they also force you to give a recovery account. i’m thinking microsoft’s hands are tied in this matter, it might be the government forcing a kyc strategy
> "To avoid the next problem: 'Microsoft locked my data behind bitlocker, and now I can't get it back.' they need to store that key on the MS account."
Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?
That's a long article ridden with ads just to say "a redditor complains about shitty Windows OOBE requiring a Microsoft account (this has been the case for 10 years already)". Alternatives exists and are viable, now people still prefer pouring energy into complaining to a wall instead of actually moving. Getting abused is deserved at this point, it's been more than 10 years now, get a grip.
I was in a hurry trying to log into my kid's Minecraft account, wound up clicking something to associate it with the Windows account... now the PC is in restricted mode and I'm having a hard time restoring the previously associated Microsoft account (among other things, have to ask permission to open the browser and approve the requests logging in on my phone)!
Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.
I have used a Windows OS almost every day of my life since 1999 or so. Last December I had a choice and switched to MacOS for work laptop. Since then I seldom use Windows and I don't really regret.
I still use an Xbox almost every day so there's that. In the last couple of weeks there's been some good news coming through for Xbox so we'll see.
This may get buried here, but there is one important distinction missing from all these articles.
Win 11 Pro allows you to enable local login, and disable all the intrusive microsoft stuff. Ive been on win 11 for the past 5 years and don't even remember my microsoft password at this point. IIRC you still have to set one up when you first install, but then once you switch to local login, any time you open up a microsoft app it makes you login in the app.
Its not a "good" solution, but given that Win11+WSL2 pretty much lets you run any software out there, its worth while doing.
I was forced to switch to Windows 11 despite promising myself that I would never do this.
WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I INCREASE THE WIDTH OF THE TASKBAR? I have a 30" monitor, I can afford to have 3 or 4 rows of windows in my task bar. But I can't, not because it's technically feasible but because a human at Microsoft that believes they are more important than their customers made a decision to remove that option because they think they know better.
I ditched Windows in 2022. I'm not going back to Windows unless Microsoft makes an OS for professionals that is stripped down out of the box to show how serious they are. No ads of any kind, no garbage online account features, nothing, just core offline-ready Windows. I bet it would perform drastically better too.
I enjoy windows 10 hugely now that it is out of support. It became way better when microsoft started tormenting the users of win11 instead of win10, and now that windows update doesn't bring new catastrophes and unexpected reboot, the OS is finally not interfering with usage anymore.
Windows 10 wouldn't let me run Minecraft because the OS was out of support. I upgraded to 11, and it wouldn't let me run without logging into the OS Store, in addition to Minecraft. I removed my Windows partition completely. I run MC on Linux now.
Win10 is still getting updates if you opt in. My dad's computer started hard locking after a recent update - I spend a few hours trying to fix it, and I'm not terrible at debugging win10 issues, but I couldn't find the problem. Had to reset windows. It worked fine after doing that (of course, there was no actual hardware problem, as I had guessed), but I have to reinstall all his tax software since he does his (and my) taxes on it. So the long term reliability of win10 is rather questionable at this point; I suspect vibe coding has infiltrated the windows update process.
Personally I'm on linux full time now, which has its own issues but enshittification by Microsoft is not one of them.
You should try Windows 7, then. Boots in no time at all, feels EXTREMELY snappy, and nowadays, there are UEFI loaders and a thing called VxKex-NEXT which adds the few new API calls Windows 10 introduced and thus makes W7 run many W10-only apps.
VxKex/VxKex-NEXT really is an amazing bit of work. It helps me run the latest Apache, PHP, Go-based tools (ngrok/stripe cli), node. It’s been a game changer for keeping W7 going.
this is why ive finally ditched windows for everything.
ive been a dual boot linux user for years, but still booting into windows for games and work.
no more, i just couldn’t take the:
- constant nagging
- ads for all of microsoft’s other shit that i absolutely did not want to use. copilot, onedrive, xbox, and on and on.
- the nonstop “sign in to your microsoft account” etc…
- settings i very deliberately changed reverting back on update.
