I mean people are bullied into hooking up Google Chrome with their gmail, and then their entire web history is "backed up" on Google's servers. At least Firefox's Sync features have been end to end encrypted, you lose your password, you lose your files / history. If you log into a gmail account it would force it on Chrome in the past, so I stopped using gmail on Chrome altogether.
I have been happily using Linux on my desktop for over twenty years. It hasn't always been easy, but it has worked quite well for me and it could for others too.
Windows 10 is a total catastrophe for business and private use.
It established ads and spying as normal for an OS, it removed abilities to administrate the OS in a meaningful way and mostly ignored users in favor of nudging people to their products. Products that I would declare to be mostly in beta phase. The bi-annual untargeted channel version couldn't sort desktop symbols without bugs if you had multiple monitors attached till a few month ago.
And before anyone mentions that "normal people" like it and it is just the icky nerds that have reservations: Not in my experience. They hate MS spying on them too. It is just that there is often a lack of an alternative if they are caught up in the ecosystem.
I wonder how people even manage if they don't have some friends and family to help them get rid of the bad stuff.
There are underlying improvements, but what use is a safer system if the malware comes preinstalled.
> it removed abilities to administrate the OS in a meaningful way
What do you mean by that? I moved last year from macOS to Windows 10 for my personal machine, and I don't see what administrative features I could be missing.
For updates, I guess you mean the fact that you cannot block them completely. Or do you mean something else? So that would be the only difference. For the vast majority of people, how does that have an impact? People get their security updates that they otherwise don’t install. Seems to be an ok-ish trade off IMHO.
My main frustration is the automatic reboot, but I’ve seen this behavior since at least windows 7.
For anyone looking at my HN history, apologies for being a broken record.
For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster: All the behind-the-scenes UX and setting flipping, the forced installs, and the performance dips that comes with all this means that low-confidence users feel like they're working on quicksand. The experience becomes unpredictable and scary and the iPad gets more and more use and the PC gathers dust.
I don't get why this all is worth the cost of squandering the good will MS has built up elsewhere.
To be fair, the shift-to-iPad happens even when the desktop isn't awful.
My mother now only touches her Macbook Air if she needs to use her bookkeeping software, or transfer embroidery files to a USB drive to use with her sewing machine. She's much happier being able to do everything else on her iPad -- plus, she can take it with her more easily, and the battery life is ridiculous.
Perhaps for the next holiday, you can buy her an adapter so she can plug her USB drive into her iPad, and remove one more reason to device shift to her computer.
> For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster
that's pretty wretchedly ageist. I know people up and down the age spectrum for whom this is an identical unmitigated disaster with the same effects. I also know a lot of greybeards who will just go in to some "registry" thing and rip out the cancer at its source.
For whatever reason, I've fallen into a kind of side job of helping various people with their computers (I have trouble saying no) and I have noticed that as people get older, their desire to deal with UI changes declines rather rapidly. Many operate purely on muscle memory rather than re-reading and re-parsing whatever new UI gets rolled out.
New things on the screen (or in menus) can induce a kind of paralytic panic and now with Windows 10, Microsoft feels rather free to just ... add stuff, wherever. My first Windows 10 tablet was baffling because stuff kept appearing when I know I didn't put it there. This prompted me to get ahold of and install Windows 10 LTSB. I could not be happier with the result. After a bit of wrestling, I was able to control when updates occurred (if at all) and the random UI changes vanished.
I, too, am getting older.
How much bunkum fluid versus crystallized intelligence is, I do not know, but this has seemed to be a trend I have picked up.
Okay yes. You can be in your 90s and opening up regedit or writing rust programs using async.
But for the majority of people at that stage of their life, who don't really care about the technology and haven't really followed it closely, it's a valid concern that random A/B testing and continuous version updates that change how you use programs are an alienating obstacle to using computers.
From the comments on this thread, a lot of people who do follow technology and who are used to being treating like this also hate it. It's not a stretch that, for less savvy users don't know what exactly it is they should hate will just assume it's computers that are at fault and choose a different tool.
> Windows 10 is a total catastrophe for business and private use.
There is just no real competition, so business and private users don't have a say in it anyway. MacOS requires different hardware and only has to be a little bit better to compete with Windows, so it's progressively getting worse as well. Linux distros lack in other areas and are also heavily corporate driven and low quality, sure if you invest time in it you won't be able to tolerate Windows and MacOS, but you might need a lot of time, as usefulness and freedom of Linux only really exists for programmers. There is also pressure from iOS and Android, people do not care as much about desktop OSes, they live within their phones, and forgive desktop OSes a lot more crap because of that.
