When Nadella took over from Ballmer, he steered Microsoft in a better direction for a while. But by now he's become a lot worse. The biggest software company can no longer produce good software and its products are actively hostile to users. Nadella cares only about one thing, which is shoving AI everywhere and to everyone, at any cost. The irony is that he knows nothing about AI, how to build capable models or how to build useful AI products, nor does he have people who do. AI is his Metaverse: something he's singularity focused on, to the point of neglecting everything else, without any idea what to actually do with it.
This one youtuber, I forget his name, was fired as part of that layoff. He had a son with severe Autism and Microsoft's health benefits were very important to him.
> He had a son with severe Autism and Microsoft's health benefits were very important to him.
This really sucks for him. Through should Microsoft _not_ layoff specific people due to health conditions? Is that something we require from companies?
Jerry Berg is the person you're probably thinking of. His YouTube channel is
Barnacules Nerdgasm.
He's a super smart programmer, but seems to be suffering from depression since Microsoft laid him off. He often talks about his issues when he livestreams Tech Talk on Saturdays.
Was he the reason shift-left hit mainstream? Recently, smaller non-faang companies followed suit and fired all the qa people. DevOps/SRE people are likely next.
People have forgotten this, but he did the same with Windows Phone for a while at the very start of his time as CEO. His motto was "cloud first, mobile first" where cloud meant Azure and mobile meant Windows Phone. After some time he gave up and they pivoted into the direction he is now well known for, which was to focus on good developer tooling regardless of OS.
GitHub and VSCode were smart ways to quickly recapture developer mindshare. They felt distinctly un-Microsoft with how open and multiplatform they were.
The Azure Linux friendliness play was essential and smart. Again, Microsoft felt like they were opening up to the world.
But they've backslidden. They've ceded Windows and gaming to their cloud and AI infra ambitions. They're not being friendly anymore.
Microsoft spent a lot of energy making Windows more consumer friendly, only to piss it away with Windows 11.
One evil thing they were doing that they've suddenly given up on: they spent a ton of money buying up gaming studios (highly anti-competitively) to win on the console front and to stymie Steam's ability to move off Windows. They wanted to make Windows/Xbox gaming the place everyone would be. They threw all of that away because AI became a bigger target.
They'll continue to win in enterprise, but they're losing consumer, gamer, and developer/IC support and mindshare. I've never seen so many people bitch about GitHub as in the last year. You'd swear it had became worse than Windows 7 at this point.
People don't understand that this is MS culture. It doesn't mater the CEO. They'll always move to lock customers into the useless products they create.
I actually just had to independently tag him on LinkedIn after my son had an issue with his Minecraft account. Their account recovery flow directs you to call on the phone and then when you call on the phone, it directs you to use the account recovery flow. When we went to their Support page we received a stack trace from asp.net. After wasting several hours, we screenshot of the error and tagged him on LinkedIn and filed a credit card dispute.
In my LinkedIn post I questioned if they can’t be trusted with a $30 game license how can we trust them with a multi million dollar copilot rollout? I pointed out that it seems like this is more than just a lack of human support. It is a company that: does not care about their own brand, the up-time of their own systems, their own employees, or their customers.
I question if their goal is to simply extract money under unethical conditions. I question whether they expect the customer to just repeatedly purchased the game every time the company fails to deliver it. I also questioned to him why he has hiring managers bragging on LinkedIn that they expect people to output 1 million lines of code per month, so they can rewrite the operating system in rust, while their systems are off-line.
I noticed an immediate dip in quality of the products when Nadella came into power. Even Windows 8, for all the faults of the Metro UX, felt like a complete product.
I feel the same, but in hindsight it makes a ton of sense once you consider that Microsoft customers have not, and for a very long time, been its end users. Instead, it's been those (mostly technically incompetent) FortuneXXX middle/top-managers and IT support department managers that they hooked on to Azure & al. via obscene service agreements (for no better cause than "everyone else is doing it anyway" and "nobody ever gets fired for placating MS stuff everywhere").
Microsoft is just profiteering off of their defacto monopoly, selling more is their only metric, the "what" is secondary.
True, its insane how bad MS teams performs and is built and this is coming from a company that have written their own OS, Programming languages, frameworks etc.
Today Microsoft didn’t write any OS and had only partial participation in programming language or framework. They open sourced .NET and in Windows 10 you can still see same behavior and internal as XP.
I wonder how many real top-tier engineers are there at Microsoft and how hard they have to work to prevent it from failing. It’s not uncommon in any bigger than probably 200 people company - the belief of having a lot of talents while having maybe 1% of the company capable of doing anything working.
Nadella had it easy when he took over. Stock soared before he did anything. The only improvements seemed to be made by others using the CEO change to try & push a few better agendas.
Acquired podcast had Ballmer on this past year. Gives interesting take of how he was never a true CEO, always had Gates still running things.
I imagine Microsoft probably has about 5-10 CEOs running it right now. Nadella is just the face. Amy, Brad & Kathleen for sure. Would not be surprised if Bill still has a lot of say. Guthrie probably doesn't have enough say.
As someone who lived through a small portion of the internal mess that was Vista, I DO NOT miss him at all. I worked there 6 months and his bizarre management directives were obvious. Behind every single developer push was a lock-in push, too. Every "open" product had to have some form of lock in or vendor-only advantage. None of it was driving customer success, it was all about enforcement and lock-in from top down.
He seemed to me like such a total d**k, sorry to say but the energy I got from him and the things he did (throwing chairs etc), brrr. Also his public shows were so hard and pushy. This is not ok even for a CEO. A toxic work environment is never acceptable.
If I had worked for MS I would have hated him and the company he forged. I don't like Nadella much (note, there's very few 'leaders' I like) but at least he seems to be a nice person.
Not aiming at you specifically, but I am tired of seeing shitty behaviour that is dismissed as best as incompetence. I do not want to believe someone becomes the CEO of one of the strongest organization on earth without a strategy sixth sense. So, why would he be shoving AI everywhere ? What does he know that we don't about it ? Is it just plan surveillance ?
I switched my parents onto Linux a couple months ago, after my mom kept getting confused between edge and chrome - not being to uninstall edge was the last straw, but the massive amount of adware slowing down her capable-but-old laptop was a close second.
So far so good! Some smaller hiccups, like chrome won’t use dolphin, but I installed rustdesk so I can help them through whatever.
