Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

Regards " stability issues with Explorer", I doubt it is Explorer itself.

2 thoughts:

1. Possibly something hooked into Explorer. Not necessarily malicious but could be like an acrobat extension or image editor extension or similar that helps to make thumbnails/previews. Or a context menu hook in.

Use Sysinternals Autoruns [0] to have a look. It is a free diagnostics tool from MS that shows everything that loads on startup. It looks at Start menu Startup folder, registry run and runonce keys and a bunch more places where things are hooked in. No restarts or anything required simply to look. It will show plugins/addons to Explorer too. Easy disable/re-enable process allows for somewhat easy troubleshooting. You'll have to restart Explorer after a "disable" step to see the results though.

Be sure to use the "hide microsoft entries" option if you want to narrow it down some.

2. Filesystem filters - things like antivirus "scan on read". If a "scan on read" goes to an antivirus that is not playing ball it will halt the "file open" request for example.

The command "fltmc" will list filesystem filter drivers. But making sense of which one belongs to what software is a further exercise. Which is why I suggest this investigative path as number 2...

[0]:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/aut...

How do you run 365?

Ok and I had the opposite issue of installing windows and not being able to get a lot of drivers work. Also getting issues with Bluetooth all the time that had me install and uninstall drivers. With linux I had no issues.

Nvidia graphics?

How much care did you take in getting a machine for running Linux? Did you get one specifically with that in mind? Or did you slap it on the machine you already had?

Getting a 5090 and 5k2k monitor is what forced me back off of Linux last time I switched. I'm used to crappy "cutting edge" hardware support in Linux and routinely bounce back and forth between Windows and Linux as the different annoyances build up. Yes, I know Linux has issues with NVidia. But AMD doesn't make a comparable card period.

Linux is generally a rock solid delight on any AMD desktop, but insists on being at least an occasional pain in the ass on basically every laptop in the world and anything with Nvidia.

"the truth is 99% of people would rather just make a Microsoft account than have to learn and switch to a whole new OS."

First, I am writing this reply in Pale Moon browser running on Arch (KDE Plasma), so I'm a pretty diehard Linux user and have been so for years. That said, I still use Windows as I'll explain.

You are absolutely correct, switching to Linux from Windows is still very hard for many people—likely the majority—for a multitude of reasons, there being too many to give full justice to here. Several stand out however, such as having to learn the idiosyncrasies of a new operating system and adapting to new apps that do not have the same feature set as their Windows counterparts, for those wishing to switch compatibility issues are still a significant headache.

Nevertheless, users within corporate environments usually find switching to Linux easier by virtue of having a more controlled set of applications as well as having access to training and helpdesk facilities. For example, switching from MSO/Outlook to say LibreOffice/Thunderbird ought not be too arduous, also their Linux environment is managed by their IT departments. On the other hand, home users and small businesses aren't afforded such 'luxuries' and have to manage everything for themselves. Unless one is technical or reasonably computer-literate converting can be not only challenging but also very time-consuming.

Clearly, Microsoft is aware of the resistance to change factor and is leveraging the fact to its full advantage. When it comes to switching from Windows to Linux I think many Linux users underestimate how important these differences are to Windows users. As mentioned, I still use Windows on a number of systems and I even balk at the changes between the way different Windows versions work at the GUI level let alone the differences between it and Linux (it's why on Windows I restored Quick Launch when MS removed it and why I use that wonderful program Classic Shell by Ivo Beltchev to make the GUIs of my different Win versions all look like XP). Suffice to say, I prefer the old Windows Task Bar to KDE Plasma's Panel; for me, it's ergonomically more functional (even after having made many tweaks to the former).

The same goes for certain important (well-loved) Windows applications, whilst some key programs such as LibreOffice are native to both Windows and Linux, others remain Windows-only apps sans native Linux equivalents but which are arguably substantially better any Linux program with the same or similar functions. No doubt, many Linux-only users will likely differ from that view but that's irrelevant, here it's the perception of Windows users that actually counts—if they cannot run their favourite programs on Linux (or close equivalents) then they will stubbornly resist changing operating systems. I say that from experience, I used to head an IT department and users can make management's life very difficult when forced to make changes against their will. Also, I'm reminded of someone at Microsoft whose name temporarily escapes me saying that the Win32 API was one of the company's most valuable assets. Very true indeed!

Putting a Windows hat on here with some examples, from my experience there is no equivalent or near equivalent native Linux program that is as good or as ergonomically functional as say the Windows file search program Everything, same goes for the excellent image viewer IrfanView, and to a lesser extent same for XnView (if necessary I can justify those claims). Similarly, when it comes to file managers nothing else comes close to Directory Opus in either Windows or Linux, if it were available for Linux I'd buy it immediately.

OK, Linux-only users will immediately retort "just use Wine and your problems will be solved". Right, Wine is great for many 'self-contained' programs but Wine's a pain and essentially incompatible with programs that make certain demands of the operating system outside of those normally handled (or not well implemented) by Wine. For instance, IrfanView allows the viewed image to be edited by an external image editor which here would likely be the native Linux version of GIMP. Attempting to get that to work from within IrfanView whilst running under Wine/Linux is a major headache, just check the many online requests from frustrated users who have been looking for a solution. Similarly, Everything's search relies on accessing NTFS's MFT (thus even on Windows it won't work in FAT32, simply forget any notion of using it with, say, Btrfs).

So we are back to the fundamental problem of incompatibility between Windows and Linux hence the many requests we've seen over the years to make Linux more compatible with Windows. Linux developers rightly say they're happy with their ecosystem and that any further moves in that direction would not only complicate matters but also require much additional work not to mention they'd likely make Linux less secure. That's also pretty much my position.

With these factors in mind it's clear Microsoft has no qualms about implementing changes to Windows that benefit itself even if they are to the considerable disadvantage of users (that's the inevitable outcome with monopolies). Thus, fallout from this latest change will be minimal, yes MS will lose a small percentage of users like those here on HN who are both outraged and technical enough to make the change, but as you say with no other practical option available the vast majority will simply fall into line with Microsoft's demands. In the wash-up, Microsoft will have done the sums and in the end it'll be further ahead.

Given the never-ending issues many users have with Microsoft's administration of Windows and the way it treats its users with abusive contempt, something has perplexed me for years which is why there has been so little support for the FOSS Windows lookalike, ReactOS, it's been in gestation for so long—over quarter-century—that I call it the "Going Nowhere Project". It's damned annoying ReactOS is still not available, if I could get a reasonably stable version I'd use it immediately for all that legacy Windows stuff that refuses to die.

It's not as if ReactOS doesn't have potential, it does and I've actually had various alpha versions running, although they weren't very stable. When I've queried the reasons for its snaillike development more often than not online commentators say it's because MS would sue it if it actually worked as intended. Possibly, but I reckon there's more to it than that which I'll not address here.

Nevertheless, with this latest edict from Microsoft it's clear to me that more than ever we urgently need an operating system that's capable of running the Win API without any Microsoft involvement. As I've shown, Linux can help many but not all Windows users escape Microsoft's clutches, that means we still need a more general/practical solution for ordinary users. Unfortunately, the only suitable project seemingly on the horizon is ReactOS, but it will never become a viable option unless it's put on a much more solid foundation and made into a well-supported mainstream FOSS project.

I have been a software developer "for many years" and I have been using Linux full-time since 2007.

I rarely have issues with Linux, and some of those systems also had nVidia Graphics cards.

One time I had an issue was my wireless network, which the linux kernel did not support for that particular distro. That wasn't the end of the world -- I was using ethernet for it, anyway.

- My Wife has Linux

- My Daughter (now) has Linux -- after soo much annoyance with Windows 11 originally.

While more people are (slowly) going to Linux, we still have Convenience dominating over ethics/pride/politics/freedom/etc.

The Convenience Microsoft has right now is familarity. The Non-PC technies understand enough about the Start button, or Drive C: etc. However... and most importantly... is this reason:

New PCs (desktop or laptop) comes with Windows installed. Most of the Non-PC techs do not know any better, and will just follow like sheep each instructions to completing their Windows installation. Yes, even if it is "Oh, you need to create a Microsoft account with us"

The typical shops people buy their new desktop or laptops will encourage Windows as it is their job as well pushing for anti-virus and Office pack add-ons. They won't want you to say "don't worry, I am going to install Linux"

Imagine if new desktops and laptops provide a choice in main computer shops? I do wonder how many people will choose Linux as it does not cost extra? It does make you wonder. Sure, I am not expecting this to a 50/50 split - but I am sure Microsoft would notice a decline in various areas.

Anyway - I remember buying a laptop in a shop.. a laptop for my Wife.

Staff - "Would you like XYZ software for extra protection.. etc"

Me - "No thank you. I wont be using Windows"

Staff - [pause] "What are you using, sir?"

Me - "Linux"

Staff - "You wont be able to install these software and you will not have the security Windows can offer"

Me - "I know what I am doing, thank you"

Staff - [Goes to get laptop, return 10 mins later] "I just spoke with my manager and we can offer you a discount for out XYZ security software and include Microsoft Office"

Me - "This has not interest to me as I will be running Linux"

Staff - "You wont need to install Linux. You can keep Windows, sir"

Me - "Eh.. No thank you"

Staff walks to the counter with this look on his face. Yes.. yes.. he knows better, right?