On the other hand maybe someone will see an opportunity for a high quality desktop Linux distro that addresses many problems of other OSes now that other OSes are getting so much worse.
We have voluntarily allowed much of our society to become dependent on IT facilities where a key element was provided by a de facto monopoly. We are now learning a hard lesson in why that is a bad idea.
The geeks among us may flee to Linux. The quirky or curious might try Apple (though they don't exactly have a stellar reputation for looking after their desktop OS either in recent years). But for "normal" people, if you buy a new PC today, you get Windows 10 and all the negative baggage that comes with it, and that's just how it is.
I have been convinced for some time that statutory regulation with real teeth is now the only way to protect normal people from the nasty, greedy parts of the tech industry.
I suspect the most plausible alternative -- and that doesn't mean actually plausible, just less wishful thinking than anything else -- is for popular sentiment to turn sharply against these practices and make it a liability for Microsoft to continue down its current path. We've seen a couple of issues recently in my area that went from the general population being ignorant or ambivalent about issues that really should concern them to quite suddenly becoming much better informed and demanding action.
However, it usually requires some very obvious catalyst for people to rally behind. It's not hard to imagine what that could be in this sort of scenario: a massive data leak resulting in huge inconvenience for lots of people, a bad Windows update bricking millions of laptops, a security vulnerability in phones or cars that leads to widespread damage and real people getting hurt or worse. It's sad that I suspect it would take such a damaging event to really wake people up to what's happening, though.
People use the monopoly because it's better than the alternatives. The monopoly is what they can afford to make things that work at least as well as they do.
>And before anyone mentions that "normal people" like it and it is just the icky nerds that have reservations
I'm one of the "normal people". I absolutely hate Windows 10 . I used it for a few years because switching to Linux seemed overwhelming. I have finally ditched Windows 10 for Elementary OS, it's just so much better.
You already have to disconnect form the network to be able to use the "offline account" option in the installer (last I checked, which was like a couple of months ago).
So this has been going on for a while.
Edit (merge the other comment I deleted):
To clarify, this was a Home Edition. I understand that the Pro edition doesn't behave this way.
Neither you or your parent is incorrect; this behavior is variable. I setup 8 new win10 boxes last week, 2 of them (HP, the others were Dell) required pulling a lan cable to get to the local account setup. I didn't have time to check details to see what was different (I'm not really IT, but small company/many hats) but the local account option didn't appear until the internet was disconnected.
Windows 10 Pro, I've installed it about 40 times or more. Domain Join is the option to create a local account. It works, I do it every install, while connected to network.
I last installed Win10 a few months ago and it was not, until I unplugged the Ethernet cable and went back a couple steps to get it to re-assess things.
I think it's possible in professional edition but you have to be offline on home edition. (I messed up and installed pro for a home key, so I did it back to back with same ISO)
Installed Windows 10 Home a few weeks, poked around for 5 minutes searching for an offline option until I gave up. I know it used to be there but they have removed it.
It's not explicitly mentioned in the article, but the fact that presumably installing from the same disc will somehow produce different behaviour at different times (is it phoning home during the install, to decide what to do?) is rather disturbing.
They've already started. We've been replacing Dell laptops at work these past couple months and it was nearly impossible to fully boot Windows without signing in via a Microsoft account. The whole process just felt ridiculous, especially on a computer clearly intended for a business.
When my work computer just used a MS account I had 0 issues, when i was forced to put it on the domain and have an AD account etc I have had nothing but issues. Intrusive sys-admins are more annoying these days trying to control and lock things down in a more connected world.
>Intrusive sys-admins are more annoying these days trying to control and lock things down in a more connected world.
How about trying to stop a raging forest-fire and the primary tool you are supposed to use is a squirt gun?
The backend that we have to work with was designed around the concept of "1 network, X users" and the biggest threat was a boot-sector virus that formatted your hard-drive after silently replicating itself to every machine.
Now you need security in layers, because even if every god-damned employee was as smart as Tim Berners-Lee and didn't open every email attachment, drive-by downloads; 0-day browser exploits that give access to ring0 coupled with an OS that releases updates that are more likely to bjork your computer then actually solve the fucking problem these computers are sitting fucking ducks.
And because we are seen as "Intrusive" we can't even get the C-level assholes to listen to us, or to follow the rules that they see are necessary for everybody else.
The environment has grown so hostile that Becky in accounting doesn't need internet access, and you are lucky we don't limit the internet to 1 terminal in the lunch room with every port disabled and filled with a hot-glue gun.
