This happened to me. I was wondering why my internet speeds were slow when I discovered that Microsoft was in the process of uploading my users directory, they had already uploaded almost two gigs when I realized. They also changed the path to these directories to something like C:\Users\name\OneDrive\Desktop\. Another poster in this thread claimed it's easy to reverse -- I disagree, it's a pain in the ass to track down the setting, and I shouldn't have to do this. When I did, it gave me an error for one of the directories and refuses to revert (documents?).
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged. I only ever boot into Windows nowadays when I need to compile and test a Windows build of software. I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this. I avoid MS products, they cannot be trusted.
> It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged
Man. I have felt this way a whole lot lately.
I think some people see Linux users and genuinely can't fathom how or why they'd want to go through all of the trouble choosing to use Linux and doing real work on it. A lot of us look back just as puzzled, because when I switched to a Linux desktop for the first time in around 2004, it was definitely a choice, but it hasn't felt like a "choice" for a very long time.
Installing a mainstream distro on modern hardware (AMD graphics at least; I haven't tested Intel, Nvidia) is way easier and more relaxed than doing the same for Windows 11.
Then installing apps, even with WingetUI it's far easier on Linux than trying to find and install apps on Windows... God help me, I hope Microsoft have learnt how to actually do window management this time to make all their crap worthwhile.
There was an incident a week or two ago, where one chess player demanded brand new computers to be unboxed before the chess match[1] begins. Every day of the match, to unbox new computers, because he didn't want the software to be tinkered with by no one.
So they unbox the computers every day, and they have to wait an hour or more, a team of 10 people, for windows update to finish and start the match. Windows update could not be cancelled by the user anyway.
I thought, if he doesn't trust software from other people, maybe he could carry with him an OS in a flash drive the size of a gum. Also, linux was not traditionally great for games, but a chess game can be supported even on a live boot.
To be fair this is about Kramnik who is completely unhinged and paranoid. No one in the chess community treats him seriously any more. He's a meme now.
Yeah I ran Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017 and I regret it.
Since then I run Windows 10 + WSL and life is good.
Win10 support ends next year and I am at a complete loss at what to do.
Linux desktop never worked, never will, the incentives are not there. It's only free if you don't value your time. As I wrote before , your choices are Ubuntu where an OS upgrade shatters your entire system so throughly it takes days to get back to a working system or you can go with Arch where Bluetooth/multifunction device/etc might break every so often. But at least most of the system remains standing. And if you need to connect to some funny enterprise wifi or VPN, the IT department of the client will have Mac and Windows support but Linux? X Windows doesn't get new features, Wayland is not ready, and the package manager landscape is just getting worse https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/616/9...
Windows 11 is hot garbage. No other way to put it.
FWIW, I continue to run Linux as my primary desktop, and I do not regret it. Nothing is free, but very few things are worth your dignity. I made my choices.
It's somewhat of a grey area but if you can get your hands on the IoT version of Windows 10 LTSC - the supported lifecycle end date is all the way until 2032.
I have a dual-boot mid-tower running EndeavourOS (Arch Linux flavor) and the non-IoT version of Win 10 LTSC (support ends in 2027) with strict group policies around disabling of telemetry that's been humming along for several years now.
Go Mac. The GUI is stable and boring: the Finder hasn’t changed much in years. It’s Unix underneath so you can use command-line stuff or dusty programs like Emacs.
You can now pick up a MacBook Air at Walmart for $700. Considering the inflation we’ve had, that’s actually reasonable. It will do the Unixy stuff well. My Mac is of this same class and I’m happy with it.
Very happy for people who are pleased with macOS and Apple in general. Well, I guess realistically, I'm kind of happy for whoever is actually pleased with their computer in general, even if somehow for someone that is Windows.
