Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 Pro will soon require a Microsoft Account during initial setup

theverge.com

386 pointsSoapSeller451 comments

Using Windows with a Microsoft account introduces all sorts of issues that only power users tend to come across, and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.

For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.

It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.

I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles.

I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.

I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.

I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.

> I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities

Well, shit me.

I've not used Windows since 8 came out. However, I would have loved to have had that workflow for a multiple desktop type thing.

Why didn't I think of that 20 years ago?

(for a long time, windows has internally supported multiple desktops, but it's not quite the same)

I do the same thing on Linux. I have multiple different users I use for various purposes. One for Work, Personal, Side Business, and an emergency "break glass" user.

I install most applications in my home XDG directory if possible. It helps me have pure separation between work and home life. If I'm on my personal user, I do not have access to work tools, etc.

Highly recommended way to use any flavor of windows going back to way back when - give your admin account a long fancy password and then just rarely logon as that account. Your daily driver is an account with normal priviliges. Also good for Grandma so she can't install a bunch of spyware

Windows now exposes the multiple desktops feature in the shell.

You can still create local accounts - it sounds like it is just during initial setup they require a Microsoft account and internet access.

That's interesting and seems like an easy work-around. Just create the first account with a Microsoft account, and then create your real account afterwards as a local account. Then delete the first account you created and you have no more links to the Microsoft account. Seems too easy.

True, but in time it will escalate more, just as this escalation builds on the ones that came before it.

Just because a trap closes slowly doesn't mean it isn't a trap.

> For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult.

I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.

I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.

As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.

> RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier

Only if you use the same account on both computers. What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine.

I'm confused about your hypothetical. Why would they have to do that? Could you explain that issue more?

And only if you logged it at least once with the password. If you log in with the pins or other hello stuff, the computer won't have the password cached locally and won't let you in.

>RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier

Here is where it gets complicated, what you say is true for personal accounts and Hybrid Azure AD accounts, but it becomes super difficult with pure Azure AD accounts.

I haven't used pure Azure AD accounts from a management perspective before, and I've used it for less than a year as a user. However, I've yet to experience any sync issues personally. What kind of issues can crop up, and how?

My issue is that my Microsoft account has a long, random password that is saved in my password vault. I never have to manually type this in because I have it linked to the Microsoft Authenticator app. But if I try to RDP to a computer with a Microsoft Account, I have to use the password to connect with the RDP app (unless I'm missing something?). My local user accounts on my home LAN have complex but easy to remember passwords so this is not usually an issue for me.

If you're already signed in, you've got access to your vault, so it's not too hard to get your password from that when doing your login for RDP. Then you can have it remember your account, or just use the password vault each time. On the plus there, then all your computers are then protected by this complex password instead of weaker passwords. Then you can use PIN, Hello, or security keys for easier sign in locally. Your account is still protected by your complex password, the alternative login methods are local only and have short guess attempts.

I haven't tried but I think these days you can actually authenticate RDP with a security key associated with the account.

I am convinced Power Users are not the target market for Windows 11 (or maybe even windows). I mistakenly updated to it and have regretted it. Did you know they turned off animations when using Virtual Desktops [1]? A power-user feature on all the other OS' that took Microsoft till 2019 to adopt was crippled in little over 2 years after release.

[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/windo...

Color me confused. Why would I ever want animations when I change virtual desktops? I know what keys I pressed. I pressed them for a reason. The animation just gets in the way.

In general, animations don't seem like a "power user" feature at all. Animations hint at new users ("hey, where did that window go when I minimized it") but aren't useful once you understand the abstraction.

Being a power user does not make you infaillible or unable to press the wrong keys. A subtle animation is a trivial visual cue that they keys I pressed did something, the wrong keys resulting in the wrong cue. I am not looking at my keyboard when I switch desktops.

Look at tools, for example. Tools for power users do not have fewer cues and affordances than tools for neophytes. They have more, because they have more features, more power, and using them can be more dangerous. You can also see it that way: a newbie using a feature once a day will be wrong (and needing to be nudged to the right direction) once a day. A power user who is wrong 1 times every 100 they use a feature will still be wrong more often than the newbie if they use it more than 100 times a day.

Also, this:

> We’ve turned off the animation when switching Desktops using the keyboard shortcuts as it was leading to flashes and hangs

is fucking ridiculous. If your compositor is so bad you can’t animate desktop switching without “flashes and hangs”, it means you have some serious work to do on your display subsystem. Fix your OS already!

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/08/05/announc...

Maybe I just have exceptional cognitive and motor skills issues, but even though I spend pretty much all my time in front of a screen and consider myself to be a power user, I press wrong keys by mistake very often, and I do appreciate (fast) animations for feedback. There definitely should be at the very least a toggle though.

There should be some feedback to something so drastic as a desktop context change

When going "two to the right" over empty desktops it is nice to see it was triggered two times maybe? I have a habit of putting the same stuff on the same virtual desktop number, so the other are ofen empty.

Hum... Do I have an absolute shortcut to go to virtual desktop X, or only a relative one to go to the previous or next one?

On the first case animations aren't important, but on the second they are essential.

The main problem with a MS account is if you have alot of documents and you log onto a new machine, you better have good internet speed otherwise you will be waiting hours for the documents to come down. Its not so noticeable with windows server (at least since server 2000) and workstations because office network speeds are good but if you also had exchange, then local copies of exchange mailboxes also tied up office networks for ages especially if users had exchange/outlook mailboxes in excess of a several Gb in size. Usually at least 10/100 speed but usually faster, you dont get that over the internet hardly anywhere.

You can disable auto sync for onedrive and/or outlook. You can also mark your connection as metered so any background transfer will only be initiated on user approval.

Logging in with a MS account automatically uploads your documents to their cloud?

Cool…

I doubt it, considering that Microsoft only gives you 5GB of storage for free. Anyone with non-trivial amounts of documents will quickly blow through this. What the parent poster is talking about is probably the onedrive folder, which probably gets automatically set up when you sign in with your microsoft account.

No, it doesn't. I have no idea what the parent is talking about. It sounds like roaming profiles with an AD domain, nothing to do with an MS account.

I don't believe this is the case. On my corporate account stuff only uploads if you drop it in OneDrive. If you use “Documents” on OneDrive then yeah they get uploaded. Use it in the local folder, and it's local. Otherwise, I'm a Linux man.

There are settings to disable a lot of that, but Windows updates will often default them without informing the user.

The whole user-experience feels more like an active war against an hostile actor constantly trying to take over your machine.

> Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.

I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.

As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.

Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.

This is how I wound up becoming so annoyed that I finally switched to Linux. It’s been great. I haven’t even missed out on gaming.

I might get downvoted, but I like windows as an OS. I used it for years and it was pretty stable and easy to modify. Now that they are going the way of Google they really have nothing to keep me. Linux has been my main OS for years anyway. Windows I used for office, adobe products, and games. I guess I'll just keep a network gapped VM around for those on my linux and buy some extra memory to handle the VM.

Technically speaking it is nice. I like NT as an OS too. The user experience is being eroded by marketing.

