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Comment by hot_gril | Hacker News Reader

I installed Windows 10 (not even 11!) recently on a random laptop and was appalled by the amount of BS in the initial setup process. Forced me to make a Microsoft online account seemingly with remote access to my PC, tried to sign me up for several different free trials, then tried multiple times to push me to Edge instead of Chrome. The UI has new crap like the Bing search on the taskbar and in the center of the desktop. It finally left me along after a while, but I know there will be updates and Edge will try to reassert itself. Win10 wasn't this bad a few years ago.

I'm not normally careful about privacy and never felt Linux was a worthwhile alternative on desktop, but this was so plain annoying that I'd probably pick Linux on my primary PC nowadays if I didn't already have a Mac.

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I literally reinstalled win10 yesterday and you’re right on. I couldn’t even install due to “a media driver your computer needs is missing” with no further info and no workaround. This was after mbr2gpt.exe failed and gave no information on why and every online resource was SEO crap without any info on fixing it.

I eventually used Ventoy, it works on Linux and solved my problems immediately. It also forces the win installer to think it’s offline to avoid the dark pattern of online-“only” accounts.

Then it was loaded with adverts and other horseshit. Seriously degraded experience.

All of this because when I was trying to play a game pass game the play button just did nothing. No logs, no info, nothing. The online help was pretty good, but removing/resetting/reinstalling all game related software did nothing. Real pain when there’s no feedback.

> A media driver your computer needs is missing

Oh how I remember the days of installing proprietary media codecs on Ubunt-… oh wait we’re talking about Windows? In 2023?

> every online resource was SEO crap without any info on fixing it

Man, searching anything related to Microsoft software is an instant trip down scam lane. It's not their fault even. Part of me is glad the majority aren't using Macs and bringing that over here.

It's a little bit their fault. They host forums but appear not to tend to them. There's endless trash there from external "experts" that rarely engage with the specific problem and have no particular advice beyond sfc /scannow.

Good troubleshooting advice can be found but good gravy is it hard to dig up.

I've seen those forums, and they're the worst. Idk why those "experts" are spending so much deliberate time giving people wrong advice.

> “a media driver your computer needs is missing”

If you installed the N version of Windows, try manually installing the Windows Media Center.

I had problems with NVIDIA Shadow play which were resolved by installing it.

Apparently the application is omitted from the N version because of European antitrust action ages ago.

> Forced me to make a Microsoft online account

They actually don’t quite force this. They just make it very difficult to find the option to use a local account instead.

(Unless they’ve changed things for the worse since last time I installed windows. Very possible!)

I remember it being hard before but still having the button hidden somewhere. This time I looked for it and didn't see it. Maybe if I didn't connect it to wifi at all, it would've let me do it. I originally connected cause I figured there'd be OTA updates and wasn't about to restart the whole process.

Also, the entire reason I was even doing 10 instead of 7 is this laptop came with 10.

On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence. A normal person being asked to connect to wifi during setup will do so and never have the option to not create a MS account. So it may not be impossible to create an offline account, but for all intents and purposes they do force your hand.

On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you can't actually complete setup normally without network and a ms account.

> On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you can't actually complete setup normally without network and a ms account.

Maybe with the latest images, but I have an original W11 RTM image that installs just fine without network and a MS account.

Probably you have the "Pro" version, which allows this.

The Home version does not.

Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.

Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) offers an option to revert fix this, but you still have to ensure that you keep wifi disconnected and ethernet unplugged during install.

Actually yes it will - at least as of last weekend. During OOBE setup, after connecting to Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you must select “join a work or school domain.”

I got tripped up by this too because I was insistent on not connecting it to the internet during setup, but the local account only switch had moved since I last checked up on it.

It will still ask you three or four times ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to sign in to a Microsoft account. But at least you can still avoid it for the moment.

Probably only for Pro edition, not Home

I'm fairly sure if you try to login with f@you.com it'll try to log you in and fail a few times and let you make an account.

> Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.

Huh. Aside from the ethics, this creates a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone who needs a PC to set up their home internet.

Most people would just get a pre-configured router from their ISP that you can just plug in.

Even those sometimes require some kind of activation on a network-connected PC or phone. It's probably not very common, but it happens.

> On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence.

This isn't correct. Even with network connected, it's 2 "no thanks" clicks to continue with a local account. If you don't have network connected, you go straight to local account as the only option.

At least this is the case with the last 3 versions of W10, and a normal single-user product key, or if you skip the product key. I guess if you use an enterprise or volume key it might be different.

Isnt this a dark pattern.

I think you are apologizing for them if you say it wasnt forced. It sure feels forced.

Oh it’s a dark pattern for sure, and it’s really shitty. I’m not apologizing at all, just putting a comment out there to let people know that it’s actually possible to do what you’re trying to do.