That said, I just want to make it abundantly clear: I can barely even tolerate the macOS desktop for a fraction of my day. I hesitate to rant about every single thing that pisses me off about it, I think it's wasted time: the direction macOS is going in is not compatible with me and my computing needs and I don't think anyone has to worry about it. The point is, macOS is not the solution for everyone. I don't think I could have a stronger distaste for Apple and their philosophy if I tried, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
(This opinion is, unfortunately, up to date. I am currently using macOS in some capacity, regrettably.)
I'm very happy with my Mac, but... while the key point here is the unasked for enabling of OneDrive...
Untangling synced Docs and Desktop folders between multiple Macs, and trying to revert to something akin to a default and reconcile what is in various folders, not pleasant.
After I moved continents (again) I am now more stable and since I use my 55" 4K TV as my monitor, I decided to make a desktop PC which can game on it -- I went with an 5700X3D CPU with a 7900 XT GPU and 64GB RAM.
I do not think there's anything like it in the Mac world.
Wayland is almost-ready. This is what I needed to do to switch (caveat: this is ubuntu 22, so I may be 2 years out of date):
- Accept inability to use monitor color profiles (this is still WIP)
- Accept inability to use full-screen sharing (very likely to be broken, in theory fixable, in practice its unclear how to fix the portal mess)
- Forked libinput because it behaved unacceptable with my touchpad, and the original developers don't want to add the configuration options to fix this. (Well kind of - custom acceleration profiles may be available in later versions)
- Spent some time adding all the "use wayland" cli flags to everything electron based. In theory, ~/.config/thing-flags.conf is supposed to work, in practice it doesn't, so I have a bunch of wayland replacement clis for everything (wcode, wobsidian, etc)
- Spent some time looking up tool replacements (i3wm -> sway, dmenu -> rofi, xclip -> wl-copy, xprop -> ... its complicated etc)
Benefit: for the first time ever my Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen3 laptop (4K screen) outperforms my Android phone in graphics rendering performance and responsiveness, even just using the Intel card. Using it feels gloriously good. This includes the OEM Windows install as a comparison point, which is doing significantly worse, even with nvidia card enabled.
Replacing Xorg is an absolutely impossible task, with a long tail of broken things left in Wayland's wake. But I think it might finally be getting to the point where its worth it
Why shit on the group of people who are taking the time to create a viable alternative to the bullshit that Microsoft and Apple try and cram down our throats?
Instead of begging for help, why not be that help for someone else?
You're woefully out of date at this point with your experience. The vast majority of the visible polish to make desktop Linux viable has been done in the last 4 years. I started using it full-time in 2020 and since then the progress has been remarkable. Just yesterday I upgraded to KDE Plasma 6.1 and it's truly incredible how well done it is. It's better than windows at this point.
I use Linux desktops daily but even I can recognize that it's not quite ready to compete. Anything you've ever had to fix by googling or opening terminal would be a complete showstopper for the vast majority of users
That's true and what's more is that's what so fucked up about this discussion.
They would literally rather suffer with the kind of impressive surveillance and advertising that Microsoft heaps on them rather than change themselves and the tools they can/could use for the better.
I have a friend from HS who had no interest in computers beyond using them as appliances until he asked me how to extend the life of a shitty laptop that he owned and I suggested that he install Linux on it.
This was about 20s ago now and between now and then he's become a distrohopping person who is quite knowledgeable in hardware with no impetus from me beyond the initial push.
I look at what rural farmers can do when push comes to shove in all kinds of domains and I wonder why not with the general public and computers.
If we had a Cuban embargo type scenario where westerners couldn't get modern hardware and the operating systems that run on it they'd figure out how to.make.die with the cheapest and most reliable software/hardware combo.
People don't grow to learn new skills because they aren't pressed to by circumstance not because they can't.
Visible polish is utterly irrelevant when the problem is with drivers -- the manufacturers have zero incentive to produce Linux drivers and the open source ones are of uneven quality simply because they don't have the information. This is not to shit on the developers, it's 100% the manufacturers fault but at the end of the day, it's my printer-scanner that doesn't work regardless who is to blame.
