Well, if I’ve got no way to bypass it (when setting up for customers), I’ll create an account specifically for this purpose.
And proceed to poison the hell out of any data it sends.
Does it still let you sign in locally if you disable network interfaces in BIOS?
Does it still let you sign in locally if you disable network interfaces in BIOS?
Don’t think so. The setup itself can’t complete without internet.
Man it must suck to set up a computer now on restricted networks.
Windows computers that is
I’m spiteful enough that I would have returned my new laptop (despite needing it for a trip in a couple of days) if I hadn’t been able to bypass the account requirement by disabling the wifi.
What still pissed me off is that it would restart itself after downloading updates if it was left idle, and there was no straightforward option to turn that off. (I think I managed to break that “feature” but who knows how long that will work.) Turning my computer off is never acceptable unless I initiate it. It’s about as obviously wrong as walking into my house uninvited or borrowing my stuff without asking me.
That was one of the things that drove me away from Windows. Coming to my desk in the morning to see my computer on not sleeping because it woke up to apply updates or some other shit pissed me off.
Just one of the many ways that with Windows, my computer didn’t feel like I was in control of it anymore.
With Linux, I’m in complete control and it feels so good. Also knowing that I’m not giving out data just by using my computer is great. And FOSS is just cool.
And FOSS is just cool.
It’s such an underrated feature of desktop Linux. The fact that if I experience an issue with a piece of software, I could find the program’s source code and browse issues to see if anyone had a shared experience. And if not, I could publicly submit an issue which the developers and other users/contributors could help resolve. And if you’re brave/experienced enough, you can take a crack at fixing it yourself and potentially resolving the issue for other users!
On windows/macos which both fail to foster robust foss communities remotely comparable to Linux, the best option more often than not was sending an email to some support address that either never gets checked, or only replies with canned messages. After which you’ll never know whatnif anything happened to your report.
Couldn’t you just reinstall windows with an older ISO to bypass this? That’s what I already do at work anytime I need to setup a new machine, gets rid of the manufacturer supplied
programsbloatware. Plus Rufus has an option for triggering the bypass command automatically.Yes, that works, too.
I will just have to sign it up to a domain then add a local user using the command prompt. Still a lot more trouble than installing it should be but I will not give in to this garbage push to make everyone have a microsoft account. I disable the store and all of it on every PC I install.
NRO
Doesn’t that remind anyone of this other NRO? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office
(Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#/media/File:NROL_39_vector_logo.svg)
I still have an old copy of the installer with that command intact. Might be good to keep around.
this right here. I had to switch back to windows as just too much software I needed to use doesn’t work on Linux wine or proton be damned. so I just use 21H2 until either Linux support becomes more mainstream or until the less likely option of Microsoft un-enshittifying. (LOL)
Noooooo!!! You can’t just force us to use a Microsoft account!!! You have to allow us to use the bypasserino!!! Noooooooo!!!
This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity
And what if someone doesn’t have internet connectivity?
no computer for you
But then how we can put advertisements in the Start Menu, and spy on them once our Project2025 overlords want the general populous to be fully committed to extremist christianity 24/7?
I’ve got my first son or daughter on the way, I’m thinking they might be learning Linux as their first OS
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Uh… what? They only thing they have in common is following the POSIX standard. The moment you step outside of that POSIX lowest common denominator, it becomes abundantly clear just how different they are.
The only difference I see both try to follow posix macos follows the unix specification linux doesn’t and that’s about it
I mean compared to some elements of windows, yeah Linux is more similar to macos. But compared to other elements of macos, Linux is more similar to windows. But to say it’s super similar to either one in particular is kind of missing what makes each of them what they are.
Macos and Linux skills and fluency aren’t significantly more transferable than between Linux and Windows. They’re three pieces of software that ultimately try to do the same thing, but go about it in drastically different ways. There are only so many ways from your house to the grocery store, so some of them are bound to cross.
Just another reason to switch to Linux
This with Windows 11 LTSC IoT edition?
