Microsoft Is Plugging More Holes That Let You Use Windows 11 Without Ms Account
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Microsoft is removing workarounds that allow users to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account, sparking frustration among users who value their privacy and autonomy.
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Look how that changed.
Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing.
Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S.
What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine?
People jumped to Windows 7 out of spite; with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months. Windows 7 is EOL and no longer receives security patches, so security wise people are a lot worse off than what was anticipated.
Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'
I own this iPad, as in: it's mine. Why should I, and why would I want to put MY device's access and security on the whims of company?
They want to own our hardware, and our software.
I for one preach Linux Desktop, Manjaro XFCE for me. I think people are sticking with Windows 7 despite it being EOL because games and their software will for the most part not run in to issues linux gaming may be facing.
That ain't the way. Your computer. Your choice. No cloud accounts/everything being logged on the desktop that people do, no 'requirements' to utilize the new software, and no 'requirements' to connect people to cloud backup systems to later coerce and push people to buy.
I wouldn't get too excited about that. That might just be because people are moving off of desktops entirely and now only own mobile devices, a market where Linux may as well not exist (excluding Android). The number goes up, because at large, the portion of people who run Linux desktops are less likely to pivot to using only a mobile phone as they tend to be hobbyists/enthusiasts.
Where do you get these figures from? Is there a sensible % increase?
I've been using Linux desktop for a decade now and I am certain it still used by few, and nothing has changed recently. Or you're telling me 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop?
Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space. Windows 11 is really there as a checkpoint to force people to upgrade to more secure hardware. If you dont care about security, you probably dont care about security updates, you can remain with Windows 10.
Thats not to say that they went about this in a pro consumer way. Its been bungled. But specifically on the point of hardware upgrades, for your average windows user the hardware isnt really "fine" as you put it.
>Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'
On the apple front, they get 10x the amount of flak for "enabling" stolen hardware to be reformatted and reused, than they get for bricking people who lose access to an account.
Recovery is expendable in Apple town. Recovery of iCloud accounts enabled identity theft and personal photos of celebs to be released. Recovery of hardware enables theft. Its a losing proposition.
>That ain't the way. Your computer. Your choice.
We really need a hardware path without conflicting priorities.
Microsoft's idea of Security is security from me, not security for me. They use this overloaded language because it's so hard to argue against. It's a thought-terminating cliché. Oh you must not care about being secure huh???
My point was, if you dont care about Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0, then you probably dont also care about security updates. Not whatever insult you thought I was making.
If your thoughts were terminated, that was entirely self inflicted.
Huh? I certainly care about the latter but not the former, and I doubt I'm in the minority.
And how long would you expect Microsoft to write updates for computers with insecure boot chains, and secure boot chains? How much should they spend on mitigations for classes of attack that you can shut down just by updating? Why would they risk being seen to support a platform, that they consider a potential vector of incredibly bad PR, just for end user convenience? They have been browbeaten into being extremely security conscious, especially after the SMB stuff.
Personally, my Win 10 laptops are becoming Debian laptops as god intended.
For bitlocker, I like it. But I use the password version that doesn't need any particular hardware.
How long do I expect updates? Well for starters, not even ten years of support for processors that were state of the art in 2018 is very bad. And windows 10 stopped being the newest option in 2021, so would ten years from that be so burdensome for security updates?
And no it's not a PR risk to release updates for windows 10. You don't need to stretch that hard, please.
Because I care that I'm secure, but I don't care that my computer isn't secure from me.
> how long would you expect Microsoft to write updates for computers with insecure boot chains, and secure boot chains?
Forever, because the same code works for both unless they go out of their way to do extra work for it not to.
> How much should they spend on mitigations for classes of attack that you can shut down just by updating?
There are basically zero attacks against ordinary consumers that SB/TPM protect from. The kinds of attacks regular people need to worry about are resolved through regular updates that don't need those things.
> Why would they risk being seen to support a platform, that they consider a potential vector of incredibly bad PR, just for end user convenience?
What are you talking about? There's no bad PR in allowing SB/TPM to be off. The bad PR comes from requiring them to be on.
