It actually bypasses this when there's no Internet access, which I had to force manually in order to work around this, as the console would not come up for me last time this happened.

I always setup my own new installs offline, with no Internet connected and assumed that the was the workaround this was referring to. Guess that's my fault for not reading the article. I wasn't even aware of the fake email bypass.

But my reasons were primarily because I wanted to disable as much telemetry as possible and tweak other settings before putting it on a network.

Just install Linux. You can download it... Oh

Call Microsoft and tie up their support

If it doesn’t work, make sure to type his first:

⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️ B A Select Start

Shift F10 just opens the command prompt. After that it's the name of a batch file in the oobe folder. (Out of box experience.) You can tab complete the name so you just have to remember the oobe part. The biggest annoyance is if you buy a laptop that is in S mode, you can't start command prompt to do this.

All it does is add a registry key, and reboot, but you would have to know how to do custom windows deployments to to create an image to skip it always.

What's happening right now is potentially much, much worse than just being served ads.

i am running Linux for gaming now too and i have yet to encounter a steam game that does not run smoothly out of the box with Proton on my machine.

Try Bazzite

Why wait? I'd recommend starting now with dual boot to get comfortable with Linux. Not that Linux is hard, but it takes time to adapt to the differences. With dual booting you will be able to jump back to windows when needed while you find the way you want to do things in Linux.

Same here. There's nothing tying me to Windows other than that's what I already have installed. Microsoft already announced a forced upgrade to Windows 11 next year. If I'm being forced to change my OS anyways I'm going to pick a Linux distro.

Steam has Steam OS, but experiments on my classmate showed it wasn't user-friendly outside of Steam.

I would seriously recommend at least loading up a partition with Linux. Its a steep learning curve from Windows.

Research distributions now, don't wait until the last second and possibly screw yourself over.

I was hoping for a Steam Created distribution to come out

Try Bazzite. It's not from Valve but it's the next best thing.

Nobara is pretty close. Glorious Eggroll's distro, comes with proton pre-installed so it can run steam games out of the box. Worth a shot, I love it

I remember when it happened. Back then we were concerned about how Microsoft was pushing Internet Explorer as a browser on its platform. And then we just gave up on enforcing Antitrust laws let them do whatever they want along with the rest of big tech. Since then they've been doing so much worse than that.

You can blame lobbying for that.

Lol, right. Linux ain't even close to replacing windows - just look at the gaming issues that persist, or other compatibility issues.

It's great for specific use-case scenarios, but I'm not dealing with supporting friends and family when stuff doesn't work because I told them to install a Linux distro.

Besides, business doesn't have this issue - it's only on home (not Pro) installs, because for business we do all sorts of system management that would preclude this, even is MS tried to push it.

This just reflects how MS sees home users - there's no profit there (never has been, it's always been about getting people used to Windows at home, to capture the audience).

No one in my family is allowed to use Windows Home versions. They either buy pro when they get a new computer, or I get it for them.

My standard response to "just go Linux" :

I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.

As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).

I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even boot. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery (even then, to really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero).

There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.

There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.

Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". No, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.

Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?

Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.

Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of windows since 2000, at the least, and would probably work on Win95.

Someone else said it better than me:

Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.

So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.

And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?

I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.

I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.

Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.

Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.

Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.

If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.

These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.

All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).

Because Windows is still effectively a monopoly in many industries with proprietary software solutions not found on Linux.

It's not rocket science to figure this out.

I run some windows-only proprietary software. Realistically what's the performance like with Wine or whatever it is that emulates windows?

I run a lot of GPU accelerated CAD

I develop software that has a Windows version, I need a Windows installation to test it.

Sounds so much like a abusive relationship for a reason.

I've been happy on FOSS desktop OSs for home for nearly 20 years and work 12 years. It's certainly possible to leave. Windows wasn't my first OS, RISC OS was, so I already I could be treated better.

You don't have to put up with it! Windows will take all it can from you and give as little as it can.

Funny thing is, I find myself forced to use the command prompt more in Windows than I do the terminal in Linux. And don't get me started on the absolute nightmare that the windows registry is.

