Posted by tech234a 3/29/2025
They are envious of the Google and Apple walled gardens/cashcows and are now determined to turn Windows into one.
Windows is no longer a product for users, the users of Windows are the product for Microsoft to be shoved into the Azure sales funnel.
Instead Microsoft is trying to upsell cloud storage, backup and ad-free email (along with Office apps) with Microsoft 365. And on the biz side they’re getting into the biz of offering managed patched online Windows VDIs, kind of like Citrix.
Also Microsoft Store-only Windows is a deal killer for Windows in businesses. A lot of specialised LOB (line of business) apps run on Windows and the Store is a non-starter for those. And in home contexts there’s a bunch of legacy apps that people keep Windows for, dropping support for them will mean switching to ChromeOS or macOS just got easier.
So yeah — I fully agree they’ll absolutely shove you in into the Azure or M365 sales funnel, and individual users no longer feel like a priority. But non-store apps aren’t quite dead yet.
I too planning to use a gaming centric distro for my next gaming PC build. The horseshit they've been pushing at me on 10 has been atrocious. The lie that 10 would be the last. Injecting pages into Chrome. Windows acts more and more like literal malware.
I don't find that the distribution makes that much of a difference?
I just use Arch Linux, and install all the programs (gaming centric or otherwise) that I need when I need them. I guess I'm lucky, because the Steam Deck's distribution is based on Arch Linux, but I used it before it was cool.
I suspect the main differences between the distributions is what you get by default, and that can be a huge factor in terms of convenience?
I know a fair bit about OS internals but especially when I'm gaming I want to play rather than read and follow technical docs.
Sorry, not sorry.
I completely removed Windows from all of my personal notebooks and workstations.
Early on I consulted ProtonDB to see if my games would run, but honestly now I don't even look at it any more. While YMMV depending on the games you play, I haven't encountered really any major bugs and zero crashes. The most I found was some strange shadow texture rendering artifacting in Baldur's Gate 3, but it was contained to a particular part of a particular map.
A decade ago it was kind of rough, but now? I am never going back to Windows for gaming. Playing games on Linux is light-years better than what it used to be. If you're curious but haven't tried it because you had bad experiences in the past, I'd encourage anyone to give it another go.
If StreamOS can get widespread and they start to introduce desktop apps to the store, I think they can take some market share.
Just a note to readers who are interested in this: some games in your Steam library may still not work with Proton, but the ones that do work should have rather few issues. (I play exclusively on a Steam Deck so “should” is in reference to the variance in hardware among bespoke machines.)
I haven't used Windows in a few years, but I was actually fairly happy with Windows 10 as a casual user.
Devs don't test on low spec machines and MS fired the team that maintained the testing PC zoo a decade ago.
Linux on the same hardware does not.
If that worked on Linux, I would not longer need Windows at all...
I am glad they've added bots years ago which made me stop playing so I do not miss it.
2017 called. It wants Windows S Mode back.
Needless to say it still isn't very popular. But this has been around for <checks notes> 8 years now
Just a question of time before they flip the switch for good and force it down everyone's throat and call it "enhanced security and user experience".
It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft forces everyone with local accounts to switch to a Microsoft Account just to access their own machines. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, local accounts are completely disabled, except maybe on specialized enterprise versions of the OS.
I'm exhausted by the anti-consumer behavior of American companies, constantly restricting user choice and access, undermining privacy, and hiking up prices, all in the name of "profit".
You mean "enhanced security and user experience"? /s
>Windows is no longer a product for users, the users of Windows are the product for Microsoft to be shoved into the Azure sales funnel.
So true. I won't be running win11 outside of a VM and anything but win11 IoT. You know where to find it...
But I expect the new leadership will not put much value on this. I imagine it'd play out that first to "to enhance the security and improve the UX" they'll start a shoving a bunch of nagging dialogs in the users face "this app is not safe" etc.
Then they'll add a flag to enable "unsafe mode" where the user can run unverified / unsigned code.
Then finally they'll just nuke the flag.
After all requiring that the ecosystem with the most "important" apps such as their own office suite, slack, adobe etc. grind out new versions with digital signing is not out of alignment with these companies incentives and development cycles either.
In fact I would not find it surprising if these companies would actually be approached by Microsoft to participate in any such scheme and get offered some kind of "discount" or reward (whether it's app store discount or whatever else) and these companies would only see it strengthening their own moats against any possible competition.
And I'm talking about the consumer use case, not the corporate.
was
And people will buy it. Because "general purpose computing" is a niche feature for nerds. (Astronaut 2: Always has been.) And it presents enough problems and extra work that most consumers woyld gladly give it up. Most consumers just want something thet can do Facebook/Excel/Spotify/Netflix/games with.
