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.
Linux is this way, guys.
This alone is enough for me, to consider Windows a bad choise.
I’ve said that line so many times.
For me its that and the other 20 reasons. :)
Only 20?
I would note that every single time I’ve tried to reactivate windows after a mobo or CPU upgrade, it has failed.
I guess it’s supposed to work better if you sign into your Microsoft account ever, which I don’t, because I see literally no reason they would need me to expect to advance spyware and adware.
The phone activation is the only thing that has worked. Good thing I’ve been dual booting a Ubuntu fork for the past six months. I guess after my next hardware upgrade I’ll be Linux only.
Who wants a computer which might not work after an upgrade and not because there’s an actual problem but because a corporation says no? It’s more stress and more work out of nowhere. Corporations should never be allowed to brick devices, but since they are, I choose “not corporation” as my permanent fix. It’s a good move!
I‘ll stay with 10 until I figured out Bitwig.
What’s your current DAW of choice? If it’s Ableton, Bitwig should be a breeze to figure out.
Also aside from that, most DAWs and VSTs work great in WINE.
Yes it’s Ableton, will try it out.
I think Bitwig was made by former Ableton employees, so it has a very similar workflow. It’s by far my favorite DAW, although nowadays, I’m trying to use Zrythm since I want to use as much open source software as possible.
Bitwig on Linux is amazing and was the final thing which let me ditch Windows for good after years of using Linux for everything else.
You won’t regret it!
Remember when you activated software with a key on the back of the CD case?
FCKGW?
How did you get MY key?!
Your key‽ That’s MY key!
Our key comrades.
I remember key generators… :)
Never had any luck with those to say the least…
I think today, maybe they dont work. But I was using them in the 90s and 2000s, they were great and had music and graphics and everything, coded in pure assembly. :)
I remember awesome multi keygens for groups of titles by one publisher. Good times 😁.
those had the BEST music for some reason.
I never used the one on the CD case, I just used all ones. Or 123451234512345, etc. for Windows 98.
This is the dumbest decision for one reason alone: some laptops and desktops that lack updated drivers cannot connect to the internet.
It literally happened to me with a lenovo laptop, where I had to find a way to bypass the internet requirement or else I’d have a $800 paperweight.
If I didn’t need Windows for a specific reason I’d be on Linux, believe me. But this decision is ridiculous.
I don’t see how this particular thing is an issue. You don’t need to activate Windows during the setup. You can skip activation, update the driver, and then activate windows afterwards
I think the real problem is setting up Windows without a Microsoft account?
that wouldn’t work without tinkering anyways with the latest windows 11 versions
or use your phone or any other device to get the activation key.
Activation scripts can be put onto a USB drive, so if nothing else, there’s always a way to keep using the hardware you paid for (assuming you want to stay hostage to these fucks)
microsoft kills official
was gettin excited there
This garbage makes me so glad I switched to Linux Mint. Gaming has been just fine. Sure there have been a few hurdles, but they were well-worth spending time on as Microsoft continues this foolishness.
I’ve been perfectly happy on Mint since switching over a year ago. The few games I play run just fine (FO4, FOLON, Portal, and such), and the other apps work too, GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice, Blender, etc.
In spite of the recent post about which Linux distro to recommend, and seeing many no longer recommend Mint, I’ll stick with Mint. It just works.
+1 for running Mint.
Tried Pop_OS and the audio drivers were hot garbage. Went to Mint and it worked fine.
To all Linux users. Help out the new ones, explain calmly and make them feel welcome so that they can contribute back later too.
Couldn’t you theoretically download an ISO for an older version of Win 11, install that offline without an account, then update it to the latest version?
Well…here’s the thing. Step 1 of your plan is to install windows 11.
In the words of Manny Calavera:
“I don’t really want to do that…”
I’ve installed a more recent version of Win11 without network and local account was still working. I also recently found that the IoT Enterprise version cuts out Copilot AND the Windows store in the base install. So IoT + Massgrave ftw.
Probably. I think the update will ask for your account at some point though (I don’t really use windows though, so you probably want a second opinion on that).
I believe they get weird about local accounts on recent versions of 11, even ones that already existed. I’m not going to verify, but yeah I think the point is they’re moving towards them basically not existing.
If something is beneficial to the side with more negotiating power and is practical to do, it happens.
It wasn’t plausible when Internet connectivity for accounts on local machines wasn’t a given always everywhere.
And it wasn’t that important for them.
Now both have changed enough.
Also I think all stable continuous changes of mass where single person doesn’t change much are predictable, similarly to Asimov’s Foundation (except there it was presented as something a virtuous genius does to help humanity, not quite how life works).
So expecting Microsoft and others to break their dicks is infantile. I think they’ll succeed fully inside their strategic definition, their model, one can say.
Where anything divergent and interesting can happen is the fringes. Like Reticulum, Briar, hobbyist weak hardware, technologies that will emerge occasionally without mass economic pressure. Toys and jokes.
Oh absolutely, the strategy has always been to secure the market, make it difficult to leave the service, and jack up the profit. The only thing we can do is recognise it happening and work to make alternatives available, work on our own skillsets instead of relying on their tools.
Which is a shame, but the mask is off as of late, and we can’t do much about that.
It’s the Reddit and Twitter strategy, and sadly, it works.
Yeah, I bet you could. Good thinking.
