Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup

Komposten

@catweazle said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

which intended to update my system to 11, without asking me, in one of a regular update

That's curious. Windows gave me a pop-up that said something like "Your PC is ready for Windows 11! Do you want to update?". I chose no and since then it's been completely silent about it. If I go into Windows Update it just says "This PC can run Windows 11" in the sidebar, and that's it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Microsoft won't suddenly change policy and force it upon everyone in the future. But at least the last couple of months it has behaved, and I expect it to continue that way for the forseeable future. Normal feature updates haven't been forced upon users, probably because they are big updates that can take a system out for several ours, and an Win 11 is an update on a presumably larger scale.

(An interesting side note: I have secure boot disabled since I dual boot Windows and Linux, but the Windows 11 update checker didn't seem to have any problems with that.)

Catweazle

@komposten ; in my case Windows simply said something like "I couln't update to W11, please consult your sys specs" in one of the regullary updates, this means, it tried to update to 11, without asking. Maybe there are differences between Home and Pro version.

ultravio1et

@locutusofborg I've just installed windows 11 and everything I've been using has been tied to my outlook account and Microsoft has fully told me about it at every step, if I didn't like this and wanted a more private OS I would re-install Linux, which I might do in the coming years if it takes my fancie again

guigirl

@Dedoimedo belatedly sees the light, & begins planning.

Catweazle

@guigirl , very similar thoughts of mine.

LocutusOfBorg

@catweazle said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

@locutusofborg , certainly Windows is and was for advanced users, the normal user is only a victim for M$.
Windows can be a good, stable, fast, secure and private OS, but only if you get rid of the tons of crap and telemetries "to improve the user experience" which come with Windows by default.

Exactly Windows biggest problem is the enduser not taking the time to really learn about the OS and how to tweak it for privacy and stability.

LocutusOfBorg

@catweazle said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

@komposten ; in my case Windows simply said something like "I couln't update to W11, please consult your sys specs" in one of the regullary updates, this means, it tried to update to 11, without asking. Maybe there are differences between Home and Pro version.

Actually no it does not necessarily mean that it tried to update to 11. All it means is it installed a tool to check if you could upgrade and informed you that you couldn't.

guigirl

It just gets better & better.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-is-testing-ads-in-the-windows-11-file-explorer/

And i bet this latest idiotic outrage still will not dissuade the majority of welded-on windozers.

Hilarious.

Komposten

@guigirl said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

And i bet this latest idiotic outrage still will not dissuade the majority of welded-on windozers.

Even if it did get more people to want to switch from Windows, it's not like there is any good alternative. MacOS might be a decent OS, but it comes with the price of buying a premium system. And Linux, for all the progress it has made over the last decade, is still far from ready to be a mainstream OS.

guigirl

@komposten

Catweazle

https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxfxdevil/

LocutusOfBorg

@komposten said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

@guigirl said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

And i bet this latest idiotic outrage still will not dissuade the majority of welded-on windozers.

And Linux, for all the progress it has made over the last decade, is still far from ready to be a mainstream OS.

Not even remotely true for years now. It has a learning curve sure, but pretty much anyone can run it out of the box now.

Komposten

@locutusofborg
Anyone can run it out of the box. And with today's graphical installers most people could probably figure out how to install it as well. But it's not the first hour that matters.

There are two problems with Linux as I see it:

It has way too few safety nets. Windows tries (sometimes too hard) to be idiot proof. Linux is the opposite. If the user wants to do something, Linux will happily oblige even if it is sure to brick the entire system.
When things go wrong, the process of fixing them requires a deal of technical know-how (even if the solution is found on the first search result on Google). Not always, but often enough.

I've been using Linux for several years, and so far it's been less stable than Windows. Sure, Windows will bluescreen occasionally, which is something that has never happened in Linux. But Linux can decide to randomly stop working after a system update, booting to nothing but a screen that says "[ERROR] Some vague message here" in the top, no obvious plan for recovery, and a promise of a few hours worth of Googling and trying things to get it to work.

