Yesterday when I booted my windows 10 desktop PC I got a bunch of popups (Win32 MessageBox) about errors in some O365 AI dll files.
Turns out some MS AI software was silently installed on my PC in late may.
I do not have MS Office or anything that should require any AI software.
[1] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
The biggest attack vectors are the browser, the mail client and direct network access. I would never use outlook, edge or connect my computer directly without NAT or firewall to the open internet. And would never open a website without a add blocker.
You can count all other known big attacks(on unpatched Windows 7!!!) on one hand.
1) Remote execution via Wifi Stack
2) Remote execution via True Type Fonts
3) 0-Click code execution via USB Stick Icon processing
Windows update instead gives AT LEAST Microsoft a steady remote code execution on your and millions of other computers. It's a really interesting attack target when you go big. Why I should trust M$ to get the security there right?
The same holes exists and have existed for some time already. If he was not worried about them before why be worried about them now? And if you're worried about security holes why not be worried about the ones that exist now?
In general I find it funny that some people think that system is "secure" when it's on the latest version. At time t0 version N is considered "secure" then an update is made at t1 with version N1 and suddenly N is no longer secure. But it didn't change... it's the same version it was before.
Fact is a computer system is never going to be 100% secure.
So till november 2026 or so everything is fine. Then I will probably have to switch to Linux.
I joke
Personally I'm on linux full time now, which has its own issues but enshittification by Microsoft is not one of them.
I prefer to use non-encrypted drives so I have the option of popping out the disk and reading it from another system with ease, which also means that I can recover files from drives of otherwise dead systems just as easily. This is a trade off I'm willing to make over losing access to data.
I understand business uses for it, and for that they have an IT team to manage key backup and backups in general. Plus when you're using company equipment it is theirs, not yours.
I call this "The Pawn Shop Threat Model" ;)
And, IME it is likely to happen.
All of these drives had Pii and personal photos. Some of the estate sale drives included pii of children and grandchildren.
Likely? How likely is it? I've never had a computer stolen, nor has anybody I personally know. So it doesn't seem to me like it's all that likely.
Personally, I find whole disk encryption to be more risky than it's worth. I much prefer encrypting things on a file-level instead.
There is a very real security vs. availability trade-off though. Is the average person more concerned with others reading their emails, viewing their pictures, seeing their tax returns, or are they more concerned with losing access to those things themselves?
Losing access to an encrypted drive is a very real possibility (people often forget their passwords, and are used to that being recoverable), and is the data loss is probably more impactful than privacy loss for many people.
That way I know what I'm signing up for.
Just put "encrypt? Yes no" in the on-boarding flow and let people know what the risks are and what they may be protecting against. I'd probably default to off because people don't read wizards and the last thing someone wants is to lose their entire HDD because they accidentally made a decision they didn't understand.
And maybe for a certain period of time they can nudge users to read about encryption and decide if it's right for them, or just easily disable that nudge. Maybe even basic education like "if you find yourself forgetting your password often then maybe encryption is not for you" or something like that.
Windows is already optimized for extracting as much value from customers as possible, may as well help them make at least one informed decision.
For business users with notebooks who fly around a lot or spend time in coffee shops, it's possible.
Quite a stretch. In almost 50 years of using computers every day, never had one stolen.
Defaults should be safe for most users. Power users are exactly the people who can deal with changing a setting. It’s constantly surprising to me when technical people insist that defaults should be optimized for technical people.
No, it’s not.
What it should definitely not happen is to do this behind scenes and store recovery codes on a microsoft account. Why those codes have to be stored on their servers?
A screen should display the recovery codes and instruct the user to print them and keep them in a safe place in case of requiring them. I should be able to recover my data completely offline. End of the story.
They should also be given an option of storing the keys in the cloud service tied to an account. Most would still click yes, but the fact that law enforcement can ask for those keys without your consent is an issue.
Here is a question for you though, you probably have those backup codes for services stored securely somewhere, but does everyone you know?
To me that's the main thing about disk encryption, it's to stop a nasty rootkit from being installed trivially as much as it is about stopping the guy at the pawn shop from getting your tax info. Whether you're on macos, linux, or windows, it's really quite easy to fully compromise a machine if you have hands on it.