Just because YOU are "smart with computers" doesn't mean your damn computer is safe.
We (SysAdmins) are fighting a desperately hard battle. We get shit on by the end-users, and Upper Management. If you have 1 frustration with your PC multiply it by thousand, and try to put yourself in our shoes.
Why do see a need to conflate both things? Microsoft forcing users to use an online account is already quite bad. No need to change the definition of what bullying is to communicate that message.
In the first place, I consider removing local accounts to be an actual abuse.
But in the second place, "bullying" is not restricted to "actual abuses", however defined. Bullying refers to an attitude, the attitude of shoving someone around because you can. The reverse of "bullying" is "caving in", not "being victimized". Here are some cites I pulled from COCA:
> What are the keys to the match for Halep? It sounds trite, but Halep needs to stay aggressive -- as she was in the semis -- and not let Serena bully her around the court.
> Can someone please explain to me why Magic Johnson and other executives have been fined by the NBA for just a simple comment on another player, but yet, Kawhi Leonard can actively and outwardly recruit an under-contract player and persuade him to bully his way out of that contract?
> Just look at what China's trying to do. They're trying to bully us, hold our farmers hostage.
> the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a lot of the legal enforcement protections that are in the agreement that are particularly important for Canada and Mexico especially because they're smaller economies, smaller countries, much more reliant on the U.S. market. They can't really bully their way around to getting things that they want when things don't go their way
These four cites describe three different scenarios, but not one of them could be considered to match what you claim is the definition of bullying.
I'm based in the UK. This has been going on for a good while outside the US. Back in mid November last year I struggled to get past the requirement to create an online account when rebuilding a friend's laptop after a hard disk failure.
I scratched my head for a good bit thinking that I'd missed the old pathway that let you skip the online account step, but it turned out that the installer's behaviour had actually been altered.
After some more dome scratching I eventually discovering that disabling the built-in wifi module (no wired LAN connection was made) caused the installer to let me create a local account instead.
Quite bloody annoying.
Footnote: this was an install from a bootable USB stick where I'd "burned" the full Windows 10 ISO image.
Good luck to their marketing and sales team. It's gonna be a fun game to convince people to do so when you have perfectly equivalent and usable, totally free, and now cute open source OS/distros.
People started to sell TAILS on usb keys for $10, if someone packs Linux Mint, eOS or similar for $5 .. in a web app world, linux + firefox is probably invisible to the average user.
Just as bad is forcing you to set up a pin number on top of your password in order to log in. It wouldn't let me not pick a pin during a recent installation so I had to set one up, finish installing and then remove it in the settings somewhere. Very odd. I don't even mind it being offered as an option, maybe some people prefer an alphanumeric pin...
They're already there. The ThinkPad I bought in December didn't have the local account option available.
It's currently in "trick the user" mode: it has you connect to wifi to download the latest security updates, then remembers the network and automatically tries to have you create an account a step or two later.
I avoided it by rebooting, going into the bios, disabling wifi, and then resuming setup - only when it couldn't connect would it allow a local account. Just rebooting to restart initial setup doesn't work, it remembers the network.
I reinstalled a computer about a month ago, same thing but I didn't have to mess with BIOS settings, going back 2 steps and disconnecting the wifi worked.
I bought two different laptops in January and installed Windows 10. I managed to reach the local account option by entering a Gmail address without a connected Microsoft account when it first asked me to log in during initial setup. At the failure page they added a local account button that wasn't on the previous screen so that I could set up a local offline account.
It still keeps nagging with a notification saying that my Windows installation is not fully secure since I haven't added a Microsoft account. I've disabled that notification, but it may have disabled all notifications from the settings part of Windows, I'm not sure.
This is odd, considering it's a Microsoft device, but the Surface Pro I bought in January had a local account option available, and I connected to the update servers before creating my local account. However, around the same time I accidentally converted the local account on my gaming desktop into a Msft account when signing into 365 to setup onedrive. I didn't realize I was doing that until my account photo on the login screen changed. I can still login to the PC with my old password (Msft account p/w is the typical 20 char random string from my password manager).
Tip- you can disable the security nag notifications in defender settings individually. There is a screen with different categories of 'threats', and you can turn on/off warnings individually. You probably don't want those notifications entirely disabled, since it is pretty useful as anti-virus, but the account and backup notifications are obnoxious.
tldr; Among mainstream OSs I'm most happy with Windows today
For the last few years I've been using Windows 10 rather than macOS. In general Windows seems mid-to-long-term more stable than macOS. But maybe that's because I'm used to treating macOS like a nicer Linux while they've been locking down many Linux-like abilities (kernel modules, tracing/debugging, etc). But there's also been the macOS filesystem and permissions model changes that have made upgrading a pain.