Over Christmas the in-laws were asking about Linux because of windows issues, which was surprising since they’re technologically literate but in a layman sense. I didn’t try to switch them over since the parent experiment is still ongoing but a couple more months of seamless use and I’ll consider it a success.
All this to say I’m very glad for Microsoft leadership!
My non-technical friend installed linux on her 10yo old laptop by herself after a windows update slowed down her device and rendered it unusable. She said she said she read about it somewhere and that the Ubuntu installation was pretty intuitive.
I was both amazed and proud. She's daily driving Linux now
(to be fair, it's just tv shows and web apps like chatgpt or docs, but still, Linux is now a good-enough alternative, at least anegdotally)
Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away, and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)
If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.
A family friend recently called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her (I work in e-waste recycling), partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux. Lets see how that works out.
My elderly parents asked me to install Linux on their laptops this Christmas after finally getting sick of the adware on Windows. If Microsoft can make them switch, anyone can.
Cool. I used to install it on all my family and friends computer when I was a teenager but as I grew older and had less and less time, being the constant tech support guy for everyone I introduced to Linux got very hard so I stopped recommended/installing it. Which distro did you choose for your parents?
After my mom's Chromebook died I switched her to Ubuntu + Firefox on a Thinkpad x201 and it's been her daily driver for years. I keep asking to buy her a newer laptop with a bigger screen (800p is pretty painful these days) but she won't let me.
Her router is running Linux. I can tell because of the speed of the WLAN alone.
Her STB runs Linux, specifically Android TV (Nvidia Shield TV). Thanks for adding the fantastic ads in the newest Android TV, Google! /s
Her vacuum cleaner runs Linux, I know because I slapped Valetudo on it.
Her NAS runs Linux (DSM), Synology.
Her printer runs Linux (Brother).
Her Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant runs Linux (DietPi).
Her tablet runs macOS variant, iPadOS.
Her smartphone runs macOS variant, iOS.
Her smartwatch will run macOS variant, watchOS.
OK, fair enough. Her laptop! Her laptop still runs Win... wait a sec, she hasn't had a laptop for more than a decade. She's been using that super expensive hardware keyboard for iPad. My mum never even used Windows 10 or 11. Her laptop came with Windows Vista back in the days, it was terribly sluggish.
I don't know which year it is, but it isn't the year of the Windows OS.
And yes, I am super happy with Microsoft using thumb screws like these. Squeeze them tight. The more computers will slip through your fingers, grand moff Nadella.
They're pulling out all the stops. If you told me that whoever was in charge of the consumer versions of Windows was trying to drive it into the ground, I'd believe you.
I've been using Linux since the 90s, however I was never super awesome with it. I can do the basic stuff, and with a bit of documentation/guidance, a bit more. I was able to install Arch Linux at least 3X, for example. I also managed to build a kernel like twice...although I didn't do a great job of configuration.
I think my crowning achievement came early on when I managed to follow Linux From Scratch all the way through.
I say all of this to say that I am finally off Windows for good. It has become my daily driver. I've no obstacles. Not in gaming, software dev, personal work, media consumption (beyond streaming services degrading streams for a non-supported OS), or anything else. I've found open source apps to be quite a bit better than their closed source equivalents.
Things have really shifted in the past 5-10 years, and I dig it. KDE + CachyOS is great! Although I hear Bazzite is better for new users (I have some decent experience using Arch so I prefer Cachy)
I don't foresee ever moving back to Windows. The AI and constant push to Microsoft Edge, Second OOB experience, and other nonsense (including Diablo 2: resurrected, a [now] Microsoft owned product that still gets a few updates, hard locking my system), I decided to take my ball and go home...to Linux. A few people I know who aren't even remotely computer literate at all have done the same, and they've been surprised at how much better everything is, particularly on somewhat older hardware.
every discussion like this has at least one of these comments. The year of the Linux Desktop must be nearly here. They've been predicting it for years already!
As the old saying goes, it happens slowly and then all at once. The things tethering people to Windows have largely disappeared for many/most people.
One of my sons has a desktop that is quite powerful and overwhelmingly adequate for what he does. As Windows 10 hit the end of support we were considering how to move forward as Windows 11 refuses to work on his device. We realized there is absolutely nothing keeping him on Windows, and perhaps we just replace his PC with a Mac Mini. But in the meantime he's rolling with Ubuntu and has lost absolutely nothing and gained plenty.
Yeah, except there has been a steady increase in Linux (~5% "confirmed") and a steady decline of Windows. I bet a large percentage of those "unknown" are also linux machines.
For me, after 35 years of Windows, 2025 was the year of the Linux desktop. Finally. Linux has become a lot better, and my skills with Linux have too. And Microsoft screwed me over a few times too many. I had bought a "lifetime license" for Outlook, which cost me over $100 a couple of years ago. So then I wanted to upgrade the CPU on the machine running the VM where I had Outlook running, and suddenly that "lifetime license" ended due to the CPU being different. That was really the last straw for me. I moved to Linux Mint and Firebird for email, and it's been great. Now all of my VMs are running Linux, all the locally hosted services I had running have Linux binaries. The switch was a lot easier than I anticipated.
If Microsoft is alienating people like me, using Windows for 35 years, they can alienate anyone.
The forced buying of new hardware just to run Windows 11 is going to be the last straw for a lot of people. And Apple is really no better, their existing x86 machines have the same problem. We could no longer update a MBP, and other software stopped working due to the inability to update (and sorry, no we're not going to use hacky solutions to force it to update).
I have a little AMD AliExpress PC where the Windows installer recognizes neither the wifi card nor the Ethernet port. I guess there's a way to download the drivers on another computer and load them during installation, but instead of figuring out how to do that or what the latest option for circumventing the online requirement is, it now runs Pop OS.
The trouble is you need network access to end up at the desktop to install the network drivers in the expected manner. Both of the ways I am aware of resolving the issue involve dropping to a command prompt. One method is to run the device driver installer from the command prompt. The other method is to run the bypassnro script from the OOBE directory, to get to the desktop to install the driver. There are probably other ways, but given that most search results talk about non-official ways (which I place less faith in, frequently don't work, and are more complex anyhow) I don't see how most people would get around the problem.
In contrast, most desktop oriented Linux distributions have a simpler installer and provide at least enough hardware support to leave you at a functional desktop. (There may be issues with more esoteric hardware, but chances are that hardware wouldn't work under Windows until vendor supplied drivers are installed anyhow.)