Unfortunately you tried the worst possible distro out of them all - Ubuntu is infamous for being the Windows of the Linux world (for all the wrong reasons), and Canonical is getting worse every year. Still nowhere as bad as Microsoft, but they're getting there.

I would highly recommend using a sane newbie-friendly distro which bundles all relevant drivers, like Aurora[1]- they even have a developer edition which may be of interest to you. If you're a gamer though, Bazzite[2] may be a better option - comes with drivers for all popular game controllers and hardware and includes Steam and other stuff so you can get gaming in no time at all.

My 70yr old mum uses Aurora and she has zero issues. She surfs the web, edits documents, prints and scans, backs up and organised photos etc. Pretty much all your basic PC user stuff. If my mum can use Linux, so can anyone else.

[1] https://getaurora.dev/

[2] https://bazzite.gg/

I personally migrated to seniors (70+) to Linux. They both enjoyed it for years. One even found and installed a new driver for their printer when he switched. Plus most ChromeOS users can easily migrate to Linux. For Office I recommend ONLYOFFICE as that looks and behaves mostly the same as Microsoft Office. I haven't experience any issues with drivers but then again I never use NVIDEA, I used AMD and currently an Intel ARC.

For me it's been the opposite experience. I used to regularly get BSOD on windows, but ubuntu has been rock solid for me.

What? Zero crashes here, for decades. Maybe I bought specific hardware, dell and framework. Normies tend to use the web version of office these days don’t they?

> Every time I login using a Wayland desktop, only my main monitor is detected and it defaults to 60hz. I have to go through a whole process of unplugging the "undetected" monitors and plugging them back in.

Are you using GNOME? mutter has this problem where it does not retry commit on the next CRTC: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/3833. If this is actually what's happening on your system, switching to KDE should solve it.

> HDR on Wayland is barely functional (in my experience)

This also sounds specific to GNOME, as mutter still doesn't have color management. You'll get a better HDR experience with KDE.

In my experience, hardware support with drivers is far better with Ubuntu than with any of the 'consumer operating systems'. Display drivers, Nvidia in particular, have been a problem though, which I avoid by just going for integrated graphics (Intel). This worked well since I don't play games, however, then I got into Blender, which really needs a proper GPU (with drivers).

This summer I tried to interest a relative in using a Wacom tablet on their Apple computer. In linux-world you just plug the thing in and the job is done. Yet on the Apple computer I was having to hunt down drivers and install stuff, taking me out of my comfort zone. We didn't get the Wacom tablet to work (it is a decade old) and gave up.

All operating systems will inevitably force their ways of working on you to some extent and it is 'better the devil you know' for most people, myself included. My first OS that 'didn't get in the way' of what I wanted to do was SGI Irix. I think Ubuntu has that aspect of not getting in the way, however, I am confidently able to use the command line to type in installation instructions. Text instructions for installing stuff is brilliant since you can reproduce results consistently with not much more than 'cut and paste' needed. As soon as you move to a consumer OS then this becomes murkier, particularly if you have to use things like 'Homebrew'. An Apple user will quibble with me that this is difficult, but each to their own.

Along the way I have invariably kept the standard Windows installation, to never use it, ever. I thought I would need dual boot to hop into Photoshop, Word or some other Windows application, however, this has proven to not be the case.

The time has come for me to delete those Windows partitions and get my disk space back. In so doing I will also be excluding myself from any of those AI integrations that must be polluting Windows these days.

All of my problem was solved by disabling hybrid graphics and use the dedicated card only. I had not a single bug since then on X11 (I didn’t try Wayland yet, because it was almost completely unusable with hybrid config). The only drawback is battery life, but that wasn’t great even before. I could never reach the ~4 hours, which was possible with Windows. Even with the dedicated card disabled. So, I’m not entirely sure that it’s entirely on Nvidia.

Are you using a ThinkPad? My work laptop has this issue too, on windows 11. 75% of the time I have to unplug the monitor after waking up the laptop. 20% of the time it works. 5% of the time it has 640x480 resolution, and I have to unplug it again.

HDR is unusable on Windows too. I finally decided to sell my HDR monitor after like a year because it was a massive pain in the ass from the moment I bought it. One of my biggest wastes of money ever.

Essentially, the only games that doesn't work nowadays are the ones that intentionally break it by adding Linux-incompatible anti-cheat. This is common among the big AAA-games that are multiplayer (think Fortnite).

I’m using Bazzite now for about 8 months, and I have a dual boot Windows drive. I haven’t used the Windows drive once. Windows was my daily driver for 3 decades.

Performance wise, there’s no degradation. I can run games at 4k or bonkers FPS just like I did on Windows, no input lag, etc.

Bazzite also has a very active discord for support with issues. I highly recommend.

Not only is it competitive, it's actually superior in many instances.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...

Basically the only games that don't work are those which include anticheat which intentionally borks Linux. Check https://www.protondb.com/ for any game you're interested in to see if it'll run or not.

Yes. Nearly every game is compatible. Checkout protondb.com and check the games you play.

Anything that has a kernel level anti check (Valorant) will always be a resounding No. But besides from that, everything is pretty damn nice.

Yes, it works great, actually. But you have to have specific hardware, for example AMD gpu instead of Nvidia.

Also, nearly anything with anti-cheat (many online games, esp shooters) won't work.

Depends on what you like to play. Some games are heavily encumbered with either copy protection like denuvo or anti-cheat and those either don't support linux or flat out try to sniff out linux and refuse to run on anything but windows. Otherwise its great, you can check protondb and winehq for reports of compatibilty.

Dogs will always bark. I daily drive linux, and I am happy with it. Majority will not make the switch because they either are dependent on the office, adobe, or video editing software.

Linux user base grows. One tiny percent of percent every year. Too little to make a dent.

We were able to wait out Windows 8. Windows 7 was supported through 2020 and Windows 10 came out in 2015.

While I don't disagree with you at all, I'd advise against calling the OS “Windoze” (or “Winblows”, or the company “Micro$oft”). This gives off a very “From my parent's basement, I stab at thee!” impression and reduces how seriously a lot of people will take you and what you are saying, and those people could apply the same impression to the rest of us too. I used to do the same thing, about 1½-to-2 decades ago.

What do you mean? My Intel MacBook Pro works better on Linux than it works on the latest supported macOS (Big Sur in my case). It works longer, and fans almost always stay silent. I have a fairly minimal sway setup, however.

I left Visual Studio for Rider long before I gave up Windows, IMO it's far superior to VS for everything other than GUI Apps or Blazor hot reloading (which is basically broken in both).

JetBrains seem to have the best IDE for every language I've tried: Rider / IntelliJ / Android Studio / PyCharm / PhpStorm / RubyMine. Never tried CLion though, but given they all share the same base I'd thought it would be of a equally high standard?

Visual Studio is nice for C++ if you target Windows and CLR languages but for the rest it’s pretty abysmal. I personally generally prefer IntelliJ and used to find CLion nicer for C++ but that was a long time ago.

Anyway, Windows has become a pain for normal user but remains fine if you are a company user. The management tools will strip away most if not all the annoyance people are complaining about here. I think Microsoft knows where the money comes from.

If your target platform is MS Windows only or only supported by MS Windows like with your examples, by all means, use Visual Studio. If Visual Studio is dictating your choice of platform, I'd consider the tradeoffs.

Have you tried out CLion (https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/)? AFAIK the JetBrains IDEs work pretty well on Linux.

I use Emacs. It does need some fine tuning, tree-sitter installation, etc. but after that, I cannot understand colleges using VS. I have seen no feature in VS not available in Emacs.

Some colleges have switched from years VS to Emacs and after a week won’t look back.

Just wait for it, from what I know Sony uses clang for it toolchain, don't know about the others so if enough studios start to switch they will start to offer the tools.

Side note: I have been using msvc in wine for almost 5 years now, so if that works I don't know why the Sony/Nintendo/Xbox toolchain wouldn't.

Have you tried the intellij IDEs? I thought that they were pretty similar in terms of experience, although I have used them for java/dotnet primarily.

I've found Visual Studio fairly helpful wirh debugging, but for general code editing it is unusably slow.

I generally use Sublime Text (+ various plugins) for code editing and leave Visual Studio for dwbugging the code or editing GUIs.

Is running windows inside a VM a possibility for you?

I guess downvotes come from people that believe vim + grep + printf debugging is peak development environment. Quite amazing that they even go for something such advanced as vim, instead of sticking with ed, for I believe there exists some Linux user claiming that ed doesn't lack anything that VS has.

Linux is the better OS. Windows 11 just forces people to evaluate other OS's to experience the latest Linux for themselves.

I didn't have the time as a working Adult for distro hopping and Gentoo compiles, but the thought of having to live with Windows 11 made me try out modern linux again, glad I did.

I think the better way to look at is that no matter how good Linux gets, if MS didn't shoot themselves in the foot it would always struggle to make headway. Even the modest headway it's made over the last couple years.

It's not about quality, it's about market dominance. Walk into any major retailer, 95% of the computers they sell have Windows on them (100% if they don't sell Apple). Go to any company and see what they run on almost all their computers, Windows. Go to any school, probably the same thing (though years ago Apple would have had a strong presence too).