My primary concern is a robbery while I'm not home. It's trivial to break in, steal hard drives, and then go pop them into another machine on your own time to scan the files looking for tax or other sensitive docs.
While encryption keys are a risk, you can always save the random key file or passphrase in cloud storage (using symmetric encryption) and/or in your password manager.
Everyone has different security needs. But (maybe it's different on Windows), what's hard about popping the disk to another machine and then decrypting it with the key? Does Windows not give you access to the key?
Many normie users not only get locked out of their laptops but they also forget their Microsoft account password causing complete loss of data.
At the time of writing, there are already other replies to this comment how "it's mandatory today to encrypt drives" without any qualifiers. I am growing more and more frustrated by people who try to force security measures like this "because it is more secure that way" without first taking a look at the risks, impacts and associated costs. I think they simply force these security measures on others to feel good about their choices.
It was a breath of fresh reasonability when I found out that apt intentionally uses only HTTP instead of blanket HTTPS everywhere because the packages are signed, therefore they can be verified by the client, and using HTTP allows easier caching with cache proxies and such.
Isn't this rather trivial? You gen a keyfile, register it with luksAddKey, then update /etc/crypttab, no? The real concern is making sure that keyfile is stored securely, but you can simply symmetrically encrypt it and upload it to your favorite cloud storage provider.
1. Use a password-based encryption method (not tied to hardware identity) if you prioritize moving the disk around. Then it is just as readable in a spare machine.
2. Use an easy to remember password/passphrase and write it down somewhere you keep paper documents, if you prioritize recovery.
This still provides meaningful protection when you need to discard the drive. The random downstream recipient of the hardware will not know your password, even if you skip the step where you "crypto-shred" the drive by setting a new random password.
I'm not sure how BitLocker compares with LUKS, but the ability to set (or revoke) multiple keys in the drive header gives a lot of flexibility.
For example, The same drive could be unlocked multiple ways:
* A passphrase that you memorize or metaphorically throw in a vault somewhere.
* A key tied to the hardware so that it is automatically supplied, or requires a lesser input like a PIN.
* Same as above, but added to support another computer you anticipate swapping the drive to.
The vast majority of people don't know that this is an option or how to do it.
I'd say it's mandatory today to encrypt drives. In the age of SSDs it's not really possible anymore to delete files and to be sure they are in no way recoverable by an adversary.
Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?
As of October 2024, there are 125 states parties to the Rome Statute, which are represented in the court's governing body, the Assembly of States Parties. Countries that are not party to the Rome Statute and do not recognise the court's jurisdiction include China, India, Russia, and the United States.
Member states represent around a third of the world population.
What happens if MS decides that using competitors software is "shady" - they have previous form of unfair competition practices, so it's not unlikely.
Also, what happens if the US administration decides that MS software is only authorised if you have white skin and support Trump?
And it's even more scary that MS uses dark patterns to trick older non-technical users into enabling MS online accounts. When the bitlocker activation automatically happens during tricking the user into going from a local account to online account it is without the user's consent or real participation. They don't print out a copy of the key or move it to a usb drive becuase they aren't aware their drives are being encrypted. And afterwards they can't set up recovery keys because the computer itself only shows the blue aka.ms screen. It's effectively dead until they follow the demands.
This is not theoretical, it actually happened to my mother on the local account Win 11 computer I set up for her sewing applications. I had to drive across town in order to figure it out since the weird URL I'd never heard of (aka.ms) and demand for pasting private info sounded so much like ransomware. And in fact, it was effectively ransomware, it was just demanding online activity rather than money.
https://cybernews.com/security/researcher-releases-bitlocker...
Depends. The average user would be more afraid if its not backed up online.
She locked her W11 laptop. Disk was encrypted and she couldn't recall neither login or password for MS account.
Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.
However, at that time I had no idea about the existence of the "S mode". I could not install on the laptop some applications that were distributed and used internally in the company and which were essential for my work.
I requested assistance from the IT department, but at that time not even they had any idea about the existence of the "S mode", so they were equally baffled why on my previous Dell laptop I could easily install any application, while on its new replacement I could not. For a couple of weeks, various IT support people from teams located on several continents had repeatedly connected remotely to my laptop every day, trying to solve the problem, but without any success.
"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.