That won't work. Windows won't let you finish the installation process unless you connect to the internet so you can't get the PC to a point where you could install the drivers.
Without unofficial bypasses of MS online account requirements you would not come to a point where activation is a concern. No internet access is not enough of a reason for MS let you use your device.
Just go find the PCI IDs (lspci) and download the appropriate cabs from the Software Update Catalog. Extract them and throw them on a USB stick. Really effing simple.
With both Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe now being non-starters for many, it's clear that we're going to continue to see impressive growth in the Linux desktop in 2026. Last year I migrated my Windows gaming machine to Ubuntu, and it's been a great success. I don't play games that require kernel level anti-cheats, so for me, Proton has worked great. I'm playing new games like Anno 117 on my 2019 vintage RX 5700xt and am having a blast. I'm about to wipe my Windows 10 partition and not look back.
I still have an M1 laptop with a broken screen that is going strong in clam shell mode, but once it dies or I can no longer run Sequoia for whatever reason, I'll be tempted to abandon macOS if Apple can't move beyond the mess they've made with Tahoe.
I’m still on Sequoia; I have high hopes that Tahoe is an aberration that will be fixed with the departure of Alan Dye. But let’s keep things into perspective here. The subtle enshitifications of macOS are mild compared to the train wreck of Windows 8 onwards. I daily drove Windows 7 until 2015; IMHO it’s the greatest version of Windows ever.
My wife works for a large corporation that is 100% Windows. I first used Windows 11 a few weeks ago when I was troubleshooting a connectivity problem on her laptop. To some extent my lack of experience with Windows 11 was a factor, but configuring network settings shouldn’t be so obtuse and fragmented. It didn’t feel serious. It felt like a parody of an operating system.
I agree that Tahoe is considerably less enshitified than Windows, but they are slowly turning the screws on us. With every release, it becomes harder and harder to run unsigned macOS binaries, and I can't shake the feeling that their ultimate goal is turn the Mac into more of a "trusted appliance" and less of a general-purpose computer.
Gatekeeper & notarization, System Integrity Protection, hardware level security enforcement, all of these shifts reek of security paternalism, platform convergence, and ultimately ... control. This frog is starting to feel the water boil, and to mix metaphors, can see the walls of the garden getting higher.
The new Liquid Glass UI has a lot of detractors, both on iOS and on macOS, but it seems like the clamor is even louder on macOS. Beyond the looks, it's created a lot of usability issues for folks. Buttons and controls can overlap awkwardly, navigation can be more difficult when it's hard to identify different UI elements on the screen, all the eye candy like transparency and rounded corners can create accessibility problems for folks less than perfect vision. It's a bit of a mess.
Microsoft is the US military's biggest supplier. There is definitely a solution for this. And that solution is probably not available to regular users.
There are several solutions, and while most are limited to volume licensing, which, depending on your definition, may exclude "regular users", at least one is not:
1. Supply the code given by the "slmgr /dti" command to Microsoft over the phone or online from a non-air gapped machine.
2. Apply the resulting activation code with the "slmgr /atp" command.
Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following: "Support for product activation has moved online. For the fastest and most convenient way to activate your product, please visit our online product activation portal at aka.ms/aoh"
It does require logging in (to the website) with a Microsoft account, but Microsoft claims:
By logging in with your account, it will not associate the account to the licenses.
From there, it's just a web version of phone activation (you enter your Installation ID and presumably they give you the Confirmation ID). No idea what happens when moving a licence between machines (with phone activation, the automated process would fail due to the existing activation and you'd be handed off to someone in a call center who would generate the Confirmation ID for you).
I don't think regular Windows 11 is that useful in those cases. You probably either want an intranet connected Windows client, that gets activated and updated via a local server. Probably also a LTSC release, that doesn't get feature updates all the time.
Or a Windows 11 IoT image, that only enables some specific features, and is stripped down for a specific purpose.
For individual use I guess the solution is to set it up once with internet connectivity and air gap afterwards.
>For individual use I guess the solution is to set it up once with internet connectivity and air gap afterwards.
That's simply not good enough for some purposes. Once a computer is connected to the internet, at all for any amount of time, the system could be considered to be less secure.
Internal key activation can be done through a KMS host , which can be activated by phone (or some other dedicated mean if you're big enough for MS to care)
Last time I tried to use it for an appliance, we weren't able to buy licenses. Microsoft gave us the contact to the only reseller in our country, and they couldn't find anyone in the company who knew how to sell Windows IoT licenses.
Edit: We only wanted to buy around 20 licenses, so their motivation was also not that big to figure it out.
If/when support for Linux gaming becomes widespread and easy to navigate with few configuration hurdles, Windows will die very quickly. As for MacOS, I genuinely can't wrap my head around why anyone who is technically competent would prefer that OS.
Fewer and fewer people own home computers anymore. I would not be surprised if ChromeOS laptops outpace home Windows install at some point.
The bastion of Windows installations will still be the corporate market. Outside of developer circles, Macs are only used by executives - the drones still get underspecced Windows laptops.
not only corporate but also many small shops still running some dedicated software for PoS. Maybe wine will work but it's a lot of hassle still and too risky for trying something that critical to work for such PoS scenarios. Also not sure if situation changed but at least 5 years ago most ATMs in asia were running windows based on talk with my friend working in this field.
MacOS is like the best of both worlds between Linux and Windows. It's commercial software, and a major platform target for devs, and can do all the unix-y things too.
Doubtful this will ever happen for the most lucrative part of desk/lap-top gaming: multiplayer and micro transaction games. They require anti-cheat to keep the money flowing. And IIUC, Linux fundamentally grants too much user control for effective anti-cheat.
I have not used windows in a while but thinking of building a PC. Is there a way to install way older version of windows 10 without Microsoft's AI nonsense and the online account requirement?
I just did it today with the current ISO you can download from Microsoft themselves. Then installed all the Windows updates, graphics drivers and even enrolled in the free extended security support. Then I just uninstalled Cortana and Copilot manually. Ezpz
Be warned that they employ extreme amounts of dark patterns to try and trick you into converting the offline account into an online one.
Online activation of the Windows license is separate from an online user account.
Were you able to use the online activation system without a Microsoft account? I wasn't able to - though as you say, that account doesn't have to be tied to the license or an account on the machine being activated.
