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Comment by imran-iq | Hacker News Reader

> It depends on what my needs are.

Unfortunately Microsoft/windows does not care what your needs are, it only cares about data collection and ads.

I recently had to install windows in a vm because I could not get adobe reader working through wine. The install process was awful:

* Dark pattern to try and force me to login with a MS account during setup

* Majority of setup steps pertain to data collection and/or ads

After setting it up, I had to open up edge to download and install adobe reader, once again

* Nags me to login to an account

* Most if not all setup steps are about ads and data collection

All for the sake of filling out some pdfs. I am truly grateful that Valve is pushing proton as it makes me (almost never) have to leave linux.

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Oh yeah, go try to install Chrome through edge on that new setup. Windows alerts like 3-4 times during the process that Edge IS Chromium and stuff trying to keep you using their browser. I am not about to start using a browser that has special backdoors to annoy me when I try to do things that it doesn't approve of...

To be fair to Microsoft, Edge is Chromium.

The only difference between Edge and Chrome is choosing who you want your data to go to and your ads to come from: Microsoft or Google.

"To be fair" these facts are 100% irrelevant to whether my computer should do wtf I tell it to do.

You tell your car to drive to a cafe and it tells you that caffiene is bad for you and you should go to McDonald's instead. I give zero shits about whether it's true or not, it's nobody's goddamn business where I want to drive.

Whether it's Edge or Chrome it's going to sell you their respective vendor.

Meanwhile, both Edge and Chrome are Chromium.

I was also trying to install windows 11 on a VM to do some one off work. It was next to impossible to create a local account with internet connection on. I had to restart my installation process with Internet disconnected. And even after I installed, I realized how many times it asks me to login. Even desktop features like widgets need login.

> I had to restart my installation process with Internet disconnected.

No way! Thankfully I went for windows 10 which did not need me to unplug the internet (just a hidden option down to the side), but that's just awful.

It's even worse after you manage to install it: in Windows 11 the remove the option to ungroup application windows on the taskbar. So if you want find that specific windows, you need to first hover with your mouse over the single app tab, wait until it shows the windows, and pick up the right one. People are getting mad about this.

Not to mention the massive taskbar taking up a huge chunk of your monitor without a way to resize it. Why is it so big?

>So if you want find that specific windows, you need to first hover with your mouse over the single app tab, wait until it shows the windows, and pick up the right one. People are getting mad about this.

Worth remembering that everyone has complained about grouped windows in the taskbar since way back in Windows XP when Microsoft first released the feature.

> It was next to impossible to create a local account with internet connection on.

And without Internet connection you cannot even reach the step to create an account.

If you're using Windows Pro there should be an option for "Domain Join." If you select that it'll have you create a local account that's admin (so maybe don't make it your day to day account) because domain join is not actually done during the OOBE.

You can also try entering no@thankyou.com for the account name and a random password [1]. It should give you an error message stating the account is locked and then let you proceed to create a local account. Might not always work though according to some recent comments on [1].

[1]: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/269419/tip-set-u...

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