- Microsoft removes guide on converting Microsoft accounts to Local, pushing for Microsoft sign-ins.
- Instructions once available, now missing - likely due to company’s preference for Microsoft accounts.
- People may resist switching to Microsoft accounts for privacy reasons, despite company’s stance.
It also feels like their insistence is doing nothing but hurting them. The average consumer who doesn’t know the difference between a local account and a Microsoft account won’t know or care about MS doing this.
But the users who do have a preference and do want a local account are just going to be irritated at it and give them bad press. They’ll eventually figure out how to make a local account anyway and it may be the push they need to migrate off of Windows.
The Microsoft cycle:
Microsoft does thing nobody likes -> people complain -> some people threaten to switch to Linux -> a few of those people do but most people don’t -> They make some excuse and claim that once Linux reaches some arbitrary milestone they’ll switch (Adobe support, better game support, better software support, etc) -> most of those people forget (they’re a minority, the vast majority of people never cared) -> Microsoft notices and they became even more emboldened to make their products worse -> repeat
If you want change then you need to break the cycle
The most important part of this is:
the vast majority of people never cared
We make our happy little bubble her to be outraged in. The world at large carries on without caring. Just in the past few years, there’s been the Reddit API change, the WhatsApp ToS change, the YouTube dislike button removal, etc etc. A small minority (like us) complains endlessly. The rest of the world shrugs and accepts enshitification.
People have accepted that they’ll never have privacy, that they dont own the products they purchase (physical or digital), that not only do they not control their technology but fundamentally their technology controls them, that every few years they’ll have to replace their devices or the manufacturer stops supporting them, people own nothing and are happy.
People don’t know and don’t care. Privacy isn’t an issue on anyone’s mind (just like climate wasn’t 20 years ago). People don’t know or care about digital media ownership issues.
People know, they see their digital media being removed from them and they know that their devices spy on them. Everyone talks about it yet nobody cares.
I disagree. I think it’s more helplessness than apathy.
I don’t approve of all the spying, but I don’t “own” any congress critters, so what can I do? I can’t even opt out of the spying by cancelling my Internet plan and smashing my phone – there’s still tracking through CCTV, face recognition, license plate scanners, etc. I’d have to move to some remote middle of nowhere and live as a subsistence farmer – and even on the way there, I’d be thoroughly tracked. There’s no escape, it’s like we’re all in a giant digital cage.
Some of us manage to break the cycle, but despite how much I love Linux (ups and downs) I understand that it isn’t for everyone currently.
What most people want is a stable system they can just use without understanding much if anything about how the underlying systems work. They don’t care that wifi drivers can be fixed through a few terminal commands, they rail against the fact they have to do much of anything at all besides click [Next >]. And I can’t blame them; that’s what Microsoft has trained them for.
So many people with random toolbars and junk extensions in their browsers because the [Next >] button is how they get past whatever problem they have. The average user isn’t very tech savvy, and it takes someone with a desire to learn to truly thrive in a Linux environment.
I’ve converted my mom to Kubuntu, and she does well, but she’s also an outlier (she has an expired CCNA certification).
Linux suffers from a catch 22: there’s not enough users because there’s not a lot of commercial support because there’s not enough users because… And the people who are donating their time to make it better are saints as far as I’m concerned, but there’s only so much people can do for free. Things truly have gotten better, but until more typical user types can adopt Linux with little to no fuss, not much will change.
And that fact hurts my soul.
The problem is the average user won’t use Linux unless it comes included with their PC.
I was at the make excuses stage until late last year when my excuses were fixed. Booted my windows install maybe four times since then, and that was mostly to grab files from it haha.
Some people like you and I actually switch to Linux, but we’re the 4% and we need to remember that.
It used to be about 1%, so actually huge gains have been made
I did manage to switch to Linux. I can understand though why people are hesitant, there are still things that are tough in Linux, or near impossible in some cases. That’s despite having used Linux on and off for years.