Most of my work life has been focused on Microsoft products, so I've been using Windows for a long time as my primary OS. I upgraded to Windows 11 as soon as I could and despite me creating a local account initially, I then linked it to a Microsoft Account which has caused me no end of pain. There have been lots of other niggly issues with Windows 11 that I've been living with, e.g. I prefer having my taskbar on the right-hand side of the screen but that feature went away with Windows 11; and the start menu search has been playing up recently where I couldn't just start typing after the menu coming up - although it seems to be better at the moment.

I switched my laptop over to PopOS a while back and have really been enjoying that, although I miss not having the Office desktop apps available. I also purchased a OneDrive sync app for Linux which works very well.

I keep hoping Microsoft will go one step too far and everyone will be forced to switch. Hasn't happened yet.

Linux really doesn't have good alternatives for most of the tools I use, and none of it runs in Wine and similar, so I hope not.

Frog boiling is an art.

This is exactly what happened to me. I just had enough with all the anti-patterns emerging for each larger update or Windows iteration. I now do all work which require windows in a VM, and using PopOS as host and couldn't be happier.

If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago

Wow, this comment just crossed 50 replies. I think the fundamental issue is that Microsoft platforms have never maintained the invariant that knowing your username and password is enough to log in.

Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.

I could never get my RDP to work until I switched to using a local account. Now I know why I was pulling my hair out trying to get it working.

The RDP issue is only a problem because the UI doesn't make it clear that you need to have password sign-in enabled to RDP, when setting up a PIN during initial setup disables password sign-in.

> and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.

Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.

I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.

Never again windows with Microsoft accounts. I have two windows 10 licenses, one home and one pro. I made the mistake of associating the licenses to my Microsoft account and now there is no way to move the pro license from the old PC to the new one. The Microsoft support site is a complete joke of unpaid chatterers that send you on wild goose chase, the web is full of SEO bullshit site that keyword-dance around the issue... Windows 11 for me is Windows Never, and I am well under to way to ensure that the 100 odd laptops at $company run Ubuntu next thank you very much.

This is not true at all, you can transfer the license. Unless it was an OEM license and is tied to the hardware. It has nothing to do with your MS account. I've done this many times when upgrading hardware for myself and my family using different combinations of Home/Pro licenses.

I actually added mine to my Microsoft account specifically because it made it easier/safer to move the license to a new installation (new hard drive, in my case). You just do a base installation with physical media, sign in, and you’re good to go.

Thank You nightski. These are not OEM licenses, I bought the Windows Pro one fair and square and full. Can you send a link to an how to? I do confirm that I could not do it there was nothing on the MS license site that lets me do the switch. Nothing I confirm.

Also no warning or any information to the effect that something is being prevented because of an OEM situation. Just no way to switch the two licenses between the two PC's.

Abou nine years ago I bought a Windows 8 Pro license that was upgraded to 10 and now 11 for free. It was transfered between 4 or 5 machines including one virtual machine.

Perhaps your license is OEM?

Thanks for the heads up on not associating my win 10 pro license with a cloud account!

Can't you just deactivate the Home license and then install Pro? Or just try installing Pro then deactivating the Home license? I only have Pro keys attached to my account but I've shuffled them about between different computers.

is it OEM license? you can't transfer OEM license to another machine. i have retail Win10 and i have no problem transfer it.

Congratulations, you've just created an IT nightmare. By forgoing the easy configurability of Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory, you've added an untold amount to the TCO of your laptop fleet and IT infrastructure! You've also created problems down the line as it's more difficult to procure endpoint security and whitelisting solutions for Linux than for Mac or Windows. There's a reason why enterprises choose Microsoft time and time again: it works, it's easy to configure and administer at scale.

Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.

Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.

Agree about not making decisions when mad but aren't there good options beyond MS for the things you mentioned. Gsuite or any number of other office + mail providers can replace outlook. AD is useless these days unless you have Windows machines to administer or may be with azure cloud which by all accounts sucks when compared to gcp/aws.

So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.

Outlook, Exchange and Active Directory? These are buggy software packages from the 1990's right? We've been off the lot for the longest time now. The PTSD is even almost gone.

Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues, but I run them in a virtual machine not connected to the Internet where I need things like iTunes and MS Office. Some games don't run in a VM very well because of the overhead and abstraction (unless they're lightweight or not resource intensive). I have a separate Alienware laptop for gaming on Windows however.

My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]

[0] https://www.neverware.com/freedownload

[1] https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Neverware-is-no...

[2] https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/products/chromebooks/chro...

For gaming? Ditch virtualbox and migrate your VMs to libvirt/KVM/qemu.

On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.

I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.

An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.

Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.

And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.

>Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues

Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.

[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]

I still run windows 7 as the primary os on my daily driver.

Soon enough you will be better off running ReactOS as your daily driver.

I'd love to, and support the project with my bucks, but that seems a bit optimistic in the short term. Getting more and more work done with linux in the meantime.

With these efforts, at least my craving for sovereignty is mostly satisfied. With windows I feel like a crofter living on someone else's land.

I hate it, not because it requires an account, but because Microsoft is nightmarishly bad at account management and has been since I was a little kid in the 90s. They somehow make it possible to have multiple different unsynced accounts across different services, so you constantly forget which is which, and resetting or gaining access is always an incredible hassle. I find myself having to reset my password literally anytime I want to log in to something owned by Microsoft.

If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.

These morons at MS decided to force a very confusing and friction-ful Minecraft account migration from Mojang to MS just as all the kids are migrating from Minecraft to Roblox. I'm sure this is only accelerating Minecraft's demise.

Forget across services, I somehow have at least three Microsoft accounts all tied to the same email address, with no way to know which account any particular service wants on any given day. Teams is particularly bad, signing me into one of the three seemingly at random so that I have to keep logging out and back in until it miraculously gets me into the correct account, guessing which password it wants each time. Any support avenue I’ve tried has no idea what I’m talking about and offers no fix. Thankfully I don’t much rely on my Microsoft accounts.

I'm not sure what to call it, but the shadow tenant they set up for Teams is a nightmare. A random person can sign up for Teams with their work email and all of a sudden they become an important part of the process if you want to set up MS365 for the same domain. I would describe it as them owning the shadow tenant.

My Skype accounts all have Microsoft accounts of their own.

I guess it's a good thing Skype isn't the mainstay it used to be.

Ah we never saw that one coming. What really bugs me is why people keep defending these companies: this is straight up abusive, and we - all of us - should not accept these tricks. Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.

If we could get everyone to reject X, for any X that's clearly no good, we'd be in a much better world today. But people accept every such X.

>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.

That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.

So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)

My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.

> Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years.

It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.

It’s 2022, accept that everything is now a subscription and learn to eat bugs.

Not a chance.

Why is he downvoted?

Most people using Windows probably already have an MS account. Those that don't may flee to Linux. But honestly I subscribe to Office 365, use OneDrive even on my iPhone, and enjoy Game Pass. It just doesn't matter that much. If anything having 2 factor auth for my computers is a benefit.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.

Can someone explain to me why Microsoft migrating my Minecraft account to my Microsoft account is not a huge security anti-pattern, given that this is the same account I use to access my high-importance Azure account? Do we really believe that the Minecraft launcher presents no additional attack surface and handles authentication material with the same rigor as the Azure login process?

