Using Windows with a Microsoft account introduces all sorts of issues that only power users tend to come across, and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
I use multiple non-admin profiles for different activities and I think this will ruin my strategy. I always make the first user a local account and never use it for anything but adding normal user profiles.
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
> For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult.
I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
> RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier
Only if you use the same account on both computers. What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine.
>RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier
Here is where it gets complicated, what you say is true for personal accounts and Hybrid Azure AD accounts, but it becomes super difficult with pure Azure AD accounts.
My issue is that my Microsoft account has a long, random password that is saved in my password vault. I never have to manually type this in because I have it linked to the Microsoft Authenticator app. But if I try to RDP to a computer with a Microsoft Account, I have to use the password to connect with the RDP app (unless I'm missing something?). My local user accounts on my home LAN have complex but easy to remember passwords so this is not usually an issue for me.
I am convinced Power Users are not the target market for Windows 11 (or maybe even windows). I mistakenly updated to it and have regretted it. Did you know they turned off animations when using Virtual Desktops [1]? A power-user feature on all the other OS' that took Microsoft till 2019 to adopt was crippled in little over 2 years after release.
Color me confused. Why would I ever want animations when I change virtual desktops? I know what keys I pressed. I pressed them for a reason. The animation just gets in the way.
In general, animations don't seem like a "power user" feature at all. Animations hint at new users ("hey, where did that window go when I minimized it") but aren't useful once you understand the abstraction.
The main problem with a MS account is if you have alot of documents and you log onto a new machine, you better have good internet speed otherwise you will be waiting hours for the documents to come down. Its not so noticeable with windows server (at least since server 2000) and workstations because office network speeds are good but if you also had exchange, then local copies of exchange mailboxes also tied up office networks for ages especially if users had exchange/outlook mailboxes in excess of a several Gb in size. Usually at least 10/100 speed but usually faster, you dont get that over the internet hardly anywhere.
You can disable auto sync for onedrive and/or outlook. You can also mark your connection as metered so any background transfer will only be initiated on user approval.
> Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
I might get downvoted, but I like windows as an OS. I used it for years and it was pretty stable and easy to modify. Now that they are going the way of Google they really have nothing to keep me. Linux has been my main OS for years anyway. Windows I used for office, adobe products, and games. I guess I'll just keep a network gapped VM around for those on my linux and buy some extra memory to handle the VM.
This is exactly what happened to me. I just had enough with all the anti-patterns emerging for each larger update or Windows iteration. I now do all work which require windows in a VM, and using PopOS as host and couldn't be happier.
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
Wow, this comment just crossed 50 replies. I think the fundamental issue is that Microsoft platforms have never maintained the invariant that knowing your username and password is enough to log in.
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
The RDP issue is only a problem because the UI doesn't make it clear that you need to have password sign-in enabled to RDP, when setting up a PIN during initial setup disables password sign-in.
> and power users are who Windows Pro is targeted for.
Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
Never again windows with Microsoft accounts. I have two windows 10 licenses, one home and one pro. I made the mistake of associating the licenses to my Microsoft account and now there is no way to move the pro license from the old PC to the new one. The Microsoft support site is a complete joke of unpaid chatterers that send you on wild goose chase, the web is full of SEO bullshit site that keyword-dance around the issue... Windows 11 for me is Windows Never, and I am well under to way to ensure that the 100 odd laptops at $company run Ubuntu next thank you very much.
This is not true at all, you can transfer the license. Unless it was an OEM license and is tied to the hardware. It has nothing to do with your MS account. I've done this many times when upgrading hardware for myself and my family using different combinations of Home/Pro licenses.
I actually added mine to my Microsoft account specifically because it made it easier/safer to move the license to a new installation (new hard drive, in my case). You just do a base installation with physical media, sign in, and you’re good to go.
Thank You nightski. These are not OEM licenses, I bought the Windows Pro one fair and square and full. Can you send a link to an how to? I do confirm that I could not do it there was nothing on the MS license site that lets me do the switch. Nothing I confirm.
Abou nine years ago I bought a Windows 8 Pro license that was upgraded to 10 and now 11 for free. It was transfered between 4 or 5 machines including one virtual machine.
Can't you just deactivate the Home license and then install Pro? Or just try installing Pro then deactivating the Home license? I only have Pro keys attached to my account but I've shuffled them about between different computers.
