9 ms·
Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account
- DecentShoes 2y agoThe best marketing campaign for Linux, is Windows 11.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y agoThis has been true every major Windows release.
- falcor84 2y agoWell, sales-wise it seems to mostly be driving people towards macbooks, but yes, also linux.
- hippich 2y agoCan you fully use MacBook (install apps, updates) without online account?
- quag 2y agoYes. Most MacBooks used in businesses don’t have an iCloud account associated with them. The store doesn’t work, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue. Downloading and installing applications by dragging them from the installer to the Applications folder works fine.
- cyberax 2y agoYes. But you'll be locked out of XCode-based development infrastructure (which arguably is a plus).
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoYes, there are few important apps that aren't available without Apple account, like Final Cut Pro or Xcode, but I don't use those.
- transcriptase 2y agoThe best marketing campaign for Windows is finally deciding on a distro only to be presented with a bunch of bullshit options (gnome, cinnamon, xfe, kde, mate, etc) the average person is expected to somehow understand the difference between or care about if they did. And no, someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing is not going to feel comfortable picking at random. Then the 95% odds that trying to dual boot without the correct incantations fucks up being able to boot into Windows, which somehow after 20 years still hasn’t been fixed. And I say this as someone who’s been using it personally and professionally for 20 years. The year of the Linux desktop will come when people are met where they are, not where you want them to be. If the simplest standard things require sifting through forum posts from 2006 for hours on end, you’ve already lost.
- zozbot234 2y ago> Then the 95% odds that trying to dual boot without the correct incantations fucks up being able to boot into Windows This is fixed now with most desktop systems using UEFI. The bootloader will always show a "UEFI setup" option, and that in turn lets you pick alternate boot choices.
- sidewndr46 2y agoThis isn't really true from my experience. Windows 10 will update the BIOS of the computer without your consent. This can result in the BIOS getting reconfigured in such a way that the system no longer boots unless you happen to know how to reconfigure it
- bee_rider 2y agoSurely after 20 years you’ve given up on the year of Linux on the desktop. I’ve only used it for ~15 years but long ago came to the conclusion that I really don’t care about broader adoption. Why should I? It is good if people find their way to Linux. But it isn’t a product, they can come to it and accept it as it is, or fix it for themselves. But there’s no real benefit to increasing marketshare for its own sake.
- MattPalmer1086 2y ago
- LinuxBender 2y agoIs this loophole the method used by Rufus when burning images that add options to skip Microsoft account, TPM checks, etc...?
- ranger_danger 2y agoAnyone know if this comment on the article is actually true? - Select Organization - Select Sign In Options - Choose Domain Join - Create a username and leave the password blank. - You'll be logged into Windows without a Microsoft account!
- jwoglom 2y ago> We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11. This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account. "enhancing security and user experience" -- what a ridiculous, bold-faced lie. Bravo Microsoft.
- colordrops 2y agoIt's standard practice for corporations to lie about their motivations for decisions. Why is this acceptable?
- bigstrat2003 2y agoIt's not. But not all unacceptable things are illegal. And just as immoral people will do legal-but immoral things, immoral corporations will do the same.
- zozbot234 2y agoWhat they're doing might actually be illegal under antitrust law, since it's effectively 'tying' a market-dominant desktop OS to provision of online services. If they are genuinely determined to get rid of the existing workarounds, there might be grounds for a formal complaint on that basis.
- imglorp 2y agoSo there's three revenue streams, all of which are incompatible with offline usage: locking and upsell on cloud services, exfiltrating and selling your data, and showing you ads. In an ideal world, that would be a triple decker antitrust problem!
- cmiles74 2y agoIt's dumb on every angle. How many people are going to these lengths to avoid an MS account? Even if they suck it up and stick with Windows, will this really convert them into MS Store app buys or whatever? I doubt it. They make people mad, they lose some customers... Maybe that's the whole point? I just don't get it.
- ivanjermakov 2y agoAfter rolling the update that unintentionally uninstalled Copilot, they're back at net negative "upgrades".
- mholt 2y agoHow can you set up / use Windows without an Internet connection? Surely that's not an unsupported use case anymore, is it? There's gotta be plenty of places where Internet connectivity is not available or is restricted.
- MarcelOlsz 2y agoAll of those people are still happily running XP.
