3 ms·

There used to be a much bigger scene around custom Windows installs and I hope it gets resurrected if/when the ability to create local accounts goes away. The d

by gdulli 1y ago

There used to be a much bigger scene around custom Windows installs and I hope it gets resurrected if/when the ability to create local accounts goes away. The desire for a tiny install is pretty niche at this point but I could see demand going up to preserve local accounts. Or perhaps that won't be necessary because certain enterprise customers will insist on local accounts and it will be easier for pirates to just tap into that install path? One way or another, if/when local accounts go away I hope there's some option to work around it.

tapoxi 1y ago
Why not just invest in Wine?
- gdulli 1y ago
  I use Linux daily as a server/VM and hate using Windows as a server, but I've never been happy enough with alternatives to Windows as a desktop when I've tried them.
- ssl-3 1y ago
  Why even do that? I don't want a better Windows than Windows so I can run Windows programs on my not-Windows computer. I want Linux software, instead. (I'm old enough to have once had a "better Windows than Windows" experience, with OS/2 Warp -- ~30 years ago. It was a very nice system that completely failed to thrive, with many back then blaming its quite good Windows compatibility for that failure.)
- ayaros 1y ago
  Or ReactOS...
  - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
    If AI had 1/10 of the promise it's marketed to have, I'd have faith in react OS actually catching up.
- layer8 1y ago
  Wine won‘t give you a full Windows GUI / desktop environment. That’s the main draw for using Windows non-professionally, besides gaming and the software/hardware ecosystem.
mid-kid 1y ago
It still exists, and it's gotten way more reliable than in years of yore. Check out ameliorated, and its derivative projects, reviOS and Atlas OS. There's also projects that modify a system less deeply, like Sophia Script. These days the default windows install is so garbage that I have little issue running semi-open source customizations like these.
ZiiS 1y ago
Do any enterprise use local accounts? I guess for airgapped?
- gdulli 1y ago
  I don't know, but I was thinking/hoping maybe the code for local accounts has to live on if at least any enterprise customers demand it.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - wildzzz 1y ago
    Likely the process is to provision the PC using an AD account, setup a local account, and then disconnect from the network forever. Microsoft isn't going to step on the toes of businesses that need local accounts but they really don't care about upsetting individuals In reality, truly airgapped PCs are rare. They are usually just there to run some specific application that likely can't run on anything safe to connect to the network. Unless you're both the admin and the only user, an airgapped PC is disadvantageous for security reasons. There's no one monitoring what the users are doing with it, how do you know if anything malicious is running on it if the only reference you have is the PC itself? It's like owning a single clock and never checking to see if the time is actually correct. You're more likely to find airgapped networks that allow for monitoring of the hardware and what users are doing with it. Of course there will always be things like malware testing but with how smart malware is now, it's pretty good at detecting when it running airgapped and won't actually do anything until it knows it can phone home.
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > in reality, truly airgapped PCs are rare. there is a lot of measuring equipment running Windows
- nolok 1y ago
  It's a big part of why Microsoft has struggled to kill ALL path to local account, entreprise don't use local but they don't use regular cloud account either, they use active directory account. Which, in windows world, are local account that sync with a local server. They're pushing hard to push all active directory to Azure AD and the like.
sharkjacobs 1y ago
I had a bootcamp partition with TinyXP installed on every Intel Mac that I owned.
zamadatix 1y ago
It's far more likely such users will just pirate Pro/Enterprise (select "Work" instead of "Home" during the OOBE) than revitalize the customized install media scene around Home. Alternatively, configure the user in autounattend.xml If you mean when no edition of Windows allows local users... I mean, there's a lot of other things which have to come to Enterprise before we get there. I wonder if Windows will lose relevance before that level of change occurs.

by gdulli 1y ago

tapoxi 1y ago

Why not just invest in Wine?

gdulli 1y ago
I use Linux daily as a server/VM and hate using Windows as a server, but I've never been happy enough with alternatives to Windows as a desktop when I've tried them.
ssl-3 1y ago
Why even do that? I don't want a better Windows than Windows so I can run Windows programs on my not-Windows computer. I want Linux software, instead. (I'm old enough to have once had a "better Windows than Windows" experience, with OS/2 Warp -- ~30 years ago. It was a very nice system that completely failed to thrive, with many back then blaming its quite good Windows compatibility for that failure.)
ayaros 1y ago
Or ReactOS...
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  If AI had 1/10 of the promise it's marketed to have, I'd have faith in react OS actually catching up.
layer8 1y ago
Wine won‘t give you a full Windows GUI / desktop environment. That’s the main draw for using Windows non-professionally, besides gaming and the software/hardware ecosystem.

mid-kid 1y ago

It still exists, and it's gotten way more reliable than in years of yore. Check out ameliorated, and its derivative projects, reviOS and Atlas OS. There's also projects that modify a system less deeply, like Sophia Script. These days the default windows install is so garbage that I have little issue running semi-open source customizations like these.

ZiiS 1y ago

Do any enterprise use local accounts? I guess for airgapped?

gdulli 1y ago
I don't know, but I was thinking/hoping maybe the code for local accounts has to live on if at least any enterprise customers demand it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wildzzz 1y ago
  Likely the process is to provision the PC using an AD account, setup a local account, and then disconnect from the network forever. Microsoft isn't going to step on the toes of businesses that need local accounts but they really don't care about upsetting individuals In reality, truly airgapped PCs are rare. They are usually just there to run some specific application that likely can't run on anything safe to connect to the network. Unless you're both the admin and the only user, an airgapped PC is disadvantageous for security reasons. There's no one monitoring what the users are doing with it, how do you know if anything malicious is running on it if the only reference you have is the PC itself? It's like owning a single clock and never checking to see if the time is actually correct. You're more likely to find airgapped networks that allow for monitoring of the hardware and what users are doing with it. Of course there will always be things like malware testing but with how smart malware is now, it's pretty good at detecting when it running airgapped and won't actually do anything until it knows it can phone home.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > in reality, truly airgapped PCs are rare. there is a lot of measuring equipment running Windows
nolok 1y ago
It's a big part of why Microsoft has struggled to kill ALL path to local account, entreprise don't use local but they don't use regular cloud account either, they use active directory account. Which, in windows world, are local account that sync with a local server. They're pushing hard to push all active directory to Azure AD and the like.

sharkjacobs 1y ago

I had a bootcamp partition with TinyXP installed on every Intel Mac that I owned.

zamadatix 1y ago

It's far more likely such users will just pirate Pro/Enterprise (select "Work" instead of "Home" during the OOBE) than revitalize the customized install media scene around Home. Alternatively, configure the user in autounattend.xml If you mean when no edition of Windows allows local users... I mean, there's a lot of other things which have to come to Enterprise before we get there. I wonder if Windows will lose relevance before that level of change occurs.