idea of what you’re looking for and what kind of hardware you’re using, I’d be able to recommend some distros to try out.
Are you a power user? Do you prefer stability or always having the latest software? Do you value ease of use or do you consider yourself more of a power user? Do you want to learn how to use the Terminal, or whould you rather avoid it and use graphical tools instead?
Also different desktop environments, even on the same distro will provide vastly different experiences.
Still sad because my Precision 5560 (same as XPS 9510) has this floaty trackpad bug on Ubuntu and Pop OS for whatever reason! (I haven’t tried any other distro). Much easier for me to swap to Linux on my laptop than my desktop because my laptop is just for Python, LaTeX, and MATLAB.
Dell even sells a 5560 with Ubuntu preinstalled, but they don’t make it available for users. But I have not for the life of me been able to get the track-pad bug to go away.
Try a more modern kernel. Lookup installing mainline kernels on Ubuntu. Pretty easy.
You could wait a couple of days and try ubuntu 24.04
with its much newer kernel it might not have that issue
Here’s the fix (yoinked from archwiki)
Sadly I’ve been at this thread and done this already, did not work :(
People think it’s just due to the trackpads being crap (and somehow Windows gets around it). I’ll probably never need to buy another laptop, but if I do I will probably not buy a Dell again regardless of how much I love every other aspect of this laptop.
Obligatory “switch to Linux to turn it off” comment.
But honestly, Windows becoming more annoying and actively working against me is the reason I finally switched 4 months ago. It wasn’t that Windows is proprietary, or that Linux has some technological advantages (as Windows probably has others) or that I disliked the desktop environment or whatever. It got in my way, and that’s disrespectful and time consuming. I don’t want my OS to get in my way, I want to do things with my computer.
The irritating thing about all this is, at least if Raymond Chen is to be believed, the OS letting you do what you want without getting in your way was actually a/the core design philosophy of Windows up until probably the end of the XP era. It seems with Vista they started losing the plot, and by the time of Windows 8 Microsoft had fully committed to going completely off the rails.
Honestly, Windows 7 was kind of good. It’s the last Windows OS I could stand to use because it’s the last one that was offline. You could do whatever you want and update whenever you want, there were no ads in the start menu or whatever
Knock it off, Microsoft. You’re not my buddy, you’re an OS. Your job is to sit down, shut up, and run the programs I choose. That’s it.
If I find a function that’s useful for more than a week, I might make a batch file for it. Until then, you’re spare code.Man I have to take this tone with every LLM I talk to.
Personally I love that Microsoft did this. Please keep making windows more and more shit and annoying to use so people will switch to something else
You vastly underestimate the tolerance of an average user who barely knows their way around a web browser and Word.
My mom doesn’t even have a computer. She’s already retired so there’s not much money to squeeze from that demographic. In my late 20s, 30s and 40s I could build a new computer no problem. I use Linux. There’s no going back ever. Unfortunately I use windows at work cuz I’m forced to do that and I occasionally have to help my wife to windows some shit. No, my kids are going down the Linux rabbit hole.
I said the same thing, until the kids needed to use Office365 for school.
And NO, Libreoffice won’t cut it because the school is deeply entrenched with Microsoft - it’s not just using Word or whatever, but all those OneDrive things that are so tightly integrated.
So they run Windows, and I hate it. My work laptop also runs Windows, and I hate it. But there’s only so far you can take your idealism if you still want to be part of a normal functioning society.
My home server rocks Linux and Docker and whatnot. But work and school? Just accept it.
Can’t you use Office and OneDrive online?
Yeah, you just need a browser and you’re set, you could even use a tablet, no need for windows.