It's changed for the worse :(

I had to help my grandma get her new laptop up and running for the first time, with Windows 11, and it got to the account screen and there were no hidden/vague options to skip or go local. I assume this is because they detected an internet connection.

She literally had to get an MS account which apparently didn't work because she already had one from the last laptop. MS wanted to send her a recovery code to her email... Which she couldn't access because no computer.

Oh and the amount of opt-in screens after that? 10+ screens. No joke.

It's insane. There's no way she would be able to use her new laptop if she didn't get 2 hours of help.

Correction: those were opt-out screens.

> I'd probably pick Linux on my primary PC nowadays if I didn't already have a Mac.

Just do it! I bought a Framework laptop and, because I forgot to buy an OS with it, decided "what the hell" and installed Ubuntu. I figured I could always install something else if it didn't work out. And it's actually been pretty good! In some ways better, in some ways worse than macOS (my main OS) and Windows (my gaming pc OS). It is actually quite nice to run the same OS as my server(s) on my laptop - it means I can use the same knowledge in two places.

When I was finally forced to ditch Win7 due to lack of drivers, I installed (alongside Linux, that I've been using for years), a modified Win10 with all the telemetry crap and other stuff removed.

My parents have unmodified Win10 and that thing just annoys me to no end, ads, resetting settings after update, etc... Including some behaviour that caused revenue loss in my parents company.

The irony here is that the line used to be "Linux is only free if your time has no value", but with all the junk you need to remove from Windows to make it usable, we could say "Windows is only $140 if your time has no value".

(MacOS is no saint either, I vivdly remember the frustration of having to run random system commands taken off the internet to try in vain to get "smart sleep" to work. If I'm going to have to futz with my system regardless, I'll just use Linux.)

More like $0 (I ain't registering it), but still not worth.

I have an old 2010 Mac Mini that I wanted to sell on, figured I would install it back to the base OS (was a Linux box for a very long time) and then see what I could get on Ebay.

The horrors or trying to get that thing reset without an Apple account! I gave up after a few hours and it is just sitting as back up in case I blow away an install and need a machine to get a disc image from.

I bought a cheap laptop to run some industrial automation software and i was shocked at how bad Windows still is. I used to dislike Windows for being slow, stupid and buggy. Instead of addressing quality they just make the OS more creepy.

All we really want is Windows 2000 with modern security updates and drivers. Instead we get this non-sense!

Pro tip: never give Windows internet access during setup.

Windows 11 will not let you continue without an online account unless you use a tool like Ventoy which automatically bypasses it

Not fully true. There is a way to open command prompt and skip the account login and the entire setup

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

How kind of Microsoft to allow us to skip such a critical step using command prompt.

I bet my ass it was originally included for OEM and hardware manufacturers

I updated my comment, thanks for the correction!

You can use a local account, but it’s really hidden away (you have to use command prompt at setup time). I had to do this because my WiFi requires a browser to setup and my Ethernet had missing drivers.

I use Win 10 in the work place, it is - fine - once you spend the hour or two to lock it down. Ignoring the privacy issues.

But the joy of having a fresh install of something like Linux Mint (or Kubuntu)and having nothing to lock down is so refreshing. It is like stepping back into the simplicity of Window XP but knowing it is up to date with current technology requirements.

Is pass-through good enough on modern hardware where I can just run a windows VM for gaming and then shutdown windows when I'm done? This would be the ideal scenario for me. I applaud Valve's efforts with proton, but I think Microsoft will start pushing back. I bet starfield will be very difficult to run well in Linux, for example.

yes, with vfio. I've had a windows 10 in a VM on my "main desktop" for nearly 3 years now. Gentoo gets two screens and an "ok" GPU, windows gets the beefier GPU and its own screen. I use qemu, there may be other ways to do it. The linux machine can't "see" the other GPU or screen(s).

if you want to do this, there are a couple of gotchas. One i'd recommend bearing in mind is not using identical cards. Either two vendors or two different types of cards (like a 1060 and a 1070). This makes it easier to stub the windows card and also write/edit the scripts (which are probably searchable on goog with "vfio-bind").

The second is one that i lost the information about, but if it affects you, it should be possible to dig up the info. Some games get micro-stuttering or stuttering when running with vfio under qemu; the fix can be an application that applies settings on windows or editing the windows registry.

All that aside, it works fine. The audio latency is minimal, but if you have a machine with more than 24 PCIe lanes, you can just dedicate an entire USB PCI card to windows, passing that through and plugging all the windows related hardware through that.

I think Linus (LTT) mentioned doing something like this, virtualizing even multiple windows machines on a single machine with the threadripper (32-64 lanes) and Epyc (64, 96, or 128 lanes) - having a dedicated USB and GPU for each virtualized desktop. Nice.

