Microsoft makes Windows setups more restrictive.
  • @conorab@lemmy.conorab.comEnglish
    41•6 months ago

    This forced account shit is infuriating. I’d see students with computers that cannot get to government-provided education sites because they are forced to sign up with a Microsoft account to use their PC, which forced them to setup a child account because of their age and therefore be under a parent account, which means the child account can only use Edge and can only go to whitelisted websites, which blocks some government education sites unless the parent account allows it through which they can’t until the student goes home.

  • @waigl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    93•6 months ago

    Why the fuck is a Microsoft account so important to Windows that running it without one is considered a “loophole”?

    • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27•6 months ago

      because microsoft is shifting focus from selling you a product, to selling you as a product

      And they need a unique account to track every single click and thing you do on your PC, and the web, and everywhere else to facilitate doing that with greater control and ease.

      Its literally what, and for the same reason, google has done for the past decade+

    • Not a replicantEnglish
      1•6 months ago

      Microsoft will sell it as a safety thing - your essential stuff is backed up to your Microsoft account, so in the event that your computer is compromised or damaged, you can wipe and start over with your important stuff restored from your Microsoft account.

      Which is not a bad idea in itself, but the rest of the data harvesting and telemetry makes it yuck. I use pihole to block access to Microsoft telemetry servers.

    • @kevincox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      33•6 months ago

      They want to make money off of services, every service they offer requires a Microsoft account to purchase and use. Everyone that they force to make an account during setup is one step closer to paying for a Microsoft service.

      There are obviously tradeoffs (less sales of these versions of windows and some users pushed away from Windows altogether among others), but the motivation is clear.

  • @NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2•6 months ago

    I have heard about identity provider software on Linux for self hosting.

    Is that a possibility for family members’ win11 accounts too, when they run into that problem in the future? Or is a M$ account the only way then?

    • @atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      Bill Gates doesn’t run Microsoft anymore. He’s not the CEO and largely not responsible for the change in their business model.

      Also, I game on Linux more than I do on windows (though I do have a partition in my drive to run windows for games I couldn’t get working on steam OS/ Bazzite. It’s literally 4 games out of over 100.

      • @mhague@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        I’m making fun of the juxtaposition of people that express frustration/animosity for Windows with the need to stay on Windows in order to consume cutting edge video games.

        It gets to be comical. Something about the “height” difference. Like you have the giant “They’re taking away my ownership of my data and my very computer!” standing next to little old “But I like my raytracing.”

        “My data is being exposed in the name of corporate AI!” next to “But I can’t play games with anticheat with my friends.” It’s funny. I’m going to laugh.

  • @seven_phone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    68•6 months ago

    Describing the ability to make a local account as a loophole is letting a little too much real intention slip out.

  • kingthrillgoreEnglish
    29•6 months ago

    lol there’s already a fix: run start ms-cxh:localonly from a CMD line in the installer

  • @Freewheel@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    20•6 months ago

    Just one more reason not to use Windows, As if forcing data scrapers down our throat in the guise of AI wasn’t enough.

  • 52fightersEnglish
    10•6 months ago

    Is it possible to skip account creation by installing while not connected to the internet?

    • @Skipcast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10•6 months ago

      Nope, you need an internet connection to get past initial setup. Unless you use pro, there you can select to domain join computer instead and it’ll let you create a local account

      • @kernelle@0d.gsEnglish
        10•6 months ago

        You are wrong for now, it is still possible.

        • Ctrl + Shift + F3 during setup gives you access to sysprep
        • In an admin CMD you can excecute the BypassNRO.cmd script. In C:\Windows\System32\oobe\
        • I have encountered one 24H2 installation where the oobe folder was empty, but if you copy the file from another device it works just the same
        • Reboot from sysprep and you can now select “Install without internet” when selecting a WIFI

        This will not work if you’re already connected to a wifi. BypassNRO sets a registry flag, so it’s only a matter of time till they patch it out, but it works for now.

        Edit: Rufus also allows the creation of a local user when making the installation USB, skipping the entire setup process.

      • SayCyberOnceMoreEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        Ok, so setup a DC (in a VM on your linux laptop), install Win11 joined to that domain, create a local user, then leave the domain & destroy the VM…?

        Or install Linux 👍🏻

        • @Skipcast@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4•6 months ago

          You don’t have to join a domain, it just skips the Microsoft account login and goes to create a local account

      • @IceFoxX@lemm.eeEnglish
        3•6 months ago

        Can recommend ventoy. Then simply put the iso’s from the main distributions with different DE’s on the stick

    • @Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish
      2•6 months ago

      Does the dualboot of Mint cause any issues for Windows? I only tested it very briefly on somebody elses machines where I needed to wipe windows and install Linux

    • @arkanoid@lemmy.caEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      I’m a long time Linux user going back to the linux 1 kernel days. The only reason I still use Windows on my home PC is for gaming. I know Linux has come a long way thanks to many contributors like Valve, but how stable are the AMD video drivers and how well does it work for playing AAA PC games? The last time I built a new PC (2023) I tried running Linux w/ Windows in a KVM virtual machine and direct GPU passthrough, but that was such a nightmare to get set up and working, I just wiped it and installed Windows 11. I game on it and run Hyper-V VMs for Linux, which works quite well actually but feels like a sin.