> They have been browbeaten into being extremely security conscious, especially after the SMB stuff.
SB/TPM aren't actual security. They're DRM masquerading as security.
> Personally, my Win 10 laptops are becoming Debian laptops as god intended.
That's good, but it doesn't invalidate any of the above.
Secure Boot and TPM are ways to attest that what is running is what Microsoft signed. This is only useful if I think that non-nation-state attackers will have physical access to my hardware. Nation-state attackers can probably get something signed with the public secure boot keys. TPM is just more of the same — it lets the software running on a computer verify that it has not been changed from what Microsoft signed. If I controlled the signing key (perhaps every manufactured device has its own key that is sold with the device, which I can then sign whatever OS I want with), then I could gain some security without this control loss, and that would be useful.
Regarding bitlocker, I can encrypt my drive just fine with no TPM as long as I do not expect my OS to be tampered with (which requires physical access or running something untrusted as root). I can simply use a long password with many hash cycles, so if someone stole my drive they could not decrypt it without the password. But, if the key were in the TPM, then nation-state actors could probably get it back out, depending on exact implementation (for example for biometric unlock). So, in this way, using a TPM is less secure.
We should also do away with TPMs in most cases, since all that they serve to do is attest that the corporation with the keys to the TPM decided what was running and that no one interfered with that. It's DRM, plain and simple.
There are other security updates that I may want, however, even if I am not concerned about giving an attacker root of physical access. For example, Windows has had vulnerabilities which can be exploited over a network.
nope. only useful for corporate setting. We should be able to run anything we want, however we want, without any arbitrary requirements by MS. Especially if it was proven already that it isn't a hard requirement to run the OS - just an arbitrary setting.
It just paves road for more invasive DRM and even more locked down systems.
If they have issue with crashes, and taking blame for corporate AV failures - don't give out kernel level access to them.
>Recovery is expendable in Apple town. Recovery of iCloud accounts enabled identity theft and personal photos of celebs to be released. Recovery of hardware enables theft. Its a losing proposition.
I don't care as a customer. I want my data, I don't care about corporate profit margins - and I shouldn't need to. Data theft is pure service issue of them not vetting recovery enough - due to cutting costs on it.
There's nothing depending on it that prevents OS to run.
Right, crazy I swear I hung a lantern on that, implying you could just keep using Windows 10.
>I don't care as a customer. I want my data, I don't care about corporate profit margins - and I shouldn't need to. Data theft is pure service issue of them not vetting recovery enough - due to cutting costs on it.
Right, crazy again I swear I thought I wrapped up by saying we needed a hardware path without conflicting priorities.
Apple wants you to have a tablet to spend money on apps.
You need hardware built outside of that paradigm to have a hope of avoiding a mess of locked down anti consumer nonsense.
If it has a passcode and you remember the passcode, you should still be able to wipe the device with Apple Configurator?
If the situation is that you don't have a passcode, but you do have an iCloud account where you don't remember the password and can't access the email address, and either don't have access to the recovery phone number or never specified one, then yeah. You might need to find your receipt and bring it to an Apple store to be reset.
Great question! You did configure it that way, so it might be worth asking yourself.
If they'd just been upfront that they were directly targeting a few US companies and prescribed exactly what to do, then the DMA wouldn't be a mess that made some things worse, and they could have made Apple to do what they wanted.
If you saw the same report of that, it turned out to be a UA anomaly. Most likely very few people actually went back to Win 7, which now has quite bad compatibility with newer hardware and software.
If it's so easy, which are these ways, then? Do you think they'll remain available indefinitely?
Not that I don't underwrite the risks involved in getting your OS from untrusted or unreputable sources
Not only does it allow you to create a local admin account, but you can also skip all the other setup screens that you want by pre-supplying values. Throw this file into your Windows boot media, do a fresh install (which you should be doing when you get a new machine regardless), and away you go. I use this both personally and my work environment. Not only are you then not relying on modifying OS ISO's or compilations, but an XML file is relatively easy to verify that only the settings you have set are the ones being input into the system if you utilize a third party tool like the one available at schneegeas.de
I suppose I might still be worried about targeted offline-acting malware if I were using Windows to control some enrichment centrifuges or something. But apart from that, I'm fine with whatever inhabitants it may have frolicking in their isolated jungle.