Every single game save? Why? I get it if you are deep into a month long Factorio game or have a huge Minecraft world, but on the whole games are ephemeral entertainment. If it's not worth backing up, it's usually fine to just start a new game.
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.
I deal with the shenanigans at work but I'm at least paid to eat shit there. That's how they run things I guess, you give them money, then they extort you to get more if you want what you paid for or they'll make your kid cry. I'm grinding my teeth just thinking about it.
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.
Something that isn't available to everyone.
And was Windows 11 bug free, no. Was it easier to use, no. Absolutely irritating OS.
Recently moved desktop to Linux though so hopefully don’t need to deal with them again
Absolutely hate it. Can't wait to ditch Xbox for PS.
Implementing a strict "no fiddly shit on my game machine" policy was one of the best choices for my mental health that I've made: It's a dedicated machine for gaming, with nothing really sensitive on it aside from gaming related accounts, and its only purpose is to play games with the least amount of immediate hassle. In other words, if the choice is installing something ugly or fiddling, that launcher, kernel level anticheat or whatever it is gets installed.
And from the article: "Technician's know how to get around this, but not everyone using a computer is a technician."
To use an alternative, you need to know someone with the knowledge and ability and able to request their time. Backing up data, burning USB sticks, installing, setup new backup solution, resyncing bookmarks, creating shortcuts to their email, replacements for the apps they use... all the details takes a lot of time, and it is ongoing work. Someone has to become 'the technician' and provide support. Otherwise, people have no option except to keep bumbling along with the default or somehow become 'the technician' themselves without any guide but web forums and ChatGPT.
Yeah, compatibility on Linux is better now, especially with Valve implementing Proton so games would run on the Steam Deck.
But there are still incompatible games, and non-Windows operating systems are generally not a priority for many game developers. So, you have to hope that either Valve or the community have found a way to make them run on other systems.
And then there's the aforementioned niche stuff. Yes, your games may be compatible with Linux, but what about the tools needed to mod them? Plenty of modding and ROM hacking communities only develop for Windows, so anyone looking to get involved in those scenes has no real choice other than to use Windows. Wouldn't be surprised if plenty of non-gaming communities made heavy use of tools from the days of Windows 95 or MS DOS too, whose creators haven't bothered to update them in years or who have no interest in porting them to Linux in general. Bonus points if the tool is closed source freeware from some site that looks like it was made in 1995.
Not everyone does everything from a web browser.
The lag will be with you. VNC won’t be any better.
He’ll, even some YouTube videos are overly taxing from Firefox in Linux.
Also Stream seems to think Windows is more equal than Linux…
I remember the first time I partitioned my hard drive and did a dual boot and I was really unsure about so many things. It is intimating.
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.
Just like how Linus from LTT (just trust me bro on the source) said one day he needed a tool (hammer?) so he walked into the hardware store, found what looked like a hammer, and bought it. End of journey. And then he finally realized how a regular person buys tech. Most people do not care, do not know they should care, and do not care enough to know if they should care enough.
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!"
That's irrelevant, because they don't owe you an excuse to begin with.
My kid's grandma (my wife's mom) brought me one Windows laptop too-many to fix "because there were ads everywhere".
I confiscated her laptop (I'm now using Linux on it) and had her buy a Chromebook.
People aren't using Windows under my watch / friends don't let friends/family use that mediocre piece of turd that Windows is / etc.
Otherwise leave it behind and move on to Linux, BSD or whatever doesn't require a cloud account to work
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.
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.
Apart from that, I have no desire to keep my home PC on windows.
edit: I realised I overplayed how much faster and smoother it is. compared to standard win 10 or 11. Example being my login screen sometimes struggles to come up when the computer is locked (work around double mash CTRL-ALT-DEL)
Win 11 Pro allows you to enable local login, and disable all the intrusive microsoft stuff. Ive been on win 11 for the past 5 years and don't even remember my microsoft password at this point. IIRC you still have to set one up when you first install, but then once you switch to local login, any time you open up a microsoft app it makes you login in the app.
Its not a "good" solution, but given that Win11+WSL2 pretty much lets you run any software out there, its worth while doing.
- Disable the network cards in the BIOS
- Install
- When prompted to setup the network press Shift+F10
- Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
- Setup the local account
- After install completes re-enable the network cards in the BIOS
Nothing could be easier. Truly the most user-friendly OS.