And that's not even talking about business software like Office. MS built that dominance back when Linux was almost entirely focused on the server space. What Desktops did exist where mostly hobby projects or relatively small companies. Shit Linux itself was a hobby project lol.

MS has had that position for over 20 years. Windows is the Xerox of computers. A lot of people don't even realize there are options out there. In that environment, even if the Linux Desktops got better than Windows, it should have taken an absolute killer app or some big evolution in the space to get people switching. All MS had to do was keeping offering a competent product. Or even a kind of shitty one that didn't actively give people a reason to switch.

But they can't help themselves. Most of the money isn't enough, they need all the money. And they've degraded their product to the point where it is actively driving people away. And even now it'll probably take another decade for Linux Desktops to break the 10% mark.

Modern Ubuntu, for me, is akin to Windows 7 (peak Windows), but with some added benefits like real package management and mnemonics (the underlined letters in menus you can access with alt+underlined letter), and other cool things like middle-click anywhere on the window to resize.

Even Mac is pretty bad by comparison.

Again, this is just me, but I wonder if people saying Linux is bad are really just complaining it's different? It does help that I only buy hardware I know works.

Linux desktop has improved a lot, but the huge momentum of the competitor has prevented many people (including OP) from switching or even remotely considering it. Anything that decreases the momentum of Windows lets the improvements of Linux show.

I think it has improved significantly. For the last few years KDE has been great and getting more polished.

The pain points are nothing worse than the crap Windows 11 throws at you. The only difference for the average person is that their go to tech support person might not know Linux. And paid support options like the India call centre stuff that gets thrown in with a laptop purchase for a month or so doesn't exist for Linux.

As with anything, there are transition costs. If your current solution becomes worse, those transition costs become relatively lower. So it says a lot more an issue of moving over than anything about linux

Yes, of course? Linux could be immaculate, but having less than 5% user share is a bigger issue that is best solved by the current market leader cratering.

I bet you're a blast at parties.

"You say meeting them was the best thing that happened to you? What does that say about your achievements?"

Linux being the best OS didn't just "happen". It was a long process in many fronts (usability, devices, drivers, games, etc). But despite that, people are still reluctant to even try Linux, so Windows screwing around is the best thing that can happen to Linux.

I think it counts. If the most popular airline in the world suddenly started forcing you to commit to a subscription model to travel, one would consider less popular airlines going forward. Sometimes consistency of doing the job without adding hassle is more important than arriving at every destination under the sun. The problem with the Linux Desktop is it that it has a reputation as a scrappy alternative until it hits that random problem that grounds it. It will never replace Windows but it can take bigger and bigger chunks of users out of it.

The argunent is that it forced people to break their habit. Which is always the main hurdle for adoption. There is nothing innovative about Linux 2025 compared to 2024 or 2023, Windows just got worse. I say this as a 12+ years linux user. The biggest shift for the normies was Proton, and we got steam to thank for that. But Linux is more secure, reliable and hard tested as ever.

I think you missed the point. Linux was already good: it didn't become good because its competitor became worse. Rather, the competitor becoming worse gives some people the push they finally needed to make the switch.

The point of the comment is that without Microsoft misbehaving, many people wouldn't have discovered/would not discover how good Linux is now.

They'd have to outlaw compilers to make that work.

Say (hypothetically) they forced KDE and Gnome to do that - they are open source, you can't hide that it was done, someone will rip out that part and either compile and release a new distro or post the git somewhere outside that jurisdiction and someone else will do it.

This isn't a new thing even - we've had free/non-free/rpmfusion and the like for decades - hell back in the day I had to pull and compile freetype because of the patent on subpixel hinting that was valid in the US and not in the EU.

The one that does worry me more is that they straight up just start locking down the hardware more strictly - a mobile phone style attestation/locked bootloaders would be a major challenge to open computing.

I am confused. What "Linux"? There are many distributions. There is the kernel (many versions). Maybe even today they are some distributions that are as you described, used in certain companies or states or whatever. But you can choose another one and you will still be fine.

Linux is not one single entity. You aren't bound to one single distribution if their philosophy doesn't satisfy you.

> Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale.

The best way to do that would be for all the governments and large corporations that buy Windows machines for their employees to switch to Linux. That would probably end up cheaper in the long run. But nobody wants to sign up to be the one driving the switch.

Unless and until that happens, the unfortunate fact for individual Windows users is that you're rounding error in MS's numbers anyway. You're not the one they're making all the money from. The large government and corporate accounts are. And as long as people have to use Windows at work, they're going to use Windows at home because it's familiar to them. (Except for outliers like me who run Linux at home even though we have to use Windows at work. But those outliers are rounding error to the rounding error.)

Apple has customer service you can call and speak to a person.

>Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale.

The reality of the situation is: If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem.

Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale.

100%

So many business models today are based on rolling over the customer, on the theory that anything with that much momentum is impressive to new buyers.

They should be required to provide human customer service, with some sort of legal liability to ensure their products perform as advertised, without an end-user having to spend tens or hundreds of hours chasing down a solution, spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and all the rest of the hassle.

Apple (which you mention earlier) do. I've used their live support at any time of the day to solve issues whether it be a software glitch or having trouble using something I just purchased. The only company that comes close to this level of streamlined, anytime support, is American Express.

If customers just start bugging Microsoft devs directly as though they are customer support (which…technically they should be since they built the product) then maybe productivity would grind to a halt. When all the MBAs running the show start seeing all their JIRA dashboards full bad news then perhaps they’ll think twice?

Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product for 80%+ of daily caloric/macro intake, then we would probably see things change quickly.

Companies that can’t run at a particular scale should definitely not be enabled to do so. But sadly, we seem to not hold them accountable, directly.

This is why we have courts and judges, to hear complaints and issue remedies when the defendants are unwilling to do so. A better solution would be to reign in arbitration agreements, which are horribly inefficient. Arbitration purports to be lest costly, but it encourages unnecessary litigation by preventing the operation of res judicata, it increases the costs of litigation by preventing class actions, etc. It increases injuries by keeping wrongdoers conduct confidential.

The issue is cost. You're going to have to pay considerably more for a computer to have a human ready to help you with it.

With many products, every contact a customer makes with customer service is an opportunity to profit. However, it requires quite a mindset to appreciate this.

You can rig your product reviews by providing above and beyond customer service, for example, warranty claims dealt with in a day with a replacement in the post arriving as if by magic to surprise the customer. Hit them up for a review and they will write a review with meaning, explaining how you fixed their problem, exceeding all expectations. Unless you have done this then you would never know. Although most companies do collect reviews, they don't know the way to do it is to get reviews from the customers that complained rather than the ones that didn't. It is very counterintuitive.

You can always upsell. If the customer has problems with the product then maybe they need a different product or a whole suite of stuff. With software you can always give trials too. Complaining about what comes with Windows? Maybe you need Office. Here you go, a three month trial to tide you over.

Customer service should also be the eyes and ears of the company, to alert product and sales teams to any problems with new products so corrections can be made very quickly.

It is also about having customers for life. It is more cost effective to retain the customers you have rather than churn them.

All of this applies regardless of the company size. There are some caveats though. Nothing can be queued unduly, queues don't save time for anyone and you still have to get all of that queued work done. This means you need team members that work from both the front and the back of the queue, to have a clean queue by the end of day.

If you get it right then customer service is not a cost, it is the exact opposite, at the heart of marketing due to word of mouth goodness that can't be bought so easily. If you can get the upsells to work too, then a customer service department can pay its own way, to profit even.

You also have to recruit people that will go above and beyond. Lots of people have hectic lives with kids and other obligations that make their lives unpredictable. They will need days off, special working hours and other niceties, however, give them a job that they can fit around their life and they will show gratitude with loyalty and hard work.

There are cultural problems why this 'bring it on' approach is not so common. Usually customer service are down there with the pigeons in corporate pecking order. In reality, customer service needs to be at the heart of the company with more than lip service given to the 'customer first' idea.

With companies giving customer service over to AI chatbots, there is plenty of opportunity for companies of all sizes, including Microsoft, to resist the AI temptation and get serious about customer service.

How can the government regulate companies into providing good customer service when they can't even provide good customer service to their citizens?

I guess they don't want Windows to cost $10000 per licence.

Even better, just switch to Linux. F** Microsoft.

I have legit licenses for Win 11 and I still use massgrave as it's easier.

LOL. I found that website today and thought it was named "mass grave".

I so wish I could move to Linux, but I extensively use Windows computers via RDP and the Linux RDP clients are just so bad on my eyes. I tried Remmina, rdesktop and FreeRDP. Maybe NX would be a good option but I can't install NX on all of the computers I use. I guess I should shut-up and try to contribute to those projects to make them better.

> NUC is somehow recognized by Windows 11 as being entitled to a copy

There's some form of "BIOS-attached license". Don't really know how it works, but I've seen this for many years. Basically all PCs that have the Windows logo have that, and you can install windows on them as many times as you like, without ever having to enter a license key (I suppose this is limited to the same edition level - I've only ever tried this on "enterprise-level" machines that came with windows pro).

This even works for machines that originally came with windows 8 to install 10, and 10 -> 11. I've never tried "forcing" a win11 install on any machine that came with win8.