I'm a tech guy, so I can deal with these issues. I may not be a Linux guru, but I know my way around Google and a terminal, and every time this happens I get better at diagnosing it. But for my non-tech friends? Most of them are practially afraid of terminal windows, and have no idea how to do basic debugging. They don't want to fix their system, they want to use it. When something goes wrong their only real option is to take the computer to someone who can fix it. And in my experience these kind of "you can't boot your PC anymore" issues are way too frequent. You don't want to start each work day worrying about whether you'll be able to work or have to take another trip to the local tech shop.

I may be exaggerating a little bit here, but this is more or less what Linux experience has been like so far. My Linux machines don't have issues every day, or even every month. But over the years they've way too many "you can't use your system until you fix this" issues, compared to Windows where it's only happened once or maybe twice (in spite of using various Windows systems for almost 2 decades). And that's only looking at large, blocking problems.

I don't hate Linux. I use it as my primary OS at work and my secondary OS at home, and it is my go-to system for any programming-related tasks. And I'd love to see more people adopt it. But I just don't think it's quite ready for the true mainstream yet. People expect their computers to just work, with no hazzle. Linux (as I have experienced it) does not provide that.

Note: I've only really used Zorin OS (Ubuntu-based) and Manjaro (Arch-based). I guess it's possible for some distros to be more stable than these.

guigirl

@komposten Not to dismiss or ignore your points as such, but to take a slightly different perspective. IMO a large proportion of your described

non-tech friends? Most of them are practially afraid of terminal windows, and have no idea how to do basic debugging

...but not focusing on YOUR friends, simply windozers in general globally, are simply lazy &/or intellectually incurious &/or unable/unwilling to spend any time learning something new. It's always possible for "Linux" to improve [& i'm confident it will continue its fab trajectory of recent years], but i doubt it will ever reach a stage of being viable for a substantial chunk of the windoze cohort i described. Horse, water.

One thing that has gobsmacked me for years wrt the common windozer anti-Linux prejudice & ignorance on the basis of "oh i couldn't possibly learn that", is so many of them seem entirely to miss the obvious point that they didn't emerge from their parents' test-tube already knowing how to use windoze, they had to learn it. For many of these people, it seems to be a case of "i've done my learning, i don't need any more learning".

These illogical & inconsistent attitudes amuse me.

Catweazle

For me in the background it is irrelevant which OS I use, being in 99% on the net, where the use depends on the browser and not on the OS.
Each one is better more or less depending on the use given to them. Windows by default is so easy that my grandmother don't have problems from the beginning, but requires more knowledge of the userthan in linux to turn it into a OS without spyware and without superfluous trash that it brings by default.
Apart for people who get them to play games is quite better than linux or mac, although more than by availability of games than by technical issues.
Linux is a very valid alternative and in recent years for nothing more difficult to handle than windows in a normal use.
Anyway it's advisable to have both OS in dualboot.

pafflick

@guigirl said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

One thing that has gobsmacked me for years wrt the common windozer anti-Linux prejudice & ignorance on the basis of "oh i couldn't possibly learn that", is so many of them seem entirely to miss the obvious point that they didn't emerge from their parents' test-tube already knowing how to use windoze, they had to learn it. For many of these people, it seems to be a case of "i've done my learning, i don't need any more learning".

I don't know if it's prejudice/ignorance/laziness (or something else), but the main thing keeping me from switching to Linux is that I see no possible benefit for me with doing so. Why would I switch from an environment that I know so well, and which has worked without issues for so long to something that I'm not familiar with, something that requires a lot of learning and appears to have multiple issues (while being so unforgiving)?

True, I'm judging by other people's observations, as I haven't tried it myself (for more than a couple of hours), and perhaps my vision is skewed, as I'm mostly dealing with Linux users who experience some issues. But with Windows, I know my way around, and it just works - it does what I want. But when I'm reading some threads here, I'm astounded how even the most basic things can break all of a sudden - things that I just take for granted here, on Windows.

I'm not saying that one is better than the other - that's not the point (and probably not the case). I'm just trying to present things from my perspective. I do want to learn. But I'd rather spend the time learning more about HTML/CSS/JS or fixing hardware, or how to fix some things around the house, or in my car. I can see how this could benefit me. As for learning Linux - I just don't see any meaningful benefits.