Windows IoT still forces all the useless trash to be installed ... such as XBox game bar. I have to spend every few months going through the means to disable this trash via the registry so it can be automated in air-gaped systems.
Original Window Embedded, pre-IoT branding, allowed full customization. Now it is near equivalent to standard desktop.
You have to pay me to use Windows OS ... even with gaming.
Click "Sign in options"->Domain Join Instead
That's it, it''ll have you create a local account.
Time intensive, but doesn't require much knowledge or pulling hardware.
You also do not need to supply a password for the new local user account. It will now automatically login and have local admin rights.
So I removed that account but when W10 was released, it was offered during initial setup of upgraded system. Windows still stored information about that account somewhere.
And yes, there are system tools still present today in W11 that allows users to create additional local accounts beside the default one set during installation - that's mmc snap-in (terrible name) local users and groups or net user for console. But I totally get it and support: people don't want to be forced for an online account out of the box, for a local workflow.
The ID along with their telemetry, M/S can map you to what you do and from where. That pretty much makes their builtin disk encryption useless.
Does the encryption keep the user's data safe if the device is lost or stolen? Yes? Then it fulfills its main purpose.
Safe from coffee shop people or in a dorm, probably yes. If you lock your laptop with a good screensaver and have a decent PW, those people are not getting in anyway.
Plus with smart phones hardly anyone carries their laptop around these days.
But with what M/S is doing with Windows 11 "security" any ad company with $, lawyer with a warrant or alphabet soup agencies, can get a decent idea with what is going on even if they cannot get to see your data in Excel or Word.
But most M/S office data is now in the "cloud", so all bets are off for those files in many cases.
Do technical users have the option to install something better? Yes? Then this has no purpose.
WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I INCREASE THE WIDTH OF THE TASKBAR? I have a 30" monitor, I can afford to have 3 or 4 rows of windows in my task bar. But I can't, not because it's technically feasible but because a human at Microsoft that believes they are more important than their customers made a decision to remove that option because they think they know better.
Whoever you are, I hate you.
I literally hate the Windows 11 taskbar.
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.
At least macos doesn't require it to install software.
ios is a different story.
However beyond XBOX, Microsoft is one of the biggest publishers as per amount of owned studios especially since ABK acquisition, so even when XBOX is doing bad, Microsoft Publishing is doing great.
- you have to dodge dark patterns to get through setup without one
- you can't install software
BTW, where do I create an account to for my Linux?
Perhaps you hear no complaints because unlike on Windows, MacOS does not spoon-feed you 10 screens of dark-pattern-riddled upsell ads with options of "Remind me later", "Yes" during set-up. It quite literally feels like being spat on, considering Windows is not a free operating system, and yet it still riddles you with ads and dark patterns as if some horrible shareware from the mid 2000s.
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
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.
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...
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.
There are reasons to install Windows. For one, I had to install it for my wife, and making her switch to another OS she isn’t used to would be quite a hassle. I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.
But I have the Pro version, and, AFAIK, there is a stark contrast between Pro and Home. Even though there is a push in Europe to make software Linux-compatible, there are still many, many companies and government institutions fully entrenched in the Microsoft world. Going Linux-only just for the sake of it sometimes does not make much sense business-wise.
As a C# software provider, making something Windows- and Linux-compatible is easier than ever. So giving up on Windows is effectively the wrong move, because you would miss out on the behemoth companies that are simply too large to transition easily.
I know the majority of HN readers are fed up with Windows. That is completely understandable. But not everything about it is bad.
Windows 10 LTSC 2021 IOT is great tbh.. Install it without internet and you dont need a MS account at all.
I've hit my limit with Microsoft, too. I'm going to start moving my PCs over to Linux. The last time I installed Linux on a personal device was in high school, almost two decades ago, and it took quite a bit of work to get everything running properly. I've heard that compatibility issues are much less prevalent now. If things to smoothly, I may even convert my main gaming and work PC, although I'll have to look more thoroughly into whether all my Steam games will be playable.
Consider Chromium (the open source build) instead of Chrome when you migrate to Linux. It is in the main repo of most distributions. Chrome is literally spyware. Also Firefox (with the real uBlock Origin, not the watered down version for Chrome/Chromium) is excellent.