I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token. So everyone is actually authenticating through the same secure interface, and even if one application's credentials get leaked, all they would give access to would be your Minecraft profile, and nothing else. Hopefully.

Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.

Do not make a second Microsoft account, it'll just end in frustration.

Story: I have two Minecraft accounts (I used to do plugin work and it made testing easier to have an alt.).

I migrated my main one to my MS account (one that's been in use with xbox and O365 for a decade+ at this point), no problem.

I migrated the second one to a new account a few weeks back after they pushed that it'll be mandatory after 10th March; usied a gmail address for the new MS account because I'm done dealing with outlook.

It all worked, for a week.... I'm now locked out of that second account, with them demanding a mobile number to "verify" it's me...

I haven't had the energy to go yell at them yet. It's the same bullshit I hear happens with twitter accounts where they also demand a mobile number.

The truth is I think my "primary" account has my mobile number already attached... and I'm scared that I'll lose access to that as well if I try to use it to unstick my second account, getting "auto-banned" in much the same way they described my second account (which ONLY ever got used to login to Minecraft) for suspicious automatically detected activity and violation of TOS.

> I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token.

Benefits really depend on your threat model. Login process uses same credentials which can access everything. But afterwards, the credentials stored in Minecraft has limited access, if third party has a way to steal them.

To be fair, I've found that Microsoft have the best security for their accounts - much better than Apple ID or Google Accounts. Excellent 2FA support and if you have it set up with the Authenticator app, you will almost never need to type in your Microsoft account password. Unlike Apple or Google where I find that I often need to type in those passwords which forces me to pick easier passwords.

If you can spare the expense ($5/mo/user and a domain) you really should be putting Azure resources in a Microsoft 365 tenant instead of using MSA/live.com accounts. Microsoft will act as a 'processor' instead of a 'controller' of your data in this configuration.

Dialing up the annoyance level to a 11. Microsoft has spent the last 6 years or more glacially gravitating its OS-developer features towards Ubuntu. Because they couldn't do better - VSCode being the one crowning glory - and not an insignificant one. The side annoyances of a barely functional Cortana & Edge, were things I looked past, now add one more, a required account - we'll be led into unknown realms of integration (not of tools) but of 'marketing identity' and SSO .

Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.

> Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture,

Not if you're a back-end coder or a system admin/DevOps. You might tolerate some level of torture, but you for sure won't be happy about it. Ripping out Cortana, Edge and the Windows 10 start menu are literally the first items on my "setting up a new machine" checklist.

Aside from that, I have never been okay with Teams (beyond voice calls, that's the one thing I'll defend them on) or SharePoint, even if I do have to use both occasionally. It's not like I have any say, but when I have a chance to say my piece, I complain about them openly.

So far, doing most of my work on a Linux VM on a laptop that was well managed by the internal IT team (and with local admin permission granted as needed) was the only reason why I put up with the nonsense that was Windows 10 anywhere.

VSCode is great, Github only got better under Microsoft, and I'm actually one of the people who likes Teams... But even as a general fanboy (Win98 was the system that really got me into computers), it is just too much bullshit at this point. While before I had a Linux partition for specific work, and my main "digital life" on windows, I'm going to switch this around now.

And it sucks so much, there is no good reason but short-sighted greed to push for this, I'm happy to pay for a windows version I own and feel like an owner of, this kind of product just isn't developed anymore apparently.

In WinXP there was something about WMP checking for the rights to MP3's that were already on your computer to verify that you were legally allowed to play them.

I don't think users of Windows have been the primary focus for a long time.

That's a common misconception. What it would do was when indexing a folder with DRM'd music files, it would automatically try to add the rights to the store on your local computer. They weren't using that specific functionality to scan and report. And, it was opt in (when you first started wmp)

Getting track titles automatically (gracenote, etc) might be what you're mixing in - and that was also opt in, and even open source software has that functionality now (VLC, for example)

I actually hate VS Code after earnestly trying it for a year (2019). It is decades behind other IDEs in terms of capability.

It's a code editor, not an IDE... they never claimed otherwise.

Sure, there are extensions now that almost make it an IDE (integrated debugger, support for some build systems, etc.) but if you need the real thing, get the real thing.

For debugging native code I always bring up Visual Studio or WinDBG, but as an editor, VSCode is significantly lighter and faster (despite it being built on Electron) than full VS.

The I in IDE is key. Modern Visual Studio, the IDE, will even provide a fully integrated development environment for open source stuff. Trying to do this with a code editor like VSCode is like trying to carry plywood on a VW Beetle. It can do it, but it looks kind of funny, and maybe you should have just rented the truck/IDE from the store...

It is really good for remote coding and collaborative coding. Seems okay for everything else. It doesn't really compete with JetBrains IDEs, but I'm sure it's competitive with other free IDEs.

> and not an insignificant one.

And it's all due to how Code is both open-source in spirit and in truth, and aren't beholden to silly sales targets. You can see what this sort of thing does to a project when the Visual Studio 2022 team tried to move `dotnet watch` HMR functionality to Visual Studio 2022[0] instead of leaving it in VS Code.

0: https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/pull/22217

VS Code isn't really FOSS, try using VSCodium.

VS Code binaries might be under a different license that governs auto update and telemetry, but the code for all of VS Code itself is OSS. VSCodium is explicitly just a build of VS Code without any MS extras, and it's a stark difference from licensing the code so that there's zero competition in hosting the product as a managed service.

“The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup.”

If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.

Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default

My last round of Windows 11 installs, I just created a new MS account for the install, created a local admin user, and then deleted the MS account from the machine and built local accounts out normally.

I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...

MS is using the boiling frog strategy. They will likely increase the difficulty of creating/using local accounts in the future, with the end game of completely removing support in a couple of years. Then you will either need an MS online account or an enterprise AD account.

Well it's all a part of them trying to turn Windows into iOS like device management system, including the "family" aspect of app store and subscriptions.

When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?

“When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?”

So that’s what I’m doing wrong!

> When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?

That's not the point. The point is that Apple gives you a choice.

I wonder how that affects activation.

There are so many (and so simple) workarounds that it almost feels intentional. My favourite one is typing "a@a.com" as email, literally anything as password, and this will throw an error and viola, prompt you to create a local account. Been using this in the latest Windows 11 Dev builds, no MSA required. Even Microsoft Store works without MSA!

Have they removed the "Domain Join instead" option?

I thought I read somewhere that they broke that workaround now.

I've encountered machines with Windows 11 preinstalled that by all appearances were not going to let you proceed with setup without connecting, but Alt-F4 would get you past that step. More recently I've seen some machines that have a "Continue with limited setup" option similar to what Win10 offered.

I don't understand Microsoft's product strategy. The push for WSL, PowerToys, a new powerful Terminal, was obviously a ploy to attract developers after Apple's hardware (2016-2019) and software (2011-) decline.

Now what? More telemetry, more cloud-as-default, required Microsoft accounts, Edge sabotaging Firefox and constantly making itself the default browser. I actually like Windows, I understand its flaws and how to configure it to get out of my way. But this is plain creepy. Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff? With VSCode? Their strategy makes no sense. I know they don't care about making money from Windows anymore, but surely they want to keep/attract power users and devs?