I run Linux at home too. Its annoying, but I sometimes need to run Windows in a WM for Word, as the online version is crap on large complex documents where formatting matters, and interoperability with colleagues keeps me from using LibreOffice Write.

So... what's the former way?

I have to ask, why even bother paying some key site? It is violating the terms of the license agreement anyway, so why not just pirate?

Use free software from the get-go and nobody will feel cheated.

I could, and maybe I should, but it's just too much effort, time, and money. It's not worth what I paid for the license. If the license was $10k that would be different.

I wish it worked like that! Sadly, it does not. That's why I was using a MS account login instead of a local username/password - I thought that it would be 'automatic'. No such luck.

Can't. As I said, they don't have any on-phone support anymore. I tried for a couple days but it's not possible to reach a human anymore. No keywords like 'representative' work now. The try to offer automated support or redirect you to webpages, but that's it.

The days of reaching a human at MS are gone.

The reason they don't meaningfully enforce their copyright on consumer PCs is precisely because they do care about their market share. If you buy a computer with Windows (or get it installed) in what I suspect is the overwhelming majority of the world, it's an 'illegitimate' copy and it works 100% fine, including operating with Microsoft's servers.

As you mentioned, they could trivially stop this if they wanted to, but they don't. Because if this were not possible, there'd be billions of more PCs out there running instead what would most likely be Linux. Enabling people to use Windows without paying is a key component of their strategy of maintaining market dominance, especially on a global level.

>those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

To an extent sure, but when people that grew up as home consumers not using Windows become business leaders they won't have the brand loyalty to Microsoft that the current aging out generation does.

If Google doesn't characteristically fumble the bag their dominance with ChromeOS in schools has potential pay major dividends in 10-15 years.

Windows centric software development is pretty much completely driven by business leaders 50+ years old on the young end.

If something displaces Windows in the consumer PC market, I wonder how long it is before those new OS consumers start to want to use what they're comfortable with in the business as well. Windows will start to feel like some weird legacy system. By the time business starts moving away, it will be too late for Microsoft to save.

I think you're right that they don't care about the money from Windows licenses, but they seem to be pivoting to trying to pull data from consumer desktops for AI training. That's arguably way more valuable and no one besides Apple (or potentially Google) gets that kind of data.

As more and more public accessible areas start becoming so inundated with AI generated material, that makes the walled gardens where generated content is not AI generated that much more valuable for training.

Whether they care about consumer market or not, they know that most of the consumers aren't going to care about this problem. Hardly anyone would bat an eye at using their already existing Microsoft account/email address and internet connection to log on to their PC. They're almost 100% headed to get on the internet to do whatever anyways. These people are connected to the cloud 24/7. In the same way hardly any Apple user cares that they need an Apple account to get into a bunch of things/phone/whatever. This is a nerd/tech-niche problem.

> For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

Yes, and making corporations and smaller businesses donate their stuff via official spyware os, clouded "services" and "agents" is perfect opportunity for spyware creator :) It is hard to blame them for wanting this :) Except that, probably, will explode in their faces...

Small businesses don't like creating Microsoft accounts either. Limit 30 software activations per email address or something like that. And retail Office stops working after 365 days offline.

"How did Microsoft go bankrupt?"

Two ways: slowly then all at once.

I’ve had multiple friends who are not tech savvy ask me about steam os. Because they basically only use their gaming PC for gaming, and they are frustrated with windows.

None have actually switched yet, but also 10 is still supported, and steam os isnt quite ready from what i understand; (nvidia driver issues?) although I assume that’s changing quite quickly. I haven’t looked super recently.

Personally I run bazzite on a machine I’ve got hooked to a tv. It’s basically steamOS and works great for gaming. I can’t speak to the desktop mode, but as long as it’s passable, windows sets the bar pretty low. Main issue is that some multiplayer games intentionally don’t support Linux for anti-cheat reasons. :(

PC ownership is NOT a zero-sum game. You assume that lost marketshare must be replaced by something else. I'm confident this is not people replacing their PC for a Mac, this is people who stopped using a PC completely.

Microsoft, by ruining Windows, is not leaving the field open for a replacement OS; they're slowly killing the PC itself.

> Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days

That's essentially Microsoft Account nowadays, which went thru few rebrandings on the way. In XP it was promoted via Windows Messenger with popup message which for less experienced people would suggest that in order to access the Internet they need this "passport".

Considering how many sites now offer (still optional) logins with apple/meta/microsoft accounts I wonder if the goal here is to be the provider of identity for sites and services and at the same future-proofing for any digital ID checks govt's may introduce

To the average consumer, Windows doesn't matter much anymore.

To enterprises, Microsoft has them under lock and key with Office 365, basically forever. LibreOffice is nowhere near a replacement for Excel in an enterprise setting.

WINE it is. I can't see any point in playing cat and mouse with an actively hostile OS. When a new Windows update starts stealing IMAP credentials[1] before the modding community catches on, it's game over for the user. Better to not use anything based on Windows.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453

I was with you until you listed Xbox - their consoles are dying in the market.

They've adopted a strategy of calling everything "gaming" Xbox, and seem to be going all-in on Gamepass subscription revenue along with making their first-party games available on other platforms. I'll be surprised if there is another flagship console following the Series X.

We'll see how that works out for them.

Office on the web sucks though. Slow AF and can't handle large documents.

Sorry, but ReactOS is not seriously usable. Not to insult the work done on it but it is an experimental OS.

Pretty much.

I remember when new Windows versions were still an event: you could read about it on the magazines, people would get excited to try them, people would debate about how pretty/ugly the new UI was, etc.

Nowadays new Windows versions are like some unwanted background noise. I don't even know at what point Windows 10 stopped being the new version and 11 came out, but it went totally unnoticed to me until I heard that Windows 10 was close to EOL a couple of months ago. And then you start dreading the moment that you'll have to migrate and uninstall all the Xbox crap again that they force on you, etc.

I liked Windows 7. I also liked Windows XP SP2 before that.

But you’re right that since Windows 8, Windows is just something I’ve tolerated.

That being said, Windows 11 seems nice, but it looks like Microsoft is pulling the same stuff again.

Not true. I like Windows 11, and I think it's the best desktop OS out there.

I remembered something weird like this, & went looking for coverage last week. I thought it'd maybe gotten divied up between Azure Services and like some ads or online experience thing? I ended up giving up, so much noise and I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I'd love to see some coverage. Incredible seeing Windows broken up like that & internally sold for parts, just total throwing it to the MBA wolves to milk some money out of, it felt like & seems like.

mac window management is borderline unusable and I'm tired of installing 5 tools to fix it.

Looking at Tahoe, seems things are getting worse.

This is another good one: https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

Does this allow to:

- remove all this Games & XBox related stuff? - remove everything pre-installed but not used stuff? (Internet Explorer legacy?) - remove all this "fancy" Icons & links: Video/Music etc. in Explorer - deselect to install most of all these Background Services?

And: Does it work for the Windows Server versions as well?

Enterprise edition is as much of a clownshow as the others. I actually run one such edition at work and since a few weeks ago I've noticed in the "home" screen of the settings a new tile, inviting me to add my microsoft account to benefit from something or other.

Now, this is a machine I mostly use for goofing out, so it actually has my microsoft account connected to it. It's fully entra id joined: I log into my windows session with my office 365 account, which has a full license (p2 or whatever it's called), I can see the bitlocker key in entra id, the works.

Now, curiosity got the best of me the other day, and I figured I might just as well click that button. Guess what? It didn't work! It apparently doesn't support business accounts!

On my home pc (pro edition, which I use for photoshop and the occasional game), which does have a consumer microsoft account, that tile doesn't show up.

I'm a linux fan but calling linux user-focused is insane.

Drivers are a lot of work. IMHO, do some core stuff, and then build in driver adapters. NDIS wrapper, linuxkpi, etc.

If you want to work hard to make things easy, I bet you could build a hypervisor that does pci passthrough for each device to a guest that runs a different OS driver and rexports the device as a virtio device, and then the main OS guest can just have virtio drivers for everything. It can't be that hard to take documentation for writing Windows drivers and use that to build a minimal guest kernel to run windows drivers in.

That indirection will cost performance and latency, but windows 11 feels like more latency than windows 10 too, so eh. You can also build native drivers for important stuff as needed / over time.

My example: I installed Debian 13 recently. I installed on the second SSD of my laptop, so I can dual boot and keep working with Debian 11 on the first SSD.

I encrypt my disks. Debian 13 can use the hardware encryption of my Samsung SSD, 11 didn't. The installer offered me the option and I accepted it. That nearly bricked the SSD because of (I'm not totally sure) a mismatch between the block size of the file system and the block size required by the SSD encryption. The installer should have made a check and at least warned me. It did nothing of that and the laptop didn't boot. I couldn't even change the partitions on that disk. It enforced its encryption and refused to do anything. I appreciate that but it left me without my disk. I asked questions to either chatgtp or Claude, found the problem and after a few attempts I got the right sequence of commands to unblock the SSD and get an empty one. I reverted to the standard OS based encryption and all is well now. I would have had to dig deeply into forums and learn the meaning of those commands. AI saved me a lot of time. Is this a Linux only thing or a Windows installer would have made the same mistake? No idea.