IMO, Windows without a Microsoft account misses out on the least features, when compared to macOS without an Apple ID, iOS without an Apple ID, or Android without a Google accout. Sad that Microsoft keeps making it more and more difficult to bypass logging into a Microsoft accout during installation. But I use Linux anyways (btw)
Android without a Google account is great though
That is nice, but I need the Google Play Services for push notifications on the messaging app that everyone in my country uses. It’s sad, I know. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t log in to a Google account on my Android phone either.
Yeah OK, that’s fair. It’s really a shame how dependent notifications are on Google. ALl the other things - Mail, Photos, Drive,… - are a lot easier to replace.
I have e os based on murena. At least there they try their best to replace the google play services. If you have an old phone somewhere that does not get updates anymore you could safely try it out
You don’t need to log in to google for any of what you listed to work with google play services.
Just one more reason to skip Windows 11…
every passing day i feel increasingly gratified to have switched my previously win11 laptop to linux mint. aside from the sheer principle of microsoft being ass, i also fucking despise all of windows’ AI bullshit. Fuck copilot for eternity.
Yeah, it’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t have to be this way! 🤦🏻♂️
Just be sure to check support before buying any newish laptop. I really like my ASUS Duo Pro 2024, but ASUS adamantly refuses to lift a finger for proper Linux support for special features. Even the audio chipset which is standard somehow doesn’t work with default kernels due to something they’ve done. Dual screen can be made to work with some scripting-fu, but the keyboard’s multimedia keys just don’t work at all.
Vote with your wallets and be noisy to those brands who don’t support Linux well. Let them know if lack of Linux support was why you didn’t buy.
This is purely anecdotal but my last pc build was ASUS mobo and its absolute shit tier. I promised myself never to spend another dime on anything ASUS ever again.
I got it cause it had good reviews. Asus ROG strix. I should have stuck with my gut and gone MSI or Gigabyte.
MSI have dropped AMD as a GPU partner as of this generation (funnily enough - also the same generation they had proven to be their highest selling!), and their next generation of PSUs have dropped PCIe 6+2 for whatever the current HPV12 implementation is, so they’re in my shit-list too.
Gigabyte’s warranty support has been ass in the past (at least in my region), and their 3000-series GPUs were prone to overheating due to poor quality thermal pads. Oh, and their PSUs were sub-par and prone to exploding!
I think ASRock is the only ‘Tier 1’ brand (that I’m aware of) without massive controversies in the past few years?
ASrock is ASUS. I don’t trust their quality. They are on the same level to me as Razer products. The lowest of the low in quality assurance.
I remembered reading somewhere that ASRock started off as ASUS ‘budget’ brand - but had since been spun off into its own entity.
I thought that meant that they were sold off, and were a completely separate company now - but it looks I was wrong, they’re still a subsidiary. 🙁
I think I’ll just go to RadioShack and solder my own board. Every company is shit these days. 😔
ASRock is my go-to now. Funnily enough they split off of ASUS a while ago. One continually got better, and the other worse.
Edit: I was wrong about that last part. I thought they had split off, but apparently they are a subsidiary. Well, either way, they seem better.
Tbf Asus has been dogshit for at least a decade at this point.
I tried setting up a dual boot Mint next to my Win 11 last night. Just so I can experiment with getting all the (replacement) programs of my Win 11 install to work on there… froze during install and was busy for hours getting my boot files for Win 11 back.
I’m not a technical genius or anything and now I’m scared to try again. I assume it’s way easier if I would just rip the bandaid off and do it in one go. Sadly too much relies on me still being able to use the computer close to the way I could before. Ah well. Another day, another chance to nuke the boot files.
Clone your drive first and then no matter what happens you have a quick click to restore. I’ve run dual boots on multiple distros for years and you learn a whole lot when things go wrong.
Good call. I have 2 hard dives and really thought that if I didn’t touch the win 11 drive it couldn’t possibly cause windows issues. Lol. Not making that mistake again.
Dual boot with Windows is terrible because of how fastboot messes with the drive partitions. If you want to dual boot you will have to turn off Windows fastboot.
