The writing has been on the wall for years. Die hard windows users have been telling me that the increasingly esoteric incantations needed to install Windows without submitting to giving Microsoft your identity are a deliberate and officially supported feature which they can rely on even as the common proles are herded onto Microsoft's plantation. I wonder if any still really believe it. The best time to jump ship is now.
If you practice good operational security and maintain a decent anti virus and fire wall you will probably be fine. I know people who still run Windows 7 to this day with no trouble because they are vigilant of what they are doing.
This isn't to say it's a good idea but that it can be done.
If you plan on running win 10 anyway Ask Leo has a video called "how to keep using windows 10 safely after support ends" with some solid advice
It's funny to see how Windows and Linux completely switched sides. Linux once being the clumsy one, hard to install, even harder to configure, mediocre UX, running on poor device drivers and requiring hours spent on the internet to solve a problem. Today, replace the "Linux" word with "Windows" in the previous sentence.
I wiped Win11 from my Ideapad and installed Ubuntu. I love Gnome & it's the closest it'll get to MacOS (am a Mac user mainly). Win11 was absolutely wild though - around every corner was some ad for Office365 or Copilot or some other shit product. You don't own Windows (anymore) - you borrow it.
The main issue is how opaque the system is, though that may also be a feature to limit people’s abilities in figuring out how to bypass various restrictions. No one should have to risk the existence of their channel and livelihood to some unknown automated algorithm. Although the reddit post only cites videos from one person running into this issue, the first video link has comments referencing someone else so I found a video from that other person as an additional data point.
I tried different AIs to make the scripts to automate installs in DosBox-X as long as you have a product key and ISO or other media.
Most interesting to me was the different quirks between OSeS. NT was the most tricky in getting to work on DosBox-X and syncing up internet, IIRC. But overall a very fun project. Brings back nostalgia of 3.5" disks and seeing those install screen. Very cool times in the 90s ha! :)
The number of Linux fanboys coming out of the woodwork to complain about Windows (and to provide anecdotes about Windows which are clearly exaggerated) is very high.
Please read the Linux Advocacy HOW-TO.
Shitting on Windows and MacOS does not make you look authoritative, honest, or credible. It makes you look like you have a very strong opinion and shut off from anything that does not conform to your opinion.
They have been taking down a lot of YouTube videos with Bob Dylan botlegs in the recent days, so maybe the platform is becoming more restrictive with everything, not just Windows 11 installs
Fwiw I had to report one of those "free win11 activated" videos as it was having users download and run a script from a suspicious source and handing full domain admin to a 3rd party.
This is probably youtuber drama about some random youtube algorithm led takedown and likely nothing to do with Microsoft or the actual content of the video that got taken down
Download .iso of LTSC version of Win. Make bootable install disk via Rufus and tick options to create local account during install. Install Win from created bootable device. Done.
Or use Rufus to create the install media, it will ask you what mods you want applied, after installing run win11 debloater, it will ask you what mods you want to apply. Then if you’re a sane person that just doesn’t want to learn to navigate your OS with every update, install openshell.
I found an Italian website that offers this and other procedures. To automate the modification, it suggests pressing SHIFT+F10 and then using the built-in Windows curl command to download a simple cmd script:
https://www.ilsoftware.it/focus/windows-11-con-account-local...
The cmd file can be run with the no-oobe username option, allowing you to choose the name of the local user account to be created. I hope this is helpful.
Those sort of thing always make me nervous however because it's not easy for the average user to tell if its running any sort of malicious scripts in the process. This one seems to be safe and I'm going to give it a try to see what happens.
still works as well which would be even better because thats local and easier to verify its integrity. that being said I think these are both valid suggestions if they work and I'm going to give them a try.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 69.8 ms ] thread90% of Windows games run on Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736925
LibreOffice is an okay office suite (good enough for my purposes): https://www.libreoffice.org/
GIMP is a good image editor: https://www.gimp.org/
VLC is a good media player: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Modern GIMP doesn't have the features that Photoshop 6.0 had 25 years ago, and GIMP had a 5 year head-start on it.
This isn't to say it's a good idea but that it can be done.
If you plan on running win 10 anyway Ask Leo has a video called "how to keep using windows 10 safely after support ends" with some solid advice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpAIOcYPYgo&list=TLPQMjkxMDI...
https://youtu.be/vQ-RXzzU9u0
And a GitHub repo: https://github.com/BrowserBox/windows-dosbox-x
I tried different AIs to make the scripts to automate installs in DosBox-X as long as you have a product key and ISO or other media.
Most interesting to me was the different quirks between OSeS. NT was the most tricky in getting to work on DosBox-X and syncing up internet, IIRC. But overall a very fun project. Brings back nostalgia of 3.5" disks and seeing those install screen. Very cool times in the 90s ha! :)
I’ve tried emulators but performance is abysmal for these apps. There are also all sorts of weird networking things that don’t work.
And generally when you work with a new team which has a different tech stack, there just isn’t time within the context of a race weekend to faff.
I’m unfortunately locked in.
Please read the Linux Advocacy HOW-TO.
Shitting on Windows and MacOS does not make you look authoritative, honest, or credible. It makes you look like you have a very strong opinion and shut off from anything that does not conform to your opinion.
Step 2: Install W11 with the autounattend.xml.
Step 3: Powershell as admin -> irm https://get.activated.win | iex
CMD will open
Type (no quotes) “net user Prefferedusername /add” (replacing Prefferedusername with the user name you wish to use) and press enter.
Next type “net localgroup administrators Prefferedusername /add” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /active:yes” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /expires:never” and press enter.
Next type “net user administrator /active:no” and press enter.
Next type “net user defaultUser0 /delete” (this is case sensitive make sure the "U" is capitalized) and press enter.
Next type "regedit" and press enter.
This opens registry editor, navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE"
Delete "DefaultAccountAction", "DefaultAccountSAMName", and "DefaultAccountSID"
Right click on "LaunchUserOOBE" and rename it to "SkipMachineOOBE" and make sure the value is set to "1".
Close registry editor and type "shutdown /r /t 0"
präferiert (dt.) is often pronounced praefferiert in my head, too, but it is always written with only one f, in german and in english.
I thought Windows was the "user friendly" choice
> Next type “net user defaultUser0 /delete” (this is case sensitive make sure the "U" is capitalized) and press enter.
Why do we have to delete them?
Download .iso of LTSC version of Win. Make bootable install disk via Rufus and tick options to create local account during install. Install Win from created bootable device. Done.
Those sort of thing always make me nervous however because it's not easy for the average user to tell if its running any sort of malicious scripts in the process. This one seems to be safe and I'm going to give it a try to see what happens.
The article also suggests that
"reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1"
still works as well which would be even better because thats local and easier to verify its integrity. that being said I think these are both valid suggestions if they work and I'm going to give them a try.