Fwiw the stuttering fix you describe is likely moving from IRQ to MSI, it's common to edit the passed-through PCI device in regedit to use MSI (message signalled interrupts) instead.

Yes, that's what it was. And i just remember the arch wiki had something about it back when i set it up, but it was[0] incomplete - it fixed most of the issues i had with my setup, but not the MSI (i think) stuff. The site that did have the correct information and possibly even a windows download link was light grey text on a black background, and otherwise a very minimal site. I had it bookmarked on firefox on an old PC, and for some reason firefox loves deleting history/bookmarks that are older than some age. I've never bothered to track it down and it bites me every couple of years when i try to find/remember information just like this.

Technology, it's so advanced.

[0] it may be more complete now. I probably wouldn't do this again myself; but at the time i had been "selling" this service (qemu/xen virtualization of PCI cards) for linux on linux for over a decade, so it was something i already knew enough about to stumble through - windows on linux.

Oh by all means I would just boot into Windows or have a separate PC for video games if I cared about them. Not worth messing with emulation unless you find it fun.

Not emulation, virtualization. That would be easier than emulation or dual booting, if it worked well. Surely virtualization must be getting pretty good given it's ubiquitous use in the cloud. In fact, I was hoping that one day we'd see games distributed in a fully containerized manner so that the OS becomes irrelevant. That's probably just a pipe dream though...

In the unfortunate scenarios, where you need to use a Windows Install and or a VM never start without running through something like this:

https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

WARNING: Use at your own risk, no guarantees. Personally never broke anything for me.

I tried Blackbird (similar idea) a couple times on my Surface and it hosed the install twice. I'd still make it to desktop but it was a barely usable mess, and the "restore" functionality didn't fix it.

I've been pretty leery of them ever since - definitely don't try it on a critical machine, and you're really at the mercy of Microsoft changing something every update. Definitely "use at your own risk" territory.

https://www.getblackbird.net/

PS > Get-AppxPackage -allusers | Where-Object {$_.name -notlike "store" -and $_.name -notlike "linux" -and $_.name -notlike "ubuntu"} | Remove-AppxPackage

PS > Get-AppxprovisionedPackage -online | Where-Object {$_.name -notlike "store" -and $_.name -notlike "linux" -and $_.name -notlike "ubuntu"} | Remove-AppxprovisionedPackage -online

> and never felt Linux was a worthwhile alternative on desktop

ZorinOS (https://zorin.com/os) can hopefully change your perspective.

I've tried em all. It's not that I need a more user-friendly DE like Zorin's, it's more that the Linux kernel lacks broad support. One small but kinda important example is how simply watching Netflix requires workarounds and won't run above 1080p. Zoom and Discord also have caveats. And hardware peripherals are always questionable with Linux, whereas they'll get 0 stars if they don't 100% work with Windows (even if it's Windows's fault).

Also, random other users are probably better off with Ubuntu than Zorin purely because that's what more people use and you can actually Google how to do stuff in it. Even a lot of Zorin questions will link to Ubuntu tutorials.

Ubuntu resources are practically (in practice) useless. They change directions too much. Fixes that worked in ubuntu 18 won't work in 22, because they changed too much. Best case the old fixes do nothing. Worst case, you have a non-functioning system unless you have a long-suffering friend that is willing to help you.

Ubuntu has the windows-itis, change for change's sake. I can't even say i like Ubuntu Server, but i'm regularly forced to interact with it because universities output stuff that "works on ubuntu, just copy and paste these lines!", where ubuntu doesn't update certain packages so you end up with old versions of stuff that works reliably until the next "tick" of an even year, when everything will break again. Windows-itis also implies that there's money in "knowing" ubuntu, because you have to keep up with their new ideas in order to be effective.

I'm less than a year away from just switching to BSD, sooner if gentoo decides to do away with openRC.

> universities output stuff that "works on ubuntu, just copy and paste these lines!"

Well that's the value in it. There's never going to be a perfect system, just good enough. Until I conceded to that, I was using FreeBSD and enjoying the lack of systemd while I struggled to make random packages work. My servers do run Ubuntu Server now.

I don't use Netflix but on Brave, I haven't had any problems with Amazon Prime Video.

> Zoom and Discord also have caveats.

Such as? I use zoom just fine on Linux. Never noticed any caveats. I don't use Discord so not sure what's missing.

> And hardware peripherals are always questionable with Linux

Not a problem with most PCs. Unless you have a really special hardware, Linux will work just fine. Sometimes brand new hardware takes time to receive kernel updates but most hardware is absolutely fine.

> Also, random other users are probably better off with Ubuntu than Zorin purely because that's what more people use and you can actually Google how to do stuff in it

I disagree because Zorin comes with its own support desk. Not only do they provide official installation support (that Ubuntu doesn't), they also have more specific resources than something compared to Ubuntu. Besides, any problems that you run into, you can just search for the same problem for Ubuntu and the fix will work.