Were you able to enable extended security updates without logging in?
I've held out for literal years, but that was the thing that finally made me log into an online user account (and start figuring out how to finally cut the last bit of Windows out of my life)
If you're willing go through a little bit of trouble -- and it sounds like you are -- it's pretty easy to configure Windows 11 to look and act pretty much like Windows 7. You'd be hard pressed to tell what version of Windows I'm running if you gave it a cursory glance.
O2O Shutup ( https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 ) is also pretty useful for disabling anything you don't like all in one place -- it doesn't even install.
Windows 10 is outdated, not recommended at all. Just install Win11 Enterprise and get your favorite LLM to give you instructions to remove the stuff you don't want, after like 15 minutes it will be totally cleaned for perpetuity.
Not recommended by whom? Win10 still works perfectly fine, has less bloatware, will be supported for a while, and probably won't get updates that just add useless AI and advertisements.
If someone wants/needs Windows, I would absolutely recommend windows 10 right now, it's probably the best time for using that version.
Yes it just felt really really awkward and drawn out. I really hated it. I had some sequestered VMs at work which were not allowed internet access so I got this a lot. Was a security lab.
When I recently installed Windows 11 on my new rig, it didn't recognize the built-in motherboard wifi and I could only connect after installation of Windows + mobo drivers. How would that work now?
Just like you used to be able to provide storage drivers on a floppy disk, you can now provide NIC drivers on a USB stick. (IIRC, there's a button for it on the Microsoft account sign-in page of the OOBE.)
Though admittedly $1,176/16 cores is a bit steep for a desktop OS, and don't forget the CALs if you plan to use file sharing or Remote Desktop (or third party alternatives like Steam Remote Play).
I understand why this is bad, but I personally would sign up for a Microsoft account anyway. Mainly, I don't want all my stuff in "C:\Users\micha". Is there a way to set your username?
I read their handheld Xbox is a version of Windows with none of the bloat nor slop. I'm sure they'll never sell that as a version of Windows but I wonder if it's possible to make it into an installable by third parties like other custom ISOs that float around the internet.
The responses here baffle me. This IS GOOD NEWS. HN more than anyone should understand this. Every mistake Microsoft makes with Windows is a free win for Linux. We should celebrate this and encourage Nadella to make Windows as hostile as possible. Add that nasty recall ai spyware, put ads everywhere.
People here hating on Nadella and loving Ballmer are missing the point. This is not a partisan issue. Windows stopped being good a long time ago. Arguably XP was the last good version of Windows.
Windows becoming an OS mostly for corporate types is beneficial for the world. Let us celebrate!
A decent amount of people actually like Windows as graphical user interface, and some of the related tech. That's a loss that Linux can't replace in a comparable fashion. Unless https://loss32.org/ becomes a viable reality, that is.
The flaw in this logic is they are a monopoly. They continue to profit off of the bad user experience, that’s been their business model since day one, and they keep posting growth numbers. I hope they do die, but in the meantime the bad decisions still negatively impact users, and many of them didn’t have a choice.
The other flaw in your logic is assuming that markets are free. A free market is one that is both informed and consents. In this market, there is both misinformation and a lack of consent.
When Nadella took over from Ballmer, he steered Microsoft in a better direction for a while. But by now he's become a lot worse. The biggest software company can no longer produce good software and its products are actively hostile to users. Nadella cares only about one thing, which is shoving AI everywhere and to everyone, at any cost. The irony is that he knows nothing about AI, how to build capable models or how to build useful AI products, nor does he have people who do. AI is his Metaverse: something he's singularity focused on, to the point of neglecting everything else, without any idea what to actually do with it.
Nadella was the one who fired Microsoft's QA team for Windows. It took a while but those chickens finally came home to roost.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1626871/microsoft-to-b...
This one youtuber, I forget his name, was fired as part of that layoff. He had a son with severe Autism and Microsoft's health benefits were very important to him.
> He had a son with severe Autism and Microsoft's health benefits were very important to him.
This really sucks for him. Through should Microsoft _not_ layoff specific people due to health conditions? Is that something we require from companies?
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There's a long-circulating mind virus that makes executives believe top-tier engineers don't need their software tested.
Google's QA is pitiful too.
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Jerry Berg is the person you're probably thinking of. His YouTube channel is Barnacules Nerdgasm.
He's a super smart programmer, but seems to be suffering from depression since Microsoft laid him off. He often talks about his issues when he livestreams Tech Talk on Saturdays.
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Was he the reason shift-left hit mainstream? Recently, smaller non-faang companies followed suit and fired all the qa people. DevOps/SRE people are likely next.
COBRA enables one to continue with the employer's insurance for up to 18 months after a layoff.
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People have forgotten this, but he did the same with Windows Phone for a while at the very start of his time as CEO. His motto was "cloud first, mobile first" where cloud meant Azure and mobile meant Windows Phone. After some time he gave up and they pivoted into the direction he is now well known for, which was to focus on good developer tooling regardless of OS.
GitHub and VSCode were smart ways to quickly recapture developer mindshare. They felt distinctly un-Microsoft with how open and multiplatform they were.
The Azure Linux friendliness play was essential and smart. Again, Microsoft felt like they were opening up to the world.
But they've backslidden. They've ceded Windows and gaming to their cloud and AI infra ambitions. They're not being friendly anymore.
Microsoft spent a lot of energy making Windows more consumer friendly, only to piss it away with Windows 11.
One evil thing they were doing that they've suddenly given up on: they spent a ton of money buying up gaming studios (highly anti-competitively) to win on the console front and to stymie Steam's ability to move off Windows. They wanted to make Windows/Xbox gaming the place everyone would be. They threw all of that away because AI became a bigger target.
They'll continue to win in enterprise, but they're losing consumer, gamer, and developer/IC support and mindshare. I've never seen so many people bitch about GitHub as in the last year. You'd swear it had became worse than Windows 7 at this point.
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The ability to know that giving up might be the right path forwards, is very useful.
> "focus on good developer tooling"
So "developers, developers, developers"?
People don't understand that this is MS culture. It doesn't mater the CEO. They'll always move to lock customers into the useless products they create.
So the clunky user interface and experience and the jumbled and meaningless features locks you in somehow? Or what's the spiel here?