I do have a Microsoft account but I don't do anything with it. I don't use any Microsoft products that are not included in the base install. I tried Hyper-V for a while but it was painful to configure so I've been using VMWare with more success.
Generally speaking, it seems like Microsoft is looking further than a year from now -- getting design and quality right compared to macOS which no longer seems to have any particular direction. It's not just in their software; I've been seriously impressed by build quality and pricing on the Surface line of tablets and laptops. I actually mistook a Surface book for a 2015 macbook pro. In contrast, I really don't want to gamble with post-2015 Apple hardware.
And although I do a lot of development on my laptop, I'm trying to move to developing in the cloud or a home-server because compiling kills my battery. Windows enables this use-case fine. To be fair, macOS would too.
I haven't had any issues with unwanted ads. The only ads I'm aware of are the lock-screen backgrounds that show different places around the world... I don't really consider them an ad though.
What makes it worse is when their account set up is broken. For an interview yesterday, I attempted to install and get an account for Skype. The back end broke, and when I tried to do create a general Microsoft account to confirm it was the back end, I was banned from using my email because of "suspicious activity".
To make it more fun, their "Technical Support" chat failed as well, so I was unable to get a human to even talk through this.
That would be even worse if that prevented me from installing or using Windows.
Still have the same problem with my private account. Exactly the same reasoning. Wanted to just delete the account after that, but I would need to login and they ask for my telephone number which they certainly will not get. Well, they already have it on my business account but that is beside the point. Tried contacting support, but you need an account... even wrote a fan mail to SNadella@microsoft.com (spoiler: no response).
They would be legally obliged to delete my account, but at some point I had the revelation that any minute spending thoughts on them is a wasted minute of life.
The relevant question is whether it's still safer than relying on Windows 10 even so. Windows 10 has had so many problems that the answer to this is not obvious. If you're not connecting your computer directly to any untrusted network and only operate behind a firewall, the security of your applications is likely to be more important for your protection than the security of Windows itself.
Of course, Microsoft has engineered the market so that getting any new 7 systems is now intended to be impossible and exerted considerable influence to get people to move to 10, so which is safer is becoming a moot point.
And don't be fooled into thinking that Windows 7 is less secure because it isn't supported anymore. Windows isn't safe either way, it all depends on in how you use it.
Use uBlock Origin to block ads, trackers, and other third party insidious code (preferably use uMatrix as well if you're savvy enough). Enable your firewall. Don't download files from untrustworthy sources, etc.
Personally I only do financial transaction on Linux, and don't use a password manager on Windows. I actually only use Windows to play a game sporadically, or to use software that hasn't got an alternative on Linux, which is becoming quite rare.
Three years ago was pre-18.04, which I've been using very successfully on my personal Lenovo X1C5 for quite a while now.
With 20.04 imminent, it might be worth giving it another shot in a VM to see if things have changed.
Personally, I used Win10 on my carbon for a while (having previously tried and given up on Linux on a T410) before finally getting tired of the forced reboots, the software auto installs, etc, and giving Ubuntu 18.04 a shot. It isn't perfect (e.g. the fingerprint reader has never worked, and suspend sometimes doesn't work if Bluetooth is turned on) but I was genuinely shocked at how otherwise functional it is out of the box (even the USB C dock works after installing the DisplayLink drivers). Heck, with TLP installed using an out-of-the-box configuration, battery life is better than Windows.
It's at the point where I genuinely prefer it to the Win10 X1C5 I have at work.
Manjaro is better than Ubuntu as a workstation and for developers it's better than Windows in my opinion. I've been trying out Linux desktops for 20 years and it's the only one that got me to switch.
I've been on Manjaro now for almost 2 years, doing JavaScript/React/PHP/Ruby/Python work (and some .NET Core with SQL Server!). I use VS Code and Chrome. I listen to music with Spotify. We have Slack. I can remote desktop into Windows machines with FreeRDP.
Recently someone said that they thought they would prefer to try Xubuntu because it had more official support so I decided to compare it to Manjaro and try it out on a spare machine. There's really no comparison. Setting up software on Ubuntu is painful, having to find and add keys to various disconnected software repos for every package. After a week, the Ubuntu installation ate itself after an update and wouldn't boot.