Maybe write to the FTC? This is a privacy violation. It’s also arguably anticompetitive— they’re auto-enrolling you in an MS product you didn’t want to use, and this comes at the expense of either just local use or of any competing system.
IMO this is also something that the US should shut down hard for a very different reason: every time anyone complains about a vendor, usually Chinese, misusing American data, the US is implicitly making a comparison to American vendors, which are supposedly better. But here’s MS being every bit as bad, if not worse.
Foreign countries can, and should, stop using MS over this. Things like NDAA look pretty dumb in light of this behavior. The US’s technological dominance is somewhat at risk due to this crap.
I've tried copilot and the code it generates is far worse than the free version ChatGPT. The idea that they want people to pay for it is frankly absurd.
I'm sure anyone using Windows implicitly agreed to this "feature" via EULA but it sounds to me like data theft and something state attorneys general might want to start looking into. It stinks whichever way you approach it.
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged
You're not unhinged, there's been a fundamental change in internet culture and the early 2000s free internet people are considered loony now. Ive been laughed out of Discord groups(it's what the under 30s use these days instead of chats and forums, and is itself problematic) for talking about these things.
I think it’s better to see it as not a shift in culture but understand that the internet represents all culture now. There are still under 30s that believe in real freedom but everyone is on the internet now, rather than a set of people that were more biased towards freedom (as that was partly what the internet represented).
I'm with you. They just don't know any better. Discord is a prime example of how complete garbage software can become dominant because modern day users set the bar really low.
This has been a struggle for me as I've gotten older - and I'm not even that old (36) but I've noticed such a big culture shift with the younger generations.
I've been accused of holding "far right" views, or at best an overly paranoid nut, for some of my opinions on software and internet freedom, for promoting E2E encryption, and lamenting the loss of public forums to private, hidden from search, discord/Facebook groups, etc.
To be honest, it's difficult to sit by and watch the enshittification of everything tech while seeing the younger crowd be totally OK with it, and in a lot of cases even defend it.
> I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this.
Someone in Microsoft should look into who is making these decisions, why these decisions are are being made, and why they are being received so negatively. Then they need to address them.
Even though I'm not much of a fan of Microsoft products, I get the impression that they have some excellent developers making excellent products that end up being undermined by business decisions. These are decisions that will probably end up undermining the business itself. We don't live in the 1990's anymore. Microsoft has plenty of competitors who are nibbling away at their edges.
Oh, I mean, the "why" is pretty simple. They're going to enable onedrive upload by default, wait until the sync finishes, then change the EULA to allow them to scrape everyone's onedrive for machine learning data that they can then sell.
I can't tell you the last time I read a EULA. Probably back when software still came in a box and they put the EULA in said box, and I was stuck on the toilet without any other reading materials.
The decisions are probably made by a C suite level who is responsible for specifically OneDrive. They could not care less if the rest of the company crashes and burns on their way out the door with their golden parachute.
I had this happen about a year ago. OneDrive changed the default path for the Documents folder to the one you mentioned above, but I only noticed it when I wasn't able to find some files in the Documents folder. It turned out that some files were being saved to the default path C:\Users\username\Documents. So I tried to move the Documents folder from the directory made by OneDrive back to the default one, but it gave me an error. Then I tried to fix it in the registry, but there were quite a lot of different entries for the default path, and I wasn't able to figure out which one I should change or remove. In the end, I had to reinstall Windows. Now each time I install Windows on any PC, the first thing I do is remove OneDrive.
Unfortunately, this problem somehow happened again on my current Windows installation. Maybe I forgot to remove OneDrive this time, or it was automatically reinstalled during some update.
This problem CONSTANTLY haunts me and my customers.
(1) Uninstall OneDrive
(2) Reboot
(3) Apply policy to block OneDrive reinstallation (linked below)
(4) Attempt to change your folders with Explorer: right-click the library folder, then go to properties, Location, and choose Restore Default. If this fails, use Move.
(5) Manually move any remaining files from c:\users\username\OneDrive
(6) Open registry, manually edit the keys shown in the link
(7) Delete leftover OneDrive folder
(8) Reboot for completion!