Congratulations, you've just created an IT nightmare. By forgoing the easy configurability of Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory, you've added an untold amount to the TCO of your laptop fleet and IT infrastructure! You've also created problems down the line as it's more difficult to procure endpoint security and whitelisting solutions for Linux than for Mac or Windows. There's a reason why enterprises choose Microsoft time and time again: it works, it's easy to configure and administer at scale.
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
Agree about not making decisions when mad but aren't there good options beyond MS for the things you mentioned. Gsuite or any number of other office + mail providers can replace outlook. AD is useless these days unless you have Windows machines to administer or may be with azure cloud which by all accounts sucks when compared to gcp/aws.
So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.
Outlook, Exchange and Active Directory?
These are buggy software packages from the 1990's right?
We've been off the lot for the longest time now. The PTSD is even almost gone.
Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues, but I run them in a virtual machine not connected to the Internet where I need things like iTunes and MS Office. Some games don't run in a VM very well because of the overhead and abstraction (unless they're lightweight or not resource intensive). I have a separate Alienware laptop for gaming on Windows however.
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
For gaming? Ditch virtualbox and migrate your VMs to libvirt/KVM/qemu.
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
>Windows 7/8 are the last good versions of Windows IMHO. Yeah they have security issues
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
I hate it, not because it requires an account, but because Microsoft is nightmarishly bad at account management and has been since I was a little kid in the 90s. They somehow make it possible to have multiple different unsynced accounts across different services, so you constantly forget which is which, and resetting or gaining access is always an incredible hassle. I find myself having to reset my password literally anytime I want to log in to something owned by Microsoft.
If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
These morons at MS decided to force a very confusing and friction-ful Minecraft account migration from Mojang to MS just as all the kids are migrating from Minecraft to Roblox. I'm sure this is only accelerating Minecraft's demise.
This one absolutely kills me. Why do my kids need Microsoft accounts for this? Their official instructions ask for DOB and require checking some box about allowing my kids to sign into "third-party applications". Not to mention all the legal crap I'll have to agree to, settings to scrutinize and opt-out of to ensure privacy, etc. I am this close to just telling them that they're going to have to abandon their favorite game for something else.
This account migration was bizarrely difficult. I lost access to Minecraft when I followed their procedure. I got hold of support, and they had me move back to an older version of the launcher, which recognized my new account, while the new launcher didn't. I assume I'll lose access again someday because they'll force an upgrade.
On the plus side, I was able to contact support. MS is a lot better than some other tech companies that way.
Also, if you have multiple Minecraft accounts, the official launcher is much slower to switch between them than it used to be with the old Mojang accounts. It was so annoying that I finally bit the bullet and switched to the MultiMC launcher, even though it's really frustrating getting the various plugins like Optifine working with it every time the game updates.
Forget across services, I somehow have at least three Microsoft accounts all tied to the same email address, with no way to know which account any particular service wants on any given day. Teams is particularly bad, signing me into one of the three seemingly at random so that I have to keep logging out and back in until it miraculously gets me into the correct account, guessing which password it wants each time. Any support avenue I’ve tried has no idea what I’m talking about and offers no fix. Thankfully I don’t much rely on my Microsoft accounts.
I'm not sure what to call it, but the shadow tenant they set up for Teams is a nightmare. A random person can sign up for Teams with their work email and all of a sudden they become an important part of the process if you want to set up MS365 for the same domain. I would describe it as them owning the shadow tenant.
Ah we never saw that one coming. What really bugs me is why people keep defending these companies: this is straight up abusive, and we - all of us - should not accept these tricks. Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for.
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
> Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years.
It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.
Most people using Windows probably already have an MS account. Those that don't may flee to Linux. But honestly I subscribe to Office 365, use OneDrive even on my iPhone, and enjoy Game Pass. It just doesn't matter that much. If anything having 2 factor auth for my computers is a benefit.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
Can someone explain to me why Microsoft migrating my Minecraft account to my Microsoft account is not a huge security anti-pattern, given that this is the same account I use to access my high-importance Azure account? Do we really believe that the Minecraft launcher presents no additional attack surface and handles authentication material with the same rigor as the Azure login process?
I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token. So everyone is actually authenticating through the same secure interface, and even if one application's credentials get leaked, all they would give access to would be your Minecraft profile, and nothing else. Hopefully.
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
Do not make a second Microsoft account, it'll just end in frustration.
Story: I have two Minecraft accounts (I used to do plugin work and it made testing easier to have an alt.).
I migrated my main one to my MS account (one that's been in use with xbox and O365 for a decade+ at this point), no problem.