- sidewndr46 2y agoYou joke, I get pretty frequent requests from customers to validate that a product is compatible with Microsoft Windows Server 2003. That's basically the server version of XP
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- woleium 2y agoenterprise deployments are different
- beefnugs 2y agolast i tried was only months ago, there is still a fallthrough, if you go back and forth enough times about not connecting or creating an account it just lets you through, perhaps had you unplug ethernet as well
- int_19h 2y agoIt has been unsupported since the last major Win11 update.
- wtallis 2y agoIt has been "unsupported" in the sense of "Microsoft doesn't approve of that behavior and won't help you accomplish that goal" since before Windows 11. It is not yet "unsupported" in the sense of "Microsoft has made it entirely impossible"; every year or two they make it incrementally harder, but they have yet to close off all of the workarounds, and even this change may still leave a workaround.
- lousken 2y agoEnhanced security, if you connect your device to the internet. Can they at least stop bullshitting? It's shameful
- caseyy 2y agoMicrosoft is really degrading themselves over the 0.1% of users that opted out (and however much money they didn’t manipulate out of them because of that). I’m really surprised how humiliatingly their top managers act. Surely someone who lies like this has no concern for self respect or pride.
- Krasnol 2y agoThe sad thing is that they're being respected for that in their circles. There is no need for shame. They're proud of themselves. They don't talk to people who feel the cringe, and I guess them subconsciously knowing is a reason why they don't talk to people further below them. Of course, those most successful are just numb due to specific psychological deviations from the academic norm.
- wmf 2y agoSecurity updates do come from the Internet.
- dmitrygr 2y agoBut so do security threats.
- qwerpy 2y agoWhat is MS's motivation to push so strongly to have everyone on a Microsoft account? I really hope it's not primarily so that they can more effectively target your computer for ads. Or upsell some service subscriptions.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoI have some bad news for you.
- proc0 2y agoBad leadership/ direction of product. These decisions are bad in the long term as people find alternatives. Windows will just be used by large non-tech orgs that need excel and are locked in that ecosystem. Then there is the gaming crowd and I think Steam is in a unique position to do something here. Everything points to Windows 11 being the last Windows, but not for the reasons MS intended.
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- inetknght 2y ago> I really hope it's not primarily so that they can more effectively target your computer for ads. Or upsell some service subscriptions. I hope you're not that naive. Alas, smart people have been shining a light on Microsoft's path for over a decade.
- qwerpy 2y agoI suspected it was that which is why I spelled it out, but wanted to see if anyone had a more charitable explanation for it.
- soraminazuki 2y ago
- downrightmike 2y agoThey are just determined to lose all retail users
- 486sx33 2y agoSomewhat related and mentioned in the article. New to me. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/11/23913107/microsoft-windows-11-block-windows-7-8-keys-upgrade-activation https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/11/23913107/microsoft-windo...
- diego_sandoval 2y agoWhat are you supposed to do if you have no Internet connectivity? You basically have a brick on your hands until you can connect it to the Internet? That's ridiculous.
- michaelt 2y agoWell you see, contrary to the rampant speculation you get on sites like HN, when we deployed a telemetry update to report on how many of our users have no internet connectivity, the data showed 100% of respondents had internet connectivity. /s obviously
- gambiting 2y agoI mean, Xbox has been like this for a long time and clearly it's not dettering sales at all - and even with Windows the functionality to skip it has been well hidden and required bringing up windows console and typing in a command that rebooted the installer - hardly something that your average person would do I guess. So yeah, it's ridiculous, but Microsoft knows it will make zero difference to sales.
- anigbrowl 2y agoI own an xbox (which I received as a gift) and absolutely hate having to log into it any time I want to use it. MY 15 year old PS3 still delivers a far more pleasant user experience.
- shostack 2y agoYou make them less money if you are not online so why should they care?
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoWindows 7 was legitimately pretty good. It’s been downhill ever since.
- bee_rider 2y ago10 was basically fine as a glorified gaming console as well. I don’t know how people use it for, like, work stuff or whatever.
- tapoxi 2y agoI have a recent (2024) Gigabyte AMD motherboard and Windows 11 refuses to recognize the Ethernet NIC or onboard wifi. I can't load the drivers during setup either because they're .exe installers and it wants .inf files or something. I got mad and installed Fedora Kinoite, which somehow just worked out of the box. My games all worked too. I've been mulling over installing a Windows partition for the inevitable game with anti-cheat I'd like to play (Battlefield) but insanely hostile shit like this has made me reconsider.