That’s because what people need to understand is that fundamentally Linux is not a drop in replacement for Windows, its not some open source copy. It’ll never have full software compatibility, it’ll never run the same, it’ll never look exactly the same, and it’ll never be the same. The sooner people accept that the sooner people understand what their options are. For me that’s an advantage, I like the UI on DEs like Cosmic, I love the Unix filesystem, I love the terminal and how powerful it is, I love package managers, and I love the customizability of it all.
I don’t think something needs to be identical to Windows to be a good replacement for it. I think there should be a replacement for Windows, and distributions like Linux Mint are that replacement for some people.
I also think that parts of the Linux ecosystem have major problems. Not necessarily problems with the kernel itself, but problems with the surrounding software like programs and user interfaces. Wider application support would be a start. Some distributions and parts of modern Linux systems can be unnecessarily complex or downright esoteric. Some features like HDR have very poor support, and are difficult to enable/setup where they are supported. It’s also difficult for developers to publish to Linux because of the wide variety of different Linux systems. Flatpaks and snaps help with this obviously but have divisive in the Linux community for one reason or another.
I don’t think something needs to be identical to Windows to be a good replacement for it.
I said drop in replacement
Wider application support would be a start.
No organization is willing to pay companies to support Linux
Some distributions and parts of modern Linux systems can be unnecessarily complex or downright esoteric. Some features like HDR have very poor support, and are difficult to enable/setup where they are supported.
That’s because organizations like the Linux foundation primarily serve enterprise and server customers, they only need a good enough UI so that’s what desktop users get. Nobody is paying money for Linux and few people donate.
It’s also difficult for developers to publish to Linux because of the wide variety of different Linux systems. Flatpaks and snaps help with this obviously but have divisive in the Linux community for one reason or another.
That’s because the current system allows distribution maintainers to decide if they want their distro to be bleeding edge or stable.
TLDR: Desktop Linux users get the scraps of enterprise and server Linux
No organization is willing to pay companies to support Linux
Well that’s a lie. Lots of companies use Linux servers, Linux embedded devices, even Linux desktops for programmers or engineers. Android devices are everywhere too.
That’s because organizations like the Linux foundation primarily serve enterprise and server customers, they only need a good enough UI so that’s what desktop users get. Nobody is paying money for Linux and few people donate.
One of the most common uses of Linux is smartphones. Chromebooks are also fairly popular. It’s more that the kind of people that use Linux desktops aren’t happy with smartphone like functionality and customisation.
The better question is why aren’t people supporting desktop Linux? We have increasing market share after all. My guess is a combination of fragmentation and the fact that the user base aren’t the kind of people they want to sell too. It’s hard to sell MS Office for Linux to your average Linux enthusiast who might even be an Open Source purist. They are also more likely to jailbreak or pirate your product.
Well that’s a lie. Lots of companies use Linux servers, Linux embedded devices
I mentioned that
even Linux desktops for programmers or engineers. Android devices are everywhere too. One of the most common uses of Linux is smartphones.
They make money because they’re proprietary, sell peoples info, and because of that they represent everything the free software movement fights against. I use Linux because it supports the free software movement, not the other way around.
The better question is why aren’t people supporting desktop Linux?
It’s a combination of a few factors, developers are pressured into not asking for donations (users need to actively find their website to donate), the vast majority of Linux software is free of price, and people don’t want to pay money for their operating system.
It’s a combination of a few factors, developers are pressured into not asking for donations (users need to actively find their website to donate), the vast majority of Linux software is free of price, and people don’t want to pay money for their operating system.
I am talking about businesses supporting the Linux desktop with software, not about the OS devs themselves.
They make money because they’re proprietary, sell peoples info, and because of that they represent everything the free software movement fights against. I use Linux because it supports the free software movement, not the other way around.
This is the reason why most businesses don’t want to support Linux.
It’s also difficult for developers to publish to Linux because of the wide variety of different Linux systems.
I disagree there. The issue is that in Windows people bring over their own version of libraries they compiled on (the millions of .dll files) and you can even look in your Uninstall Apps settings where there’s a bunch of MS specific runtime bundles to see that’s even an issue in the MS ecosystem.