Now you understand why Stallman was right. If you don't want to get shafted, the only way is to control 100% of the software running on your machine. One either does that with totally free/libre software, or they don't.
No one can or should trust non-free software. Period.
I'm imagining this happening to someone on a highly metered connection and blowing through gigs of their limited monthly upload budget before realizing their OS has just gone rogue on them. Treating everyone like they have an unlimited bandwidth budget and greedily using it without permission is just awful behavior.
Proton is an improvement for sure and worth being hopeful about but it takes effort to get/keep games working. I've probably spent 10 hours trying to make Cyberpunk 2077 work with varying levels of success. I finally caved and just started booting into Windows 11 to play -- the only time I ever use it.
It's not possible to reverse. Once you send information to an online service, you should assume it'll become public domain in only a matter of years. Digital information is permanent. Hacks happen. Crypto will be broken. Culture will change. Governments will most likely even pass laws requiring it. That's why tech wants this so bad they're willing to do what I thought only cyber criminals would do ten years ago.
I just discovered the OneDrive path last night. Bought a gaming laptop a couple of months ago. Only use it for gaming. No Office use or anything like that. Uninstalled OneDrive within the first hour of using it. Didn't notice paths for Documents et al were altered until last night when I was trying to fix a minor problem. Despite never agreeing to OneDrive and uninstalling it very shortly after the machine was turned on, all my paths to the preset folders are now \name\OneDrive\.
Found ways to change it. Have no idea if I should. It's currently working and afaik OneDrive isn't slurping any data from it. There's no data to slurp other than savegames anyways.
But it still left a bad taste. I think my laptop is well supported by the major distros. I already know my favorite games work on Linux thanks to my Steam Deck. Having a strong urge to just abandon Windows for good.
<< It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged.
I almost wonder if this is by design. I genuinely had people look at me funny when I described relatively minor issues that eventually made me jump from Windows ( in my case I think it was dropping detailed descriptions from updates in Windows 7 ). I kept explaining that even the issues are not the actual issue. The issue is that I am unable to administer my machine as I see fit. I am not anti-tech, I tell people, but the tech has to work for me...
I realized too late that apparently the only way to get rid of the OneDrive directory structure is to manage the settings from within OneDrive itself! I'd already uninstalled it and removed, by hand, most of its folders.
Now if I try to reinstall OneDrive, it doesn't open when I try to launch it! I think it just gets trashed by all the changes I've made.
I guess I have to live with the OneDrive\Pictures and OneDrive\Documents folder forever, because they keep coming back when I delete them.
(I am somewhat loathe to reinstall Windows because just getting it installed on this laptop was a huge PITA in the first place, and it was extremely annoying getting all the ads & crap uninstalled)
ee; this is another example of a phenomenon I see a LOT, which is that just complaining about something into the void is often a critical step to solving a problem.
> You're low on disk space. Storage Sense is freeing up space on your PC to help it run its best. Synced files that haven't been used recently will become cloud-only.
All of my family and friends get tricked by tactics like this. None of my family wants to use OneDrive or the cloud storage from Google / Apple for photos, etc., but their data always ends up synced to these nasty services.
How is it not considered predatory? Fine them a gazillion dollars and make the CEOs smash rocks with a children's hammer for the rest of their lives.
Edit: And how is that a "backup"? They're moving my files to their servers eventually. That's not a backup. That's theft.
Go re-write your own stack from the ground up to somehow end up with perfect social constructs, meanwhile I'll take advantage of the imperfect tools that can actually accomplish something today in the real world and not fall for the bs that I should scrap the 'good' because it's not 'perfect'.
I had this weird feeling but with my google account. It's a digital lifetime that can be just deleted (ofc, not hard delete but I still won't be able to access it) in an instant.