- crimsontech 2y agoI've mostly dropped it, I have a couple of windows machines for dev stuff but I really don't enjoy using the OS, each time I log in there is a new annoyance. If I got to a point where I couldn't use it without a Microsoft account I would just drop it entirely.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoAt this point it’s mainly my Quest 2 that’s keeping me from keeping my tower booted into Linux most of the time.
- a2128 2y agoYou can use ALVR to stream SteamVR games to your Quest 2. Some people use another app called Envision. There's a bunch of information here https://lvra.gitlab.io/ https://lvra.gitlab.io/
- theandrewbailey 2y agoI had been mulling it for a while, but with (the last version of[0]) Windows 10 support ending, and Windows 11 looking like a dumpster fire, I bit the bullet and went Linux on my main desktop, reformatting over the last Windows install in my house. It's been a remarkably smooth transition for me. At nearly the same time, I re-flashed my phone with LineageOS, but without Google apps. I finally completed my transition away from Google that started with Snowden's leaks, only coincidentally did the same to Microsoft at the same time. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
- MrMcCall 2y agoI've been skipping dealing with a MS id every day for coming up on seven years now :-) and I had been (ab)using OpenBSD for a few years before that, so it's been a nice long hiatus. I do, however, miss the early F# on WinXpPro64, having bought the Pro install version a million years ago for a clean install, using it for quite a few years on an early q6600, I'd love to be able to fire up one of my boot disk images into a no-network VM subnet from those years, maybe even creating network drives to connect and disconnect to in order to migrate files to and from. It was fully registered and current, with up-to-date service packs and everything, and quite a bit of nice MS dev software as well, and nicely stripped down by cannonballing down into the registry morass and tweaking as many sections as possible over the years. Any clues on which modern 64bit linux or BSD would allow it to boot and run and as a functioning MS instance to run old-school commandline F# fsi.exe, including the recompiled one I made a tiny prompt change to? [That was some high-nerd-reward spelunking that I never really took advantage of.] Maybe QEMU? I loved the commandline interactivity; I had built up quite a suite of code to do some slick processing using F#'s mind-blowing pipe operator. Anyway, AtDhVaAnNkCsE, and Happy Friday, all.
- transcriptase 2y agoSince there’s a good chance someone involved will read this, I mean this in the most sincere way possible and I hope you take it to heart: Just fuck off.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoUnfortunately, the people who made the decision almost certainly won't read this. At best, it'll be seen by some developers who were opposed to this, fought against it, and got overruled by management. I have no doubt that the tech guys at Microsoft hate this stuff just as much as the users do.
- MarkusWandel 2y agoLast time I activated a Windows 11 system, I had already entered my Wifi credentials, and then couldn't find any way out of the online account trap. Eventually backed out far enough, deleted my wifi credentials again, forward again and created a local account. Have they closed that loophole too, i.e you can't activate it at all without cloud connectivity? Another question, once you've activated it with an online account, is it possile to then create another local user and simply use that?
- mapcars 2y agoI think its enough to disconnect your wifi/router and installer will give you an option to proceed without internet.
- Spivak 2y agoUnless something changed really recently that loophole has been fixed for a minute. I had to use the bypassnro because being off wi-fi wasn't enough.
- gambiting 2y agoThat's been closed for a while now. Now(and even before this most recent update) even if you don't have any network devices present on your machine at all it still doesn't show any option to create an offline account - you just can't do it until you find a way to connect to the internet. >> is it possile to then create another local user and simply use that? Yes, that is absolutely an option. Just remember that by default your hard drive is encrypted with bitlocker and Windows sends the encryption key to microsoft to that account you signed in with without asking you first.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoHow come the EU do not kick MS back into the stone age for shenanigans like these? Does using a yubikey instead of a password works in that heap of shitpile? Or we need to wait for that another 10+ years?
- MarkusWandel 2y agoOh, another M$ account creation trick. When they discontinued Skype they said you could just log into Teams with your Skype credentials. Not so! That just forces you to enter an email address (that's not already associated with a M$ account) and guess what.. now you have ANOTHER M$ account. After this the Skype credentials are invalidated.
- eska 2y agoNvidia does the same thing for their geforce experience tool. For a tool that shouldn’t require an account. Bait and switch.
- droopyEyelids 2y agoHeres a little life saver that fit my use case. https://github.com/ElPumpo/TinyNvidiaUpdateChecker https://github.com/ElPumpo/TinyNvidiaUpdateChecker
- yett 2y agoNot anymore. They have a new Nvidia App that doesn't require you to login.