Meanwhile I have 3 workstations running Manjaro (work desktop, home desktop and personal laptop) and they all run perfectly and installing software is as easy as opening Add/Remove Software utility and finding what I want. Everything is there, even my favorite diff util from Scooter Software - Beyond Compare.
AFAIK that's still not an option available to for home users or small businesses, though (unless you're willing to do illegal things to get it, I assume, but that's not a good solution to the underlying problem here).
For machines on Windows 10 Pro, click on the “Domain join instead” button during OOBE. AD joins cannot be completed during OOBE, so it falls back to asking you to create a local account.
I simply don't care what products they do, M$ is consistently a piece-of-shit amoral company, period.
An asshole kid who is kindly opening the doors to teachers and kicks smaller kids in the head just around the corner and tortures little animals after school is still a proper asshole.
NVIDIA has also removed the possibility to set up an NVIDIA SHIELD TV without a Google account, there is no option to skip logging in during setup. The requirement for a Google account is not advertised on their site [1]. Other devices with the same Android TV version have a skip button on the Google account screen.
Not going to lie... I setup win10 2 weeks ago and I didn't see (notice!) the local options.
As I use Outlook.com/Onedrive I didn't care until I opened up my terminal and noticed my username was the first 5 letters of my email. What the hell. I don't get why they would do that instead of just using your firstname or asking you at least. or at the very least use _everything_ up till @ instead of the first 5...
This irked me beyond belief and after googling a bunch of crazy ways to 'fix' this, the easiest turned out to be creating a local account 'chris', deleted my MS account, then attached the MS account to 'chris'
I feel like the tech in general is getting user-hostile... Everyone (websites, apps, cars, tvs, etc.) wants to track you and collect as much data as possible, websites nag you to install app on your phone, dark patterns everywhere, "smart" devices that won't work without an internet connection or become bricks after a while, smartphone manufacturers forcing you to buy new phone by making apps slower on older devices, more closed protocols and walled gardens - the list goes on and on...
They're not "crazy", which is pretty disrespectful. Anyone paying attention has seen the writing on the wall for a while. Snowden just confirmed what they've been saying all along.
Data is the new arms race, those who collect the most have the most to gain, especially financially where data is being a core asset to a business.
Dumb is going to be the new gold, at least for those "crazies" you speak of.
Productivity gains. But naturally people want more returns, higher stock prices, more profit. So we get both real technological change (innovation) and the dark patterns too.
It's not tech that is getting user-hostile, it's just bad tech.
The big problem IMHO is that some of the essential technology we rely on every day -- our operating systems, communication devices, vehicles -- has been moving rapidly into that category in recent years.
When the pseudo-malware stuff was only being done by individual applications or websites or quirky IoT devices, you could mostly avoid it by just not using those things. Now it's becoming unavoidable, and that's a serious concern.
Everytime I see some despicable software behavior my mind always envisions and reviles the programmer that allowed it to happen. I'm always disgusted at the depths humans will go to make more money.
Would it be unethical to genetically engineer embryos to eliminate sociopathy? Or how about engineering an airborne virus which modifies victims' DNA to eliminate sociopathy? (Of course, these could have drastic unintended side-effects, especially the latter.)
Through no fault of its own I don't think a better technology has ever existed for the rent seeker to leverage than current digital tech. The whole modern concept of a "platform" puts good old fashioned slumlording and payday loaning to shame.
That headline seems really bad. Windows has been in "bullying" mode for years now. Installing without a Microsoft account has been very difficult for a long time. The change now is to refuse to install at all without a Microsoft account, which is not "bullying" any more, it's something else.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadIt established ads and spying as normal for an OS, it removed abilities to administrate the OS in a meaningful way and mostly ignored users in favor of nudging people to their products. Products that I would declare to be mostly in beta phase. The bi-annual untargeted channel version couldn't sort desktop symbols without bugs if you had multiple monitors attached till a few month ago.
And before anyone mentions that "normal people" like it and it is just the icky nerds that have reservations: Not in my experience. They hate MS spying on them too. It is just that there is often a lack of an alternative if they are caught up in the ecosystem.
I wonder how people even manage if they don't have some friends and family to help them get rid of the bad stuff.
There are underlying improvements, but what use is a safer system if the malware comes preinstalled.
What do you mean by that? I moved last year from macOS to Windows 10 for my personal machine, and I don't see what administrative features I could be missing.
My main frustration is the automatic reboot, but I’ve seen this behavior since at least windows 7.
For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster: All the behind-the-scenes UX and setting flipping, the forced installs, and the performance dips that comes with all this means that low-confidence users feel like they're working on quicksand. The experience becomes unpredictable and scary and the iPad gets more and more use and the PC gathers dust.
