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- Hacker News
- I have used a Windows OS almost every day of my life since 1999 or so. Last December I had a choice and switched to MacOS for work laptop. Since then I seldom use Windows and I don't really regret.
I still use an Xbox almost every day so there's that. In the last couple of weeks there's been some good news coming through for Xbox so we'll see.
by esalman - What news are you referring to? The only news about Xbox I've caught is that it's declining in profit because they removed Xbox exclusives.by Agentlien
- Did you create an apple id?
At least macos doesn't require it to install software.
ios is a different story.
by m463 - Lifelong windows user here - gave up last year, switched to macos for laptop & ubuntu for desktop - haven't turned back since
- Install Windows IoT. It's for internet of things devices and has more strict updating procedures than conventional Windows.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/product-family...
Functionally it's the same and have heard good things. In any case I will be switching to Linux for my gaming Desktop soon. I will still have Windows for the odd multiplayer game that isn't well supported by Proton.
by s_dev - is media ungated/downloadable for iOT? also downgradable from pro or home?by zparkes
- I switched to Windows 10 as my main development machine few years ago after 25 years of continuously crashing Linux with an enormous pleasure. FreeBSD, well, there's nothing to crash there, that's the problem with it. Nothing. I didn't know almost anything about this Windows OS so I just started playing some sort of whac-a-mole game with it. I don't know what I did but right now I'm a happy (windows 11) user. I use Hyper-V with great success for driving my Linux and FreeBSD development. I like powershell and the dotnet platform and storage spaces and ntfs and many other. Good technologies, it feels good using. Windows terminal is almost OK. I stay away from crap like WSL and Code. I still use mutt for mail, not Office. And I can just play a game without any problems.
There's no Microsoft creep anywhere inside my daily flow. Actually, as of late, I feel more creep in Linux and FreeBSD than in Windows. Everything just works. Sometimes it tells me it has some updates for me. I let it install them and that's it. I'm back to my game, no weird stuff.
No account problem, no copilots, just my shit and myself and no Irene.
When I read about other users having trouble with it I get pretty sad. I wish I could say "do this and that" but I have no idea how my whac-a-mole game drove me to this happy situation. I must have (de)activated some (attack) vectors by mistake. But I whacamoled it head to end, from bios to wallpaper. I kept hitting and hitting, backuping, restoring, backuping,restoring, until i won. I'm on Windows 11 Pro in testing mode right now. Getting back to a linux desktop as my main? Nah, not right now. I have my i3wm running on a gpu partition inside hyper-v and sometimes I drop to it... I can't do all my arcane linux stuff in windows yet but i'm getting there. For now, I'm enjoying it. Been a while now. I just hope they don't notice me...
by tenderfault - > I like powershell and the dotnet platform and [...] Windows terminal [...] There's no Microsoft creep anywhere inside my daily flow [...] I just hope they don't notice me...
Did you make sure to disable telemetry in .NET, and also separately in PowerShell, and also separately in Windows Terminal, and also of course in Windows itself? Otherwise your machine is sending your data to Microsoft by default.
Of course, even if you do disable all of those, there are likely to be other Microsoft programs with their own telemetry enabled by default. And even if you disable those, they could at any moment add more telemetry that you don't know about.
by ptx - Yet they use it, they do not really care, they even install Windows games that requires kernel level spyware read anti-cheat.
There are Linux distros that are newbie friendly and looks like Windows.
An end user that does not depend on Adobe, if you are still using that for whatever reason, they have no excuse to don't move to Linux distro OS.
by h4kunamata - “No excuse”by LeFantome
- good luck getting ol' grandma to flash her desktop with Fedora/equivalentby noah34
- > they have no excuse
That's irrelevant, because they don't owe you an excuse to begin with.
by stodor89 - > they do not really care
What would their choice be anyways? It's like saying "yet people still die, they do not really care, they even engage in activities which hasten their deaths!"
by themafia - People don't know about the stuff you're describing. They use the OS that comes with their PC or is the one everyone else uses.by Cider9986
- I really did not want to change from 7 to 10. I did it begrudgingly partly because "It is the last version of windows".