You see - I need a car to go to work. I have a popular brand car, made by a corporation that people generally hate. But I'm using it because it takes me where I need to be, and - though far from perfect - it's quite reliable. Some people insist that I should switch to a "better" car, which I never drove. But why would I do that if my car is fully functional and has everything I need? I know how to maintain it, how to fix it when something breaks. And I've seen too many people pulled up to the side of the road in their "better" cars while on my way to work. No, thank you.

Ayespy

@pafflick So, not a WinX fan, but by the same token, I refuse to pay double the price for a machine hosting MacOS, and I have never been able to depend on Linux. I have literally never had a Linux install that always continued to boot after updates, and which let me install software and hook up hardware universally and without issues.

That said, if MS ultimately REQUIRES me to join their "let us spy on you" network to run their pay-for OS, I am likely to bite the bullet and begin a full migration to Linux, despite that I am pushing 70 and supposedly too old to learn things. To be sure, the main thing that is holding me back at this stage is the possibility of permitting an update and getting an unbootable system as a result. THAT is a persistent Linux possibility, and one which I cannot countenance.

Not to reveal too much, but I get $100/hr US to do my job, I do my job on my desktop, and I will be damned if I will spend a couple of hours to rehab a system which was "free," but is literally costing me money to get back into operating condition. THAT is not in the cards.

Catweazle

@ayespy , Windows currently is the safest and most stable OS, but the less private by default, that is the problem At least it permits to get rid of it in this aspect if you know how. There are also a lot of tools out there to convert Windows in a fast and private OS (at least until the next updates). But I am with @pafflick, it needs knowledge, more than in Linux, private by default (but with other problems).

Regarding handling, I do not agree that Linux is more complicated to use than Windows, at least not in recent years in most distros. I was using Kubuntu for a while on my old PC, with which I never had problems and with which I cleared up in a few minutes. The differences with the handling of Windows, at least in normal tasks, is insignificant (different file extensions for executables and little else).

But apart from this, if I have a fast and save OS, that I have tamed and customized to my liking, why should I change it? It won't make sense.

guigirl

Boring word salad.

I fully accept that for various reasons, reasonable or not, many or maybe most windozers will never even try Linux, let alone actually bother to properly explore it, learn about it, & actively consider changing to it. I mean, until late 2013 i was a full-time 20+ year windozer [win3 to win7, with mostly overwhelming incompetence in dos] who had never even heard of Linux [genuinely true, i had Not One Clue about it, including that it even existed... then, in 2013 when i first heard of it, i didn't even know it was an OS].

All thru those windozing years, i was in no way... no way whatsoever ... an advanced sophisticated user. I was & remain not a coder. I never worked in any part of the IT industry. I merely bumbled my way thru my careers using aspects of IT that aided productivity, but not necessarily understanding what went on beneath the surface in any kind of sophisticated way.

Yet, this self-described numpty dweeb, in late 2013, decided she was curious about this new-to-her odd thingie called Linux... even more curious once she learned it was an OS, not some esoteric app/program as she had initially supposed. I mean, til then, i did not even know there was anything other than windoze or mac extant for Josephine Average to use on her home pc.

Yet here i am now, running ArchLinux KDE on my main pc [with numerous other distros tried before getting here in Dec 2019] in a dual-boot arrangement with SparkyLinux Cinnamon as my second-boot. I love using it, i really lurve it, it's so much fun, so reliable, so flexible, & so damn customisable. I could never go back. And even though i now do run Arch, i am still every bit a numpty dweeb, who has learned little bits & pieces along this fun journey, but who also remains aware she is still not a sophisticated advanced user, just a plodder.

TL;DR = IMO, i am proof positive that a helluva lot of windozers could easily make the same journey & love it. The only requirements are curiosity, time, & willingness to play & learn.

Ayespy

@guigirl said in Windows 11 Pro will require a Microsoft Account and Internet connection during setup:

curiosity, time, & willingness

Aye, there's the rub.