There are trusted tools out there, like Rufus, that will enable workarounds for you if you tell them to create bootable media. Tools with developers you can look up, rather than anonymous pirates.
As far as installation process:
If I go to the site of any libre project that doesn't install through nix/apt/etc, it will have a focused list of directions that I need to do to install it.
If I go to Microsoft's site and search for how to install Windows, I will be greeted with a deluge of articles I need to read and understand all of the various different methods and scenarios (after avoiding the links to BUY BUY BUY. I already have plenty of Windows licenses that were anticompetitively bundled with every old laptop I have sitting around, thank you). And then since I want to avoid their consumer install methods that insist on holding victims' wrists, I will likely need to go an eNtErPrIsE route - meaning even more reading between the lines of overwrought bullshit.
Whereas if I download a torrent of Windows, it will come with a focused list of directions that I need to do to install it.
BTW doesn't Rufus only run on Windows? That's kind of pointless for me. My workflow is virt-install --cdrom /path/to.iso
Perhaps I will look into setting up a "KMS server" next time I need to reinstall, but I would guess it's a bunch of admin tinkering for not much gain. The kind of admin work that will have fallen apart in the few years before I need it again.
... doing a quick look it seems like "KMS server" only runs on Windows itself? And there is a libre reimplementation for Linux, but it doesn't seem to be in nixpkgs, and requires setting up a heavyweight "Domain" with Samba? A few lines in smb.conf or nixos config and I'd be game, but no, it looks just as bad as I thought it would be. Please correct me if I'm missing some way that is actually straightforward and simple, but this doesn't seem to be the case!
So yeah in short, that's why.
Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on linux anyway and gaming on linux is rapidly becoming usable. And mac side is obviously competitive on various fronts too.
The problem is there's no real alternative.
Your grandma is not going to use Linux. So the choice is between windows and mac.. and the truth is a lot of apps people use are windows only.
I don't see windows losing desktop share anytime soon.
Microsoft has a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows", but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.
If someone who uses their computer to browse the web and check the email picked up a laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu, they'd likely be perfectly fine with it.
>but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.
Eroded even more so by the user-hostile approach of Microsoft itself.
Exactly with things like being a complete failure to recognize a strong valid need for general users to only opt-in to an account according to their own personal needs alone. Not with Microsoft or Google or anybody else known to be a source of unwanted ads or anti-professional annoyances.
Why abandon a remaining security element that can protect against PII compromise like no other?
It's just sad to lose an essential feature that has always been built-in to Windows since the beginning, which helped make Windows into a far better business machine than would have been otherwise possible.
And why now when security is more important than ever?
The people who will have the hardest time switching to Linux are those who need proprietary software products that are unavailable for Linux and whose needs are not met by open-source alternatives. Microsoft Office is still the standard for office software, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is still the standard for many creatives.
If LibreOffice ever reached 100% compatibility and feature parity with Microsoft Office, and if the Adobe Creative Cloud ever got ported to Linux, then this could spell trouble for Windows.
That sounds reasonable, given that
> ChromeOS is built on top of the Linux kernel. Originally based on Ubuntu, its base was changed to Gentoo Linux in February 2010 (--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS)
My plan for years has been to install Linux Mint + Cinnamon for my grandma when she next needs a new laptop... but she still hasn't needed one :(. And she's slowly getting too old for any new computer
Every Windows upgrade was a big change again. The UI would change each time, Windows Live Mail got discontinued, Office got ribbons, etc. Why reinvent the wheel each time? I've replaced:
- Windows Live Mail with Thunderbird, that has been stable.
- Microsoft Office with Libreoffice, that has been stable.