I actually just had to independently tag him on LinkedIn after my son had an issue with his Minecraft account. Their account recovery flow directs you to call on the phone and then when you call on the phone, it directs you to use the account recovery flow. When we went to their Support page we received a stack trace from asp.net. After wasting several hours, we screenshot of the error and tagged him on LinkedIn and filed a credit card dispute.
In my LinkedIn post I questioned if they can’t be trusted with a $30 game license how can we trust them with a multi million dollar copilot rollout? I pointed out that it seems like this is more than just a lack of human support. It is a company that: does not care about their own brand, the up-time of their own systems, their own employees, or their customers.
I question if their goal is to simply extract money under unethical conditions. I question whether they expect the customer to just repeatedly purchased the game every time the company fails to deliver it. I also questioned to him why he has hiring managers bragging on LinkedIn that they expect people to output 1 million lines of code per month, so they can rewrite the operating system in rust, while their systems are off-line.
I noticed an immediate dip in quality of the products when Nadella came into power. Even Windows 8, for all the faults of the Metro UX, felt like a complete product.
I feel the same, but in hindsight it makes a ton of sense once you consider that Microsoft customers have not, and for a very long time, been its end users. Instead, it's been those (mostly technically incompetent) FortuneXXX middle/top-managers and IT support department managers that they hooked on to Azure & al. via obscene service agreements (for no better cause than "everyone else is doing it anyway" and "nobody ever gets fired for placating MS stuff everywhere").
Microsoft is just profiteering off of their defacto monopoly, selling more is their only metric, the "what" is secondary.
True, its insane how bad MS teams performs and is built and this is coming from a company that have written their own OS, Programming languages, frameworks etc.
Today Microsoft didn’t write any OS and had only partial participation in programming language or framework. They open sourced .NET and in Windows 10 you can still see same behavior and internal as XP.
I wonder how many real top-tier engineers are there at Microsoft and how hard they have to work to prevent it from failing. It’s not uncommon in any bigger than probably 200 people company - the belief of having a lot of talents while having maybe 1% of the company capable of doing anything working.
Nadella had it easy when he took over. Stock soared before he did anything. The only improvements seemed to be made by others using the CEO change to try & push a few better agendas.
Acquired podcast had Ballmer on this past year. Gives interesting take of how he was never a true CEO, always had Gates still running things.
I imagine Microsoft probably has about 5-10 CEOs running it right now. Nadella is just the face. Amy, Brad & Kathleen for sure. Would not be surprised if Bill still has a lot of say. Guthrie probably doesn't have enough say.
I miss Balmer in what concerns Windows development culture.
As someone who lived through a small portion of the internal mess that was Vista, I DO NOT miss him at all. I worked there 6 months and his bizarre management directives were obvious. Behind every single developer push was a lock-in push, too. Every "open" product had to have some form of lock in or vendor-only advantage. None of it was driving customer success, it was all about enforcement and lock-in from top down.
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He seemed to me like such a total d**k, sorry to say but the energy I got from him and the things he did (throwing chairs etc), brrr. Also his public shows were so hard and pushy. This is not ok even for a CEO. A toxic work environment is never acceptable.
If I had worked for MS I would have hated him and the company he forged. I don't like Nadella much (note, there's very few 'leaders' I like) but at least he seems to be a nice person.
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Developers, developers, developers, developers[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fcSviC7cRM
Not aiming at you specifically, but I am tired of seeing shitty behaviour that is dismissed as best as incompetence. I do not want to believe someone becomes the CEO of one of the strongest organization on earth without a strategy sixth sense. So, why would he be shoving AI everywhere ? What does he know that we don't about it ? Is it just plan surveillance ?
I think Hanlon‘s razor becomes a lot weaker the more the offender has to gain from their action.
Nadella is doing his job of shareholder value maximization quite well.
Concerning AI he is also cluless about how to use it well - or at all - for their non-AI product portfolio.
It's definitely not ignorance of AI that is the problem. It's entirely enshittification and number goes up.
It's just exceedingly bizarre watching this AI stuff and not except that global capitalism is deranged dick measuring.
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Thank you, Microsoft, for accelerating the advent of The Year of The Linux Desktop
I switched my parents onto Linux a couple months ago, after my mom kept getting confused between edge and chrome - not being to uninstall edge was the last straw, but the massive amount of adware slowing down her capable-but-old laptop was a close second.
So far so good! Some smaller hiccups, like chrome won’t use dolphin, but I installed rustdesk so I can help them through whatever.
Over Christmas the in-laws were asking about Linux because of windows issues, which was surprising since they’re technologically literate but in a layman sense. I didn’t try to switch them over since the parent experiment is still ongoing but a couple more months of seamless use and I’ll consider it a success.
All this to say I’m very glad for Microsoft leadership!
My non-technical friend installed linux on her 10yo old laptop by herself after a windows update slowed down her device and rendered it unusable. She said she said she read about it somewhere and that the Ubuntu installation was pretty intuitive.
I was both amazed and proud. She's daily driving Linux now
(to be fair, it's just tv shows and web apps like chatgpt or docs, but still, Linux is now a good-enough alternative, at least anegdotally)
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Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away, and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)
If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.
A family friend recently called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her (I work in e-waste recycling), partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux. Lets see how that works out.
My elderly parents asked me to install Linux on their laptops this Christmas after finally getting sick of the adware on Windows. If Microsoft can make them switch, anyone can.
Cool. I used to install it on all my family and friends computer when I was a teenager but as I grew older and had less and less time, being the constant tech support guy for everyone I introduced to Linux got very hard so I stopped recommended/installing it. Which distro did you choose for your parents?
After my mom's Chromebook died I switched her to Ubuntu + Firefox on a Thinkpad x201 and it's been her daily driver for years. I keep asking to buy her a newer laptop with a bigger screen (800p is pretty painful these days) but she won't let me.
I switched my mum to Unix(-like).
Her router is running Linux. I can tell because of the speed of the WLAN alone.
Her STB runs Linux, specifically Android TV (Nvidia Shield TV). Thanks for adding the fantastic ads in the newest Android TV, Google! /s
Her vacuum cleaner runs Linux, I know because I slapped Valetudo on it.
Her NAS runs Linux (DSM), Synology.
Her printer runs Linux (Brother).
Her Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant runs Linux (DietPi).
Her tablet runs macOS variant, iPadOS.
Her smartphone runs macOS variant, iOS.