Yeah that Minecraft setup is ridiculous now, then you get ads.

You need a Microsoft account to play Minecraft anyway, so you still would have had set one up.

Why?

I used it to set up a company laptop less than a month ago.

Do you have a source? First time I'm hearing about it

I almost want to kill myself reading this

Yeah this is a fair point. Not a fan of that either.

Exactly. At any point and update can brick the install. If I wanted an OS that can brick itself just by updating, I would use arch.

Signed: a Bazzite user

Distributions of Windows are an inherently terrible idea. Maybe look at amelioration scripts instead.

There is nothing in 11 that I want that isn't already in 10, and what I need from Windows vs. Linux is approaching zero.

Louder for the people at the back!

And also at the front, and also in the middle.

Friggin’ 73.91% desktop market share. 1.6 billion…

At this rate the user base will go from 4% to 5%!

Pretty much. The thing is it’s done sooooo poorly. Like beyond hot trash. They are also bringing it to all their games, PC, mobile, what have you. It’ll get much worse just wait.

I left last year lol. I read the writing on the wall 😁

I do know they made it a pain in the ass to find the last time I built a computer, but I did eventually find it... though things may have changed in recent weeks.

There's this workaround that works well : https://www.tomshardware.com/...

It's definitely not for lambda users and a real pity that we have to resort to this, but it does the job (for now).

You can use shift+f10 and type OOBE\\BYPASSNRO

• Install Windows 11
• "Sign in with your MS account"
• Click Sign-in options
• Domain join
• It allows you to continue to the local account setup
• Doesn't force completion of domain join

W11 even enterprise users are all tied into autopilot, Intune MDM, and/or a microsoft account

The "win 11 business editions 23h2" iso that I got from visualstudio.com yesterday, did no more than the usual amount of crap to make it difficult to find the "join a domain instead", allowing me to make a local user.

The fact this is even necessary makes me want to shit a brick.

"Do you want to make an online account?" No. "Okay, please set up your local account."

That should be it. And honestly, even that's egregious to me. Signing into online bullshit should be opt-in, not opt-out. Thank goodness I don't use Windows anymore, finally wiped the last Windows machine in my house this past week.

Damn windows seems really complicated.

TBH I'm not going to install Windows 11, but back in Windows 10 you didn't even have to open the command prompt.

Last time I tried this it immediately demanded I enter my domain credentials (which I don't have, because I don't run an Active Directory domain at home) and wouldn't proceed without any. So I had to fall back on the disconnect-from-the-internet song and dance.

For me, that bypassed the email account linking altogether.

we ain't never gonna have the Year of the Linux Desktop

Yes, but at this point you can't even blame Microsoft for this. Maybe the issue lies elsewhere?

I need an os for my vms. And thankfully u can disable internet.

No vassals, you are landed gentry. You own your machine now.

they have such a monopoly

The major weakness in their desktop OS market dominance isn't from other desktop OSes. MacOS, ChromeOS, and traditional desktop Linux distros prevent Windows from being a total monopoly, but there's no doubt that Windows has quite a bit of market power.

The real competitive threat to Windows is from people who decide to not use a desktop computer at all. Between tablets and phones, there are a lot of people who no longer feel the need to have a laptop or desktop at all, for personal use.

And on that front, Windows being shittier than phones and tablets will cause people to slow down their upgrade cycle and maybe avoid using a traditional personal computer at all.

Oh nice! I think it was around 2018 when I attempted to install Arch. I'll check it out again sometime this week.

For real, I've been less annoyed with some of the usernames work has given me than the shit Windows 10 thought was a good idea.

I thought we weren't supposed to kink shame. Maybe /u/Raglesnarf is really into degradation and being dominated. Full on ball-busting, perhaps?

because it was super duper easy to setup and the overhead isn't all that bad for my use case. I am concerned whenever I decide to move/upgrade to something different since my hard drives are in a Windows "Storage pool" or whatever it's called

I've heard great things about Free NAS. would unraid be similar to that?

Fuck, you're right, is that I don't read each new that is posted here, but I should at least read that.

No, you don't need an Apple ID to setup an Apple laptop or other iDevice.