I don't get why this all is worth the cost of squandering the good will MS has built up elsewhere.
My mother now only touches her Macbook Air if she needs to use her bookkeeping software, or transfer embroidery files to a USB drive to use with her sewing machine. She's much happier being able to do everything else on her iPad -- plus, she can take it with her more easily, and the battery life is ridiculous.
that's pretty wretchedly ageist. I know people up and down the age spectrum for whom this is an identical unmitigated disaster with the same effects. I also know a lot of greybeards who will just go in to some "registry" thing and rip out the cancer at its source.
For whatever reason, I've fallen into a kind of side job of helping various people with their computers (I have trouble saying no) and I have noticed that as people get older, their desire to deal with UI changes declines rather rapidly. Many operate purely on muscle memory rather than re-reading and re-parsing whatever new UI gets rolled out.
New things on the screen (or in menus) can induce a kind of paralytic panic and now with Windows 10, Microsoft feels rather free to just ... add stuff, wherever. My first Windows 10 tablet was baffling because stuff kept appearing when I know I didn't put it there. This prompted me to get ahold of and install Windows 10 LTSB. I could not be happier with the result. After a bit of wrestling, I was able to control when updates occurred (if at all) and the random UI changes vanished.
I, too, am getting older.
How much bunkum fluid versus crystallized intelligence is, I do not know, but this has seemed to be a trend I have picked up.
But for the majority of people at that stage of their life, who don't really care about the technology and haven't really followed it closely, it's a valid concern that random A/B testing and continuous version updates that change how you use programs are an alienating obstacle to using computers.
From the comments on this thread, a lot of people who do follow technology and who are used to being treating like this also hate it. It's not a stretch that, for less savvy users don't know what exactly it is they should hate will just assume it's computers that are at fault and choose a different tool.
There is just no real competition, so business and private users don't have a say in it anyway. MacOS requires different hardware and only has to be a little bit better to compete with Windows, so it's progressively getting worse as well. Linux distros lack in other areas and are also heavily corporate driven and low quality, sure if you invest time in it you won't be able to tolerate Windows and MacOS, but you might need a lot of time, as usefulness and freedom of Linux only really exists for programmers. There is also pressure from iOS and Android, people do not care as much about desktop OSes, they live within their phones, and forgive desktop OSes a lot more crap because of that.
On the other hand maybe someone will see an opportunity for a high quality desktop Linux distro that addresses many problems of other OSes now that other OSes are getting so much worse.
And we have a winner!
We have voluntarily allowed much of our society to become dependent on IT facilities where a key element was provided by a de facto monopoly. We are now learning a hard lesson in why that is a bad idea.
The geeks among us may flee to Linux. The quirky or curious might try Apple (though they don't exactly have a stellar reputation for looking after their desktop OS either in recent years). But for "normal" people, if you buy a new PC today, you get Windows 10 and all the negative baggage that comes with it, and that's just how it is.
I have been convinced for some time that statutory regulation with real teeth is now the only way to protect normal people from the nasty, greedy parts of the tech industry.
I suspect the most plausible alternative -- and that doesn't mean actually plausible, just less wishful thinking than anything else -- is for popular sentiment to turn sharply against these practices and make it a liability for Microsoft to continue down its current path. We've seen a couple of issues recently in my area that went from the general population being ignorant or ambivalent about issues that really should concern them to quite suddenly becoming much better informed and demanding action.
However, it usually requires some very obvious catalyst for people to rally behind. It's not hard to imagine what that could be in this sort of scenario: a massive data leak resulting in huge inconvenience for lots of people, a bad Windows update bricking millions of laptops, a security vulnerability in phones or cars that leads to widespread damage and real people getting hurt or worse. It's sad that I suspect it would take such a damaging event to really wake people up to what's happening, though.
That would be a more convincing argument had Microsoft itself not forcefully removed the most plausible alternative from the market.
I'm one of the "normal people". I absolutely hate Windows 10 . I used it for a few years because switching to Linux seemed overwhelming. I have finally ditched Windows 10 for Elementary OS, it's just so much better.
You already have to disconnect form the network to be able to use the "offline account" option in the installer (last I checked, which was like a couple of months ago).
So this has been going on for a while.
Edit (merge the other comment I deleted):
To clarify, this was a Home Edition. I understand that the Pro edition doesn't behave this way.
How about trying to stop a raging forest-fire and the primary tool you are supposed to use is a squirt gun? The backend that we have to work with was designed around the concept of "1 network, X users" and the biggest threat was a boot-sector virus that formatted your hard-drive after silently replicating itself to every machine.