There has to be a resistance. Basically all of us who know our way around a computer, we simply quit helping the rest and bam Microsoft is history. And I think that’s happening now. I’m simply not going to push that shit into my kid’s life. I have a simple mind and I’m simple minded. Here I am typing on a little rectangle of glass and plastic with one finger. I’m writing more than a few words a day to many strangers. There’s no need for 15gig or you pay google powered AI one drive shit. You know that. Me, I would like to own my works of art. Wether it’s this very response or a photo. I want to know where in my computer the thing is stored and I would like for Microsoft to not have access to it. It’s a privacy issue. All the big companies are going to hit the privacy wall soon. Besides their shitty software, they will be hit by legal battles. If they win, we all loose. If they loose, then maybe, just maybe our kids will grow up with computing options that are there to help them and not to take advantage of their labor. Man, I’m willing to stand up in front of a PTA meeting and say this. I’m just tired of these tech corporations running loose and taking away our future. That’s all.
Windows users will add a new PowerShell command or registry hack to the pile of shit to do to clean up a fresh install, and keep complaining that Linux is too hard.
Lol yeah I keep hearing about the commands and stuff people have to do at Win11 installation to stop it from forcing you to have an account or satisfy MS’s ridiculous TPM requirements. I hear about the commands people run to disable (most) telemetry, and the registry edits people use to prevent Windows from spawning ads, etc.
And I’m like damn, why is windows so complicated? It should never be required that a user open a terminal/command prompt.
You’re not mah buddeh Guy!
I’m not your guy, friend!
I’m Guy your friend, not!
I’m not your friend, buddeh!
I turned it off two weeks ago by installing Mint.
For a second I was wondering how the money management app that intuit just killed stopped this for you. Forgot that’s also a distro, I’m a dumbass.
If you’re referencing the bypass used on new windows 11 machines they patched it.
I hope the person who implemented the bypass didn’t get shit for it. And fuck, hope there’s a new way
If there is I still can’t find it. I’ve been using a generic email address and creating a new profile deleting the Microsoft one. It’s annoying af
Rufus usb installer bypass
Unfortunately my boss doesn’t want us using Rufus. Please don’t ask me why, it doesn’t make sense.
The bypassnro command still works though. Installed 23H2 in a VM yesterday and it worked fine.
Even if you put in a bogus user and pw three times? Not joking, that used to let you get a local account option.
Oh I tried a lot more than 3 times
Shift +F10 (shift+fn+F10 on some laptops) to open a terminal, during the initial setup. Then just type: oobe/bypassnro
PC will reboot. Don’t have Ethernet connected, don’t connect to WiFi and boom!
This is great thank you!
Im not surprised really
Well said.
Haven’t they done this since like Windows 8 or even 7? Thought it was pretty much mandatory already tbh.
Not really. There’s always a skip or cancel button or “sign in another way” prompt somewhere. I think this means they’re going to start prompting people more often.
ah this one is easy, it’s called use linux.
Stop coping and use linux.
This has been: your local linux user, thank you for having me.
This crap is getting annoying. Most people are office workers with no say about their day to day OS.
Office workers will not be getting pestered to sign up for a Microsoft account.
you best be sure they’ll be paying for it though!
ok
I had to use a Microsoft account because I really wanted Xbox GamePass on my PC so I can play PC games. It required it on the OS level.
I wish I could say it’s not that bad. But it really sucks!
Things like having to restart, or apps/games not working because it couldn’t talk to Microsoft servers.
I let my subscription lapse a year ago when I bought a Steam Deck. And honestly hoping Proton gets even more coverage.
I specifically have Pro because Home doesn’t allow you to disable shit like this.
I personally have Linux because it doesn’t have this in the first place.
Same, and with only a few exceptions, it’s been a fairly painless switch
How about reinstall it fresh and run that OOBE command during the initial setup? Idk if it’s still working or not
I switched to Linux because of this. I’m sick of them pushing some OneDrive agenda. I want a personal computer. Not a cloud connection that a corporation has access to.
It’s been mentioned multiple times already, but yeah, with each new action microsoft takes, it pushes me toward linux. I’m not currently on linux because I’m lazy, but my next build will be linux since I’ll need to install an OS anyway then.
I love how microsoft is becoming more and more supportive of linux!! Thanks
(by making the switch to linux more enticing)