- eska 2y agoOh wow that’s actually amazing, I’m glad to hear it! This was going on for so long
- MarkusWandel 2y agoHeh, except they weren't (they said they would be). I can now log into M$ with both my old Skype userid and with the email address it made me enter. Not quite clear on whether this is two accounts or just aliases for one.
- fumufumufumu 2y agoAren't they just following Apple? Technically you can use an iPhone and Mac without an Apple (iCloud) account but it's pretty dang unsupported except for corp devices. If I recall correctly you can't install anything from the app store on an Mac/iPhone without an Apple account. On Mac you can run other stuff without an account. You can't on iPhone. You'd need XCode, XCode you can only get from the App Store or possibly from the developer site, Both the App store and the developer site require an account. I'm not saying it's good, but I'd be curious how many non-corp users are using a Mac without an Apple account. My current Windows box, Windows 11 Pro (forgot the version names). I setup an account registered with MS to get it installed. Then set up a separate user account, not registered with MS. I use that 2nd account for everything. I haven't logged into the first account in years.
- zozbot234 2y ago> Technically you can use an iPhone and Mac without an Apple (iCloud) account but it's pretty dang unsupported That was the status quo on Windows Home. But there's a big difference between "pretty darn unsupported, expect random breakage in things like the M$ Store" and "we'll stop allowing you to do it at all".
- ucosty 2y agoIf you don't use the app store, you can still install the xcode command line tools with the xcode-select command. I didn't bother signing in with an Apple account on my personal Mac.
- Hojojo 2y agoI've used my MacBook without an Apple ID for years and it works fine. When you install a fresh copy of MacOS, they don't force you into bullshit hoops like having to disconnect your WiFi or running some bat script just to get the option for a local account back. No, it just asks for a login and provides a button to skip it. You knows the exact same thing Windows used to do, but doesn't anymore. I'm not sure what you mean by pretty dang unsupported. Everything I use the MacBook for as a software developer works great, no Apple account needed.
- 2y ago
- rvba 2y agoWindows 11 taskbar has space... for 11 icons when run on a laptop screen. This is killing my (and maaaany others) productivity since in some jobs you constantly need to switch between multiple windows. Yea, extrnal programs exist, but they can br buggy, cost extra money on top... and good luck installing them on a coporate computer. Ive seen like 20-30 people with the same problem: taskbar being useless. Windows 11 is bad at switching windows. The taskbar cant even highlight the active window since everything is "graphically flat" too
- MiguelX413 2y agoThat's what alt+tab is for
- rvba 2y agoWhen you need to move between windows all the time it isnt. Also that stuff worked correctly in windows 10 (and 7 and XP...) and was just removed. Why? To cut costs? It kills corporate productivity...
- 3np 2y agoAnd yet you're on Windows. Switch. Windows will get worse before it can get better. Try KDE on Fedora, for example.
- Numerlor 2y agoI'd use multiple desktops if you have that many windows open. For the highlight it should have a different color?
- gavinhoward 2y agoSo I have Windows 10, and I was not looking forward to the "upgrade" to 11 at 10's EOL because of the TPM requirement. With this change, I have decided to accept the insecurity of not updating and stick with 10. The only thing I do on Windows is ensure my FOSS is cross-platform.
- WD-42 2y agoHave you tried using a VM? That's what I do when I want to test cross platform. The benefit being you can just re-create it whenever it starts to harass you about license keys or whatever.
- gavinhoward 2y agoI bought this Windows 10 key long ago, so no license key harassment.
- inetknght 2y ago> I have Windows 10, and I was not looking forward to the "upgrade" to 11 at 10's EOL because of ... I refused to "upgrade" past Windows 7. When Windows 7 went EOL, I installed Linux. I've never looked back.
- gavinhoward 2y agoOh, Linux is my daily driver. Gentoo, so I am no Linux noob. I just use Windows to build and test my FOSS on it.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoThat's where I'm at. Even before this, I refused to install Windows 11. I daily drive Linux, and I only boot into Windows on occasion when there are games that I can't get to work with Proton. When Windows 10 goes EOL, I will just run it unpatched for those occasional uses. When Steam stops supporting it, I will stop using Windows altogether. I must say it's quite refreshing to not have to deal with Microsoft's user-hostile nonsense. No shenanigans with required accounts, no ads, no preinstalled bloatware. My OS is made to serve me and my needs, not to eke out extra profits. Ironic that the free option is better at serving me than the paid option, these days. The sad part is, I like Windows. Or at least I used to. I've never been a "Windoze sucks, I hate M$" guy. Time was that it was genuinely a well made operating system that did its job well and got out of the way. But those days are long since gone. I hope that someday Microsoft gets their act together and starts caring about making a quality product again.