Microsoft.
They can reverse their decision at any time. Inasmuch as you are able to boot Linux on your PC, it's only because Microsoft deigns to allow it.
Other operating systems could still collaborate with manufacturers to have their key be trusted.
They can play the long game.
Normal mainstream users can't stay on very old operating systems like Windows 7 because they'll eventually be forced to install newer software that's not compatible with it. Outside actors other than Microsoft force os upgrades.
- buy a new printer and it only has drivers for newer os like Windows 10/11 and later
- need for installing newer software like latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe suite, TurboTax 2024, etc. They don't install on Win7. For Windows 7, the last version of Chrome was January 2023. Last version of Firefox was August 2024.
So setting aside commercial apps like Adobe, TurboTax, etc. -- why can't a user just stay with old version of Mozilla Firefox that's compatible with Win7 and turn off updates?!? Because bank websites like JP Morgan will block the user with an error "You need to upgrade your web browser" because the SSL/TLS encryption algorithms in old Firefox versions are obsolete.
Deliberately trying to freeze your computer on Windows 7 or Windows XP means relegating it into a "museum piece" that becomes less and less useful for practical real-world tasks. That's ok for an isolated machine that runs old video games but no good for online banking.
- Printers: the W7 cohort probably overlaps with users of classic HP Laserjets (I know it's not just me!).
- Chrome: Supermium adds W7 support back into the latest(ish) version.
- SSL/TLS: does such an issue exist on W7? It's exactly what pushed my mother (at the age of about 65, and hating having to learn anything new) to upgrade to 11 from XP a year or so ago. I do all my Internet banking on W7, via several different banks as I often move around chasing the best interest rates, and never had a problem with any of them. (Vivaldi, Supermium, Firefox 115ESR.)
- Some software such as Adobe XD: yeah, unfortunately it's not supported. Depends how much it's needed I suppose. I may be forced to "upgrade" sometime this year but I'd really rather not.
Also, on more libre software, the community can release LibreOffice and VLC builds like crazy. Ditto with Sumatra PDF, Gimp, Krita...
Microsoft forced Win10 down people's throats. I had all of my machines Windows Update processes turned off and somehow it STILL got onto my systems. I suspect Skype was the mechanism through which Microsoft did this, as they owned Skype then and I still used it.
I have no idea why people even consider updating, must be some really weird case.
There is zero new value in the latest Windows versions, just plain nothing new, there is really no reason to switch.
If I want to use a decent OS, I can do most of my development on Fedora or Arch or some other Linux distro at my workplace.
For proprietary stuff that won't work there, honestly, Windows 11 is not that bad as far as Windows go. I do not get ads, I use a local account without problems and I can do development actually decently with PowerShell, vcpkg, VS Code which Microsoft offers for free and which work on all platforms.
TL;DR: There are hills with a much better view to die on.
Microsoft does have the leverage in this case, as long as folks want to continue using Windows.
(1) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
Having to use an account to get apps from app store (Apple) vs. having to use an account to install and use the OS in the first place (Microsoft) = not even a a competition
God I hate what this industry has become.
And no one on this forum really needs app store when homebrew exists
(Aurora store might log in to a google account behind the scenes, but I don't have to have a google account to use it.)
So nah, same.
It's not perfect, it sucks, but it's better
Which is perplexing, because this is essentially the opposite strategy than what gave windows value to begin with.
Perhaps they think it doesn’t matter once everything is in the cloud.
The only segments left targeting Windows as a platform are games, replacements/extensions to the OS tools, and a bunch of legacy .NET LOB apps. And since the Steam Deck and clones, Wine/Proton are (very) slowly becoming the actual target for games rather than Windows.
Consider how much has changed since the first 25 years of MSFT. Both in business and in life in general.
The same companies sell anti virus for Android today.
Also most users is not all.
Requiring an online account to use Windows isn't really the same thing.
Unless you refer to Windows SmartScreen? That is a different thing - really about how popular some program is (though Microsoft did put it under Windows Defender at some point so it can be confusing) - and isn't about the antivirus (which is what i was referring to).
And now you get the same from Microsoft. Clearly an inprovement.
The Windows Hello PIN is protected by the TPM. This means you can't brute force it like a password could be.
Your's is a reiteration of Microsoft's preferred talking point that has no basis in reality. Tying local authentication to the cloud tremendously increases the attack surface for those who don't need it. TPMs do nothing to change this fact. The only connection between a TPM and a Microsoft account is that Microsoft chose to tie those two together for their own benefit.
Why did they do to Skype what they did (first turn it from p2p to centralized and spyable and then just ignore it and let it die)?
Same reason.