Misaligned incentives at the product management layer I guess:

PM1: grow developer tools usage to get yearly bonus

PM2: grow bing cash back usage to get yearly bonus

Sure, but what about the DRI (does Microsoft have those?) for Windows? Surely he's signing off on all this?

Bit late but no, one business unit makes the kernel, libraries, dev tools, frameworks, " ♥ 's Linux" (only on azure or in wsl though), the other makes the end user experience for Windows NT

>Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff?

Well look at how many people are fooled. Appearances matter, not just matter, make and break an entity. So PR is ramped up to 11. Propaganda works even if, and in a certain case, especially if there are contradictions like that.

>this is plain creepy

Always has been. For one example, which was a major turnoff for me from Microsoft, was them pushing the idea of Trusted Computing, back in the mid 2000s. Always-on internet was getting widespread adoption, so they tinkered with the idea: what if we would always check the software's and files' authenticity, every time they are opened?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing

Make no mistake, they're past the point where they need people to like them. With enough clout, all they (or any other large corporation) need to do is offer competitive prices while they retain their influence. The rest will take care of itself.

May the stars, the galaxy and all forces of nature combined push me away from any Windows OS from now on and, at the same time, pull me towards Debian and its likes.

I'm not a MS hater, but WTF with all the ever growing telemetry, spam and the Edge enforcement efforts. Esp. what they do with Edge drove me over the edge.

A couple of weeks ago I made the first step. Still running Windows 10 as base but with VMWare Workstation running Ubuntu LTS. I do all serious work in Ubuntu. Before that my whole dev setup was on Windows.

Still hesitant to move to something like ESXi (also because of the limits of the free version). But something like this is the next step, I guess.

Or Windows in a Linux VM. I haven't discovered that enough yet. Linux still needs more setup and maintenance IME.

>WTF with all

It's the zeitgeist of computing. Can you point out a single large established entity that doesn't do this?

Debian is extremely opinionated. I swore them off after they made it extremely difficult for many years to install Firefox because of some ideological purity bullshit.

It's not quite right to portray it entirely as "ideological purity bullshit".

Mozilla's trademark policy forbade using their trademarks with custom builds that weren't Mozilla binaries, or at least with ones that might contain non-Mozilla modifications. (I can't remember the exact details of what was allowed.) In addition to that kind of creating a bit of a conundrum with the idea of free or open source software, it would also have forbidden Debian from custom-patching Firefox with their own security fixes.

The Debian policy was to keep stable releases static and only make security and bug fixes to packages in the stable release. Firefox didn't have extended support releases at the time, so the only ways of keeping the browser patched were to constantly update to new releases or to backport patches to older releases, so Debian was still patching Firefox by themselves. The Mozilla trademark policy made it impossible for them to keep doing that, or to even maintain their freedom to do that, and keep using the Firefox trademarks.

Debian is just generally very strict about licensing and playing by the rules. (They're also strict about adhering to their free software guidelines, which might be considered ideological. And yes, the distribution is opinionated, but that doesn't mean the rationale is always ideological.)

Some other distributions, especially smaller and less formal ones, might have just ignored the entire trademark policy and kept doing whatever they wanted despite it being potentially in violation of the conditions of Mozilla trademark use. Or they might have just shrugged and decided they didn't care about being able to patch the browser themselves anyway, especially if they were a rolling distro.

They insisted on being able to patch firefox. Firefox insisted if they did they couldn't legally call it firefox without being sued. In the meanwhile it was entirely possible to download an archive of the latest firefox release and drop it in a directory on your home and add its directory to PATH. It could even update itself from there if you liked.

My opinion stays unchanged: run from Microsoft like you're fighting for your life. They want nothing but to ensnare you into a web of proprietary languages and services until you can't do anything in your computer that is not controlled by them.

You're completely right.

So, they're just like Apple and Google :-)))

Yes, which is exactly why you should be fighting against those two as well. I'm doing my bit by not putting much valuable data besides YouTube playlists into my very ancient Google account, and using Linux on the desktop.

For (sane) business e-mail you basically have 3 choices: MS, Google or Zoho.

I recently commented on this topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266721

About forced online accounts, MacOs is better than Windows (for now it does not force, I hope they won't in the future)

For the last few years I've been trying to change the billing address of my Microsoft and Office 365 account and it's still wrong. Microsoft account management is so feckin' stupid that I feel sorry for all Windows 11 users who will be forced to use it.

BTW before people come and try to tell me how to change my billing address, I know how to do it. I did it everywhere. It shows correctly everywhere on the websites, but as soon as Microsoft creates the PDF invoice that I need to send to my accountant it has the old address on it, despite it being updated EVERYWHERE. I gave up on it. I basically doctor the address myself and then take a screenshot of the pdf with the corrected address and send the image to my accountant so he stops annoying me that the billing address is wrong.

>For the last few years I've been trying to change the billing address of my Microsoft and Office 365 account and it's still wrong. Microsoft account management is so feckin' stupid that I feel sorry for all Windows 11 users who will be forced to use it.

My minor example of Microsoft address stupidity is that when I make a purchase at the Microsoft store, and provide a shipping address that I only want to use for that purchase, that address becomes the new default for subsequent purchases even if I specifically turn off the checkbox asking if I want to make the address the default. (I've had dozens of opportunities to test this.)

Microsoft defaults the local username to the first five letters of your first name, I believe.

From a purely practical point of view, I just hate that using a MA auto generates your local username (typically into something painful) this way.

So if your name is "Jonathan Smith" and you like to use "jsmith", bad luck, here's your "jonat"!

If you could specify that at least, it wouldn't be so much of an issue to myself.

A local account that I later link up has given me this control. Now I'll need a throw away, new local account, then link to my real one. What a PITA.

(If anyone from MS is reading this, would love if you could fix this. Just add a username field to the online account please).

The referenced blog post is still not clarifying whether this requirement will only apply to current and future "Window Insider flights" (which require a M$ account anyway to join the program in the first place), or be released to public builds as well. Everyone is kinda assuming that this requirement is going to apply to actual Windows 11 Pro releases, but the way they're phrasing this does not seem to imply that at all.

I feel like I see this exact article every year or two and then it always comes out that you can easily get around this with some type of easy loophole. Of course that might still get the majority of people switching to an online account but..... if you are practically giving away an OS for free is that really so bad?

Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?

For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.

LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029

LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)

LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)

Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.

LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.

LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.

If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.

LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).

The "easy loophole" last time was to install windows without an internet connection and then repeatedly try/fail to create an account until the option appeared.

I'm guessing there will still be a way for domain-connected installs to complete without a Microsoft account.

I heard that a loophole is to install Windows with a MSFT account, create a local account with admin access and then delete the MSFT account

The loophole for years has been not being connected to the internet, they're getting rid of that.

Buying LTSC licenses as an individual is not particularly easy or cheap.

Might be a good time to take some affordable evening classes at your local community college wink wink nudge nudge

You can buy a LTSC license for a single computer.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...

No but you can pirate it.

>LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)

>LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)

LTSC 2019 IOT is supported for the same amount of time as LTSC 2019[1]. Maybe you're talking about LTSC 2021 IOT? That's the one that has 10 year support[2].

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...