It's super fast -- it beats a 2026 Macbook Pro rendering Blender "Classroom".
I have a Microsoft account, I don't know what the big deal is. I follow the happy path. It's nice to have settings (and I can control which ones) sync across machines. I pay for a Office365 subscription.
I don't see ads popping up anywhere. I did disable about a dozen things (those silly icons in the search bar, syncing desktop icons across machines, etc) all through exposed UI switches, no "hacks" or undocumented registry tweaks.
I've watched coworkers go through all sorts of contortions, and downloading hacked binaries from sketchy sites, just to avoid creating the local account and I'm not sure why. I use my name and info on my longstanding Microsoft account, but you can just as easily call one "mymaxasus_11111", and be done with it.
2. Friction. This is likely MS's attempt to slow-walk Windows into a subscription service. If nobody resisted, that walk wouldn't be slow.
By contrast, I got a few Chromebooks and all my employees prefer them. If it weren't for a few legacy things, I'd switch entirely to ChromeOS or ChromiumOS.
I get it. I get that they need to upsell their customers OR their product would be more expensive. I'd be happy to pay that premium though, and I'm not going to buy any of those additional things.
But let's not pretend that this is purely an evil or thoughtless design choice that isn't economic in Nature. Windows has a cost and that cost gets subsidized by all the people who buy additional services.
Anyway, I’d be more sympathetic to this way of thinking if windows wasn’t getting worse over time. But it seems like investment in the OS is being disfavored for investment in AI-in-things-no-one-wants-AI-in, which is inverse of the subsidy direction you propose
Then buy Pro. Most people aren't happy to spend more money.
This is not Linux/Window flame. I am trying to say, local account is possible and is working.
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.
But I think it is also fair if the user was opening a CMD during install just to type `oobe /bypassnro` the user is advanced enough to understand the risks of not encrypting the hard drive (it is really easy to activate the BitLocker afterwards anyway, and for example in my case instead of storing the secret key in Microsoft I decided to store it in my password manager). So I really don't buy the excuses of this article.
Also WTH Microsoft, why it is so easy to reset the TPM key during e.g., a bios update and lose access to all your TPM keys (so you need to type your BitLocker key again). It should be a requirement from Microsoft laptops that the TPM contents are never lost unless the user explicitly asks for it.
Similar to how there is no actual citizen representation in the Congress of the US.
Now stop whining and get back to work.
I am so tired of this relentless user-hostile push for accounts, logins and pervasive tracking.
Now it's going to succeed on the desktop for the same reason
Bye bye windows
First and foremost Linux was free, no money, no licenses, no procurement procedures, download and install.
Windows insisted to have a GUI even on servers and you had to remote desktop to them and click click click. That was how most of the world was using those NT 3.51 boxes.
It soon became PHP vs ASP and Java run on both OSes equally well.
There were still many Unix developers around and they picked up Linux at least as a deployment target.
Web servers were developed for Unix first. Porting to Linux was trivial. Porting to Windows not so. We had to wait for IIS.
ive been a dual boot linux user for years, but still booting into windows for games and work.
no more, i just couldn’t take the:
- constant nagging
- ads for all of microsoft’s other shit that i absolutely did not want to use. copilot, onedrive, xbox, and on and on.
- the nonstop “sign in to your microsoft account” etc…
- settings i very deliberately changed reverting back on update.
- how stupidly long updates would take.
i just finally went to linux for everything. i was concerned about work stuff, and i ahve to admit, its absolutely definitely not perfect, but it still … feels? … better. i’m not sure this is the right phrase, but it just feels more fun. i feel good when i diagnose a linux bug, like productive or something. that feels more like fun to me compared to the dark patterns of windows which feels frustrating. if that makes sense.
i’d rather spend 20 minutes fixing a weird quirk on linux than the deal with the assault microsoft is constantly throwing at me when using windows. and id absolutely rather put up with a feature that isnt fully complete yet on linux than deal with dark patterns on windows.
and gaming? at this point, if a game doesn’t work on linux, i just play something else that does. there are just way too many choices of rad games that run good on linux. it does help that the games i’ve been playing lately (like cyberpunk) run a bit better on linux anyway.