Now you need security in layers, because even if every god-damned employee was as smart as Tim Berners-Lee and didn't open every email attachment, drive-by downloads; 0-day browser exploits that give access to ring0 coupled with an OS that releases updates that are more likely to bjork your computer then actually solve the fucking problem these computers are sitting fucking ducks.
And because we are seen as "Intrusive" we can't even get the C-level assholes to listen to us, or to follow the rules that they see are necessary for everybody else.
The environment has grown so hostile that Becky in accounting doesn't need internet access, and you are lucky we don't limit the internet to 1 terminal in the lunch room with every port disabled and filled with a hot-glue gun.
Just because YOU are "smart with computers" doesn't mean your damn computer is safe.
We (SysAdmins) are fighting a desperately hard battle. We get shit on by the end-users, and Upper Management. If you have 1 frustration with your PC multiply it by thousand, and try to put yourself in our shoes.
Right, and the bigger student in the cafeteria was just nudging people, sometimes forcing them, to give up their lunch money.
What does "bullying" mean to you?
> Bullying is the use of force, coercion, or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual.
> Bullying is the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another individual, physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Don’t you see a difference between an actual abuse, and the use of a UX dark pattern to get users to create/use online accounts?
But in the second place, "bullying" is not restricted to "actual abuses", however defined. Bullying refers to an attitude, the attitude of shoving someone around because you can. The reverse of "bullying" is "caving in", not "being victimized". Here are some cites I pulled from COCA:
> What are the keys to the match for Halep? It sounds trite, but Halep needs to stay aggressive -- as she was in the semis -- and not let Serena bully her around the court.
> Can someone please explain to me why Magic Johnson and other executives have been fined by the NBA for just a simple comment on another player, but yet, Kawhi Leonard can actively and outwardly recruit an under-contract player and persuade him to bully his way out of that contract?
> Just look at what China's trying to do. They're trying to bully us, hold our farmers hostage.
> the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a lot of the legal enforcement protections that are in the agreement that are particularly important for Canada and Mexico especially because they're smaller economies, smaller countries, much more reliant on the U.S. market. They can't really bully their way around to getting things that they want when things don't go their way
These four cites describe three different scenarios, but not one of them could be considered to match what you claim is the definition of bullying.
I scratched my head for a good bit thinking that I'd missed the old pathway that let you skip the online account step, but it turned out that the installer's behaviour had actually been altered.
After some more dome scratching I eventually discovering that disabling the built-in wifi module (no wired LAN connection was made) caused the installer to let me create a local account instead.
Quite bloody annoying.
Footnote: this was an install from a bootable USB stick where I'd "burned" the full Windows 10 ISO image.
People started to sell TAILS on usb keys for $10, if someone packs Linux Mint, eOS or similar for $5 .. in a web app world, linux + firefox is probably invisible to the average user.
I just setup Windows 10 Pro for my brother in-law yesterday and had no problem choosing a local account.
It's currently in "trick the user" mode: it has you connect to wifi to download the latest security updates, then remembers the network and automatically tries to have you create an account a step or two later.
I avoided it by rebooting, going into the bios, disabling wifi, and then resuming setup - only when it couldn't connect would it allow a local account. Just rebooting to restart initial setup doesn't work, it remembers the network.
It still keeps nagging with a notification saying that my Windows installation is not fully secure since I haven't added a Microsoft account. I've disabled that notification, but it may have disabled all notifications from the settings part of Windows, I'm not sure.
Tip- you can disable the security nag notifications in defender settings individually. There is a screen with different categories of 'threats', and you can turn on/off warnings individually. You probably don't want those notifications entirely disabled, since it is pretty useful as anti-virus, but the account and backup notifications are obnoxious.
For the last few years I've been using Windows 10 rather than macOS. In general Windows seems mid-to-long-term more stable than macOS. But maybe that's because I'm used to treating macOS like a nicer Linux while they've been locking down many Linux-like abilities (kernel modules, tracing/debugging, etc). But there's also been the macOS filesystem and permissions model changes that have made upgrading a pain.
I do have a Microsoft account but I don't do anything with it. I don't use any Microsoft products that are not included in the base install. I tried Hyper-V for a while but it was painful to configure so I've been using VMWare with more success.
Generally speaking, it seems like Microsoft is looking further than a year from now -- getting design and quality right compared to macOS which no longer seems to have any particular direction. It's not just in their software; I've been seriously impressed by build quality and pricing on the Surface line of tablets and laptops. I actually mistook a Surface book for a 2015 macbook pro. In contrast, I really don't want to gamble with post-2015 Apple hardware.