My bad - not really up on the IOT thing. Regardless LTSC 2019 (non IOT) seems to have 10 year support which goes longer than LTSC 2021

I don't get why they make it so god damned difficult to get LTSC. If they just sold it openly it would be popular.

Then nobody would use the Windows Store or all the other stuff they want you to use!

Can you use Apple products without an account? If not*, what version of Linux should I get setup with. Casual web development. I mostly use my personal machine for gaming.

Edit - Typo

You can't access stuff in the App Store without an Apple account. And there is a chunk of Apple software that's only available in the App Store. On Windows, I can't think of any worthwhile software that's not available outside the Windows App Store.

It's different though, not system wide. You don't need it to login into the OS. There are alterantive to Apple Store too.

> Can you use Apple products without an account?

yes and no

ios devices must hook to internet to activate. they must phone home. That said you can navigate the dark patterns and don't need to use apple id (but you also can't install apps, etc)

for mac you can say this device doesn't connect to the internet. but as soon as you do it phones home.

> for mac you can say this device doesn't connect to the internet. but as soon as you do it phones home.

Yes, but to clarify the specific point, you still do not need an Apple account to use a Mac, even if it's phoning home.

A lot of the replies here are recommending Ubuntu - I'm going to recommend PopOS. It's built on top of Ubuntu, but comes with a newer kernel (better new hardware compatibility), graphics drivers, and some sensible defaults.

Some optimizations for laptops with graphics switching is great too.

Does it come with ads? Because that's my favourite part of Ubuntu

I'd recommend Ubuntu also. However I can't stand their default desktop environment, so I'd either recommend Ubuntu mate, or (what I did) the latest and greatest Ubuntu, and then just sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop-environment which will give you a desktop with a start menu more akin to windows.

Ubuntu is a must have in every masochist’s toolbox

You're best starting with Ubuntu. It has the biggest userbase which makes googling for answers easier.

It'll handle casual web dev without breaking a sweat.

It's been a few years but I tried to use mac OSX without signing into an apple account and eventually I was forced to do it to get updates from the app store IIRC. So it's probably possible, but almost certainly not common or advised unfortunately.

Thus at least you can have a local account without any attempt of Apple trying to force you not to, and then login to the app store with an apple id, if you want.

Ubuntu or one of the main derivatives depending on the user interface you want: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, ...

The obvious choice is Ubuntu. Works, is easy to use, and help is everywhere for it.

Later on, you may want to branch out to More complicated Distros, but Ubuntu (or Debian) is the easy choice.

>Works, is easy to use, and help is everywhere for it.

It's so easy you can't even be smug anymore using nearly any linux distro. Damn their eyes, I worked hard in the 90's getting my linux cred. Now, grandma is using it. Time to switch to Gentoo I suppose.

I can recommend Pop!_OS for a good out-of-the-box Linux distro for development

Put Linux in a VM on your (windows?) gaming machine. It'll be much smoother than trying to run on real hardware, and if you're not gaming on it Linux anyway then you probably don't need direct hardware access (not for web dev, certainly). Use VirtualBox or whatever Windows calls their hypervisor they ship with Windows these days. If you hate it you can just delete the disk image and it's gone.

That's how I got started. Then I progressed to Wubi and dual booting, and afterwards only ever booted up Windows for games or MS Office.

This is what I have done. Currently have Ubuntu, Mint, and DLing Pop now.

Hyper-V

Depending on your hardware, you may be able to utilize Looking Glass[1]. It’s software for running games in a virtual machine that has a dedicated graphics card. I do not meet the requirements myself (and will not anytime soon with current graphics card prices), but the concept looks somewhat solid.

[1]: https://looking-glass.io/

I'm tied over this because noone can predict how future govts will go, so having a manufacturer account could be useful, but at the same time when that happens who can you trust, you dont know who is accessing your data at the manufacturers, privacy is the biggest loser eitherway.

This past summer I bought a copy of Windows 10 Pro when I built a new PC. Prior to that, I used Linux on my personal machines for 10 years. Though I knew I'd eventually regret it, I didn't think it'd be so soon. I've been very content with it, and then these idiots go and do this. It's a complete show stopper.

I still have to use Windows and other MS stuff for work, but I have work-supplied machines for that. For personal use, no more MS anything, not even VS Code or .NET, I'm done with them.

As a Microsoft-focused developer since 1999, I feel so badly for the developer division. They make quality tools and have extremely smart people working for them--people that do care about open source and philanthropy. To be part of the same company that makes Windows is sad. The profit-seeking areas of Microsoft give the rest of the company a bad name.

I will likely get rid of all Windows installations in my house (about six at last count) and replace them with Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution as soon as Windows 10 goes out of support. If I'm still writing code at that time, and assuming the developer division at Microsoft are not corrupted, I'll switch to Rider to be rid of the commercial Visual Studio and Windows dependencies.

No way in hell am I logging in to my operating system with a cloud account.

Since it's not clear from the article: will this affect people who already setup Windows 11 with a local account? Will I one day be confronted with a "Create a Microsoft account to continue using your computer" screen?

This is terrible. Folks need to be able to install Windows on offline devices for maintainence...

Guys, Microsoft doesn't give two shits about home users. Their bread and butter is businesses. And M365 is amazing for business.

If you think M$ suxors, you're not the target demographic. I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.

I don't need to be managed, thanks. Give me credentials and a live CD.

You still need e-mail and file sharing, right?

Going to have a hard time doing anything on our system without a domain joined PC, thanks.

> I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.

Yeah, you’d do that until the development team at your organisation would insist on working on macOS and linux, not Windows.

Then you’d have a field day, because we all know how well M$ tools work on/with non-Windows machines.

Dev team? Sure. Management and sales? No.

There's your error - why use Slack, Google, Dropbox? Why not host a Rocketchat, Jitsi, Syncthing/sftp share and manage that using OpenIPA or some other LDAP server suite? This mindset makes me so sad. We have all the tools we need, yet people still insist on the proprietary cloud garbage.

Again, if you think Microsoft is garbage, you're not the demographic. I'm not going to spend my time tweaking custom shit.

You will have to think, If its so simple how long is such a job profile going to last?

Better hope for complexity some times (:

Yikes, I don't like that at all. These days I only use windows for games, otherwise I'm mostly mac or linux.

I guess I should learn how to develop unity games on linux sooner rather than later.

At this point a lot of the times microsoft will just keep updating the OS anyways even if you never activate it - I guess it is not worth the potential blowback to leave machines unpatched? There will be a small watermark in the corner and they do lock you out of some settings

Gaming is not so bad on Linux but I wish I'd never bought any pro audio plugins for my home recordings. It's going to be a colossal waste of money and unfinished recording projects when I decide to get rid of Windows for good.

You can always try something like this: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

It may not work for VST plugins with certain DRMs though.

Update: I see that bepzi was 1 hour ahead of me. I did not see it when I refreshed the page, only after I replied.

If your plugins are VST2/VST3, then I can wholeheartedly recommend yabridge as a tool for using Windows plugins on Linux.

On the upside, when Windows 10 is no longer supported I run out of reasons not to go back to Windows 7 like I always wanted.

Here's one: Linux is better. A lot better.

If you are worried about gaming or other apps, Win7 won't be much better than Linux (won't have latest DirectX or anything), and may end up far worse by then.