In Linux, developers have relied on the library versions just being there. It is, I’d argue, the most compelling reason package managers basically had to come into existence. On the flip-side this can cause issues where there is some version on the system by the package manager that replaces another version. And something not a part of that package management system isn’t a part of those dependency checks and if they don’t put the libraries with the binaries…well it is just luck if you have them all or if other versions can support those library calls in the same way still.
In Linux that is all those .so’s in /var/lib and stuff.
You don’t really see many proprietary things using package managers and those that do are packaged by someone else and are in some sort of repo that isn’t part of the vanilla install because of legal caution.
Companies that made their money on porting games to Linux prior to Proton basically causing them to shutter Linux porting would put their .so’s in with the game bundle themselves, just like you see happening in Windows when .dll’s are inside the actual program’s folders.
However, the more that this sort of dependency management has become abstracted by development suites that take care of this for the developers, the less they understand about it.
Flatpaks actually take care of this and it is one reason they are so popular. They figure out (well that’s a simplification) those library dependencies, sandbox the apps with those dependencies so the library paths don’t interfere with other flatpaks or the base system itself. People complain about this as a con because “the download is BIGGER” even though flatpak doesn’t install the same runtimes over and over again, so once they are there, the download may still be bigger but the installed storage isn’t.
Anyway, yes Linus Torvalds complained about the “Linux fragmentation” issue but it was about DE’s not the state of the development ecosystem itself as I recall, though the rant is very old, so maybe I don’t remember all of it.
Wider application support would be a start.
Sure, but that’s not a Linux problem, that’s a developer problem. Linux supports application development just fine. It is a kernel and the surrounding ecosystem is the operating system after all. It is developers that don’t support it. That isn’t really something Linux in and of itself can effectively solve. Users have to increase and developers supporting applications for Linux will also increase. The classic Linux Chicken and the Egg problem but it is capitalism and that’s just going to be how it has to work.
Another reason to use Linux
Photoshop and 3dsmax on a small thinkcentre (no internet connection), the rest is soo smoth on my Mint.
Couldn’t you do that in a VM with GPU passthrough? I use that approach for all kinds of stuff, including Gaming (with Looking Glass and SSD passthrough)
Also, some Photoshop version from 2021 runs pretty well in Wine: https://github.com/LinSoftWin/Photoshop-CC2022-Linux
Can someone ELI5 why the us goverment is doing nothing against these anti consumer practises
The US government isn’t gonna do anything like this unless it causes a huge fuss. The agencies responsible don’t get enough funding to properly regulate the stuff they’re supposed to, and they have to prioritize as a result.
I’m sure companies know this very well. Our rights as consumers have been slowly decaying for years, and we haven’t seen much government action until recently.
Money
Honest question: What does Microsoft expect people with no Internet access to do?
People with no internet access obviously don’t exist.
They added telemetry. 100% of responses had internet access.
That’s just science.
Microsoft learned the right lesson, everyone has internet! \s
Afaik, it’ll just use a cached login
They’re poor…fuck 'em, who needs them!?
This is the actual, real, subpoena-the-emails-you’ll-find-it answer.
I guarantee some smarmy PM said it in Teams when a developer asked this question.
When I bought my Windows 11 laptop a month ago, I was able to set up a local account after turning on airplane mode. (I had entered my wifi password in an earlier step since I thought it was just for installing updates.)
Anyone who wants to switch to Linux we welcome you with open arms. Ask as many questions as you need. There are no stupid questions just bad answers. (You probably know the type)
If you can’t switch, that’s ok. Alot of us know what it’s like, especially us gamers, Nvidia card owners, and recovering adobe-holics. Life is tougher but a whole lot more rewarding. I moved from windows/Macos and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.
ArchWiki makes it so much easier these days.
It definitely helps you become a lot more independent as a Linux user. The tools you learn when you troubleshoot things are incredibly universal. Tools on Linux are intentionally designed to be intuitive and informative which is quite refreshing to obtuse tools like regedit.
I need a PC that runs with no monitor and gets interfaced with through remote desktop only. I just installed Linux on that machine. It currently must have a keyboard and monitor because if it gets rebooted, it comes to the login screen. The login screen cannot be brought up via remote desktop (RDP through Remmina). I also have so far been unable to find a way to force it to automatically sign in “passwordless” like it used to do with Windows.