And although I do a lot of development on my laptop, I'm trying to move to developing in the cloud or a home-server because compiling kills my battery. Windows enables this use-case fine. To be fair, macOS would too.
I haven't had any issues with unwanted ads. The only ads I'm aware of are the lock-screen backgrounds that show different places around the world... I don't really consider them an ad though.
To make it more fun, their "Technical Support" chat failed as well, so I was unable to get a human to even talk through this.
That would be even worse if that prevented me from installing or using Windows.
They would be legally obliged to delete my account, but at some point I had the revelation that any minute spending thoughts on them is a wasted minute of life.
Or use Windows 7 if you have to. Windows 10 is just malware and bloatware built around Windows 7.
Of course, Microsoft has engineered the market so that getting any new 7 systems is now intended to be impossible and exerted considerable influence to get people to move to 10, so which is safer is becoming a moot point.
Use uBlock Origin to block ads, trackers, and other third party insidious code (preferably use uMatrix as well if you're savvy enough). Enable your firewall. Don't download files from untrustworthy sources, etc.
Personally I only do financial transaction on Linux, and don't use a password manager on Windows. I actually only use Windows to play a game sporadically, or to use software that hasn't got an alternative on Linux, which is becoming quite rare.
It just takes Soo much effort to get things to work. Netflix and deactivate mouse acceleration(which isn't perfect) to name a few.
I love ubuntu server, favorite os of all time. But Linux desktop just isn't anywhere near Windows quality.
With 20.04 imminent, it might be worth giving it another shot in a VM to see if things have changed.
Personally, I used Win10 on my carbon for a while (having previously tried and given up on Linux on a T410) before finally getting tired of the forced reboots, the software auto installs, etc, and giving Ubuntu 18.04 a shot. It isn't perfect (e.g. the fingerprint reader has never worked, and suspend sometimes doesn't work if Bluetooth is turned on) but I was genuinely shocked at how otherwise functional it is out of the box (even the USB C dock works after installing the DisplayLink drivers). Heck, with TLP installed using an out-of-the-box configuration, battery life is better than Windows.
It's at the point where I genuinely prefer it to the Win10 X1C5 I have at work.
I've been on Manjaro now for almost 2 years, doing JavaScript/React/PHP/Ruby/Python work (and some .NET Core with SQL Server!). I use VS Code and Chrome. I listen to music with Spotify. We have Slack. I can remote desktop into Windows machines with FreeRDP.
Recently someone said that they thought they would prefer to try Xubuntu because it had more official support so I decided to compare it to Manjaro and try it out on a spare machine. There's really no comparison. Setting up software on Ubuntu is painful, having to find and add keys to various disconnected software repos for every package. After a week, the Ubuntu installation ate itself after an update and wouldn't boot.
Meanwhile I have 3 workstations running Manjaro (work desktop, home desktop and personal laptop) and they all run perfectly and installing software is as easy as opening Add/Remove Software utility and finding what I want. Everything is there, even my favorite diff util from Scooter Software - Beyond Compare.
0: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/
Also, on one side they get points on the developers side, but they lose more on the consumer side with those practices.
An asshole kid who is kindly opening the doors to teachers and kicks smaller kids in the head just around the corner and tortures little animals after school is still a proper asshole.
[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/
As I use Outlook.com/Onedrive I didn't care until I opened up my terminal and noticed my username was the first 5 letters of my email. What the hell. I don't get why they would do that instead of just using your firstname or asking you at least. or at the very least use _everything_ up till @ instead of the first 5...
This irked me beyond belief and after googling a bunch of crazy ways to 'fix' this, the easiest turned out to be creating a local account 'chris', deleted my MS account, then attached the MS account to 'chris'
We’re not “tech people”, we’re just early adopters. :)
Data is the new arms race, those who collect the most have the most to gain, especially financially where data is being a core asset to a business.
Dumb is going to be the new gold, at least for those "crazies" you speak of.
Of course it is. How else can tech sustain perpetual growth without wringing every penny out of users?
The big problem IMHO is that some of the essential technology we rely on every day -- our operating systems, communication devices, vehicles -- has been moving rapidly into that category in recent years.
When the pseudo-malware stuff was only being done by individual applications or websites or quirky IoT devices, you could mostly avoid it by just not using those things. Now it's becoming unavoidable, and that's a serious concern.
Unfortunately those people will always be with us because it's not completely ethical to weed them out at birth.