      • @HereIAm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3•6 months ago

        I have a very extensive steam, gog, and battle.net library with all kinda of games from wolfenstein 3D to Baulders Gate 3. The only game I haven’t been able to run is Ground Control 2, but that doesn’t work on windows 10 (possible a USB device issue). Unless you play a game with an anti cheat that explicitly deny Linux (the only one I know off the top of my head that does that is Fortnite) you are most likely good to go. I’m quite a performance/fps snobb, and I haven’t found any game that runs worse on Linux either.

        • @arkanoid@lemmy.caEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          I play the DMZ mode of Call of Duty a lot. And Cyberpunk 2077. Recently started playing Reka. Heard of any issues with those?

          • @HereIAm@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2•6 months ago

            Looks like Warzone is one of the unfortunate ones, the kernel level anti cheat currently stops it from working on Linux.

            Reka (added to my wishlist 😄) seems to run well. If it will run straight out the box or not seems to be a little hit and miss. You can check any troubleshooting steps on protondb. This shows Linux isn’t quite at the “it just works” stage. But for this title if you do run into an issue it seems like an easy fix.

            Cyberpunk runs really well. I haven’t had to tweak anything for my install.

  • @secret300@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    18•6 months ago

    Will people just stop using windows already. I get for work but if you just waiting on that one game then fuck off it’s not worth it. I gave up some of my favorite games because it wasn’t worth using Windows

    • warm
      7•6 months ago

      Can I run multi-monitor high refresh rates without the desktop slugging? Last time I seriously tried switching to Linux, this seemingly simple setup in 2024 was too much for it to handle.

      • @Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6•6 months ago

        I don’t know about high refresh rates, but multiple 4k screens was a pain point in 2023 and it’s a complete non-issue in 2025.

      • imecth
        7•6 months ago

        Sure, as long as you run a wayland capable DE. Like GNOME or KDE. It’s still experimental in linux mint afaik. You might have a few problems if you have an NVIDIA card (no proper wayland support) or HDMI cables (limited to 144 fps because of copyright issues iirc).

        • warm
          9•6 months ago

          I have Nvidia yeah and quickly learnt that I wasn’t going to get it working smoothly and went back to Windows. If I manage to get a RRP 9070XT, then I will try Linux again.

          I hate the “stop using windows” comments, when it’s quite impossible to have the same experience without specific hardware and setups.

          • @f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2•6 months ago

            It’s not the fault of the creators of an operating system that Nvidia refuses to write comparable drivers. Nvidia are the only ones with the technical knowledge of the GPU’s internals that is necessary to write the 100% functional driver. Open-source Nouveau drivers exist but are less functional because of this, its programmers have to try to reverse-engineer and do a lot of guesswork and testing, and for free.

            Basically: If you value FOSS software at all, buy from manufacturers that are friendlier to FOSS software, or you may unknowingly lock yourself out of it.

            Edit: Buying newer (especially of Nvidia) is probably a bad idea if you intend to run Linux. Older cards have had more time for them to fix the inevitable bugs. I run a GTX980Ti 😅 with the closed-source drivers on an Arch-based system and I’m honestly surprised a video driver update hasn’t seriously broken anything yet.

            • warm
              2•6 months ago

              Never said it was the fault of the creators, I love the idea of Linux and wish it was the mainstream desktop OS, then none of these issues would really exist. I only have issue with people pretending it’s so simple to change to it from Windows, which is just almost never true.

              I have an Nvidia card because it was the best option for me at the time I bought it, Valve’s Proton hadn’t matured enough for Linux to even be considered for gaming at that time (other Linux quirks aside). As much as I support FOSS, I love playing a variety of games with friends and that just wasn’t going to be feasible with Linux 5-6 years ago. I wasn’t going to dual-boot when I would end up spending most of my time in Windows anyway and the rest of my time troubleshooting Linux.

              Now AMD has released a good card, Proton is really good and Linux has progressed further to where I can seriously consider it. With Windows 10 support ending, I am very likely to jump ship.

              • @f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                1•6 months ago

                Sorry, I was not trying to put words in your mouth. I just usually hear, “Linux not good for me because it doesn’t support my setup well enough” when it should be “Linux not good for me because the manufacturers of my hardware don’t support Linux well enough”. Trying to put blame where it belongs in hopes of raising awareness to both users and manufacturers.

                I also mistakenly thought you mentioned a newer Nvidia card when you are considering AMD. 🤦‍♂️ Good luck in your computing future!

          • imecth
            7•6 months ago

            The nvidia support is getting better, but yeah they’re years late compared to AMD which basically has better drivers on linux than windows.

    • @Zanathos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20•6 months ago

      Proton is amazing though. I got Lego LotR working on my steam deck by installing some DirectX 9 dependency to fix a graphical glitch with the game. Runs like a dream.

    • DranEnglish
      2•6 months ago

      For people with “that one game” there is a middle ground. Mine is Destiny 2 and they use a version of easy anticheat that refuses to run on Linux. My solution was to buy a $150 used Dell on eBay, a $180 GPU to be able to output to my 4 high-res displays, and install Debian + moonlight on it. I moved my gaming PC downstairs and a combination of wake-on-lan + sunshine means that I can game at functionally native performance, streaming from the basement. In my setup, windows only exists to play games on.

      The added bonus here is now I can also stream games to my phone, or other ~thin clients~ in the house, saving me upgrade costs if I want to play something in the living room or upstairs. All you need is the bare minimum for native-framerate, native-res decoding, which you can find in just about anything made in the last 5-10 years.