This is not new. Microsoft has been pushing users further into their SaaS ecosystem for years. Creating a local account on Windows 10 is more difficult than signing up for a Microsoft account. That's by design. It just goes along with the transition of their core business away from desktop software and into hosted solutions and data processing. Annoying? A little. Surprising? Hardly.
One of the first things MS did after buying Mojang was to slap Azure AD on it for account management; and it’s been a number of years now since they switched to that being the only way to authenticate to Minecraft.
This has definitely been the frog boiling strategy at Microsoft for a decade or so. It’s likely a big part of why Windows 11 exits, too.
It really is that hard to move. Your kids didn't have decades of experience to relearn.
Sorry, Linux is no competitor to Windows on the desktop. Wish it were, it just isn't.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
For the first time in a long time I might stick seeing the state of Linux today, especially Plasma 6. I'm eyeing Fedora 40 or Bazzite, tried Kinoite and pretty much everything I need works out of the box, the only thing I need to figure out is OneDrive.
Can they just fuck off already? I sign into windows like once every 2 months and every time it's different and a worse experience. All my customizations using built in menus get messed up too and the shit that just shows up without asking. "We put the search back on the start bar!" Like fucking actually why?!
While I am using AtlasOS (Windows with bloat stripped off), it still kinda behaves like windows in someway compared to Ameliorated which doesn't have Microsoft tracking and updates anymore.
I woke up in the night and stared at my PC at around 3:00am and suddenly my PC starts from the suspend. I assume this is a way to update Windows secretely but I never asked for it and it damaged me emotionally because my devices behave in unexpected and unpredictable ways.
I've never heard of AtlasOS until this comment. I read the documentation and it's interesting that they need you to install it using a fresh Windows ISO. I wonder what they are doing that can't be accomplished on an existing Windows installation with a bunch of Powershell scripts?
I used atlas for a while but there are a number of issues. If I want to flash reverse engineered firmware to proprietary hardware it often requires patched windows tools leaked from the manufacturer and I haven't had that work any other way than stock windows. Capitalism with no real consumer protections has fucked us in so many ways.
In a family and SOHO setting there is an easy way around it,even without alternative media creating tools and Win11:
Active directory.
Yeah. Microsoft. But not really.
Samba can be used as an AD server for ages now, it's free,cheap and can run on a Pi or some NAS.
These days it's fairly easy to set up as long as you only use it for Identification services and basic networking.
And Microsoft won't bother you with their shit ever, as they don't dare to push corporate clients too much.
I can recommend it very much. There are also full GUI distributions available,e.g. univention.
There are templates for that.
And yes,of course it is bullshit that we have to do that.
But it's less work this way compared to installing Linux and (-the worse part-) teach it to the more technologically disadvantaged relatives who used Windows for 30 years before their retirement. Or to kids who just want to use the same stuff they use at school.
I absolutely would wish that Microsoft would stop their bullshit (it wasn't even out of the possible options for them to make AD cloud only - but a lot of government customers complained). But I wanted to show people that there is a middle ground between submitting to that fucking cloud account and ditching linux all- together.
Don't underestimate the power of nerds. Computer nerds influence tech purchasing decisions, both at home and on the job. The less tech savvy often ask "the computer person" what they recommend. Nerds have actually been astonishingly patient with MS, for decades. But the worse MS makes Windows, the less and less likely they're going to go with the default, "just buy Windows" answer.
I agree. I’m the guy who picks, buys, assembles, and installs the OS and programs for like everyone around me. I enjoy doing it, they enjoy getting awesome PCs for good prices.
My next build for them will absolutely not be Microsoft. The average person can get away with an iPad running iOS for their computing needs. So it’ll be a user friendly Linux distro going forward.
If you do not want the Settings app to nag you with Microsoft Account prompts, go to Privacy > General and toggle off the "Show me suggested content in the Settings app" option.
My Settings panel should not have suggested content
That's like offering book recommendations at the BMV
I am here to do a single task and nothing more. I will not be enjoying my time here.
What's next? "Please rate the settings app on the Microsoft store"?
We'll just have to wait and see, I guess. People didn't jump ship when Windows 8 became the norm (which didn't last long, thankfully), so I'm not expecting the needle to move much over a feature most users will never even know exists. A man can dream, though.
Yup. If my pimax crystal and all my sim hardware ran on Linux I’d switch immediately. I’m sure my Kodi/mpc-be/madvr could work. Not sure about Dolby Atmos. But some of the drivers for my sim hardware already seem slightly jank in windows and I’m not sure the already small teams they have are able to support windows and Linux builds
The gaming/home theatre is the only windows machine I own.
Sometimes I wonder: for a PC sitting behind a consumer router with no extra ports forwarded: How important are OS updates?
I mean if everything works for you on this version, why rock the boat? The idea is supposed to be security, fixes, and new features. We can throw out new features and fixes if you're happy with everything as is.
Security is very buzzy and kind of vague to this type of user, but they also probably don't tread far off from popular (likely ... hopefully ... safe) websites.
So hmm, if not accessing unsafe websites, and hidden behind a router NAT, and with physical safety of home, I wonder if the benefit of rocking the boat (and getting more ads and crap) is worth it.
Like definitely risks are there for any internet connected device but weighing it would be interesting. Someone in infosec should do a real analysis of this situation.
The problem with any device having any internet access at all is that it is quite trivial for a program to establish a connection to a known server (malware can initiate it) and then having those servers send commands back to the computer, effectively having control over it.
The problem is "unsafe websites" is actually a very broad category. Even popular, reputable websites have accidentally hosted malware in the advertisements, some of which can infect without a click.