I migrated the second one to a new account a few weeks back after they pushed that it'll be mandatory after 10th March; usied a gmail address for the new MS account because I'm done dealing with outlook.
It all worked, for a week....
I'm now locked out of that second account, with them demanding a mobile number to "verify" it's me...
I haven't had the energy to go yell at them yet. It's the same bullshit I hear happens with twitter accounts where they also demand a mobile number.
The truth is I think my "primary" account has my mobile number already attached... and I'm scared that I'll lose access to that as well if I try to use it to unstick my second account, getting "auto-banned" in much the same way they described my second account (which ONLY ever got used to login to Minecraft) for suspicious automatically detected activity and violation of TOS.
> I don't know about the specifics of Minecraft launcher, but usually these types of unified login schemes are all based on OAuth. The Minecraft launcher never/shouldn't get your actual login, and instead they get a scope-restricted oauth access/refresh token.
Benefits really depend on your threat model. Login process uses same credentials which can access everything. But afterwards, the credentials stored in Minecraft has limited access, if third party has a way to steal them.
To be fair, I've found that Microsoft have the best security for their accounts - much better than Apple ID or Google Accounts. Excellent 2FA support and if you have it set up with the Authenticator app, you will almost never need to type in your Microsoft account password. Unlike Apple or Google where I find that I often need to type in those passwords which forces me to pick easier passwords.
If you can spare the expense ($5/mo/user and a domain) you really should be putting Azure resources in a Microsoft 365 tenant instead of using MSA/live.com accounts. Microsoft will act as a 'processor' instead of a 'controller' of your data in this configuration.
Dialing up the annoyance level to a 11. Microsoft has spent the last 6 years or more glacially gravitating its OS-developer features towards Ubuntu. Because they couldn't do better - VSCode being the one crowning glory - and not an insignificant one. The side annoyances of a barely functional Cortana & Edge, were things I looked past, now add one more, a required account - we'll be led into unknown realms of integration (not of tools) but of 'marketing identity' and SSO .
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
> Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture,
Not if you're a back-end coder or a system admin/DevOps. You might tolerate some level of torture, but you for sure won't be happy about it. Ripping out Cortana, Edge and the Windows 10 start menu are literally the first items on my "setting up a new machine" checklist.
Aside from that, I have never been okay with Teams (beyond voice calls, that's the one thing I'll defend them on) or SharePoint, even if I do have to use both occasionally. It's not like I have any say, but when I have a chance to say my piece, I complain about them openly.
So far, doing most of my work on a Linux VM on a laptop that was well managed by the internal IT team (and with local admin permission granted as needed) was the only reason why I put up with the nonsense that was Windows 10 anywhere.
VSCode is great, Github only got better under Microsoft, and I'm actually one of the people who likes Teams... But even as a general fanboy (Win98 was the system that really got me into computers), it is just too much bullshit at this point. While before I had a Linux partition for specific work, and my main "digital life" on windows, I'm going to switch this around now.
And it sucks so much, there is no good reason but short-sighted greed to push for this, I'm happy to pay for a windows version I own and feel like an owner of, this kind of product just isn't developed anymore apparently.
In WinXP there was something about WMP checking for the rights to MP3's that were already on your computer to verify that you were legally allowed to play them.
I don't think users of Windows have been the primary focus for a long time.
It's a code editor, not an IDE... they never claimed otherwise.
Sure, there are extensions now that almost make it an IDE (integrated debugger, support for some build systems, etc.) but if you need the real thing, get the real thing.
For debugging native code I always bring up Visual Studio or WinDBG, but as an editor, VSCode is significantly lighter and faster (despite it being built on Electron) than full VS.
It is really good for remote coding and collaborative coding. Seems okay for everything else. It doesn't really compete with JetBrains IDEs, but I'm sure it's competitive with other free IDEs.
And it's all due to how Code is both open-source in spirit and in truth, and aren't beholden to silly sales targets. You can see what this sort of thing does to a project when the Visual Studio 2022 team tried to move `dotnet watch` HMR functionality to Visual Studio 2022[0] instead of leaving it in VS Code.
“The changes will mirror the same requirements Microsoft originally added to Windows 11 Home last year, meaning you won’t be able to avoid Microsoft Accounts by creating a local user account during setup.”
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
My last round of Windows 11 installs, I just created a new MS account for the install, created a local admin user, and then deleted the MS account from the machine and built local accounts out normally.