Luckily, google gives you the option to get all your data. So I asked for a download using Google Takeout, and as you might guess it's well hidden and makes it really hard to use - the backups can take days to be ready and I couldn't download the 150gb result in the first 5 tries, so I had to start all over (that's just random plain evil, as I didn't download 10mb even in those poor tries). But once I got it I felt safer. At least I would be able to access my mail in such an event.
Also, it's a really sobering experience. I went through the rabbi hole of checking every file and folder there. I wondered, what youtube video did I watch on 7.8.2014 at 3am?
This left me feeling empty realizing they kept every fart I did in the last 20 years. I know it's like this and everybody does that, but skimming through the data made it real. Like you know texting and driving is dangerous but when you see someone loses his life to this shit.. It's different.
Hahaha I love reading this because this is basically me. You try to do you. But Windows has other plans. When you get down to the bottom of it, although you don't even have time for that, it's always the same experience. You feel like someone shat upon your head intentionally. To the point I just became indifferent to all of this. I don't expect any good from it anyway and just click yes to all everytime. If it decide it should backup my computer without asking me - so be it. It is what it is.
Remember the thread from the other day in which someone asked how many video encoders Facebook should release before we forgive them for all the crap throughout the years?
I worked it out when the (actively) working on broke compilation after returning from my lunch break. If MS can't get OneDrive to work well with Visual Studio then what hope is there for true third-party products?
I got everything off windows and only use it for games. It’s easily the worst OS experience out there.
I wake up all the time and find my windows laptop stuck at the boot screen because I’m not using the on-brand power supply. My lid is shut, but windows ignores that, and it installs updates anyway.
And then it asks you every time to sign in/up for MS bullshit. And the decline button is becoming harder to find.
It's annoying but it's a smart move, once they get you to hit that low 5gb onedrive limit it's a easy path to get you on a office365 sub for the extra storage.
Have you tried installing Windows 11 without signing in to a Microsoft account? It's very difficult to do and the instructions online keep having to change as Microsoft makes it more and more difficult. What I'm finding now [0] involves using a hotkey to open command prompt at a certain part of the installation process and running a command to disable the internet before you proceed.
> just don't interact with the crap and you're still somewhat safer
You're not wrong, but your initial comment made it sound like it was just a matter of not stepping in a single pile of dog poo. What Microsoft presents users with instead is an entire sewer with a great big EXIT sign pointing straight through the sewage. If you're in the know you can mutter a secret incantation and a ladder will drop down, allowing you to climb up onto a rickety catwalk with lots of warning signs telling you that you're going the wrong way. If you're brave enough to ignore the warning signs then eventually you'll get to the other side without touching the crap.
Needless to say, most people follow the path that Microsoft designed for them and end up interacting with at least some of the crap.
Sure, but the typical person is not going to have a clue how to avoid interacting with the nonsense. At this point, there are two ways around it: do the installation as intended, then create a second local only account; or sift through the heaps of outdated advice online to bypass the registration requirement.
I thought the 'typical person' train has sailed a hundred years ago. You either take time to learn the fundamentals (in this instance, the fact that m$, crapple, etc. are all enemies) or you get exploited.
Notice that linux is not safe from that trend as well: you have to learn tech stuff to operate it in any capacity.
So there's no free lunch in this world, that much is obvious. I don't see where 'typical person' can reasonably survive intact in this tech climate so I also see no reason to bring them up.
You are definitely right but I still feel like this is Stockholm syndrome, if they keep dark-patterning people more and more into logging in, it doesn't really make this a substantial improvement, they'll update they're way into tracking you and uploading your personal files somehow.
I think most people understood that having step 1 be "know to look up the latest Microsoft account bypass instructions" makes a process very difficult.
If we want to be really pedantic, maybe I should have said "intentionally extremely obscure"—would that phrasing be satisfactory?
> Don't connect to the internet, press 1 hotkey and enter 1 line of text ("OOBE\bypassnro").
I've been a Linux user for decades through some dark days and some "hard" distros, and I would call that "very difficult". Part of the difficulty is knowing what you don't know, and that absolutely qualifies.