- The next item on the list was going to be Windows itself, since Cinnamon hasn't significantly changed since I started using Linux over ten years ago. It still has a start menu, system tray, window list at the bottom (without the windows collapsing and hiding!), everything made for usability and working as you expect.
The only exception is (grand)parents that need custom software. E.g. my mom has custom software (from Hema I think? Or Bruna maybe?) for editing photo albums to then send it to a print shop and get a real photo album. That will be web based nowadays I imagine. I should ask her but that could still be a barrier to switching
Edit: Similar issue on Android btw. There isn't one function that my (grand)parents use, that Android 16 has that Android 4 did not. The only thing that keeps changing under them is UI. Sure, developer APIs got nicer, support for dual-frequency GNSS is there, screens got taller... none of that needed to touch the UI. Sadly Google does a phenomenal job of obsoleting old OS versions quickly so you need to keep buying new. EU law for longer device support doesn't even help because you still need to upgrade that OS and can't simply use an LTS with security updates
This is partially why major (effective) anti-cheats have migrated to the Kernel. Windows allows the big-budget games, which are often competitive games, to operate with a higher level of game integrity, which leads to more revenue generation.
MacOS is not an attainable gaming support platform in general, as the people who are interested in the AAA games are going to need a Pro series or similar quality device which prices a large part of the current windows gaming audience out.
As an example: it's not too expensive to buy a laptop that runs valorant, and then be funneled into the skin shop. You can get a lot more sales that way than you can through the crowd of people who are on MBP, though perhaps the MBP crew is more likely to be a whale.
note: Valorant is not supported on MacOS due to the anticheat requirement, but the hypothetical still stands.
Edit: I'd guess a lot of them just follow whatever instructions they are given, and create the online account. If Microsoft thought there was a chance of serious rebellion, they wouldn't be doing it.
We have decades of training in the consumer market for very simple install patterns using UIs, and minimal messing with configurations. The people in gaming who overclock and tweak their settings are a huge minority in gaming. Those people are the ones most likely to be able to grok switching to Linux, but when they get there and find that most of their favorite apps don't work like they are used to, they go back to Windows or Mac.
My hypothesis is that for Linux Gaming to truly take off, you'll need a true desktop (not steamdeck which i use weekly) that makes it a handful of "clicks" to get whatever they want installed working. That means you'll need a commercially backed OS where developers maintain all the things needed to support near infinite peripheral connections for a variety of use cases, clear anti-cheat interfaces, and likely clear DRM hooks as well.
I wonder why. Something like Linux Mint isn't materially different from Windows in terms of UI. Any peripheral sold as "Linux compatible" that you plug in will just work, and Steams allows to play practically any game that does not require an invasive rootkit (aka kernel-level anticheat).
I think a good first step would be to start using common FOSS programs such as Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, LibreOffice on Windows during a transition period.
People for whom the computer is just an appliance with limited applications (and who recognise their relationship to the computer as such) might even be better able to switch, provided that everything is set up for them. My elderly parents used a Linux box I set up for them for years at some point.
On the other hand the anti cheat side has been really ratcheting up with newer releases requiring Win 11 and Secure Boot. I somewhat hope and fear we might get a blessed version of SteamOS for the Deck that is heavily locked down and has kernel/hypervisor level anti cheat functions added to it. Essentially allowing for a boot mode similar to current consoles. While it goes against the open spirit of SteamOS, it might serve as an argument to invest a bit more into the Linux side, potentially improving the ecosystem as a whole.
Or all of it might be the usual "year of the Linux desktop" pipe dream.
[1] leaving out the Switch which is heavily focused on Nintendo IP and has comparatively weak hardware
the problem is, the wide masses still keep buying the latest AAA game thanks to literally sometimes hundreds of millions of euros worth of marketing (GTA V already had 150 M$ marketing budget well over a decade ago), and the free-to-play "whale hunter" games are even worse.
With ye olde purchased online games, like UT2004, you'd think twice before cheating, otherwise you'd get your serial number banned (sometimes not just on one server, but on an entire fleet of servers run by the same op) and you'd have to buy a new license. That alone put a base floor on cheater costs.