LLMs have probably trawled through ArchWiki+StackOverflow and can enough content to help you debug your system. That plus a few “are you sure” responses to LLM hallucinations have gotten me far.

I had to fix a kiosk style linux desktop that had suddenly changed its touch input behaviour from touch to cursor today. ChatGPT gave me the steps immediately for troubleshooting, wrote me a udev rule and explained the potential reasons it could have happened and offered to walk me through the process of isolation. I suspect 99% of user problems in Linux can be solved this way.

There's a catch-22 in that the average Linux user is pretty loudly opposed to AI and so it appears hard for pro-AI software to gain footing in the space. Granted, most AI tools are Linux-friendly ATM, but my uneducated guess is that a larger % of Apple/Windows users use AI daily than Linux users

> Linux works great for gaming except some anti-cheat stuff which probably won't be legal anymore anyways in Europe under the PLD.

I tried to have a gaming setup with Linux (SteamOS and Bazzite) but both failed when I tried to connect more than one Bluetooth controller and they'd be unable to distinguish them or disconnect everything after a few minutes, it was a frustrating experience.

Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't care about the occasional admin who manages to uninstall Windows in favor of Linux. Since Windows is the default OS on most machines, Microsoft is already making it up in volume.

Some years ago when an older Macbook Air of mine need a bit of Linux upgrade TLC I cycled through a bunch of linux distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc) and found that Ubuntu had more automatic built-in support for the hardware and had no 1st hour niggles. So I kept it.

When I decided to wipe Windows off my desktop, I started with Fedora because I wanted more container/package consistency with some of the other environments I interact with, and I thought I wanted some of the bare-bones Gnome stuff. But Fedora just didn't feel right.. it was uglier than Ubuntu, the Super-key action was a bit jankier, I missed the menu, I had to manually configure the NVIDIA drivers, and the flatpaks didn't really seem like a huge improvement to me.

Anyway, I wiped Fedora and went again with Ubuntu. I feel like that last round of polish they add to it, and some of their device driver defaults, just work better for me. I have had no issues with snaps though I had to learn to mount external directories over symlinks for things like Thunderbird's snap security for relocated profile stores (moved my profile off the SSD and over to the internal spinning disc). But that was easy.

I tried Linux Mint before and thought about Pop_OS but decided to stick with one of the major distros. Ubuntu has won two of my recent "let's try a bunch of distros" so I think that itch has been quieted for a while.

I will say, for Linux in general, after configuring all the apps I use on the daily (browsers, Obsidian, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, etc) my Linux storage on / takes up all of 35GB of storage on a 256GB SSD. I am unreasonably pleased by that.

> there's nothing in W11 that actually relies on a TPM, it's just an artificial restriction from Microsoft to kill old hardware

untrue; bitlocker, an important thing for businesses, is far more secure with a TPM. Lots of things are more secure with a TPM, but people who think that Microsoft requires a TPM to sell more copies of Windows will never, ever, believe that to be the case.

Windows is a relatively small portion of Microsoft's revenue generation these days. Windows used to be the main breadwinner for Microsoft, but that has all changed now that Office is a subscription and Azure exists. That smaller portion of the revenue pie is why Windows has stupid shit like suggestions and tons of preinstalled crap: it matters a lot less who is put off by Windows than it used to.

The TPM is a genuinely good thing. Windows DOES use it. You can write applications which use it as well, if you want to. Short of any hardware bug in the TPM (which did happen once) it is capital-S Secure, as I understand it.

> Adobe is a permanent barrier to Linux adoption

I tried their online versions of Lightroom and Photoshop in Firefox on Linux, and I am quite happy to continue paying the subscription. It definitely takes less clicking there to remove an unwanted bird from the sky in a photo than it would take in GIMP or RawTherapee.

> I think people will sooner just start hard breaking Windows ISOs

Hasn't it always been the case? Nobody buy licenses besides companies right?

My uncle taught me how to torrent ~20 years ago, he was already cracking stuff for the whole family, he passed away but his legacy lives through me, I have never seen or heard about anyone buying a windows license in my entire life

You understand the situation better than most do here. The anti-cheat technologies built into competitive games is huge for me. I don’t enjoy gaming without it. That’s a big statement. When you simply don’t enjoy competitive gaming unless it’s on Windows.

Maybe it's time for the Linux version of WSL. Wine is already that for some subset of things - maybe the best way to run Win32 software in 2030 could be on Linux...

Is not supporting TPM an issue in terms of some app compability though? I was investigating whether to upgrade an old computer from windows 10 to 11 and that was said somewhere online. I don't know if its true or fearmongering.

I disagree with the reasoning "Because there's too much important software that runs only on windows."

My disagreement isn't because wine or proton exist, it's because most people only use a web browser. They check their email, watch tiktok and netflix, and write documents. 90% of people would have all their computing needs met by a basic chromebook.

> embroidery software for her sewing machine has a USB hardware dongle for DRM

While I don't have any sort of built up library of work or experience with a specific propriatary software, consider reccomending Inkscape + the Ink/Stitch extension to do embroidery designs.

I bought a Husqvarna Designer Jade, and the included windows-only software was a 'Lite' version, with an upsell for more advanced features (and pricing that was an additional 25-50% of the embroidery machine itself!), and I suspect a hardware dongle since I spotted references to it. I've been able to get by Ink/Stitch for the simple hobbyist jobs we've needed to do. The machine's USB port just expects a usb storage device, and the ink/stitch software can write the .vp3 files it needed to run a job.

Ink/Stitch (https://inkstitch.org/) is a F/OSS option for a lot of embroidery machines... maybe not hers, but worth a look.

> If one does everything in a web browser (e.g. Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc), that's the type of usage profile where switching to Linux desktop is an easy no-brainer.

Some streaming services don't work on Linux, the ones that do have degraded video quality, and it generally feels like streaming services are deliberately trying to break the Linux experience because it's associated with piracy.

If you have the space on your main drive you could probably shrink the partition a few hundred gigs and dual boot linux on it.

Swap over whenever you need something on Windows, easy peasy.

I got frustrated dealing with my brother's laptop, threw Ubuntu on it, and never had to touch it again. Like, he got 4 or 5 extra years out of that clunker due to that switch.

He's really not a computer guy, and he picked it up no problem.

I pretty much said that to my wife; I told her that I will buy her a Windows computer if she wants, but I will not play sysadmin for it.

If she called my bluff I probably would have still helped her, but she was happy enough to use a Mac.

> It is incredible how far it has come

No argument on my end.

I have been running Linux since 2011, and so much more stuff is in the “Just Works” category, especially if you have AMD graphics. When I installed NixOS on my Thinkpad about a year ago, it was almost comical how easy it was for me; I had gotten used to having to waste an entire day messing with drivers and fixing issues in 2012-2015, so it felt kind of weird for stuff to work as expected immediately.

I am trying very hard to get my parents to use something like Linux Mint because the Windows 11 auto-update on my mom’s computer actually prevented it from booting (making me waste an entire day remotely having them flash a live USB so I could rsync over her files to me…thanks MS!), so this might be enough of a final straw for them.

I installed linux mint xfce edition on a laptop with only 8 gb of ram, and while there were a few hiccups where I had to adjust, it's a breath of fresh air. Super low memory usage, no wayland nonsense, it. just. works.

Everyone says that it’s a step backwards, and even I did for awhile until I, you know, actually used it.

I don’t mean “install it and run it for an hour and declare it sucks”, but actually try and learn the way that the devs wanted you to use it, and stick with it for a week or two. When I did that, I actually found myself really liking it.

One of my biggest pet peeves in tech, and I am guilty of this myself, is when people make no effort to actually understand a product, and then declare it as “worse”. I feel like Gnome 3 was a victim of this; it was different than Gnome 2, different enough to where it arguably should have had a different name, but people just universally declared it as shit because it wasn’t exactly the same as Gnome 2.

Regardless, my overall point stands, replace desktop environment with any of the ones listed (though TBH I never have given KDE a fair shake so I can’t speak to it).

Yeah, for me XFCE > Cinnamon > Budgie > KDE.

I moved my parents from Windows 10, MS Office, Edge, Starpage.com to Kubuntu, ONLYOFFICE, Thunderbird, Firefox, qwant.com.

Most questions came because of the Outlook to Thunderbird switch. I can attribute zero questions to KDE. Though I said the new System is called Linux, they refer to it as Windows 11. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Proton and flatpak. The latter still has a lot of issues, but I recently come across a $200+ piece of commercial software (Bitwig Studio) that distributes as a flatpak, and it works great. And so is 99% of the desktop apps I'm using, Steam included.

Flathub is the best app store around. Can't wait until they allow selling paid apps (they had a few contractors working on it last I checked)

Feels good to be on Linux, man.

Take a look at Bitwig. Developed by a team of ex-Ableton devs, it is the DAW-Live-should-have-become even at version 5.3, and version 6, which is in beta right now, will blow Ableton out of water. As soon as they add a microtonally aware piano roll like in Live 12, I'll have no reason to fire up Live other than to revisit old projects.

And yes it runs on Linux.

(Although truth be told, the CPU usage is somewhat higher on Linux than on Windows, even with low-latency kernel. Multimedia just doesn't quite shine on Linux yet.)

Switch to Rider. It takes a second to adjust, but you'll end up with a better understanding of dotnet in general.

re. Games, are you sure proton won't work? I've got ~1400 games on steam, and only a handful have serious issues with proton.