"windows 11 local account" in Google has this bypass in the first result. I Googled things when I setup various Linux distros as well, and I didn't consider that to be very difficult.
For a tech forum, I'm surprised at these responses. I have to Google shit all the time, including "can I do X in Y". I guess I'm the one out of touch, sorry.
> For a tech forum, I'm surprised at these responses. I have to Google shit all the time
I don't think anyone here is saying that they personally would have had difficulty installing Windows without a Microsoft account. I've done so myself.
What we're doing is empathizing with people who don't typically post on tech forums—people like my dad who install Windows on their own but don't regularly dig deep into the system internals. When I went through the process of installing Windows without setting up a Microsoft account I was appalled by how hard Microsoft is working to make sure that most people don't figure it out, and that was back in the days when all you had to do was not connect to Wi-Fi.
It's great that you'd be able to figure it out, but that's in spite of Microsoft's best efforts to hide the path.
I'm generally either at work or just done work when I'm on HN so I'm in "work mode". The next time I'm called on for family tech support on a Sunday, I'll think back to this thread and be in a better position to empathize with a non-techie view.
They go out of their way to make this difficult. I tried disconnecting my internet while installing, but they're apparently wise to that because the option which internet articles claim is there is no longer there. I think there's probably a console dropdown you can bring up when installing to get a local account, but I've decided against fighting the OS. It's so user hostile that it's not worth it to try to turn it into something I like.
Luckly I've been installing into a VM, so I can delete the network interface entirely. That seems to get it.
But yeah, I only use it for some horrible hardware that absolutely will not run on WINE and has proprietary drivers. The day my wife gives up crafts, will be a day of celebration.
I literally did an install of Win 11 this week - trying to stay offline didn't work, trying to enter false details didn't work, couldn't find any other tricks and so had to make yet another account.
Got it installed, added the family as users, tried to login to my young child's freshly minted account. Apart from taking forever, you then have to go through all the "let us copy all your data" and "we're going to advertise to you, so you may as well let us personalise the ads!" and so on ... and you have to do that for every member of the family ... it's an absolutely diabolical time suck.
And of course you can't, for goodness knows what reason, just point at the existing Win10 install to copy all the profiles and settings across.
From what I see the only working method for creating an offline account is during the windows setup when you press shift + F10 which will spawn a command line window where you have to enter "oobe\bypassnro" which will reboot the computer and on the wifi selection screen will give you a "I don't have an internet connection" button
Won't work though if you're Already configured for wifi
If buy a PC with windows 11 pro instead of home, you can also just click other options and choose "Domain join instead." you don't actually have to enter any domain info, etc it'll just have you create a local account.
Won't really help "regular" people since most off-the-shelf, i.e. Best Buy, computers come with Home but if you stick to business lines (ThinkPads, XPS, Latitude, Precision, EliteBook and ProBooks, etc.) you get Pro edition.
At this point I'm not sure why to upgrade to Windows 11? Win10 EOL is 10.2025. And then you can upgrade to Windows 12, which should be good because it's even (98 shit xp good vista shit 7 good 8 shit 10 good 11 shit...)
Once I have my (now ex) girlfriend at home, and she wanted to check her email. So she used my computer to login on Outlook and just do her thing for work. Little did I know that logging to Outlook actually added some new account on my computer (for the same windows User), and it started to sync all the stuff from my ex's workplace.
Fast forward 1 month later, we broke up, and I was still seeing her stuff popping on my computer, as "recently opened" in the file explorer, or "recommended" in the start menu. Since we recently broke up it was really affecting my mood to be constantly reminded of her.
I struggled for like 3 months to find the option to deactivate it. I even considered formating my computer. It really felt like a private space violation, like my computer wasn't even my own, and all that just with a naive email login followed buy a ton of implicit behaviors.
Once I've added my second gmail to the email app on the Android phone and it added it, not only to the email app, but to the whole system. I just wanted to be notified about receiving new mail to that address, but Google decided it needed to sync and backup everything on the phone also to that second email. I consider these kind of things hostile, dark patterns.