In contrast, Fortnite or other f2p games? These are overrun by cheaters, there is no cost attached at all, so it's obvious that the only solution is to ratchet up the anti-cheat measures.
All hail capitalism and the quest for f2p developers to lure in the 1-5% of utter whales that actually bring in the money.
The M5's GPU cores are expected to pick up the same 40% performance boost we just saw in the newly released iPhones.
AAA games written for the M4 already work just fine, the extra performance is needed when you are also emulating other graphics APIs and CPU instruction sets to run Windows games.
Windows on ARM has the same issues, but Prism isn't as good at x86 emulation.
It's also about the market accessibility and penetration. When the base level MBA at it's lowest RAM settings is reliably running AAA games is when you might see more interest in the platform from those studios because much like the iOS market, people running Mac tend to be more readily monetized, especially through things like in-game cosmetics.
The performance boost is needed when you are running Windows games under emulation.
Emulation overhead is also an issue for Proton on Linux or Windows on ARM.
Nope because Proton is based on WINE, which stands for Wine Is Not An Emulator. Windows executables on Linux are running natively at full speed like any other Linux program.
Wine implements the Windows ABI and is just here to answer the system calls those executables are making.
In fact, most Windows games are running faster under Linux.
At one point, during a Dota match, every single Windows machine crashed. And my Linux machine was the only one left in the server.
So not only does it run faster but it's more stable too.
Wine may not be an emulator, but Proton includes a completely necessary translation layer if you intend to play DirectX games on Linux.
On Mac, Apple provides an open source emulation layer, D3DMetal, to translate from DirectX to Metal which is used by Wine.
As someone who has used both Windows and Linux to game on the same x86_64 device, the performance hit with Proton is pretty much negligible (and sometimes games actually run faster on Linux).
Rosetta is a translation layer that only operates the first time you run a given x86 app on Mac, and creates an ARM translation that is written to disk and used in the future.
Does that mean it has no overhead?
Also, Rosetta is more like a transpiler, since it basically recompiles the binary, whereas the others are literally layers that basically take calls in one API and translate them to another. They're pretty much the same thing as ANGLE.
D3DMetal compiles shades into Metal.
So it doesn't introduce overhead?
The frame rates are quite low on the base M4. Cyberpunk 2077 test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gID9S2hwJpU
I think you need an M4 Pro or a Max for a good gaming experience with AAA games.
Regarding this article here, when you said about competitive gaming, I imagined a competition of that sort. I wonder how does a windows installation look in a big gaming competition that many players attend. It's never "BYOD" rather they get the windows preinstalled onto great gaming PC.
Do the players need to login to their Microsoft account? And Download their cloud cotents to someone else's computer? Or maybe there is a loophole for gaming contests that allow installation without cloud login?
After a lifetime of Windows use, I'd even say MacOS is almost on par with Linux for development, while Windows' best feature on this front is WSL so you don't have to use Windows.
IMO the two biggest pains with MacOS is (1) brew is not as good as any other package manager in my experience (mostly in bugs that need manual fixing) and (2) Docker naturally is much worse (not just for performance, but for requiring 'Docker desktop'.) All the other pains are just the myriad niceities I miss from a lifetime of mostly Linux that MacOS just can never have.
I've been happily not using brew for a couple years now. Nix can function as a brew replacement without much fuss. However it lacks a simple alternative to brew services (for that you have to enter the rabbit hole which is home-manager).
The Dock is the biggest illustration of this : good luck if you have opened more than two windows of the same app.
Stuff like Quickbooks, AutoCAD/Autodesk, off the top of my head
I used to run AutoCAD on a 80286 with a maths co-pro with 1 MB RAM. It has changed somewhat since!
Who gives a shit about QB? - you could just run it in a VM and it probably runs under Wine. You can also just switch accounting vendor - there are quite a few. Double book keeping is a good 600 years old and can be considered pretty open source these days.