I would think it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to keep it technically possible to install Linux on bare metal, if only to stave off potential anti-trust lawsuits. They would likely just make it very difficult.

I ran Enlightement + GNOME at work... on OS/2... circa 1999/2000. Wasn't even that bad. Also on linux of course.

Since then it comes down to someone wanting to go deeper than the surface and that's not for everyone, particularily if they are busy.

Pain can get the attention of even the busiest people so I really hope they keep making user suffer like this because that is the best driver away from windows and off the plantation.

I wouldn’t say 20 years, I think the tides turned somewhat when AMD opened up their drivers around ~10 years ago and really turned when Valve released Proton in 2018. Prior to that it was still kind of hard for me to recommend Linux to people.

I think it’s generally pretty ok for people who primarily just browse the web.

My grandmother, who doesn’t know anything about computers at all, runs Linux Mint. She primarily uses Chrome, and someone set her up with Thunderbird and LibreOffice and she’s been totally fine with that. Keep in mind, this computer is old. When she bought it, it had Windows Vista installed and she’s still getting some life out of it.

I think Linux is in a weird place, where it’s great for people who know a lot about computers or nothing about computers. If all you do is browse the web and write email, Linux is perfectly capable for pretty much anyone. If you’re a software engineer, Linux has a lot of useful utilities and is perfectly ok to debug and fix.

The worst case is someone like my dad, who is kind of in the “prosumer Windows” camp. He doesn’t know a lot about computers but he knows enough to where he would want to dig down and change stuff, and doing that he would have to relearn everything from scratch if he moved to Linux.

I feel like your knowledge is a little out of date. Drivers on Linux are generally pretty decent now, especially if you use AMD or Intel graphics.

I had to do some recovery stuff on my mom’s laptop recently, which has an Intel GPU, and I just had it boot off an Ubuntu flash drive into Ubuntu desktop, and it worked fine, including WiFi.

On my main “game console”, I have an Nvidia card running in an eGPU case, and that was a pain in the ass to set up, so fair enough I suppose.

Yeah, I am a bit concerned about that too. I just started a second masters and I think at least at one point I need to use that bullshit Guardian Browser spyware to do exams.

I might need to keep some piece of shit Windows computer around just to satisfy that because I think VMs are explicitly not allowed.

I don’t play much AAA stuff, but Steam+Proton has gotten very good; I almost never even bother checking compatibility anymore.

I don’t know anything about music production though.

Everyone knows they're not worried about that. GP is simply pointing out a hole in their story of claiming to care about something else.

You may have missed this part. >the Windows-only software I have to use for work is no longer nagging me about being out of support

I'd like to. If you have contacts at Autodesk, Siemens, Fanuc, and Rockwell who can port their software to Linux, would you suggest that to them for me? Thanks!

We're so screwed. Tahoe sucks so my Sonoma days are numbered. Win11 sucks and win10 days are numbered. On the other hand the rails guy released Omarchy linux which is pretty great but it will take months to make it usable.

Isn't it a pain to get a working key for Win 11 LTSC?

I've not bothered since switching from Win 10 LTSC to Win 11. Win 11 is definitely faster and better for everyday use in 2025, IMO.

I start with installing a Tiny11 build: https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/the-complete-tiny1...

Massgrave it to pro.

Then I debloat: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

And you end up with a super zippy install that I've had zero compatibility problems with over the last year.

Setting up secure boot on newer motherboards usually involves some resetting of the hardware security keys related to the TPM chip and other modules. Which if not done correctly, can 'soft-brick' the motherboard requiring a BIOS reflash.

Their telemetry data didn't seem to help them figure out how important the start menu is for users. I doubt it's going to help them really do anything else either. They might have the data, but they're not using it.

Not sure. If they would actively read that telemetry data they would notice that the market share of Win11 due to their actions is shrinking, not rising.

But maybe they are holding the telemetry graphs upside down? ;)

And, obviously, a Windows system not connected to the Internet will not give you Telemetry, so this part of your customer base is invisible to you. As a PM, you would have to actually talk with your actual customers to learn about it.

Or they could have just done a survey where customers can vote on what they want. I assume that "Half of the OS settings dialogues now apply changes the moment you klick a checkbox, without a OK / Cancel button; and the other half of the OS allows you to review your changes and revert them in one go if you want."

It's just said seeing this great NT system getting crippled and ruined by actively making it harder to use and limiting choices.

Engagement numbers went up and to the right because it requires multiple infuriating clicks and keystrokes to do basic things. Start menu randomly resorted your apps? 2 more clicks to find the app you wanted!

Facts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

I googled a little... You can use iPhone without an appleid but you cannot install any apps. I wouldn't call this "using" even

IMO the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck has a decent chance of pushing big publishers to consider releasing for Linux/Proton. These handhelds fit the niche between smart phone and console gamers [1] that might have some potential growth left in it. Even the availability of Windows first handhelds was not as bad for Linux gaming as SteamOS and other gaming handheld focused Linux distros have been ported to them.

On the other hand the anti cheat side has been really ratcheting up with newer releases requiring Win 11 and Secure Boot. I somewhat hope and fear we might get a blessed version of SteamOS for the Deck that is heavily locked down and has kernel/hypervisor level anti cheat functions added to it. Essentially allowing for a boot mode similar to current consoles. While it goes against the open spirit of SteamOS, it might serve as an argument to invest a bit more into the Linux side, potentially improving the ecosystem as a whole.

Or all of it might be the usual "year of the Linux desktop" pipe dream.

[1] leaving out the Switch which is heavily focused on Nintendo IP and has comparatively weak hardware

> MacOS is not an attainable gaming support platform in general, as the people who are interested in the AAA games are going to need a Pro series

The M5's GPU cores are expected to pick up the same 40% performance boost we just saw in the newly released iPhones.

AAA games written for the M4 already work just fine, the extra performance is needed when you are also emulating other graphics APIs and CPU instruction sets to run Windows games.

Windows on ARM has the same issues, but Prism isn't as good at x86 emulation.

The gaming is the only reason that keeps me buying computer with windows

Regarding this article here, when you said about competitive gaming, I imagined a competition of that sort. I wonder how does a windows installation look in a big gaming competition that many players attend. It's never "BYOD" rather they get the windows preinstalled onto great gaming PC.

Do the players need to login to their Microsoft account? And Download their cloud cotents to someone else's computer? Or maybe there is a loophole for gaming contests that allow installation without cloud login?

If you have to play games, just have a separate Windows computer for that, and do everything else on a Linux box.

These types of games are only a small part of gaming, I use a macbook for my main machine and I play games on my console. The majority of gaming has nothing to do with buying skins and we should all be rejecting this nonsense anyway.

I agree with you here, as someone who uses all three (mostly Linux).

IMO the two biggest pains with MacOS is (1) brew is not as good as any other package manager in my experience (mostly in bugs that need manual fixing) and (2) Docker naturally is much worse (not just for performance, but for requiring 'Docker desktop'.) All the other pains are just the myriad niceities I miss from a lifetime of mostly Linux that MacOS just can never have.

I have to use MacOS for work, and I find the experience of using MacOS to be atrocious. As hostile as Windows, with the added caveat that some things just doesn't work. I honestly would rather use Windows than that crap.

I've never worked at Autodesk, and I don't use CAD. But I see they have a Web version of AutoCAD. I assume there are a bunch of Autodesk employees on Hackernews who can correct me, and I know there's probably a boat load of issue for a huge legacy project like that. But how long until AutoCAD web is just AutoCAD? Or some competitor a'la Figma is in the web?

QuickBooks Desktop only exists in an Enterprise edition anymore (which is expensive), if you want to run still-supported versions of it. Intuit is pushing everyone hard to QuickBooks Online.

Moving to cloud, or very rare for the general public to be aware of them.

All of which are very easily replaceable. That list is laughable for an example of lock in.

I used to run AutoCAD on a 80286 with a maths co-pro with 1 MB RAM. It has changed somewhat since!

Who gives a shit about QB? - you could just run it in a VM and it probably runs under Wine. You can also just switch accounting vendor - there are quite a few. Double book keeping is a good 600 years old and can be considered pretty open source these days.

You may even do some real good to your business (if you think you need QB) by going old school and really getting to grips with the numbers. Buy three huge ledgers and label them: "Sales" "Purchase" and "Nominal" or "General". Also grab an exercise book to act as a cash book and a couple of notebooks to document the system. Now, you will need to do docs too so you will need a drawing board to design your forms ...

Now CAD is not the most common business software in use by anyone which is probably why you went for AutoCAD (which you have heard of), rather than, say, Solidworks or Catia. Autodesk is a vendor and not a stuff.

This is the way. Don't forget to include vectorized logos of your employers and use pdfsizeopt for the sub 100 KB flex.

It's incredible to see people still confidently say this, to be so sure about something that would take only like a minute of research to find out they are completely wrong.

No, you are the one perpetrating old crap from 15 years ago.

Most games that come out today, in 2025, are playable on day 1. I'm not just talking about games that are less graphically demanding (eg. Silksong), but games like Silent Hill f. It just works out of the box.

You clearly haven't been paying attention or are being disingenuous. Most games released now just work on Linux thanks to Proton. There's a reason the Steam Deck is blowing away any other PC gaming handhelds.