Her smartwatch will run macOS variant, watchOS.
OK, fair enough. Her laptop! Her laptop still runs Win... wait a sec, she hasn't had a laptop for more than a decade. She's been using that super expensive hardware keyboard for iPad. My mum never even used Windows 10 or 11. Her laptop came with Windows Vista back in the days, it was terribly sluggish.
I don't know which year it is, but it isn't the year of the Windows OS.
And yes, I am super happy with Microsoft using thumb screws like these. Squeeze them tight. The more computers will slip through your fingers, grand moff Nadella.
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They're pulling out all the stops. If you told me that whoever was in charge of the consumer versions of Windows was trying to drive it into the ground, I'd believe you.
They're working on Xbox too!
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To be fair, Microsoft did deliberately drive Nokia into the ground.
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I've been using Linux since the 90s, however I was never super awesome with it. I can do the basic stuff, and with a bit of documentation/guidance, a bit more. I was able to install Arch Linux at least 3X, for example. I also managed to build a kernel like twice...although I didn't do a great job of configuration.
I think my crowning achievement came early on when I managed to follow Linux From Scratch all the way through.
I say all of this to say that I am finally off Windows for good. It has become my daily driver. I've no obstacles. Not in gaming, software dev, personal work, media consumption (beyond streaming services degrading streams for a non-supported OS), or anything else. I've found open source apps to be quite a bit better than their closed source equivalents.
Things have really shifted in the past 5-10 years, and I dig it. KDE + CachyOS is great! Although I hear Bazzite is better for new users (I have some decent experience using Arch so I prefer Cachy)
I don't foresee ever moving back to Windows. The AI and constant push to Microsoft Edge, Second OOB experience, and other nonsense (including Diablo 2: resurrected, a [now] Microsoft owned product that still gets a few updates, hard locking my system), I decided to take my ball and go home...to Linux. A few people I know who aren't even remotely computer literate at all have done the same, and they've been surprised at how much better everything is, particularly on somewhat older hardware.
The only thing holding millions, possibly in the 100s, from switching to Desktop Linux from Windows is Apple's iPhone support.
As a Mac user I might be missing something obvious - why do they need iPhone support on their computer?
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Nadella is The Linux Hitman
Is it The Year of the Linux Desktop again?
Haha. Been seeing this comment for at least 20 years now. Some things never change...
every discussion like this has at least one of these comments. The year of the Linux Desktop must be nearly here. They've been predicting it for years already!
As the old saying goes, it happens slowly and then all at once. The things tethering people to Windows have largely disappeared for many/most people.
One of my sons has a desktop that is quite powerful and overwhelmingly adequate for what he does. As Windows 10 hit the end of support we were considering how to move forward as Windows 11 refuses to work on his device. We realized there is absolutely nothing keeping him on Windows, and perhaps we just replace his PC with a Mac Mini. But in the meantime he's rolling with Ubuntu and has lost absolutely nothing and gained plenty.
Yeah, except there has been a steady increase in Linux (~5% "confirmed") and a steady decline of Windows. I bet a large percentage of those "unknown" are also linux machines.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
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Linux on desktop = the fusion energy of computing.
For me, after 35 years of Windows, 2025 was the year of the Linux desktop. Finally. Linux has become a lot better, and my skills with Linux have too. And Microsoft screwed me over a few times too many. I had bought a "lifetime license" for Outlook, which cost me over $100 a couple of years ago. So then I wanted to upgrade the CPU on the machine running the VM where I had Outlook running, and suddenly that "lifetime license" ended due to the CPU being different. That was really the last straw for me. I moved to Linux Mint and Firebird for email, and it's been great. Now all of my VMs are running Linux, all the locally hosted services I had running have Linux binaries. The switch was a lot easier than I anticipated.
If Microsoft is alienating people like me, using Windows for 35 years, they can alienate anyone.
The forced buying of new hardware just to run Windows 11 is going to be the last straw for a lot of people. And Apple is really no better, their existing x86 machines have the same problem. We could no longer update a MBP, and other software stopped working due to the inability to update (and sorry, no we're not going to use hacky solutions to force it to update).
Being repeated since Windows XP days, and yet without Proton there is no Linux gaming.
There is a chicken/egg problem.
We should be happy it has a solution.
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So there is Linux gaming, you’re saying.
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Sure but not everyone is using desktop for gaming.
And yet, without the software for Linux gaming, there is no Linux gaming.
Very hard to falsify such a statement.
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I have a little AMD AliExpress PC where the Windows installer recognizes neither the wifi card nor the Ethernet port. I guess there's a way to download the drivers on another computer and load them during installation, but instead of figuring out how to do that or what the latest option for circumventing the online requirement is, it now runs Pop OS.
Nothing wrong with Pop OS, but I assume you could still install Windows without activating it, install the drivers, then activate online.
The trouble is you need network access to end up at the desktop to install the network drivers in the expected manner. Both of the ways I am aware of resolving the issue involve dropping to a command prompt. One method is to run the device driver installer from the command prompt. The other method is to run the bypassnro script from the OOBE directory, to get to the desktop to install the driver. There are probably other ways, but given that most search results talk about non-official ways (which I place less faith in, frequently don't work, and are more complex anyhow) I don't see how most people would get around the problem.
In contrast, most desktop oriented Linux distributions have a simpler installer and provide at least enough hardware support to leave you at a functional desktop. (There may be issues with more esoteric hardware, but chances are that hardware wouldn't work under Windows until vendor supplied drivers are installed anyhow.)
That won't work. Windows won't let you finish the installation process unless you connect to the internet so you can't get the PC to a point where you could install the drivers.
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Without unofficial bypasses of MS online account requirements you would not come to a point where activation is a concern. No internet access is not enough of a reason for MS let you use your device.
A few years back I bought win 11 pro retail on usb flash drive.
I just install and type in the key. no network.
I use it for VMs no network necessary.
Just go find the PCI IDs (lspci) and download the appropriate cabs from the Software Update Catalog. Extract them and throw them on a USB stick. Really effing simple.
With both Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe now being non-starters for many, it's clear that we're going to continue to see impressive growth in the Linux desktop in 2026. Last year I migrated my Windows gaming machine to Ubuntu, and it's been a great success. I don't play games that require kernel level anti-cheats, so for me, Proton has worked great. I'm playing new games like Anno 117 on my 2019 vintage RX 5700xt and am having a blast. I'm about to wipe my Windows 10 partition and not look back.