You may even do some real good to your business (if you think you need QB) by going old school and really getting to grips with the numbers. Buy three huge ledgers and label them: "Sales" "Purchase" and "Nominal" or "General". Also grab an exercise book to act as a cash book and a couple of notebooks to document the system. Now, you will need to do docs too so you will need a drawing board to design your forms ...
Now CAD is not the most common business software in use by anyone which is probably why you went for AutoCAD (which you have heard of), rather than, say, Solidworks or Catia. Autodesk is a vendor and not a stuff.
The alternatives not only exist, they're often pushed by the very same developers who made the original which is, supposedly, untouchable.
I hate Microsoft and Windows just as much as the next self-respecting nerd, but this is no less a lol right now than it was 20 years ago. It’s like Linux users all play the same 15 titles that have Linux support and think those 15 games reflect broad ecosystem support.
Because from my ~1 500 titles steam library, I can think of one game that I had issues with. And even this particular game (which is Tomb Raider 2013, btw) worked perfectly fine after a little hack. And ironically the "hack" was checking a checkbox in Steam to force using the Windows version of the game instead of the official Linux port.
???
Oh right. ‘Except for games with anti cheats’ - so like, at least half the market lol, and more than 90% of games by game time.
https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed
But not all popular games are available on Steam, Fortnite or Rocket League are examples.
Halo Wars 2
Crackdown 3
Gears of War 4
The reason is that these are UWP-only games which are only available through the Microsoft store. Which means they will likely never run on Linux.
Most games that come out today, in 2025, are playable on day 1. I'm not just talking about games that are less graphically demanding (eg. Silksong), but games like Silent Hill f. It just works out of the box.
So yeah, even the most recent, graphically-intense AAA games run on Linux thanks to Proton.
That's a big market to just handwave away. Manufacturers have been pretty scared off from shipping Linux by default on consumer PCs, so the only way to affect Windows sales is to impact the corporate world.
And on that note, have to recommend this tool for them: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
Apple may not "force" you to use an iCloud account for their devices, but they sure push it hard.
As far as Linux communities go, Red Hat, Arch, Cisco, and even Ubuntu have also done their fair share of "bad decisions".
when users make a technical effort to workaround these bad decisions, and you keep chasing after them, subverting said technical measures, in order to enforce said bad decisions, this has gone far beyond being bad decisions; it is being done on purpose to prevent users from opting out of a Hostile ecosystem.
Windows for all its faults still has some semblance of the majority of the OS being developed under one roof so things actually work together.
And I tried Fedora at the time but, if I remember correctly, that was the distro that wouldn't load the fingerprint sensor settings page.
1. Linux works great for me
2. It was a mess for me
3. Oh it must be for this unrelated reason/did you try [insert distro]/your looking at it wrong do you even know computers?
Fedora changes more rapidly so may have seen fixes. I prefer Mint to Ubuntu, worth a try though it is typically older.
You didn’t mention the card you’re using so hard to help further.
Pop_OS!, Fedora, etc. are all better and much more stable, and I can't see this changing given Shuttleworth's weird, bizzare, misogynistic, and ableist hiring practices.
I will say I don't' have a strong opinion on Snap vs Flatpak, but I didn't know that about the CEO's hiring practices. Definitely not interested in touching Ubuntu again after reading some first-hand accounts of his behavior.
My favourite part of Windows is how opening the start menu causes CPU usage to spike because the start menu is made using React, versus using native UI components for it. Is... that the kind of "working together" that you mean?
I've been running Linux since 2009 and these complaints are fine to pull out when levelled at contemporary Linux, but it's grown up hugely since Valve started throwing money at it. I haven't had to do any major config on a Linux distro outside of "things I wanted to do with it, just because" since around 2021 (this includes games via Steam or Lutris). Meanwhile I very, very regularly have to hear stories from people about how much work they're putting into their Windows setup just to have a remotely functional OS, including replacing the entire start menu component with a random hack made by a private non-Microsoft sanctioned group.
It's honestly very funny, and it's going to get funnier as the trend keeps continuing.