This box runs Plex as well as whatever game server I want to run for friends and I at the moment. (Currently Minecraft, which is having trouble since th switchover with server lag, but that is far less important than being able to reboot the screenless server box and have it work with no further input )
Get a virtual hdmi dummy plug. A very cheap and easy fix. Because the machine now thinks a screen is attached it will create a desktop environment you can remote in to.
I have a pi5 at work (upgraded this year) that I use to administer my work network from home. I use ubutnu mate with xrdp for the desktop. Works great, even the sound works. No monitor and even if you hooked one up it would just show a login prompt.
Yeah I also haven’t found a good alternative for a windows management host for RDP. I use my last remaining windows box as an “admin host” and the Linux alternative to this would be vnc or xrdp, both of which have their issues (no dynamic resize, clipboard issues, session restore issues)… I’ve also tried x2go recently which is closer but still not as slick/simple as a windows RDP session.
I haven’t tried it myself but Ubuntu desktop 24 has remote desktop built in. You could try it out on a VM?
I think the first thing is actually recommend is enabling a daemon that launches Plex at boot without login.
sudo systemctl enable plexmediaserverFor something like a Minecraft server I’d recommend reading up on the setup process. (It’s a fair bit to summarize)If the application doesn’t come with a systemd service I’d recommend making a cron. They’re scary looking but actually pretty easy to use, I use it for automating maintenance on my server.
It may feel counter intuitive but Linux servers don’t really need a desktop to manage them so most the tools don’t really come with graphical apps. If you want an interface to check on things I’d recommend installing and using cockpit web based graphical interface.
If you want to do it proper on a systemd system make a systemd.service it’s not as easy to learn but you get extra tools to manage it.
I’ve heard there’s a lot of work that has been done in kde and gnome to get rdp (remote desktop protocol) with remote login.
I hope this helps! If not, almost everything can be done through the terminal and ssh(secure shell) makes that process really easy. I installed and setup my Linux laptop and my server that way.
If you just want to transfer files there is sshfs(secure shell file system) and the ability to go to your file browser and type in an sftp(secure file transfer protocol) address. In kde dolphin for example you select network and type in the bar sftp://(IP address or hostname)@(user):(working directory). Make sure you have sshfs installed on both machines and sshd enabled on at least the system you want to access.
What about SSHing into it?
I’m just not sure how comfortable I am with no gui yet.
I asked a legit Linux question in Rizon - Linux and got banned.
I don’t know what rizon - Linux is is but I guess that’s just the internet. I don’t know what to say other than I hope you have better luck next time.
It’s IRC
As opposed to gitter.im? I found the gitter communities to be very helpful.
I’m actually gaming on nvidia! Didn’t take any tinkering either. I got the Nvidia version of Nobara, which many steam games “just work” on.
That’s not to say I didn’t start tinkering anyway, but new games I install and just run work fine.
It’s amazing how fast we got here though isn’t it. There were a ton of talented people, most of them working without pay just to make it happen.
I love the sense of community from something like that even if all I could do is be a beta tester, request potential improvements, and donate to my favorite projects.
People will switch once developers do. So far no luck on the music industry
It sucks man, I feel you. There are a lot of free options out there you might want to check out!
I’m not experienced in this field but prosonus is working on a Linux version of their studio one app. I think they are trying to make VST extensions work at least on their software.
I’m probably not the best person to answer that question but maybe it helps. Most proprietary stuff is typically designed for Ubuntu or redhat so Ubuntu based or fedora is probably your best bet.
There are no stupid questions just bad answers.
I prefer saying:
There’s no stupid questions, just stupid answers once in awhile.I do like that saying a little better. Most people are just trying to help and yeah, any amount of help is appreciated.
Some people could try a little harder to understand that we all started out knowing nothing and we all need a little help from time to time. It’s awesome to see so many people trying to be understanding here though.
The thing is, not all answers are satisfactory, or easy without further information. That said, learning is a journey, and if you don’t get stupid answers once in awhile, you’re not asking enough questions.