- how stupidly long updates would take.
i just finally went to linux for everything. i was concerned about work stuff, and i ahve to admit, its absolutely definitely not perfect, but it still … feels? … better. i’m not sure this is the right phrase, but it just feels more fun. i feel good when i diagnose a linux bug, like productive or something. that feels more like fun to me compared to the dark patterns of windows which feels frustrating. if that makes sense.
i’d rather spend 20 minutes fixing a weird quirk on linux than the deal with the assault microsoft is constantly throwing at me when using windows. and id absolutely rather put up with a feature that isnt fully complete yet on linux than deal with dark patterns on windows.
and gaming? at this point, if a game doesn’t work on linux, i just play something else that does. there are just way too many choices of rad games that run good on linux. it does help that the games i’ve been playing lately (like cyberpunk) run a bit better on linux anyway.
the only holdout for me at this point is video and photo editing, i have to break out my macbook for lightroom and premiere still. but from what i understand linux is moving very very fast in that area so i’ll just use my mb until those are caught up. the day i can ditch my adobe subscription will be the type of “let’s go to the bar and toast with shots” kind of day. and from what other people say, it’s very close.
the cherry on top for me is, weve moved our parents machines to linux mint. my gf and i jokingly wonder if they would have even noticed if we hadn’t told them, firefox just works for their facebook and amazon lol. huge bonus that i can update their machines with a quick ssh apt update which takes literally seconds vs windows which sometimes takes half hour plus.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 82.8 ms ] threadThe ID along with their telemetry, M/S can map you to what you do and from where. That pretty much makes their builtin disk encryption useless.
Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?
There are Linux distros that are newbie friendly and looks like Windows.
An end user that does not depend on Adobe, if you are still using that for whatever reason, they have no excuse to don't move to Linux distro OS.
Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.
Absolutely hate it. Can't wait to ditch Xbox for PS.
I still use an Xbox almost every day so there's that. In the last couple of weeks there's been some good news coming through for Xbox so we'll see.
Win 11 Pro allows you to enable local login, and disable all the intrusive microsoft stuff. Ive been on win 11 for the past 5 years and don't even remember my microsoft password at this point. IIRC you still have to set one up when you first install, but then once you switch to local login, any time you open up a microsoft app it makes you login in the app.
Its not a "good" solution, but given that Win11+WSL2 pretty much lets you run any software out there, its worth while doing.
Windows 10 LTSC 2021 IOT is great tbh.. Install it without internet and you dont need a MS account at all.
Otherwise leave it behind and move on to Linux, BSD or whatever doesn't require a cloud account to work
WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I INCREASE THE WIDTH OF THE TASKBAR? I have a 30" monitor, I can afford to have 3 or 4 rows of windows in my task bar. But I can't, not because it's technically feasible but because a human at Microsoft that believes they are more important than their customers made a decision to remove that option because they think they know better.
Whoever you are, I hate you.
i’m happy on mac even with its ux regressions, and my ubuntu workstation.
Now it's going to succeed on the desktop for the same reason
Bye bye windows
Personally I'm on linux full time now, which has its own issues but enshittification by Microsoft is not one of them.
ive been a dual boot linux user for years, but still booting into windows for games and work.
no more, i just couldn’t take the:
- constant nagging
- ads for all of microsoft’s other shit that i absolutely did not want to use. copilot, onedrive, xbox, and on and on.
- the nonstop “sign in to your microsoft account” etc…
- settings i very deliberately changed reverting back on update.
- how stupidly long updates would take.
i just finally went to linux for everything. i was concerned about work stuff, and i ahve to admit, its absolutely definitely not perfect, but it still … feels? … better. i’m not sure this is the right phrase, but it just feels more fun. i feel good when i diagnose a linux bug, like productive or something. that feels more like fun to me compared to the dark patterns of windows which feels frustrating. if that makes sense.
i’d rather spend 20 minutes fixing a weird quirk on linux than the deal with the assault microsoft is constantly throwing at me when using windows. and id absolutely rather put up with a feature that isnt fully complete yet on linux than deal with dark patterns on windows.
and gaming? at this point, if a game doesn’t work on linux, i just play something else that does. there are just way too many choices of rad games that run good on linux. it does help that the games i’ve been playing lately (like cyberpunk) run a bit better on linux anyway.
the only holdout for me at this point is video and photo editing, i have to break out my macbook for lightroom and premiere still. but from what i understand linux is moving very very fast in that area so i’ll just use my mb until those are caught up. the day i can ditch my adobe subscription will be the type of “let’s go to the bar and toast with shots” kind of day. and from what other people say, it’s very close.
the cherry on top for me is, weve moved our parents machines to linux mint. my gf and i jokingly wonder if they would have even noticed if we hadn’t told them, firefox just works for their facebook and amazon lol. huge bonus that i can update their machines with a quick ssh apt update which takes literally seconds vs windows which sometimes takes half hour plus.