Thanks, I’ll look into that!
What programs are causing you concern?
I use a lot of adobe programs, like photoshop, illustrator and Lightroom. The standard MS office stuff and a bunch of games both via steam and the EA AppStore, some of which are windows only. Mind you, I know most if not all should work using wine (or similar) or have good alternatives. But I’d rather try first before nuking windows.
That’s all very reasonable. I certainly encourage caution.
I’ve never really voluntarily used Adobe products, nor the EA store, but I can tell you Linux support for gaming has come a long way, even for “Windows only” games. If you’re unsure about a particular one, a great place to start is protondb.com. I don’t know if they work with EA, but I’ve also heard good things about Lutris and Bubbles.
As you said, there are good alternatives, including Open or LibreOffice. You might benefit from reviewing alternativeto.net, which isn’t specifically Linux focused but has a good chance of giving you options. For example:
https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-lightroom/
Good luck with your experimentation!
Windows 11 seemed to kick and scream relentlessly to make coexisting impossible. So I called its bluff and nuked its stupid ass. It refuses to play nice? OK; It never gets to play again. Fuck windows. I have a separate machine for windows if I really need it.
Good for you! Nuking windows is indeed the end goal. Dual boot for me is a proof of concept as a step on the way.
Just one more reason to skip Windows…
FTFY
I like seeing these posts, non issue now that im on linux, need more ppl to swap to help the piracy ecosystem
I’m waiting for things like HDR to work properly on Linux - once it’s as easy to mod and play games on Linux as it is Windows I’ll be making the jump.
You might want to take a low at https://bazzite.gg/
It’s what I’m using for my desktop and I’ve been happily gaming ever since.
I’ll check that out thanks!
I started using Bazzite last year and it’s fantastic, but modding seems to be a bit of a headache on it right now. I think Nexus Mod Manager is going to really help that once its got more than Stardew working though.
Lots of the most best tools for desktop Linux are free and open source, so you really don’t need to pirate desktop software. As far as multimedia goes, I generally find it much easier to sail the seas on Linux as opposed to Windows where everything felt hacky and difficult to isolate.
Oh you said multimedia, thats definitely easier if not using something like stremio which is the same level of ease
Lmao if you find an open source tool that competes with houdini, let me know. I found it extremely easy to pirate on windows, it takes a long time to find a crack on linux, if I do, it is usually out of date.
I have only pirated davinci resolve studio on linux and some blender addons, like 25% dont work, while I had a ton of pirated software on windows. (marvelousdesigner, embergen, houdini, davinci openfx addons like redgiant, borisfx syntheyes, touchdesigner, resolume etc.) A lot of stuff that adds up to 1000s of dollars a month for hobby stuff that I use sporadically.
Im not even gonna try to learn music creation again, just assuming ableton and flstudio would both be issues.
Im not even gonna try to learn music creation again, just assuming ableton and flstudio would both be issues.
I understand that more conventional software is proprietary and not released natively for Linux, but it seems unfortunate yo me to let proprietary software stop you from making art. Ive got friends who produce music exclusively on Linux machines using qtractor, which is free and open source, so there’s no need to crack it. I can’t speak for the rest of the tools you mentioned but maybe it would just be worth exploring some of the Foss options to see what you can do with them? I haven’t bothered cracking software since I made the move over to Linux because I just haven’t found any piece of my workflows that actually depends on non-foss software. Turns out tools developed by the communities that use them rather than corporate entities typically turn out to be pretty good.
Everything you’re saying is more a reason to swap back to windows than stick with linux, you ltierally have less options with linux all of the linux options still work on windows
Call it fewer options, I call it curated options. Yeah, I don’t get to install every piece of software I could on windows (though that list is shrinking really fucking fast), but i also don’t want to. I don’t need to put energy into cracking adobe software so they can steal my licensing and farm my data to sell or train their AI on.
I don’t want to use a drill that only works with screws that are officially approved for DeWalt drills, and I don’t want to hack a DeWalt drill to make it work with other screws. I want a drill that fits whatever screw I want. People aren’t switching to Linux because of the vast amount of software available for it, it’s because it’s the option that actually respects us as consumers.