I vaguely remember hearing that P2P Skype was the bane of sysadmins' existence. Skype would elect clients on high-bandwidth networks as supernodes. This tended to be business customers - the very organizations MS wanted to attract. Skype's prodigious hole-punching ability made it difficult to throttle, so it got banned from a lot of enterprises. MS essentially hosted the supernodes on Azure, which centralized it.
As for encryption, on the other hand, Wikipedia says MS specifically added the ability to eavesdrop for law enforcement agencies, though apparently Skype had already added a backdoor for the NSA before MS bought them: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Skype-Provided-Backdoor-Acce...
[1] - https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/Guid...
I used to leave an extra old laptop on with it running, maybe 15 years ago, on a public address.
During the arab spring, tons of traffic could be seen connecting clients in north africa. It truly did route around things.
The big 4 will be seen as a hostile power within Europe? The big 4 ARE (mostly) European. What are you talking about?
Sales contracts? What do you mean in what context?
I agree that it would be cool if the original p2p Skype somehow resurfaces, but I can't make any sense of the rest of your post or what it has to do with the subject at hand?
They want narrative control and squashing rising political opposition.
Since it uses Windows 11, I originally logged in using my Microsoft Account and a Windows Hello pin.
Safe mode doesn't load wifi drivers and the laptop didn't have an ethernet port, so I couldn't log in to my Microsoft Account to get into Windows safe mode. Didn't have a dongle with ethernet port at that time, so I had to backup the drive and reinstall Windows instead.
That's why I use Linux these days.
I’m seriously considering going back to Linux for my next work setup.
Define "limited capacity". Other than Apple Services like iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, Apple Music/TV, etc, it should just be the App Store that's unavailable without an Apple ID (which _is_ crippling on iOS, but not so much on macOS).
No, you can log in without being connected to the internet (that obviously happens a lot on a daily basis, where people are using a laptop with no connectivity until after they sign in).
That's right. It sounds like a bug but this is Microsoft we're talking about here. They're probably brainstorming for ways to lock you from your own computer.
You can solve this problem by creating an offline account with Admin privileges after setting up Windows with your online account, but most users won't do that.
Moved to a Fedora Desktop, liberating to move back to an conflict-free OS whose primary focus is to serve its users, imagine that.
For the few programs that really need Windows, I use Qemu/KVM with Virt-Manager and Samba for sharing files.
I wish to keep using this setup, I just hope buying hardware with good Linux support in the future does not become too difficult. I fear moving away from x86 will make things harder.
Many years ago music on Linux was hard, and years behind. Software was limited and the audio driver situation was a mess. But now you get professional software directly in the package manager and choose between several very reliable sound systems and even use the far majority of VST Plugins.
It should absolutely be taken as a warning sign, though. Seriously, if at this point you're installing Windows and relying on the existence of that setting, you should be seeking alternatives.
Even Microsoft's current Storage Spaces Direct won't let you start a locally hosted Hyper-V VM without an Azure connection.
-Microsoft, apparently
https://www.digitalspy.com/videogames/e3/a489371/microsoft-e...
> Microsoft executive Don Mattrick told GameTrailers in an interview that was filmed just before E3 that he understood why some people are frustrated at their policies.
> "Fortunately, we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity," he said. "It's called Xbox 360.
> "If you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device."
Sony capitalized on the larger always online controversy with a low budget ad poking fun at the concept[1], which was great marketing.
What MS wants (from a charitable interpretation), is the ability to encourage/enforce full disk encryption (Bitlocker), TPM-based MFA and TPM-backed passkeys (Windows Hello), as well as tight integration with their product suite (Office/OneDrive) and browser (Edge). Syncing settings, apps and other things between devices (or on setup) is also a win, though it's pretty basic right now.
Though silly to a technical crowd like HN, FDE for regular users requires a way to not lose all their data if they forget their password or some other issue happens with secure boot or the device. Non-technical users aren't going to understand the importance of backing up their Bitlocker recovery key, and without it, they're hosed. During online setup, MS stores this key online to the MS account, so it is recoverable.
MS isn't going to limit the integration and security they can provide by adhering to a local-only OS concept. It's not what most users actually want, and their competition (Apple, Android) does the same thing, so users are used to it. I just wish they had a light (inexpensive) version of the Entra/Intune package for home users that want to be able to manage multiple devices and get the real advantages of the online link.
I would also say the same about require either a live.com or M365/EntraId account for local login on AD joined systems' installations. Unless of course they require you to setup a base-image with an internet connection and then convert accounts to local-only post-install, which sounds like a typical Microsoft approach.
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
Either way, I've been happily on Fedora for a while now, with very minimal "fuck I can't do that here"
139 points | 5 hours ago | 125 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43511073
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows...
Correct, and I am one of them!