Desktop linux is as much of an incoherent, barely working mess as it has always been.

I've dual-booted Linux for many years now but I can never get fully comfortable. I always get the creeping sensation that there's too many layers between what I'm seeing and what the computer is doing, like some button will just stop working and there's no way for me to ever figure out why, or I'll hit some truly baffling design choice and the only way to change it is to throw out my whole configuration and use a different distro.

Linux as a desktop workstation is not better. Not even close. It's a barely working mess, and a majority of applications don't work on it. And good luck doing any kind of game development on it using something like Unity or Unreal Engine; that is the stuff of nightmares.

There will likely be versions with longer support and updates just like microsoft has done with basically every OS (usually they charge for this). Of course there are loopholes around paying for this.

When Windowds 10 is EOL you may want to look into acquiring a legal version of Windows 10 LTSC (or whatever they decide to call it at that point).

This makes me wonder. Google has been known for a while to ban accounts semi-randomly with very vague excuses and no recourse, so people would lose access to gmail and other services. Is Microsoft going to do the same? "Sorry, we spotted you voicing an opinion that doesn't align with our corporate interests, so we decided to lock you out of all your PCs".

Yes, there are reports of people having their accounts permanently deleted due to photographs on OneDrive they claimed breach terms and conditions.

So how would that work for people who only work in offline networks?

It appears they don't care about those people. Windows is not the product.

If you are not consuming their cloud product AND providing a stream of your telemetry data for them to monetize, you are of no value to MS and so invisible.

They care a lot about those people. The USG runs billions of dollars of MS software on classified/offline networks.

I remember seeing "Windows is a service" update popups in my Windows 10 VM. That was the last straw before I went out of my way and disabled the deliberate RCE^W^W Windows Update services completely.

They will force it, probably. I think for enterprise edition, they will allow it.

Also, guys be ready to make your phone number ready because Microsoft seems to require it. They have successfully impinged their tentacles on people's privacy.

Click "Setup for Work or School", then click "Domain Join instead". Since they don't want to figure out a way to expose DNS settings in OOBE (that you might need to discover a domain controller), they just ask you to set up a local administrator account and assume you'll complete the join at the desktop.

This is how I've always setup 10 and 11 Pro, I never knew about the whole unplug the ethernet method. I knew that was required for Home, but not Pro.

Sounds like you might need a corporate / edu license (basically the same thing besides the name)

There are two reasons why I continue to use a personal Windows machine - PC Gaming and Microsoft 365 Family. On the gaming topic, almost all of the games that I play are also on console which is where I spend most of my gaming time anyways. On Microsoft 365 Family, OneDrive backup and sync is the top reason why I have it. I use it to sync all of my family photos between my phones, PC, Macbook, and iPad for myself, my wife, and my kids. It is extremely convenient and hard to argue otherwise. Beyond data backups, the biggest reason why we have the subscription is because my wife really really wants to use the Office Apps because it is what she is used to the most (Word, Excel, Publisher). So to my family and I, Microsoft 365 = value and convenience.

For me, if a good OneDrive linux sync client was out there that would be a good reason for me to finally jump ship off of Windows. I suppose I'm just waiting for the right push to move away from Windows. Maybe this is that time. Hell, I already know that my personal PC (which I built early January 2021) "fails" the Windows 11 upgrade readiness check anyways so I already feel burned. All of the reasons why I used Windows for decades was because of its "value" for me. Lots of convenience, tons of community support and tons of software, etc. But not anymore. In my opinion, what Microsoft is doing with Windows is similar to what Disney is doing with their parks. "Value" is being removed while increasing prices and limiting "choice". Maybe I still do have _some_ "convenience" in using Windows. But I'm losing more and more reasons to stick with Windows over time as more of Microsoft's business decisions are impacting you and me, and not necessarily for the better.

> Set up your Windows with a Microsoft account (tiny text-only button “continue without Microsoft account”)

> Are you sure you don’t want to use a Microsoft account? (tiny text-only button “I don’t want to use a Microsoft account”)

> Last chance, are you really sure you don’t want to use a Microsoft account? (tiny text-only button “I don’t want to use a Microsoft account”)

At least it was something like this during the beta.

This was inevitable to be honest. They've made it harder and harder to use a local only account, probably to drive the adoption rate of Microsoft account sign ins up so that they eventually can stay "no one uses local accounts any more". Give it a little more time and they'll require Microsoft accounts for everyone.

Apple:

You can use Apple ID voluntarily to sync all your settings and data across macOS, iOS on iPhones, iOS on iPads, watchOS and Apple TV.

Microsoft:

We have no tablets, watches and not even a phone. You just have a PC and we force you to use a Microsoft account so you can sync all your data with our marketing and sales department and the government if need to be.

I'm signed into an Apple ID on my one Mac machine so that I can use the App Store and to use iMessage/FaceTime despite my lack of an iPhone. I unchecked all the iCloud stuff as fast as I could because I wasn't prompted after adding the Apple ID on what I wanted to add, and there's no clear "Turn off iCloud" button.

Updated to Monterey, and suddenly 3 or 4 of the iCloud items were checked. Maybe there was something buried in the Monterey OOBE, but I honestly don't remember even getting a new EULA, and I'm usually VERY careful about looking for the anti-patterns that push cloud stuff.

Just popped System Preferences back open to see what the current state is, and it says I have 4.99 GB of 5GB available in my iCloud (presumably because of the iMessage stuff). Private Relay (Beta) has no checkbox and is spinning a spinner that says "Loading". No idea if that means it's turned on, or how to make it stop loading.

Not defending MSFT, this sucks, and I say that as someone who uses W11 Pro as my daily driver. But between them, Apple, and what Google does on Android, it's very frustrating that my only _reasonable_ option for truly offline local accounts is a Linux machine. I WANT TO PAY MONEY TO HAVE A WELL-SUPPORTED MACHINE

I'm on Monterey with a local account and have never signed into iCloud, although I'm signed into the app store with an Apple Id.

I just checked in Preference and under Apple Id it shows: iCloud -not signed in- Media & Purchases -email_of_apple_id_account-

(also it nags you with a persistant notification on the Apple Id icon in Preferences root, and a "start using iCloud" link too, but for now I can vaguely tolerate that)

Microsoft is still kicking themselves that they didn’t think about making internet access a subscription service until the XBox, this will be the first step toward making windows a subscription service, since at this point they can’t do it just for the internet.

Have you ever heard of MSN?

A few months ago, I had a non-feature update to my laptop running Windows 10 Pro (OEM) kick me to an OOBE-looking "finish setting up your computer" screen where the only way I was able to move forward and log on was to add an online account. Believe me, I spent an hour trying various things, and googling like a madman but I didn't manage to get around it.

So I did it with a temporary email address. Then I removed the account. Still on Windows 10.

Now and then I do a web search to see if other people ahve had this happening to them, but I've not been able to find anything. Then again, <insert the "search engines are crap" today discussion here>.

I think I saw that happening too, but a few years ago. Although looks weird for a non-feature update.

I don't love this move (I think people should still get the choice) bit do get it a bit more after doing IT support for the in-laws. My sister in law, who is not super tech savvy, has forgotten her password and also been prompted for the Bitlocker Recovery Key and called me on both occasions all upset.