Well, they were right in one sense. It is the last version of windows I will have. I now have an old box set up with Linux Mint, so I can get familiar with it before switching over all my main PCs
by My_Name - Exactly my turn. Win 10 is clearly the last Windows for me. For private I still use Win 7, for work I used Win 10, but the driver support for my old dell laptop(2014) is so shitty, that it's overheating and throttleling as soon it has to do some normal things.
When the last bastion of Windows, the driver support is falling, I can switch to Linux. Since 2 month I use openSuse on this device and be happy. No running fan, no problems. Windows is dying.
by krater23 - I found Fedora Workstation 'mature' and an easy thing to switch to - there are a few Gnome conveniences like taskbar and menus that can be easily turned on (Claude helped me there).by mancerayder
- Windows has reached the point where it deserves only to run in a virtual machine for some needs.
Otherwise leave it behind and move on to Linux, BSD or whatever doesn't require a cloud account to work
by madduci - Linux hasn't reached the point where it can be the main driver, not for my usecases. Everything works until very suddenly it doesn't and there's no budging.by krige
- The only limiting factor for me is - some games using anticheat (rainbow 6 mainly) - some programs that will never port (FL Studio, Adobe, etc.)
Apart from that, I have no desire to keep my home PC on windows.
by ramon156 - Oh man, unfortunately all the things I need windows for doesn’t work well in a VM:
Solidworks, needs special license to work in a VM that my company is not willing to pay for
DAWs, need real time access to low level audio stuff
Games, well, lets just say the experience is better with wine on linux
With the exception of work, at some point I decided that not only is windows dead to me, but any application that can only run on windows is also dead to me.
by left-struck - I installed it on a VM the other day, and trust me it was only because my job, which pays me, required it. I couldn't believe it was trying to get me to sign in to a Microsoft account to finish installation. I had to look up some arcane way to skip it. The article I read listed other methods, many of which no longer work so it seems they really want you to log in.
Then it was showing me shit like the FTSE 100 price right on the desktop, and some stupid thing about the football world cup. All totally unsolicited spam. I couldn't believe people put up with Windows some 15 years ago when I ditched it. Now I'm convinced some people are just conditioned to being in an abusive relationship and can't imagine any different.
- I was in a hurry trying to log into my kid's Minecraft account, wound up clicking something to associate it with the Windows account... now the PC is in restricted mode and I'm having a hard time restoring the previously associated Microsoft account (among other things, have to ask permission to open the browser and approve the requests logging in on my phone)!
Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.
by password4321 - I ran into similar MS account hell when trying to get my kid's Xbox account signed back in.
Absolutely hate it. Can't wait to ditch Xbox for PS.
- Pretty sure I’ve got multiple copies of Minecraft thanks to Microsoft login bullshit.
Recently moved desktop to Linux though so hopefully don’t need to deal with them again
by Havoc - Good luck. I lost access to 3 of my 5 Minecraft licenses due to Microsoft login, and I’ll never forgive Microsoft for it.by bleh
- > Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.
Not everything. I say: use the option to switch to Linux.
I installed PopOS and Steam for my 11 y/o. She games either on her Nintendo Switch (not Microsoft) or on her iPad (not Microsoft) or on Linux (not Microsoft).
Wife works from a Debian desktop PC, so do I.
Microsoft is not allowed in this house.
- Kinda inverse for me but abandoned Windows after having a local account for my kids, and I bought them MS Flight Simulator on my Microsoft Account from the MS Store.
There was no way to use this expensive purchase from the kid's account on the same machine! Stupid bullshit - I gave up on Windows from then on.
by gedy - God, that's the worst. Minecraft is also what led us to accidentally bind my child's account to the administrator account on my TV PC, and because he's a minor we can't actually unbind that account. I've tried for hours and have not succeeded.
"Just make a new account." It's possible but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over and ugh.
by chadaustin - I ran into this trying to set up a new Dell laptop for my mom. It shipped to her in "S mode", meaning that among other things I couldn't install arbitrary software from the web. I assumed there'd be some straightforward way to disable it (even if it might be a little buried to discourage normies). But after several hours of searching through tutorials and mucking about in Windows settings, the command prompt, BIOS, and even the system registry, and I flatly could not do it. Never seen anything like it before. Ended up wiping and replacing Windows with Linux Mint, which she was happy with.by Jordan-117