My work laptop has W11. It’s…fine. But I don’t have to manage it, so… ¯\(°_o)/¯
I had W11 on my personal gaming PC for a total of 6 months before I got fed up with it. Running W10 until I make sure it’ll run everything I need it to on Linux Mint (LMDE).
My hardware refresh came up this year. I asked for a MacBook instead of a windows laptop for the first time in my long career. Linux isn’t an option at my org yet.
If you have the money to drop on a Mac it’s definitely better, but there’s a bit more work to get games going. So if you play games elsewhere a Mac is to easy to recommend.
It’s for work only, no gaming. I have a Steam Deck and a Linux desktop for gaming.
Is this a US thing? I had to install windows 11 in a VM like a month ago and I didn’t have to create MS account or use any bypass scripts.
in the latest preview build
i assume you didn’t install today’s beta release a month ago 😉
EDIT: nevermind, i re-read your comment… it’s mandatory in some regions, I know for sure it’s mandatory in the US and in Hungary (EU).
One other thing is that if you created the installer with Rufus, that adds some magic optionally that can bypass it. I wonder if that still works with this beta.
Install it with the English (World) region
I use that command partially because Microsoft accounts don’t allow passwords as long as the password I like to use for my PC
Which suggests to me that MS stores plaintext passwords. Because a hash function doesn’t care about the length of what it’s hashing, the output will always be the same length, so they could verify a 300 character password with the same storage space as a 3 character password.
Not how it works. You don’t attempt to guess the hashed password, you guess a password which then is hashed
What’s stored is hash(password). Then the password check is stored == hash(entered).
Hash(x) will be the same length, regardless of what x is. What that length is depends on which hash function it is. So the database can set the length of its storage for each user’s password to the length of the hash and the hash function will take any size password.
are you a horse battery staple wizard
Correct
my man
Basically. It’s essentially a full-on sentence and last time I looked, Microsoft allowed about half the character length.
Well, at least they aren’t pretending to accept longer passwords but actually truncating it, like they used to in hotmail and live.
They were silently truncating the passwords to something like the first 16 characters, the rest was ignored.
Genuine question:
What’s the point of a long password on Windows? I understand that sometimes you don’t want people accessing your stuff, but all it takes to bypass that and someone access your files is booting off of a USB stick. Or do you perhaps use full disk encryption?
Most people are more worried about remote attackers than someone physically putting hands on their PC. But, yes, you should pretty much without exception be using full disk encryption.
It’s very assholish of Microsoft to lock bitlocker behind the Pro license.
It’s mostly my penchant for longer passwords in general. I did not plan to swap up strategies for my personal PC login account. Seeing microsoft demand a shorter password than I use almost everywhere else was… not promising.
I put this in another thread: It’s not a big deal. They’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script, which is just this:
@echo off
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
shutdown /r /t 0
You can still use shift-F10 at the same point, type those two lines (not the @ECHO OFF), and it will achieve the same result.
upvoted for visibility.
Its not a big deal the same way cancelling adobe subscription is not a big deal.
I have to have Windows, a VM at least, for reasons.
A nameless install, decrapified with Chris Titus’ decrapifier, installer and streamliner script is actually decent
I mean, not really. You had to open command prompt anyways. The command is just a bit different now. There’s no monetary penalty here, just a few more keystrokes.
Its shity corpo behavior to force users generate more profits for shareholders. It is no benefit to anyone but ms.
So you’re telling me 2% of new Window’s users won’t be forced to make an account? Neat!
This is not about the technically savvy. The populace is being conditioned into not owning what they purchase. This will in turn make everyone’s life worse.
Ultimately this change, while frustrating, probably doesn’t change the initial value for those who fit these two categories:
- Needs Windows
- Cares about their privacy
These people were already going to go out of their way to use the OOBE bypass. They still will. This is no more effort thanbit already was.
Microsoft crossed the line already by disallowing offline account creation through their default setup process.