My home PC runs OpenSuse Tumbleweed. A couple of days ago I bought Doom: The Dark Ages on Steam and guess what? It runs perfectly.

So yeah, even the most recent, graphically-intense AAA games run on Linux thanks to Proton.

Except for games with anti cheats, can you quote from your head three games the last 10-15 years that aren’t running perfectly on Linux ?

Because from my ~1 500 titles steam library, I can think of one game that I had issues with. And even this particular game (which is Tomb Raider 2013, btw) worked perfectly fine after a little hack. And ironically the "hack" was checking a checkbox in Steam to force using the Windows version of the game instead of the official Linux port.

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The average grandparent isn't installing an OS, they're using whatever comes on the device. If you had Ubuntu pre-installed and automatically updating, there isn't going to be that much of a difference for how many less-tech-savy people use the computer.

Microsoft has a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows", but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.

If someone who uses their computer to browse the web and check the email picked up a laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu, they'd likely be perfectly fine with it.

I don’t know…for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable.

The people who will have the hardest time switching to Linux are those who need proprietary software products that are unavailable for Linux and whose needs are not met by open-source alternatives. Microsoft Office is still the standard for office software, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is still the standard for many creatives.

If LibreOffice ever reached 100% compatibility and feature parity with Microsoft Office, and if the Adobe Creative Cloud ever got ported to Linux, then this could spell trouble for Windows.

Have you tried it? I see where you're coming from but don't think it would work out that 'no grandma can use it'

My plan for years has been to install Linux Mint + Cinnamon for my grandma when she next needs a new laptop... but she still hasn't needed one :(. And she's slowly getting too old for any new computer

Every Windows upgrade was a big change again. The UI would change each time, Windows Live Mail got discontinued, Office got ribbons, etc. Why reinvent the wheel each time? I've replaced:

- Windows Live Mail with Thunderbird, that has been stable.

- Microsoft Office with Libreoffice, that has been stable.

- The next item on the list was going to be Windows itself, since Cinnamon hasn't significantly changed since I started using Linux over ten years ago. It still has a start menu, system tray, window list at the bottom (without the windows collapsing and hiding!), everything made for usability and working as you expect.

The only exception is (grand)parents that need custom software. E.g. my mom has custom software (from Hema I think? Or Bruna maybe?) for editing photo albums to then send it to a print shop and get a real photo album. That will be web based nowadays I imagine. I should ask her but that could still be a barrier to switching

Edit: Similar issue on Android btw. There isn't one function that my (grand)parents use, that Android 16 has that Android 4 did not. The only thing that keeps changing under them is UI. Sure, developer APIs got nicer, support for dual-frequency GNSS is there, screens got taller... none of that needed to touch the UI. Sadly Google does a phenomenal job of obsoleting old OS versions quickly so you need to keep buying new. EU law for longer device support doesn't even help because you still need to upgrade that OS and can't simply use an LTS with security updates

I'll have you know my grandma was using Linux just fine... was certainly a lot easier than windows changing random UI elements every time.

Hey, but Linux is just ideal for grandma! Its only competitor is Chrome OS. Well, and iPad OS for obvious reasons.

Battlefield's anti-cheat isn't supported in Proton/Wine, so you're stuck with Windows there.

Dualboot, I suppose

bazzite.gg

sure and premium games that cost $90 don’t have any micro transactions in them.

Unfortunately, many MBAs will see it as leaving money on the table.

So yes, the product might cost some money, but that doesn’t mean it’s meeting financial targets, since they grow year on year.. but PCs as a market are not growing at the same rate.

So basically a year's worth of "advertising" money?

I recommend Linux native and a MS Windows VM using livbirt/virt-manager unless you have need for GPU acceleration in your workflow.

This way you can slowly migrate your software to the Linux side and maybe eventually forget to turn on your VM for months.

The only mid level hurdle you'll encounter is no Microsoft store. It was only an issue for me when gaming, but steam was fully supported. Same for Win 11 LTSC.

Yes, LTSC is literally missing parts that are standard on a Windows install - it's an operating system designed for ATMs and kiosks that run exactly one tested application, it is not a general-purpose operating system.

If you happen to not need those pieces, and you don't care about running super out-of-date software? Sure it might work. But it's not a Good Idea in general.

Yes, limitations are that some services do not come preinstalled by default.

Some like the Microsoft Store can be installed afterwards.

Some like Windows Mixed Reality cannot be installed afterwards.

So check carefully what you actually need and decide based on that.

Wsl2 features like nested virtualization only work in the win11 version. The ltsc releases seem like the only viable option at this point.

Steam works, and so do very competitive games with picky anti-cheats!

You download directly from microsoft, here is a useful guide: https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

It is purchasable only if you have access to business sales for Microsoft. You need to buy at least 5 normal licenses before being offered the LTSC upgrade option. It is quite pricey.

Unless it has changed recently you need to have a minimum qty. license purchase. Any good reseller will sell you the one license of LTSC and pad the rest of the order with the cheapest qualifying license in the catalog. (In the past it was DVD playback licenses at a couple of bucks apiece, for example.) I was able to get licensing for my father's sole proprietorship DBA from a big name reseller w/o furnishing any kind of business-related docs and paying with his personal credit card. (In his case it was Windows Server and CALs, but the premise is the same for LTSC.) You'll probably have to talk to a sales gerbil but it's imminently feasible.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-...

There is no comparison. Linux suffers from "not my department" syndrome. If some component in the stack borks the install you are in hell trying to fix it and risk breaking something else.

Windows for all its faults still has some semblance of the majority of the OS being developed under one roof so things actually work together.

I understand the desire to get out from under the MS umbrella, as there are definitely legitimate gripes. But I also see the irony that if you have the technical ability to install a Linux distro, you definitely have the technical ability to use an autounattend XML.

Presumably the business/enterprise editions still do?

Because it seems that microsoft could not shitify windows experience anymore.

I like windows, Its a great system specially for being productive, but the godamn start menu using react and edge and the online requirements are a pain in the ass.

Sometimes it just hangs while you click the windows key. All I want is to open notepad++...

> 2. Force release of source code if not providing LTS. You don't want to support it fine. But don't block people from what they bought.

Tangentially there is a movement happening in this regard for video games for studios to provide EOL options instead of bricking the game you bought. For software I haven't seen an example of local installations that get bricked after remote services go offline. Maybe for example if Jetbrains closed shop tomorrow and basically said to all users, your license wont be validated, too bad.

> I don’t know if it’s ever going to change either because of it being a chicken or egg scenario

We don't even need native games. Proton, when it works, is amazing. Win32 is effectively now the stable ABI that Linux always needed but never had.

The real problem is kernel level anti-cheat, which will never happen on Linux, but more importantly, gamers should be pushing back against it even on Windows. It's invasive. The latest of which you can't even enable virtualization support in Windows if you want the anti-cheat to run, which also means you lose virtualization based security, no WSL, etc. It's completely obnoxious and I hope Microsoft cracks down on it, because if they do then more games will run on Proton.

If anything, gaming is the pillar that is furthest ahead, thanks to SteamOS and Proton and everything else surrounding it.

The main issue is that a lot of people I know need things like Photoshop or propriety CAD apps or video editing software where the alternatives are simply not acceptable - sure I can mention some OSS alternatives but it's not really my field; this is their job and they can't really take the velocity hit, or waste time finding out mid-project that it can't do what they need it to do.

Depends a lot on what kinds of games you play, I think—I built a PC in 2020 and originally set it up to dual boot Linux and Windows, but over time I used the Windows partition less and less and wound up deleting it last year.

I realized recently that at some point I stopped even checking ProtonDB before buying games on Steam, I guess because its been so long since I've run into one that didn't work. I play a pretty wide variety of games, but not so much the type of competitive multiplayer FPS that seems to have the worst Linux compatibility due to anti-cheat.

The biggest problem is probably work-related apps not working. Adobe products, MS Office, and certain niches like the music industry just aren't supported on Linux.

Many ultra-popular games don't work due to anticheat, but some do. Dota 2, Counter-strike, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch 2, among others work perfectly fine. We've also reached a point where virtually every offline game will work too.

My biggest hope is Valve can pivot Steam OS into a general free OS that devs/publishers can and will want to target if it starts getting traction.

I'm more curious about what their thoughts are. They have to know what the community thinks about these moves. What do they intend to accomplish? I'd like to hear the roadmap from the lion's mouth, so to speak, if they have some kind of justification that would make sense to the skeptical observer.

Their bank accounts are probably happy though..

Are you using FDE? Check your caching settings.

Honestly KDE probably gets close enough to windows. I have only used it on top of arch, which was a decision knowing that I'll be messing about more with the system, but if you installed KDE over something like Debian, it may be very close to the Windows experience. It certainly feels like Windows 10, and KDE's settings page has most of the important configuration in it.

I've read comments like yours in the past few days about Fedora. It seems strange to me that Fedora defaults to a lousy desktop when everyone says there are better available. I can't think of any other software that has the same philosophy "We know we ship something terrible but all you have to do is install this other thing to fix it."

I have, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Macos looks sleek and professional, always has.