Recently set up my Win 11 gaming pc and despite being tech savvy, I couldn’t get around the requirement without googling. I needed to run a fucking command in order for the Windows installer to let me create an offline account. That’s just so scammy. Imagine paying money for Windows.
“Imagine people paying for Windows.” You had me up to the point that you explained why Microsoft might want to get rid of local accounts. You’re doing the thing that gives executives the idea of forcing online connectivity.
Just bought a ROG Ally. It’s my first forced use of 11 and the device is great, however Windows has never been more of a pain in the ass.
You enjoy using it? Any gripes? How’s it compared to Steam Deck? Why did you decide to get it over Steam Deck?
Honestly, Windows is my only gripe. I did choose knowing it because I wanted not only Steam access, but xbox cloud/gamepass and any other launcher. When using the built in Armory Crate software, which is their custom gaming software, it runs great, almost flawless. The software toggles for framerate limits, refresh rates etc is really well done.
Hardware wise, it’s light which I love, the screen is really solid and audio actually is impressive. I know fully cranked specs will drain the battery quite quick. So far though with stardew valley and Xbox cloud, I’ve been surprised at battery life, and haven’t felt a need for an external battery yet.
Plus I paid less than the cheapest Steam Deck despite me getting the 512gb version too.
I’ll just wait until Windows 10 reaches EOL. My expectative is that, by then, someone has created an ISO with the option of offline accounts enabled or Microsoft just gave up with this nonsense. IrIf not, I have Nobara already set up in dual boot. Proton is getting better and better by the day, anyway.
When you realize that micro$quash has never not been incredibly scammy and skeezy from the get-go, the modern business landscape makes more sense.
Also, every day is a good day to leave microsoft behind forever.
Remove Ethernet or internet. They cannot force you to sign in if you literally can’t. Anybody who doesn’t want to and yes they recently removed it from the system so fuck windows and Microsoft for continuously being the shittiest and most popular OS but this is impossible to circumvent so it’s 100% foolproof for offline accounts. The only way is if they gave you a local database of every account but that would be stupid as shit.
IIRC you are required to connect to internet to continue the setup process in newer versions.
Antarctica too? What about people who don’t have internet?
The triumphant return of the NETWORK COMPUTER!!! On your screen… sorry, OUR screen if you install or upgrade to Win-dows 11.
We have more local computing power than ever, but getting more and more chained to online services. Ah, the irony
the better to farm your information to advertise too you and try to tie you in to more subscriptions.
Here’s an updated way to bypass it. This Youtuber is a little cheerful-cheesy, but the info is good.
No. This does not need a 13-minute video.
- Don’t plug in ethernet if you’re using one.
- At the wifi setup stage press
shift-F10 - Type
oobe\bypassnro - Reboot. Proceed as normal.
There, saved you 13 minutes
Oh cool, Cunningham’s Law in action.
Boooo Microsoft Windows
Switch to Linux where all accounts are local accounts.
Linux supports network accounts of all kinds.
They even have a guide for that! https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/install
Linux supports network accounts of all kinds.
I didn’t say it didn’t support network accounts, but you have to have a local account set up to sign into those network accounts. You can set up your computer fully without being connected to the internet and it won’t give you grief about it.
you have to have a local account set up to sign into those network accounts.
I’m pretty sure that’s false. You can create an account right from OS install that is backed by something like LDAP (assuming you don’t count the root user as an “Account”)
I had very modest needs for Windows. It was not my primary computing device, but there was one application that I ran on an older laptop all the time. All the recent drama pushed me to investigate a bit and I learned that the app is also on Linux. I was able to wipe and install Linux Mint easily despite not really knowing much about either OS. There are a lot of guides on youtube about the process that helped make it easy. Laptop is running well so far. I’m also using this as as a test to see if I can replace much of my Apple stuff with Linux as those devices start to age out. Thanks for the little push Microsoft.
UpperBroccoli really wants Microsoft gone after it pisses him off everyday for years
the stupid thing is I still have my children and I adding our MS accounts after creating the local accounts, because I like setting the parental limits once for all the computers. I just can’t stand the stupid email-based usernames it creates when signing into the MS account during account creation.