Given she had signed in with a Microsoft account, we were able to get the password reset there as well as retrieve the key from there. If it was a local account then I imagine both would have been much harder. So for 'most people' it is probably a good thing.

> If it was a local account then I imagine both would have been much harder.

Suprisingly I needed to hack into an old admin account password on a laptop (that I setup on a family member's laptop) and it was suprisingly easy. After installing some software on a USB stick and choosing it as a boot device I was able to bypass the login password completely. Forgot the name of the software I used -- but there are literally a bunch of competiting alternatives.

Every single Linux live USB can access the underlying partitions freely. Or if you prefer, you can instead use it to remove the local password and reboot onto an unlocked OS.

Maybe the right thing to do here was to not apply Bitlocker if she wasn't trained on how to use encryption. Or, you know, if she wanted to set up encryption anyway and you're already helping her with tech, the backup key could live in your password manager in case she ever needed it.

Actually local accounts are far easier to reset the password on. Well, easier if you are the neighborhood computer repair guy.

This news about Windows 11 Pro "requiring" a Microsoft Account is a bit of sensationalism. You can still bypass it and create a local account if you know what you're doing, as has been the case for several years with Windows 10. Here is how:

When you see the “Let’s Connect You To A Network” page, hit “Shift” and “F10” simultaneously. This will bring up the Command Prompt to which you type the command: taskkill /F /IM oobenetworkconnectionflow.exe

When Windows 11 setup detects networking is not possible, it will let you create the local account as always.

I’m not sure whether to take this as a joke or not. Not using a Microsoft account requires using a terminal to kill a process? Is there seriously no other way?

If so, I suspect that Microsoft have succeeded in their goal to get everyone to use their accounts, because I don’t see the vast majority of users going down this route.

> as has been the case for several years with Windows 10

It was not mandatory in Windows 10, thus there was nothing to bypass (on Home maybe you had to ensure you are not connected during OOBE though, at least on some versions)

IIRC in the official specs of Windows 11 Home they specify that you must have an Internet connection and an MS account for the initial setup.

I doubt killing processes during OOBE is officially supported...

IIUC, the news is that Microsoft will be disabling this workaround and requiring an active network connection on setup.

No, the news is that they are extending the online account requirement from Home to Pro. This means that when Windows 10 goes EOL in 2025, the large majority of (non-enterprise) Windows users will be using an online account. And then it will only be a small step to completely drop support for local accounts (maybe for Windows 12). At least that’s my theory what Microsoft is aiming for.

Satya... WTF?

Really, who didn't see this one coming a mile away? Or did you actually believe that MS was now some kind of benevolent open source company that meant to do right by their users?

His nickname was 'Mr Cloud' for a good reason. Finally got what he wanted.

From UX perspective Windows 3.11 was the peak of Windows and it went downhill since then. Every time time I use Win7 or later for more than 10 min for anything other than browsing my blood pressure goes up.

I wonder why Microsoft thinks they can continuously get away with abusing their customers like this. I like the idea of -optional- SSO for stuff, however I hate hate hate forced accounts. Not everyone wants to be online 100% of the time and tracked by Microsoft, yet they seem to just not give an f. They WILL get your data so it can be mined and sold. It's so ludicrous.

Well I have 3 years before Win10 reaches EOL and then I'm moving on to greener pastures. Linux desktop has matured enough for my needs.

>Well I have 3 years before Win10 reaches EOL

You actually have quite a bit longer than that if you're willing to go with LTSC. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...

Might as well switch now, you can always run your win 10 install in a little VM. Ubuntu and PopOS are great and a nice step up from windows subsystem for linux if you're doing mostly development work.

How do you do this as a business?

I have to provision computers for users. I have to supply them with accounts and passwords. This becomes impossible.

I have visions of a apocalyptic future where everyone has to run old operating systems because the Internet no longer functions.

I've been using a Microsoft-based OS since MS-DOS, but this hard requirement to use a Microsoft Account will finally be it for me. I'm not going to be coerced into making a Microsoft account, let alone linking my personal, home PC to one. Thankfully Valve has made some good progress in Linux compatibility.

If we assume Microsoft is doing this with good intentions and in good faith, why are they requiring a Microsoft account?

I believe, like apple, microsoft sees their future as a service provider instead of a software company.

I always wonder when I see stuff like this - isn't this a business opportunity?

but then the businesses that do it with linux start doing the same things (like canonical getting ubuntu to phone home and force updates, etc)

Linux never makes you do anything you don't want to do. That anyone uses anything else really surprises me.

People use windows because Windows does the things they need it to do, easily. The fact that that surprises you surprises me.

You'll be even more surprised to find out that you can do all that stuff easily without Windows!

A lot of the software bundled with most linux distros does though. Such as systemd.

systemd respects the users freedoms:

    Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.  
    Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
    Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbour.
    Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

As such it is impossible for systemd to make the user do anything. If it did, the user could simply modify the code and share his improvements with similarly minded individuals.

I believe you can still choose the domain join option during install and still create a local account

Are there any simple domain server emulators out there which I could just run on a Raspberry Pi or whatever, like the fake KMS servers? That would be a decent workaround.

This week I installed samba on a raspberry pi running Ubuntu server to provide active directory domain services to my home network. The Windows computers in the house are now joined to the domain. It was easy and quick to setup. There are a ton of guides to setting up samba as an AD domain controller on Ubuntu out there.

Best I found: https://www.univention.com/products/ucs/functions/

UCS core is free and runs windows compatible active directory. Not sure they have a pi4 version though.

Removing the network connection might still work? Windows 10 could be installed and activated fully offline (activated via "slui 0x4" command that gives you 9 six digit numbers and tells you to call a number based on your location; after you enter them, you get 8 six digit numbers back to activate).

From another comment it sounds like you might not actually need to join a domain, it will just let you make a local account so that you can join a domain later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30390857

A fake local KMS server has been the way most activation hacks have worked for years actually

If you want to get creative you can run your own KMS server and anyone who connects to your local network can now be assigned whatever microsoft license you want. You don't even need to fake it or use the hacked version - just run a real one and get a bunch of edu licenses for whatever products you want to activate for whoever connects to your local network.

Samba can work as an Active Directory DC, but I have never gotten around trying it: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_an_Acti...

Samba can easily be configured as a DC.

I currently use my Windows box strictly for gaming. It’s a pretty low end box by today’s standards (16 GB RAM, 1st gen Ryzen 7, and GTX 1060).

When I build myself a new gaming PC, I highly doubt that I’ll be running Windows on it. I’m basically done with Microsoft at this point.

I won't be moving to 11. I don't want any of this.

I've already got my Slackware system set up for doing 99% of what I do.

Solidworks, I'm gonna miss you, but that's about all.

I guess I will finally have to move to that free macbook pro I was offered couple of times now (we are 3 Windows / WSL2 users and 30+ MBP, which is sad).

Not completly ruling out Ubuntu too.

Fedora is great, and very stable for me. I don't think you'd miss much. I'm a kernel developer and most of the people I work with also use Fedora (most of the them work for RH), and want it to just work. Ubuntu is probably just as good. I'd recommend asking for the nicest Thinkpad you can get.