I still have an M1 laptop with a broken screen that is going strong in clam shell mode, but once it dies or I can no longer run Sequoia for whatever reason, I'll be tempted to abandon macOS if Apple can't move beyond the mess they've made with Tahoe.
I’m still on Sequoia; I have high hopes that Tahoe is an aberration that will be fixed with the departure of Alan Dye. But let’s keep things into perspective here. The subtle enshitifications of macOS are mild compared to the train wreck of Windows 8 onwards. I daily drove Windows 7 until 2015; IMHO it’s the greatest version of Windows ever.
My wife works for a large corporation that is 100% Windows. I first used Windows 11 a few weeks ago when I was troubleshooting a connectivity problem on her laptop. To some extent my lack of experience with Windows 11 was a factor, but configuring network settings shouldn’t be so obtuse and fragmented. It didn’t feel serious. It felt like a parody of an operating system.
I agree that Tahoe is considerably less enshitified than Windows, but they are slowly turning the screws on us. With every release, it becomes harder and harder to run unsigned macOS binaries, and I can't shake the feeling that their ultimate goal is turn the Mac into more of a "trusted appliance" and less of a general-purpose computer.
Gatekeeper & notarization, System Integrity Protection, hardware level security enforcement, all of these shifts reek of security paternalism, platform convergence, and ultimately ... control. This frog is starting to feel the water boil, and to mix metaphors, can see the walls of the garden getting higher.
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I'm a bit out of the loop, what are people's issues with Tahoe?
The new Liquid Glass UI has a lot of detractors, both on iOS and on macOS, but it seems like the clamor is even louder on macOS. Beyond the looks, it's created a lot of usability issues for folks. Buttons and controls can overlap awkwardly, navigation can be more difficult when it's hard to identify different UI elements on the screen, all the eye candy like transparency and rounded corners can create accessibility problems for folks less than perfect vision. It's a bit of a mess.
What does this mean for using Windows in air gapped environments? I would have assumed this was common enough to make Microsoft want to support it.
Is it possible to activate via a web browser on a separate computer, similar to the flow for phone activation?
Microsoft is the US military's biggest supplier. There is definitely a solution for this. And that solution is probably not available to regular users.
There are several solutions, and while most are limited to volume licensing, which, depending on your definition, may exclude "regular users", at least one is not:
1. Supply the code given by the "slmgr /dti" command to Microsoft over the phone or online from a non-air gapped machine.
2. Apply the resulting activation code with the "slmgr /atp" command.
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Yeah this. The common man rules don't apply there.
Even in Enterprise by the way. No way we pay the amounts listed on the MS website.
I would guess (no idea) that military computers log into the cloud, maybe it is a special (expensive) ms military cloud.
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You take it to Base Ops and they imaage it or they come to you and image it.
Regular users buy a PC with Windows pre-activated.
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As per the article:
It does require logging in (to the website) with a Microsoft account, but Microsoft claims:
From there, it's just a web version of phone activation (you enter your Installation ID and presumably they give you the Confirmation ID). No idea what happens when moving a licence between machines (with phone activation, the automated process would fail due to the existing activation and you'd be handed off to someone in a call center who would generate the Confirmation ID for you).
I don't think regular Windows 11 is that useful in those cases. You probably either want an intranet connected Windows client, that gets activated and updated via a local server. Probably also a LTSC release, that doesn't get feature updates all the time.
Or a Windows 11 IoT image, that only enables some specific features, and is stripped down for a specific purpose.
For individual use I guess the solution is to set it up once with internet connectivity and air gap afterwards.
>For individual use I guess the solution is to set it up once with internet connectivity and air gap afterwards.
That's simply not good enough for some purposes. Once a computer is connected to the internet, at all for any amount of time, the system could be considered to be less secure.
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Key management services or Active Directory activation.
This is a small roadbump to home/smb free activations.
air gapped
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VAMT proxy activation, or full fledged volume licensing with KMS
These acronyms are not super helpful, and just wildly guessing at what "VAMT" means it probably is nowhere near qualifying as airgapped.
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you probably need to stand up a key management server (KMS)
That is not air gapped
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Internal key activation can be done through a KMS host , which can be activated by phone (or some other dedicated mean if you're big enough for MS to care)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started...
Just don't activate. It's not necessary.
Can't remember what, but there will be functional limitations if you don't activate, even with a verified key.
If you're a home user, I agree. But if you're a business, wouldn't this be a liability?
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I bought the darn thing, I want the full package
The closest solution is using IoT LTSC
Last time I tried to use it for an appliance, we weren't able to buy licenses. Microsoft gave us the contact to the only reseller in our country, and they couldn't find anyone in the company who knew how to sell Windows IoT licenses.
Edit: We only wanted to buy around 20 licenses, so their motivation was also not that big to figure it out.
You should still be able to activate windows offline by using the "ZeroCID" or "KMS4k" methods with https://massgrave.dev/chart#basics
those do not appear to be, er... legitimate ways of activation.
If/when support for Linux gaming becomes widespread and easy to navigate with few configuration hurdles, Windows will die very quickly. As for MacOS, I genuinely can't wrap my head around why anyone who is technically competent would prefer that OS.
Fewer and fewer people own home computers anymore. I would not be surprised if ChromeOS laptops outpace home Windows install at some point.
The bastion of Windows installations will still be the corporate market. Outside of developer circles, Macs are only used by executives - the drones still get underspecced Windows laptops.
not only corporate but also many small shops still running some dedicated software for PoS. Maybe wine will work but it's a lot of hassle still and too risky for trying something that critical to work for such PoS scenarios. Also not sure if situation changed but at least 5 years ago most ATMs in asia were running windows based on talk with my friend working in this field.
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MacOS is like the best of both worlds between Linux and Windows. It's commercial software, and a major platform target for devs, and can do all the unix-y things too.
That's the pitch, yeah. If you're happy to use the OS in the specific way Apple thinks you should, it's okay.
Unfortunately sim racing requires Windows (that's my last holdout).
As far as macOS goes, Linux is so good but I also like my peripherals to work for my job where I don't have time to tinker all day.
> As for MacOS, I genuinely can't wrap my head around why anyone who is technically competent would prefer that OS.
Even technical users can succumb to Apple's Reality Distortion Field.