When I recently set up my laptop there was an rays command I was able to do to add the option back to use a local account
“What else can we do that’s hostile to our customers?”
The next move will be bringing back Clippy and then a full-screen ad that you have to dismiss every ten seconds.
They did bring back clippy, they just renamed him to Copilot and sold his soul to the devil for “better” functionality.
It was only a matter of time. Surprised it took this long.
My last Windows will officially be the Win10 IOT I have installed in a Virtual Box, just so I can run a couple of little programs that aren’t available for Linux, and don’t work in Wine.
I moved three Win 10 boxes to linux mint cinnamon this week. Twenty more and I’ll have made good progress on my little nonprofit. But I’m probably at least a decade from being able to go 100% away from windows and Mac’s. Fuck em both.
Good on ya.
I had a copy of windows Xp that I used to call to get activated.
The moment I needed Microsoft’s permission to use my computer after installing a graphics card, I made an image of the drive, wiped it and installed a Linux distribution. That was 2008, and I’ve been a very happy computer user since.
I know not everyone can make that switch, but it’s easier than ever before, and Valve has really changed the calculus with Proton. Gaming was the biggest thing holding back Linux adoption (IMO).
I’ve gone back and forth between Linux and Windows as my daily driver- biggest problem for me was and still is lack of Adobe Creative Cloud support/good photo editors. Wound up switching to Mac for work stuff but use a SteamDeck and run Bazzite on a gaming rig hooked up to TV.
Adobe is sadly the only thing that still requires windows.
Fuck Adobe and everyone there, they were the OGs that started the subscription bullshit for software and they had such dominance no business could say no, thus no schools could say no.
And they’ve just been buying up competition since, so no one can challenge them.
Adobe and Oracle are the software equivalent of cancer.
Fuck Adobe and everyone there, they were the OGs that started the subscription bullshit for software….
For home use, sure. For business use in a business that’s regulated, it’s a godsend. No longer do I have to fight with management about why we need to upgrade Adobe Acrobat even though we “just” bought it 5 years ago.
You pay and it stays up to date. No more vulnerabilities that go unpatched because “we just bought the software” (5 years ago and it’s out of support).
All we need for the year of the linux desktop is Adobe, Autodesk and Outlook :)
I’d switch off windows but most of the games I play won’t work on Linux due to “anti cheat”.
Gta, bf6, rainbow 6, cod, none of these run because the game studios hate giving linix users anything and its not worth their time.
Most of them are made by horrible companies we shouldn’t be supporting anyways.
Not judging, just curious.
What games are those? In the last 12 months I tried 151 games on Linux. All of them worked, only 6 required tinkering.
The fact they mentioned “anti cheat”, it’s going to be your modern online multiplayer games. It’s going to be games like Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc.
I recently found a neat list of games that don’t work due to Anti-Cheat:
https://areweanticheatyet.com/
So it’s probably one of the ~700 games.
Awesome find.
Looking at the first 4 pages, you’d have to pay me to play the “denied” games.
I’m not missing a damn thing. :D
You must not play most of the top 5 fps games then lol.
Literally everything a “normal” gamer plays is not supported on linux.
Normal gamers don’t just play FPS lol
Yeahh they do. 90% of kids with a ps5 wanna play bf6 and pubg etc type games. And if a normie even thinks of gamer they think of fortnite bf and cod.
We’re talking about Windows vs Linux, not consoles. A normie will think of roblox, which blows all consoles as well as steam/EPIC/etc out of the water.
True
That’s obviously not true
Obviously how? Who is a “normal” gamer?
Well it seems like you think only someone with your interests is. However, by any objective measure more people play FPS competitive games than any variety except sports games.
Objectively Roblox is on par, and has previously beaten steam: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/roblox-had-more-concurrent-players-than-the-entirety-of-steam-over-the-weekend-as-it-reeled-in-over-45-million-users/
There is no PC game that has as many concurrent online players as the top game on roblox at any point.
You’re objectively wrong.
Not the original commenter, but for me it’s Arc Raiders. I’m a fan of extraction shooters and have been messing with the idea of fully switching to Linux and ditching microslop completely, aaaaaaand then Arc Raiders was released
Arc Raiders
Arc Raiders has Platinum status on Linux, meaning it works extremely well under Linux. What problem are you having with it?
I’ve come to terms with the fact that i just won’t play those games. There are just too many wonderful games out there that do run perfectly well under linux. Does help that most of my gaming buddies think the same. Definitely a challenge when your entire friend group is hooked in those kinda games
Then enjoy windows (unfortunately). You have no other option unless you buy those games again on a Xbox or PlayStation console.
You could always just install Linux Mint and then install the Mint XP theme. No Microsoft Account required.
There are offline environments that cannot do it online, this is bullshit. Working with critical infrastructure in OT networks, Microsoft is basically saying that Windows should not be used anymore in those.
Problem is that OT is full of legacy shit, so switching to Linux is more easily said than done.
Microsoft is basically saying that Windows should not be used anymore in those.
I would agree with them.
From what I remember, some of those airgapped environments still use windows XP, so they’re not bothered too much by this
There is every OS released in last 40 years running in these air-gapped OT networks. New and Old.
I have the same struggles, Amen!
I’m not 100% sure on this one, but I think it applies to Windows Home and Pro but not Enterprise.
They killed it on enterprise too, we have not been able to activate in half a year, the phone number just stopped working…