- inatreecrown2 2y agoWhy do this? It was already a loophole that most users would never know of or care about using, but it is essential for a small core user base that cares about how they set up their systems. This cannot be a good business decision.
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoAddressed in another comment: close all loopholes, then make using your computer a subscription service. It's a great business decision. It's a horrendous decision in all other respects.
- inatreecrown2 2y agoWindows as a service? Sounds frightening but surely it must be the way they are headed. Glad we have wine.
- CatWChainsaw 2y agowine, WINE, or both?
- zb3 2y ago> We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience I completely agree with this. By making Windows insufferable you're enhancing security and user experience by making users switch to Linux, which is superior in that regard. Well done, Microsoft.
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- edgarvaldes 2y agoI actively avoid using a MS account on my local Windows machines. Until last week when I logged into Teams and Windows activated that account as the Windows account on the next boot. The problem is: I was using my wife's laptop. I dunno how to remove the account without creating more problems.
- zozbot234 2y agoDo you have a "switch to local account" option in Windows's accounts settings screen? That would be the cleanest option if available.
- orev 2y agoThis is one of the most insidious parts of the Microsoft Account. Windows and other apps (from Microsoft) are littered with booby traps where if you sign in on one of them, it’s irrevocable and automatically attaches the account to all the other apps and Windows. You can’t feel safe anymore because there are land mines all over the place.
- WD-42 2y agoWindows set up is actually insane, I did it in a VM recently to test my app on Windows. I would say not only does it require a Microsoft account but you also have to agree to (at least) 3 EULAs about sharing/selling your data that are unskippable. Pretty sure it also makes you set your ad preferences. Absolutely insane for an OS, I don't know how people put up with it as a daily driver.
- BandButcher 2y agoLuckily I use my phone for most tasks and can avoid my two remaining windows machines unless necessary. Also I doubt it's just me but every other day when Windows forces an update "restart and update/shutdown and update", upon restarting I am again prompted by Microsofts dark patterns for all the telemetry, defaulted to ON (location, biometrics, etc). Literally every second update windows wants to re ask me and I have to either select "skip for 3 days" (comical) or walk through each step and toggle each one off... Unfortunately Microsoft no longer innovates and can only continue to try to data mine but they are fighting a losing battle. At this point revenge may be best to just use a cracked windows install on a VM using a dummy email. You want telemetry, have at it ;)
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoSure your phone doesn't have any google/apple accounts, right?
- ZeroTalent 2y agoApple is pretty awesome at privacy compared to everything else.
- nipperkinfeet 2y agoThe grass isn't greener. With the amount of advertising, tracking, and upselling on iOS and Android, our smartphones are significantly worse than Windows 11.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
- zeeebo 2y agoI was banking on Windows 11 being a skip version but Windows 12 will probably be just as bad. Windows 10 forever then!
- NKosmatos 2y agoAnother stupid move by M$. No wonder the market share of Win11 is still below Win10. IMHO WinXP, 7 and 10 were the best ones. A billion dollar behemoth like M$ should know better ;-) Windows market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201501-202502 https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
- nrp 2y agoThis is made worse by Windows 11 retail images being years behind on Wi-Fi drivers. We recommend to customers to use Rufus to create Windows USB installers to bypass the network requirements because Windows 11 doesn’t come with functioning drivers for any of the last few generations of Wi-Fi cards we use.
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- jmward01 2y agoI'm not sure I would start a job that required me to use Windows at this point much less install it on anything in my home.
- zeroq 2y agoAt the same time my graphics card asks me to log in with my facebook account to download an update.
- loeg 2y agoAfter that brief golden era of Windows 10 not absolutely sucking, Microsoft is taking the bold stance of making Windows even worse, again.
- defrost 2y agoChris Titus and many volunteers have created an open script powershell application that allows modification of most aspects of windows complete with popup help, references, forums, etc. The "MicroWin" tab allows users to create their own Windows Install disk image version from the official releases .. giving you the reusable install disk of your choosing .. w/out microsoft accounts, telemetry, etc. https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil https://christitus.com/windows-utility-improved/ https://christitus.com/windows-utility-improved/
- quickslowdown 2y agoI really did need a kick in the ass to get Linux on the last machine in my house not running it. I know people say this all the time, I have my own excuses for why I still have 1 windows machine, but it truly just isn't worth it anymore.