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
MS is using the boiling frog strategy. They will likely increase the difficulty of creating/using local accounts in the future, with the end game of completely removing support in a couple of years. Then you will either need an MS online account or an enterprise AD account.
Well it's all a part of them trying to turn Windows into iOS like device management system, including the "family" aspect of app store and subscriptions.
When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?
There are so many (and so simple) workarounds that it almost feels intentional. My favourite one is typing "a@a.com" as email, literally anything as password, and this will throw an error and viola, prompt you to create a local account. Been using this in the latest Windows 11 Dev builds, no MSA required. Even Microsoft Store works without MSA!
I've encountered machines with Windows 11 preinstalled that by all appearances were not going to let you proceed with setup without connecting, but Alt-F4 would get you past that step. More recently I've seen some machines that have a "Continue with limited setup" option similar to what Win10 offered.
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For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
Well, shit me.
I've not used Windows since 8 came out. However, I would have loved to have had that workflow for a multiple desktop type thing.
Why didn't I think of that 20 years ago?
(for a long time, windows has internally supported multiple desktops, but it's not quite the same)
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I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
Only if you use the same account on both computers. What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine.
Here is where it gets complicated, what you say is true for personal accounts and Hybrid Azure AD accounts, but it becomes super difficult with pure Azure AD accounts.
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/windo...
In general, animations don't seem like a "power user" feature at all. Animations hint at new users ("hey, where did that window go when I minimized it") but aren't useful once you understand the abstraction.
Cool…
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
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Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
Perhaps your license is OEM?
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
[0] https://www.neverware.com/freedownload
[1] https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Neverware-is-no...
[2] https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/products/chromebooks/chro...
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
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If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
On the plus side, I was able to contact support. MS is a lot better than some other tech companies that way.
- username
- password
- 2fa
- username
- password
- 2fa (but not too soon, or they’ll say I’ve used up my token supply for the day)
- maybe logged in, maybe do it again
I guess it's a good thing Skype isn't the mainstay it used to be.
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
Story: I have two Minecraft accounts (I used to do plugin work and it made testing easier to have an alt.).
I migrated my main one to my MS account (one that's been in use with xbox and O365 for a decade+ at this point), no problem.
I migrated the second one to a new account a few weeks back after they pushed that it'll be mandatory after 10th March; usied a gmail address for the new MS account because I'm done dealing with outlook.
It all worked, for a week.... I'm now locked out of that second account, with them demanding a mobile number to "verify" it's me...
I haven't had the energy to go yell at them yet. It's the same bullshit I hear happens with twitter accounts where they also demand a mobile number.
The truth is I think my "primary" account has my mobile number already attached... and I'm scared that I'll lose access to that as well if I try to use it to unstick my second account, getting "auto-banned" in much the same way they described my second account (which ONLY ever got used to login to Minecraft) for suspicious automatically detected activity and violation of TOS.
Benefits really depend on your threat model. Login process uses same credentials which can access everything. But afterwards, the credentials stored in Minecraft has limited access, if third party has a way to steal them.
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
Not if you're a back-end coder or a system admin/DevOps. You might tolerate some level of torture, but you for sure won't be happy about it. Ripping out Cortana, Edge and the Windows 10 start menu are literally the first items on my "setting up a new machine" checklist.
Aside from that, I have never been okay with Teams (beyond voice calls, that's the one thing I'll defend them on) or SharePoint, even if I do have to use both occasionally. It's not like I have any say, but when I have a chance to say my piece, I complain about them openly.
So far, doing most of my work on a Linux VM on a laptop that was well managed by the internal IT team (and with local admin permission granted as needed) was the only reason why I put up with the nonsense that was Windows 10 anywhere.
And it sucks so much, there is no good reason but short-sighted greed to push for this, I'm happy to pay for a windows version I own and feel like an owner of, this kind of product just isn't developed anymore apparently.
I don't think users of Windows have been the primary focus for a long time.
Sure, there are extensions now that almost make it an IDE (integrated debugger, support for some build systems, etc.) but if you need the real thing, get the real thing.
For debugging native code I always bring up Visual Studio or WinDBG, but as an editor, VSCode is significantly lighter and faster (despite it being built on Electron) than full VS.
And it's all due to how Code is both open-source in spirit and in truth, and aren't beholden to silly sales targets. You can see what this sort of thing does to a project when the Visual Studio 2022 team tried to move `dotnet watch` HMR functionality to Visual Studio 2022[0] instead of leaving it in VS Code.
0: https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/pull/22217
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?