Yeah your one edge case is totally the reality for the billions of people that use Windows daily. To be more clear since I expected these kids of responses: On the mean the OS is the most cohesive out of all of them. Its still a 30+ year old collection of code despite being made under one roof, its going to have edge cases.
If you have have to start your comment with Id didn't have to do that or it works for me then its "not my department" syndrome.
Searching for problems about linux is going to yield much higher quality results.
I don't think it's fair to blame Linux for "bad device support" when really it's entirely on the OEM and how shitty they are to non-Microsoft developers, and that varies a lot between manufacturer. A Lenovo Thinkpad, for example, is almost guaranteed to have a decent-to-good level of support because of how they, as a company, act and implement their systems. Other manufacturers like Asus, the relationship is more adversarial.
Linux support of mainline devices is in many ways expecting to catch up to a freight train with a little handcar. The fact that Linux supports so many devices and that I've been able to use it satisfactorily for every day work and life on Thinkpads, HP Pavilions, and other random devices, is itself a miracle. The fact that you can install it on a laptop and expect it to mostly work with only maybe sound card issues or lid detection issues, is itself a testament to the skill and effort invested in it. And then when there are problems, it's easy to dril down to the root of things. Versus my dad's USB and wifi card randomly disabling itself within Windows and there being no support for this and no way to figure out what's wrong.
Edit: Actually, currently the whole thing is failing after the second reboot for other reasons. I get an error that says there is some malformed command in the unattend.xml or something. Couldn't fully debug it yet - it's possible the setup succeeds after I figure this one out.
Seriously considering the move to Linux - I've heard it's getting better, but it would cost me a bit of time getting used to it. The pain is really starting to seem like a lower cost every day.
What makes Linux especially painful to windows users is they basically need to relearn how to solve the same sort of problems they’ve forgotten they’ve been solving all the time in windows, but in Linux. Which makes the effort novel and thus especially noticeable.
Basically it takes accepting one is going to get smacked with fractal side quests of searching how to fix problems for a bit, but it does get better fairly quickly.
But as long as I can continue my local hosted llm and playing around with that, and my son can play his games, I'll probably bite the bullet in a few weeks.
FYI I'm a C# dev and .NET works flawlessly on Linux (Fedora). Since I only used Rider/VS Code for my .NET Apps on Windows it works as just as good on Linux, albeit even better given access to better command-line tooling.
I don't run any legacy .NET Framework Apps on Linux (which require Mono) but I'm still able to build our software for all our supported platforms: .NET Framework v4.7.2, .NET Standard 2.0, .NET 6.0, .NET 8.0 both locally and on our Ubuntu GitHub Actions Runner.
Here’s some projects you may find useful
For playing around with dev projects, “Distrobox” is an easy way to manage mostly isolated environments, to keep your main system clean: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox
I use Nobara as my Desktop OS, which is a fedora/KDE based distribution by GloriousEggroll that’s a desktop first and foremost (unlike a console UI oriented distro like Bazzite). It includes a bunch of nice things and cutting edge (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom) stuff out of the box so there’s less for me to set up with. Steam, and the few games I play on it just work like normal.
For games from places Like GOG, Lutris works far more often than not. If I recall correctly, it’s literally just a matter of running the .exe
Most of my other programs are installed as flatpacks, which I would recommend.
Note that Nobara is not currently an immutable distro (like Bazzite). Like windows, you’ll likely want to reinstall it in a few years (or after some failed project) to start “fresh”.
For my NAS boxes, I use Proxmox, which I guess is mostly Debian with a Ubuntu kernel and select packages kept more up to date and a built in web UI. Proxmox is nice because its kernel (even the opt in newer kernels that can be offered on the forums) is kept in sync with ZFS which I use for my archives. I disable High Availability, among other things. Useful links:
https://free-pmx.org/guides/
https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/
Biggest gotcha with proxmox is if it seems to have lost internet access (like the webUI suddenly not working), your network device got changed/renamed due to a kernel update. You’ll need physical/KVM access to update the entry in /etc/network/interfaces with the new active network device name. Also if you install on a ZFS root, proxmox uses system-boot and silently ignores classic grub settings.
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