> if you want to allow offline login, you need to keep the hash/token to the Microsoft Account locally,

I'm not following. I thought the whole issue is that users _do not_ want to use microsoft account locally and that microsoft fights that.

Or you know, just use a local account for logging into your local machines which are physically present in your home. No need to require an active Internet connection, no danger of your online account being unavailable and thus preventing access to your own computer.

Latency. It's everywhere. Open file Explorer and it lags. Change the volume and the slider lags with the example sound and just a general sluggishness compared to Windows 10.

Also updates have broken my printer 3 times (that I can remember). At least once my network connection failed due to updates.

With the resources they have, it's unforgivable.

Regular people don’t even know to be annoyed/angered by the login stuff. This is nerd maxxxxxing.

I like Linux too. But also I can read the room.

If it were only about money, Linux would’ve taken over 20 years ago.

Yeah this is how I did it the last time I setup a Windows machine, I set it up with my Microsoft account initially, created a new local account which was admin, logged in as that and then deleted the Microsoft account.

I'm glad I barely have to touch Windows anymore, it really has gone to shit

Both possible and trivially easy. Just don’t sign into an Apple account.

> Last time I saw stats Linux desktop marketshare, somebody said it was up to 6%. That's astonishing.

I wouldn't get too excited about that. That might just be because people are moving off of desktops entirely and now only own mobile devices, a market where Linux may as well not exist (excluding Android). The number goes up, because at large, the portion of people who run Linux desktops are less likely to pivot to using only a mobile phone as they tend to be hobbyists/enthusiasts.

I'm guessing that's 6% increase in users not 6% market share

Just contacting Apple support could maybe solve this.

It is impossible to configure recent ipads in any other way. There are no established 3rd party OSes that you can install, even with great effort. IOS does not respect user freedom. As an example, see the restrictions on running code that Apple didn't approve of (directly, or, in the EU, indirectly).

I (quite honestly, not being snarky) think the whole reason for that was the EC were trying to target Apple (and some other US tech companies) while pretending to not specifically target them, and in this case wanted Apple to do certain specific actions but couldn't be that prescriptive for the aforementioned reasons, so Apple was able to take advantage of that wiggle-room to take a different tack.

If they'd just been upfront that they were directly targeting a few US companies and prescribed exactly what to do, then the DMA wouldn't be a mess that made some things worse, and they could have made Apple to do what they wanted.

Probably not 2026, but sure, by 2030. A fair chunk of the younger generation do give a shit about privacy (see also: torrenting on the rise again), Linux is mostly unattended with respect to configuring things these days, and things like "sound" and "games" are for the most part a thing of the past outside of 4 or 5 specific games that require kernel-level anticheat.

The year of the Linux Desktop was like 3 years ago with Proton becoming good and the kernel getting a ton of improvements.

2025 is surly the year of Linux desktop this time!

The problem is the protection against malware is rolled in with protection against the end user. This leads down a dark path and it seems we collectively have decided end users are less important than the corporate profits and protection against malware.

>Devils advocate. Everyone really should be on Secure Boot / Bitlocker / TPM2.0 in the Windows space.

nope. only useful for corporate setting. We should be able to run anything we want, however we want, without any arbitrary requirements by MS. Especially if it was proven already that it isn't a hard requirement to run the OS - just an arbitrary setting.

It just paves road for more invasive DRM and even more locked down systems.

If they have issue with crashes, and taking blame for corporate AV failures - don't give out kernel level access to them.

>Recovery is expendable in Apple town. Recovery of iCloud accounts enabled identity theft and personal photos of celebs to be released. Recovery of hardware enables theft. Its a losing proposition.

I don't care as a customer. I want my data, I don't care about corporate profit margins - and I shouldn't need to. Data theft is pure service issue of them not vetting recovery enough - due to cutting costs on it.

> If you dont care about security

Microsoft's idea of Security is security from me, not security for me. They use this overloaded language because it's so hard to argue against. It's a thought-terminating cliché. Oh you must not care about being secure huh???

I recently bought a Samsung television, which came with a bunch of the smart nonsense. During the whole setup process I was thinking "I have made a mistake, I need to return this ASAP" but forced myself to continue clicking "no" through the setup screens.

After about 5 minutes of setting up (never once connected to Internet), it's pretty much exactly what I wanted: a display for broadcast TV and for HDMI inputs. A pretty good one, too. The only "tricky" part was getting it to remember the last channel/input at power-on instead of going to it's "home" screen, but that was just a setting in a menu somewhere, not particularly hard to find (though I'm the kind of person that does a depth-first-search through the entire menu tree just to see what all is there).

I think the key is never letting it get a taste of internet. No internet, no ads :) The internet-related things I do want to watch (like youtube, etc) are easily accomplished through the Linux PC I have connected.

> What are you gonna do, buy a non-"smart" TV? :)

These exist and are called "digital signage" - usually these things got far brighter and more durable panels, downside is they usually hover around 2x the price of an ad delivery device.

Plug in your old Chromecast 4k or Apple TV, that's it.

I had a false start getting my mom to switch from OSX to Linux. She is tech savvy, and because of that she was doing more advanced things like mail merges for nonprofits, developing websites, etc. That was in the 2000s. I expect moving from Windows to Linux is much easier than moving from the Apple ecosystem. I still provide tech support to both parents, but since tailscale and quickassist it hasn't been too bad.

> But the IT people balk: how will windows defender work in Linux?

They don't think that at all. They probably know more about Linux than you do because I guarantee half the systems they manage are already running it.

What they think about are the applications that the people who actually make the decisions at your companies refuse to migrate away from. They know the cost of hiring Linux sysadmins vs Windows sysadmins. They think about everyone in every other company and how much harder they are to hire when suddenly none of them know how to use their office computer when they're hired. They think about the half dozen or so business critical applications which genuinely don't have Linux equivalents. None of the executives, nobody in HR, nobody in accounting or business. Nobody in sales. Let alone... nobody in the actual non-tech industry that most businesses operate in.

And it's not the college graduates they're worried about. It's the people with 5, 10, or 15 years experience who will just not want to work at a company where they have to compromise and use non-standard software.

It's still not economically viable for any corporation outside of exactly a small tech industry start-up to switch away from Microsoft, and it has nothing to do with the cost of operating system licenses or support.

You don't have any objection to the idea of being forced to use an online account? What if you lose access to your online account?

What are you comparing it to or what do you feel is missing? Remote desktop has gotten way better on Linux since the days of only X-Forwarding or VNC, at least from a performance perspective.

why not just use sunshine/moonlight? RDP (and the other junk like X11 forwarding/VNC) has always been too slow for my use-cases. Movies or gaming would bring it to a halt. Meanwhile Moonlight gives me a clean 4k60fps with only ~25ms latency across the country.

> Linux gaming isn't quite there yet too.

The game industry uses the same argument that other industries use as well; tiny user base and the distribution is a mess.

I understand those arguments; they are valid, to a point... but if Autodesk uses mostly NodeJS and Python and OpenGL for Fusion360, why can't they ship a linux version, too?!?

The biggest category of games that don't work on Linux are those that demand a root kit (where they attempt to justify it as anti-cheat), and not letting a root kit on one's computer is desirable for many reasons.

At this point, there are very few games where I've personally had to switch back to windows. I don't play online though so not impacted by Anti-cheat systems

Serious question: why not just use a stand-alone gaming system (e.g. PlayStation, xBox)?

Don't really game much, but I did buy a PS4 just for the therapy of offline GTA5 beatdowns.

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The only Microsoft in my house is a twenty year old Windows 7 Pro machine — it always just works.

Same. But at home, I have a desktop (Linux Mint), a NUC server (Proxmox w various VMs/containers) and a MacBook Air M2/iPad that wife/kids use. I am starting to see them use the Linux Mint desktop more and more (main web browsing, word processing, etc) since I dropped Windows about 4 years ago. I did maintain a separate Win10 install for games but SteamDeck (and Win10 becoming EOL) made that obsolete but I am starting to get my feet wet in Linux gaming with my nvidia GPU but haven't really tried all the distros to pick one yet.

Is this the year of the Linux desktop? Unlikely, but I've started to donate more regularly to the Linux Mint team and same with any OSS that helps me maintain our privacy which I suspect is driving more and more to look into options instead of accepting the status quo.

Well at least you should then have that on a dedicated gaming machine - treat it like a console. Not the same box you do your surfing, socials, banking and coding etc on. I think the intersection of people who can afford a rig for competitive online gaming but can't afford to keep it separate should be very small. Or at least put the gaming in an isolated Windows VM with GPU passthrough (fun times with anticheat). Git gud.

I have a whole Windows VM on my Mac for running Altium - would be amazing if they released a Mac and Linux version

Web-based isn't airgapped? Working in tech, I know what absolute slimeballs pretty much any tech company is about privacy and user data today.

> flashing the GPU's bios is apparently the only solution

Wouldn't disconnecting the fan and plugging it into the motherboard instead also work?

I mentioned feature upgrades specifically. Why is it so imperative to apply them immediately, especially since the older major releases receive updates for quite a while after it stops being the most recent version? I'm talking about updates like 25H2, 24H2 etc that supply new features, not the "cumulative" stability/security updates that broadly don't change anything in terms of UX. I don't remember these major releases ever fixing any problems I had, besides adding something I wanted to have that wasn't in an older release.