the only holdout for me at this point is video and photo editing, i have to break out my macbook for lightroom and premiere still. but from what i understand linux is moving very very fast in that area so i’ll just use my mb until those are caught up. the day i can ditch my adobe subscription will be the type of “let’s go to the bar and toast with shots” kind of day. and from what other people say, it’s very close.
the cherry on top for me is, weve moved our parents machines to linux mint. my gf and i jokingly wonder if they would have even noticed if we hadn’t told them, firefox just works for their facebook and amazon lol. huge bonus that i can update their machines with a quick ssh apt update which takes literally seconds vs windows which sometimes takes half hour plus.
https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat
Persists after updates, and is a straightforward easily auditable PowerShell script enabling/disabling Windows/app features via approved OS provided API interfaces without any hacky brittle workarounds that eventually stop working.
It's the first thing I install on any fresh Windows 11 install for the past 4+ years. I get more ads on MacOS thanks to their lovely Apple TV, iCloud, etc push notifications than I ever see on Windows 11 (≈ 0) after running it.
I've updated hundreds of times across multiple machines and it's never stopped working. I'm only reminded it exists by its absence whenever I use an out of the box Win 11 install on a new PC which is painful in comparison.
I actually prefer debloated Win 11 to plain Win 10 because I get all the benefits like vastly superior multi monitor support on 11 with basically zero negatives.
They won't change it unless you give them a reason.
Switch to macOS or Linux. That will give them a reason.
I managed fleets of windows devices and felt Windows and PC’s were efficient and had a good balance of an operating system and schema that is powerful and effective.
With windows 11.. it’s like an all time low emerged. Where I am just fighting against a platform trying a variety of gimmicks designed to extra rents and push tools that are not really all that useful or polished.
Windows 11 feels bloated and just feels like a struggle.
For me it really is the time of Linux. Whether it be a workstation, a server or even a simple kiosk… Linux just seems to embrace the ethos of what windows has left behind.
The one saving grace for all of this was Win11Debloat[0]. I cannot recommend this set of configuration changes etc more highly. It kills _almost_ everything that irked me about 11. Use at your own risk, but it's now part of my standard install practice.
personally have been able to use windows without ever logging in since windows 8.1. the iot (embedded) version is the path of least resistance for most. it even contains old paint and calculator from windows 7! might be a skill issue, but i've found it easier to debloat once than to figure out fractional scaling in linux.
i’m happy on mac even with its ux regressions, and my ubuntu workstation.
All you need is your password.
And a well-designed disk encryption tool.
This is absolutely TRASH behavior. One of my siblings not only experienced this but after setting Bitlocker off it turned on ONCE AGAIN automatically after some time.
I urged him to print those fucking codes on paper just in case after we carefully recovered them. This is one of the worst things that can happen to a non technical user.
if so much of your life is centralized through a few accounts, then these companies shouldn't have a legal right to ban you from using it
Case in point, moving to a new computer is absolutely painless now with a Microsoft Account because of OneDrive and Winget.
Make sure that Onedrive is setup to backup all folder (desktop, documents, pictures. you can do this by clicking the gear icon and selecting Manage Backups)
Next have this simple batch file run whenever the user logs in. It basically uses winget to update all packages to the latest version and export a list of all those packages and save it onedrive
winget update --all --accept-package-agreements --accept-source-agreements --silent winget export -o "C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\WingetPrograms.txt"
Now if you move computers, you just log in with your Microsoft account so that you will have your desktop and everything because onedrive will come over.
Now just do an import with Winget and you will have 95% of your programs installed. Yes I know there might be some programs that aren't available for installation through Winget, but almost ALL popular programs are available.
winget import -i "C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive\WingetPrograms.txt"
It's that simple. Something that use to take days now takes minutes and 3 commands. Plus the fact that everything is backed up to the cloud, you just can't beat it.
Yes I get the same stuff can be done with Google Drive, Dropbox replacing Onedrive. Chocolatey, ninite as a package manager instead of winget. Using Onedrive and winget are native and available on ANY Windows 11 machine and they WORK.
Also, I can now shield him from most of the incomprehensible unsolicited dialogs that triggered support calls. I haven't had to field a single complaint since I tuned his desktop !