- driggs 2y agoI had to install Windows 11 on a laptop last year, for the first time since win2k. I managed to dodge the online Microsoft account and create a local account, and was proud of myself... And the installer asks "Enter your name", so I enter "Firstname Lastname". Now my $HOME directory is `C:\Users\Firstname Lastname` with a space character in it! Ironically, the whole point of the Windows machine was to install ESRI's ArcGIS Pro, which literally cannot handle spaces in filepaths in the year 2025, so I can't reference data or projects from my user's home directory.
- zamalek 2y agoMy AD account has parenthesis in it for my short name, guess how much fun that is.
- cstrahan 2y agoI have a personal “Windows install / configuration playbook” so I don’t fall into these types of pitfalls for the Nth time (including the very example you give). Some fun ones: windows defaults to storing the hardware clock time as a time-zone local offset, so whenever it syncs time with network servers, it messes up your time in other OSes (in multi-boot setups). You have to set the RealTimeIsUniversal registry key to make Windows behave. What made me figure this out? Another pair of issues: the XBox/gaming app/overlay would give nonspecific errors, or at best not let my party hear me, when I’d try to join my brother’s party when playing games. Eventually connected the dots: I would reboot into Windows after working in Linux, the time would be messed up, and the Windows gaming overlay’s party stuff would be broken, suggesting the local time is used in some way for the chat/voice protocol, but of course they don’t tell you that. I initially scoured pages, and pages of Google search results, leading to countless MS forums and Reddit posts, none of which pointed out the importance of the system time. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Windows would more regularly sync the system time, or at least do so upon booting, but of course there isn’t a first-party way to do that, either — the best I could do without installing crap was go into the time settings and unset then set the option for syncing time automatically, coercing it into updating the time right then and there — at least, until I sorted out why the time was all messed up when rebooting after running Linux. Now with the ads and forced online account creation, it’s only becoming more of a dumpster fire than it already was.
- pentagrama 2y agoOk and some questions. You can create a Microsoft account with an alias/temp email and fake data? Or phone verification is required? And later remove the Microsoft account from the system and switch to a local account?
- ziml77 2y agoThey better give me a way to select my local username then. I always create my user account without an MS account first because the times when I created my Windows account from my MS account it named my user directory as my first name with the final letter missing. It's not even a long name!
- anonymousiam 2y agoSo how will the air-gapped customers use their Windows 11 computers? Has Microsoft decided to abandon their OS sales to governments and security researchers?
- cozzyd 2y agoThis is going to suck for setting up shared lab laptops...
- dvno42 2y agoSo is this Microsoft account requirement a 'home' version thing? I can't imagine they would force this on pro installations. Unattended installs, kiosks, ATMs, display walls, etc. would be a nightmare to deal with this.
- jemmyw 2y agoHow do you provision a Windows machine that isn't tied to a person? I've been using the bypass way for laptops used by sports clubs. I'd like to switch to using Linux but I haven't been able to overcome some packaging and performance issues yet.
- adham-omran 2y agoThe last 3 times I installed Windows 11 _and_ used an account were a nightmare as for some reason, Microsoft would disable my account for logging in during an install... I avoid Windows like the plague but it's the only place where I can use my audio virtual instruments (No audio production in VMs and I don't own Apple hardware and it'd be ironic for the Windows setup to push me to get an Apple device...)
- southernplaces7 2y agoyawn.. https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media There.
- Gazoche 2y agoCalled it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42698137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42698137 I'll make another prediction: their ultimate goal is to start charging a subscription service for Windows.
- muixoozie 2y agoThink You're Right. Then they'll justify price hikes with AI shit nobody asked for.
- newdee 2y agoWell, better keep a hold of those older Win11 ISOs then. The only beneficiaries of this are corps who want to ensure that new devices must check-in for AutoPilot enrolment on first boot out-of-box. In fact, Macs with Apple silicon will require an internet connection on setup, but only after that machine has been online at least once before and has seen that it’s registered to business (handled by a firmware flag).
- misterjensen 2y agoI am betting this will be made illegal in some European country I now have always lived in.
- underseacables 2y agoWindows needs to be taken away from Microsoft and made into its own company. It's the same anticompetitive monopoly tactics from the past.
- clircle 2y agoIs this going to apply to corporate and government windows installations?