Hasn't this happened every major release of windows?

- Windows requires some user authentication on release to prevent piracy

- ... but always caves or puts OEM backdoors for major corps/customers

- and those get pirated.

It's been a number of major releases since consumer Windows really cared about piracy (for end users at least, obviously if you start a business selling illegal licenses they'll still care about that). The more direct answer would seem to be this helps them push all of the cloud hosted services that are integrated into the default install now, easier for someone to pay for OneDrive or apps on the Microsoft Store or use the O365 app if they were already forced to create/sign in to a Microsoft account for those to load with.

I don't have to activate my MS Windows 11 account to use linux.

And I can create as many accounts as I want, without worry that MS will be mining the user data for advertisements.

those hoping to avoid that will have to use a dummy Microsoft Account to then create a local one afterwards.

And then delete the Microsoft Account? Would that leave traces?

Define “traces”. If it hits Microsoft servers with your reg key, then you’re cooked.

It's not that dramatic. They can't do much with just the reg key.

This just pushed me 100% to Linux. I’ll not sign up for a Microsoft online account to use my local computer. Whoever thought this up at MS needs to be fired.

Windows Pro is aimed at business users. Most of them will have moved or are moving to Office 365, so they will have (or need) a Microsoft Account anyway.

while just about all my computing I can do elsewhere. There is one aspect where I feel more confident in windows: VR. Sure you can run off an oculus - but the applications are still significantly better on a dedicated machine. I may be wrong though now (what is the linux or Mac way of doing this?) or later (Apple, c'mon don't disappoint).

Still up to their old tricks. So much for the caring, sharing, Linux-friendly, open-source M$. I remember the Microsoft of the 90s and they haven't changed much in 30 years if you dig below the hype. Anyone remember SCO and Suse being sued by M$ for undisclosed patents? Why would anyone who has ever experienced being locked out their Hotmail/Outlook/Live account ever trust M$ with anything related to security, logins or personal data?

They need to switch everyone to MS Account because Windows 12 will require subscription. I'm guessing 5.99/month

I feel for most people out there Chromebooks are a better solution now. Just wish there was better hardware.

Just like any previous windows “locks” of this type, search google for “windows 11 pro activation patch”.

So glad I switched back to linux. Just the amount of stuff I no longer have to worry about is enormous.

They aren't actually going to do this, so it's really pointless to get fussed up about it.

If they don't it will only be because "we got fussed up about it".

Windows 7 still the best windows

Does Windows LTSC (aka the non-ad version of Windows) require a Microsoft Account?

I'm using Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 1809 with a local account.

Does this mean no more domain join before registering with Microsoft?

This is great because I cant reliably login to my Microsoft account.

windows is reaching its EOL anyways, it's gonna be an other filter, the ones who refuse to comply will just quit the sinking ship

what a poorly managed company, crazy

Windows 10 for life then, cheers for making it easy lads.

Install Linux.

Why wouldn't you want your preferences to sync across your machines? I love the functionality.

I use different machines differently.

It's amazing. If you trust Microsoft, that is, and they haven't shown themselves as a company worthy of trust since Windows 8/10 came out.

Good for you. Use the functionality. But you don't need it to be shoved down other people's throats for that, do you?

windows 7 still the best

they make so much money they can disregard user expierence

Mac it is then

Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys. Never sign into an operating system with a cloud identity.

You should have stopped using windows years ago. There is no excuse, especially thanks to Valve for their work enhancing wine ecosystem and making your games work.

> There is no excuse, especially thanks to Valve for their work enhancing wine ecosystem and making your games work.

While Proton is great, it helps no one to suggest it's a solution to making all games work. There are absolutely enormous multiplayer titles still unavailable on Proton, if you can't play the games your friends play who cares if 99% of the rest of the Steam library works?

Again, I think Proton is great, and only getting better. It is not though a drop in replacement for a Windows gaming machine, for most people, yet.

Games may have gotten better on Linux, but that’s not the case with some programs. Usually riddled with obnoxious DRM that throws a fit in a VM or wine like program. That and nvidia woes are the only thing stopping me from using Linux.

> Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys.

I let my keys sync to my MS account. I mainly want to protect against untargeted theft of my computer, so having recovery keys online makes more sense than a recovery key printout or USB key in a drawer.

> Literally a trap to hand over your encryption keys. Never sign into an operating system with a cloud identity.

Why does your trust model include "running a proprietary OS that can do anything at any time" but not "the OS explicitly requires a user account tied to an online account?" That doesn't make any sense.

To be clear: there are plenty of great reasons to dislike this change. But they all fall under "user-hostile" or "creeping surveillance capitalism," not "shady conspiracy to steal your encryption keys." They can already have the keys if they want them, and there's nothing you can do about it as-is.

Wake me up when I can play my sim racing games with wheel and pedal support in Linux.

but the adobes

I'd like to thank Microsoft. Their constant bloating and nagging and hostility has finally convinced me to move to Mint and it's been just great. I don't think I'd have done it without their help, but now I'm glad I did and wish I'd done so earlier.

I've always wanted to see FOSS options become superior to Microsoft's offerings... I have mixed feelings about it happening by MS getting worse more than FOSS getting better. (Although it is both; Linux hardware compatibility is way better than 15 years ago, and software compat via Proton and webapps eating the world has put desktop Linux in a much stronger spot.)

+1 for Mint. Couldn't have been an easier transition.

Wishes: Microsoft just buy a linux distro. Bless it, so MS Apps only run on Windows. Make it free for home installs and remove these cloud login shenanigans. Friggin' keep charging Amazon and GCP for running it virtually (unless you actually want mindshare). I'd totally flock to Windows (and its paid services). I guess I just don't see why an operating system is still their cash cow. Feels like the stupid that is: buying your ticket and then paying for placement in an aircraft. Anyone remember when you could buy an airplane ticket and choose your seats because you're booking now vs later? 2020 on has been nothing but nickel and dime-ing.

The consumer licensing of the OS isn't their cash cow, the subscription revenue from tied services is, so changing the OS base doesn't change the subscription push.

A very small portion of the market is even aware a Windows license costs money. If they've bought a Windows PC since 7 it's pushed them for free all the way to 11 and the vast majority don't build their own to find out they need a license (and heck it really doesn't do much against you if you don't buy the license these days anyways).

The real money in the consumer side is in the services and data, O365/teams/onedrive/bing/edge(browsing), which is why they push these so hard on default installs. It wouldn't matter if they used Linux as a base, their push would still be to push users towards these services.

That a few people who even know what Linux is would be more likely to use thire services if they stopped pushing them to the average user isn't going to sound enticing to Microsoft as they'd be losing a lot more than gaining.

This is how they move away from the OS being their cash cow: using the OS as a gateway for all their cloud services. For that they want everyone to have and use a Microsoft account.

It's just like how airlines used to make money with plane tickets, but now they mostly lose money with the tickets and make it back with everything else (both nickel-and-diming you and frequent flier miles). Flying is cheaper now, but incentives were better aligned when tickets were the cash-cow.

Microsoft has a(t least one) Linux Distro: CBL-Mariner [1]. Not a desktop offering, obviously, but I felt like it was worth pointing out.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner

They do have a Linux distro.

https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner/

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