I will copypaste your comment next time people complain Linux is hard to learn.
if someone says linux is hard to learn, that person isn’t making regestry edits.
That said, windows used to be intuitive, but they peaked with xp and it’s been a downhill slide since.
It’s actually so bad lol. Idk what Microsoft has against
-forargsflags but it’s fuckn annoyingWhat, as a delimiter? Even some FOSS software uses spaces.
Whoops, meant flags
It’s also incredibly inconsistent, at least now that they’re pushing more and more towards powershell.
start ms-cxh:localonly
A bitch to remember compared to the bypassnro though.
Well, who cares. I’m never installing Windows again anyway.
You know, if you copied those three lines into a text file, then saved it as bypassnro.cmd, you’ll have solved that problem.
I just bypass the requirement by installing Linux Mint instead
I did the same on my media center mini PC. Any idea how to check/enable HDR?
The answer is a bit complicated. Linux has a long history with HDR where you would need exact software and hardware, or else no HDR… Just know that it will get easier because the ball has already started to roll in the correct direction.
But the shortest way I can say it now,
If you use Valve’s game mode, (which is possible to get either using steamos, bazzite, chimera OS, nobara, or you can manually set it up. You should be able to get it to work. This should work for windows games that support HDR. AFAIK there are no Linux games yet supporting HDR. It should be possible to get videos playing with HDR also, but that would be an exercise for the reader, or wait until people make it easier.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I currently believe the newest version, of KDE and Gnome are now HDR ready. If I am wrong you might just need the newest beta which will become stable Q2 this year.
Playing videos, I believe the newest version of MPV just got HDR support. With more apps incoming.
Anything that let’s a gamepad or a remote browse your videos? AFAIK not yet, but be patient, as this is all new
If you use Valve’s game mode, (which is possible to get either using steamos, bazzite, chimera OS, nobara, or you can manually set it up. You should be able to get it to work. This should work for windows games that support HDR. AFAIK there are no Linux games yet supporting HDR. It should be possible to get videos playing with HDR also, but that would be an exercise for the reader, or wait until people make it easier.
gamescopeis what you’re going to want to search for if you’re attempting this exercise. I just set gamescope in the launch options for the games where I want HDR.Wayland has had HDR support for around 6 months (using Arch, btw, so YMMV depending on how current your distro is). The issue has been that there is no way for an application to determine if your hardware supports HDR because Wayland doesn’t have color management protocols.
The Wayland color management protocols are done and are targeted for the next major release of Wayland (in a month or two, roughly). In the meantime, in applications that supports it (like mpv if you want to watch movies) you can launch it with
ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1to let it know that your setup can use HDR. Once the protocols are released you won’t need to do this.You can edit/create a .desktop file for HDR mpv like so:
Exec=ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 mpv --player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui --vo=gpu-next --target-colorspace-hint --gpu-api=vulkan --gpu-context=waylandvk -- %UHere’s a link to the topic on the Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support
TL;DR: Official support in a few months. But this is Linux, so you can get things sooner if you want to tinker.
HDR is kinda complicated right now.
As it stands, it’s only available on the Plasma and Gnome desktop environments.
The HDR stack on Linux has went through a lot of change recently, and much of the stack has only just been finalised/standardised. It’ll take a while to mature, and to arrive on distros like Mint.
What is hdr and why do people care about it? Seems like another doly atmos that is just made to sell expensive hardware and invent a solution looking for a problem.
Simplest explanation is HDR enables more color bits per pixel so you have much higher contrast in bright and dark images. It’s pretty much essential if you are using OLED panels as these can turn off pixels for a realistic/not washed out black.
Interesting, thanks. I just assumed monitors themselves handle that same way as monochrome monitors manage to display the same content as shitty gaming monitors and art monitors with huger rgb coverage.
You’ll want to not use cinnamon for HDR, cinnamon is not going to get it for a very long time, KDE is a much more up to date environment and it works mostly out of the box on the most recent versions. Although I don’t think those patches have made it to mint yet.