Doubtful this will ever happen for the most lucrative part of desk/lap-top gaming: multiplayer and micro transaction games. They require anti-cheat to keep the money flowing. And IIUC, Linux fundamentally grants too much user control for effective anti-cheat.
Dupe
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081
I have not used windows in a while but thinking of building a PC. Is there a way to install way older version of windows 10 without Microsoft's AI nonsense and the online account requirement?
https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
I just did it today with the current ISO you can download from Microsoft themselves. Then installed all the Windows updates, graphics drivers and even enrolled in the free extended security support. Then I just uninstalled Cortana and Copilot manually. Ezpz
Be warned that they employ extreme amounts of dark patterns to try and trick you into converting the offline account into an online one.
Online activation of the Windows license is separate from an online user account.
Were you able to use the online activation system without a Microsoft account? I wasn't able to - though as you say, that account doesn't have to be tied to the license or an account on the machine being activated.
Were you able to enable extended security updates without logging in?
I've held out for literal years, but that was the thing that finally made me log into an online user account (and start figuring out how to finally cut the last bit of Windows out of my life)
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This would be an extremely valuable comment if you would document that.
If you're willing go through a little bit of trouble -- and it sounds like you are -- it's pretty easy to configure Windows 11 to look and act pretty much like Windows 7. You'd be hard pressed to tell what version of Windows I'm running if you gave it a cursory glance.
The main tool for me is https://www.startallback.com/
O2O Shutup ( https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 ) is also pretty useful for disabling anything you don't like all in one place -- it doesn't even install.
I also found Winscript and Windhawk useful.
https://github.com/flick9000/winscript https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk
Only Aero, Classic theme not really.
Just get Windows 10 LTSC from the pirate bay and install IOT version. It's an actually good version of Windows MS dont sell to normal people.
It's based on 20H2, so there's software that doesn't support it like Starfield.
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It's possible, but it won't get security updates anymore.
Look into LTSC, and the resources at https://massgrave.dev/ .
Disclaimer: I have no personal knowledge of that site, but it is commonly recommended when this subject comes up.
I've heard that it is a way to reliably but potentially illegally activate MSFT products. Stay away.
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Windows 10 is outdated, not recommended at all. Just install Win11 Enterprise and get your favorite LLM to give you instructions to remove the stuff you don't want, after like 15 minutes it will be totally cleaned for perpetuity.
Not recommended by whom? Win10 still works perfectly fine, has less bloatware, will be supported for a while, and probably won't get updates that just add useless AI and advertisements.
If someone wants/needs Windows, I would absolutely recommend windows 10 right now, it's probably the best time for using that version.
I do have to say that telephone process was terribly tedious. You had to enter 50 digits or so and it would repeat them all to confirm, ugh.
You could do so by keypad, and I was done in either 3 or 4 minutes (I forget which).
Yes it just felt really really awkward and drawn out. I really hated it. I had some sequestered VMs at work which were not allowed internet access so I got this a lot. Was a security lab.
The way this is going, I'm probably going Linux only next time I upgrade.
When I recently installed Windows 11 on my new rig, it didn't recognize the built-in motherboard wifi and I could only connect after installation of Windows + mobo drivers. How would that work now?
Just like you used to be able to provide storage drivers on a floppy disk, you can now provide NIC drivers on a USB stick. (IIRC, there's a button for it on the Microsoft account sign-in page of the OOBE.)
Server 2022 > Windows 11 for desktop OS. No bloatware, less garbage, almost identical driver and application support.
Why Windows Server 2022, not 2025? Can't the latter be used as desktop OS?
An expensive solution.
Well, only if you pay for it
It EOLs in October this year, however.
Server 2025, then?
Though admittedly $1,176/16 cores is a bit steep for a desktop OS, and don't forget the CALs if you plan to use file sharing or Remote Desktop (or third party alternatives like Steam Remote Play).
Security updates through 2031. I'd rather not worry about added "features" introducing yet more bugs.
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Is this the last way that was vaguely easy to access? Can you still run the OOBE command or use the XML unattended install method?
Would like to know this as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081 already posted
If you think Windows is bad, imagine there are people paying real money to use it.
I understand why this is bad, but I personally would sign up for a Microsoft account anyway. Mainly, I don't want all my stuff in "C:\Users\micha". Is there a way to set your username?
Unless you prepare a custom image for installation, a non-local account is created, but you can replace it by a local account later.
Windows becoming less and less relevant every day and then they do this. 2026 is gonna be true Year of the Linux Desktop.
awaiting what massgrave dev do about this. if nothing, then there's nothing to worry about
I'll never install Windows on another machine.
There are activation cracks right?
„just like the gypsy woman said“
Next up: Anything running or playing on Windows can be solely distributed, installed and updated through the Microsoft Store.
Actually, I should place a bet on Polymarket for that.
what about that mass grave site … asking for a friedn
I read their handheld Xbox is a version of Windows with none of the bloat nor slop. I'm sure they'll never sell that as a version of Windows but I wonder if it's possible to make it into an installable by third parties like other custom ISOs that float around the internet.
Microsoft? Nah, it's called Microslop now.
The internet recognizes obstacles as damage and hacks around it. ;)
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081
It's all going downhill from here. Jesus.
The only official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet is to insert a linux installation USB stick. Got it.
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The responses here baffle me. This IS GOOD NEWS. HN more than anyone should understand this. Every mistake Microsoft makes with Windows is a free win for Linux. We should celebrate this and encourage Nadella to make Windows as hostile as possible. Add that nasty recall ai spyware, put ads everywhere.
People here hating on Nadella and loving Ballmer are missing the point. This is not a partisan issue. Windows stopped being good a long time ago. Arguably XP was the last good version of Windows.
Windows becoming an OS mostly for corporate types is beneficial for the world. Let us celebrate!
A decent amount of people actually like Windows as graphical user interface, and some of the related tech. That's a loss that Linux can't replace in a comparable fashion. Unless https://loss32.org/ becomes a viable reality, that is.
The flaw in this logic is they are a monopoly. They continue to profit off of the bad user experience, that’s been their business model since day one, and they keep posting growth numbers. I hope they do die, but in the meantime the bad decisions still negatively impact users, and many of them didn’t have a choice.
The other flaw in your logic is assuming that markets are free. A free market is one that is both informed and consents. In this market, there is both misinformation and a lack of consent.