With Ubuntu, you have no installation support, no nvidia drivers, no helpful prompts for new Linux users (like WINE), no flathub, no familiar UI for people coming from other operating systems. Ubuntu is imho a worse choice for any new Linux user.

I've always recommended Zorin to family and friends and not a single one has complained about stuff breaking or not working for them. The store has the biggest apps library compared to any other distro, windows application installation support for users who really need it, familiar and one of the most polished UIs in any distro and proprietary drivers that most other distros don't ship with.

Zoom has issues with hardware acceleration and screen sharing on Linux, similarly with Discord. Netflix requires specific setup to work at all, and you get 720p at best unless you use Chrome with some custom extension to get 1080p at best. And back in the day (2018, not long ago) when you needed Adobe Flash to watch the World Cup on the only legitimate US site for it, Linux was a dead end.

> Not a problem with most PCs. Unless you have a really special hardware, Linux will work just fine. Sometimes brand new hardware takes time to receive kernel updates but most hardware is absolutely fine.

Somehow my hardware has always been "special" but worked fine with Windows. And people at work are constantly messaging about Bluetooth headsets flaking with Linux on their Thinkpads, which are supposed to have first-class support.

Of course my servers have always been fine with Linux, but a laptop with a trackpad, BT, wifi, sleep, and USB-connected accessories, that gets dicey.

> any problems that you run into, you can just search for the same problem for Ubuntu and the fix will work.

But those fixes will work for Ubuntu too. I'm no fan of it, in fact I agree with someone else here that it's the Windows of Linux OSes, but "how to do X in Ubuntu" always gives updated results.

> Zoom has issues with hardware acceleration and screen sharing on Linux, similarly with Discord.

I have no idea what the issues are. I've been using screen sharing for years and I haven't run into any issues. Same with my friends and family who switched to Zorin from Windows.

> Netflix requires specific setup to work at all, and you get 720p at best unless you use Chrome with some custom extension to get 1080p at best.

Ah, support issue I guess. Yes, Linux is sometimes not treated well by these companies but at least workarounds exist.

> but a laptop with a trackpad, BT, wifi, sleep, and USB-connected accessories, that gets dicey.

I have used Ryzen and Intel laptops and the only issue I've run into is Ubuntu installer not booting because of missing Nvidia drivers, whereas Zorin worked fine on day 1 (when Ryzen 5th gen was quite new).

Other than that, I haven't had any issues. My desktop's WiFi USB Adapter needs third party drivers so that's always an extra step whenever I'm installing new distros, but I haven't run into any issues that make the device unusable or work in a broken state.

The Bluetooth issues you just mentioned, I haven't seen any, and I am currently writing this on an HP Pavilion 15 Gaming laptop with Bluetooth connected to my speakers. I'm sure there are a few bluetooth chipsets that need kernel updates. For example, Victus has a mediatek BT+WiFi chip and it needs the latest 6.2 kernel, so it doesn't work on Zorin out of the box. However, upgrading kernels on Zorin is quite easy and there's a guide on the forums: http://maglit.me/upgrade-zorin-kernel

Besides, Linux in its current state is still a lot better than terrible software like Windows. No ads, no spyware, the system runs smooth no matter how old the installation is. All of these things are a luxury on the Windows side; it's terrible software.

Things usually work out of the box but not always. Might seem fine to you, but suppose you were choosing something else you don't understand fully. Maybe it's a used Mitsubishi with a CVT and you're told it's fine as long as you make sure the VIN is within a certain range, the recall work has been done, and the car computer has a certain software version. You can either get that or the Toyota that'll probably never have problems but is less efficient.

The thing is, like I said, Windows has gotten so annoying on its own that I don't want to deal with it ever again.

This time, this OS really will be the one!

based on ubuntu

This really is the one if you prefer simplicity and less headaches than the distro it's based on.

Headaches for me are dist-upgrades breaking, or fresh reinstalls needed every couple-few years. Using Linux as primary/only OS (except for AAAA games) for 2 decades, and after dozens of distro-hops, I can finally recommend EndeavorOS for a clean, Arch-based system with rolling-release updates. My Framework laptop has everything functioning, from media buttons to sleep to GUI-managed bluetooth audio to full-disk encryption with sleep and hibernation to multiple DE choices while I watch Wayland advance, but have GTK stuff around just-in-case. It all just works.

the only difference for osx is that apple leaves that data collection to when you try to download security updates for your apps.

Microsoft at least let us get security updates without accounts aftet we dodge all that during install. apple doesn't. login or get out.

You don't need an account to update your OS, and you don't need to download apps from the Mac App Store (I never do).

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