Luckily there wasn't any weird content, just work stuff and memes with colleagues. I couldn't even open the files because it was locked under her login/password, literally just see the thumbnails and titles of the file. It's such a weird feature.
Imagine opening your file explorer and seeing the attached files of your ex's emails, updated live, it's a nightmare I swear.
Tech companies in general seem to struggle with consent. Even when they bother to ask, they often refuse to take "no" for an answer, only offering "maybe later."
> Tech companies in general seem to struggle with consent.
This is why Louis Rossman started describing these behaviors as a “rapist mentality” of tech companies. It’s a violation of consent, an exploitation of their anti-competitive size (yes just their size is inherently a problem that distorts the market).
These tech companies have gotten very comfortable pimping out their users to advertisers. They already believe they own your ass; if they perceive some benefit to it, why would they not just rape users directly?
And whatcha gonna do about it? Run to one of the 2 or 3 other pimps who treat their bitches with equal contempt?
While he was no saint, this was something Steve Jobs emphasized - Let the people know about it and make the decision themselves. Many would probably be happy to do it but don't just force it.
I find it just weird that 1. They think that this should be a default option that people would want. 2. They assume everyone just has unlimited data to use.
My parents laptop is on a very limited mobile connection in which they do all their photography stuff on. This move would just chew through a years worth of their internet data in one swift move. Just an outright idiotic move.
Sadly I think the enthusiasm with which the market embraced this behaviour in mobile, console and IoT makes it legally difficult for Microsoft to be punished.
How can you penalise Microsoft for pushing OneDrive by default but not penalise Apple for iCloud? Should multiple backup providers be suggested at startup for economic fairness? Or should backups be disabled by default (potentially annoying consumers of mobile devices)?
Not saying it’s impossible for a skilled regulator to build a PC specific theory of harm but it’s hard. Potentially might need entirely new legislation.
IMO While Apple are pushing iCloud harder than they really should be allowed to, but it's nowhere near as bad as what Microsoft are doing. With Apple there's a simple opt-out in the setup wizard, and if you opt-out you stay opted-out (and are only prompted to opt-in once a year with the major OS update).
On a new device iCloud is not opt-out. Yesterday I installed a new iPad and had to go to iCloud settings and turn off syncing for some 30 services. Quite annoying.
However, you can (or least could last time I setup an iOS device) choose not to sign into iCloud in the first place in the setup UI. Which requires knowing a key combination and then running a command in a terminal on windows.
I wish I could use parts of iCloud without all the crap that entails. But at least I can choose not to use it all.
All of them had an option to skip iCloud login during setup.
Of course, you have to log in to iCloud to use the app store to get OS updates. Since I'm not an Apple user, I don't know if there are offline options available.
Yes, but the question is how they implemented it. Are there dark patterns, is it all-or-nothing, etc.?
Also, with iCloud being at the heart of Apple's ecosystem, a simple bug may very well cause accidental sharing of sensitive data. Even if that never happens, it does not make me sleep better.
Apple’s apps make it pretty clear when something is local and when something is in iCloud. Even for iCloud users, it’s usually an explicit choice per file or object. Photos is the notable exception.
I’m pretty sure there’s also a very-much-not-fine-print notice about iCloud Photos when you set up a device, and you can easily turn iCloud Photos off. The only part missing is that you can’t enable iCloud Photos but choose, per photo, whether to sync the photo.
It does - there’s a message with a red dot badging in your settings that you can’t dismiss. Clicking it takes you to a nag message to log into iCloud. Still, nowhere near the blatantly insecure and anticompetitive dark patterns that Microsoft uses
"It looks like you're considering investigating Microsoft! I've loaded 500 free crystals into Candy Forgecraft Extreme and launched it for you! Just play one level..."
I have no idea why the EU isn't going after Microsoft with a heavy club for all the crap they're pulling lately.
The last time, they built a new physical (lol) office and convinced an entire state to abandon their custom Linux setup and switch back to Office 365. Looking at you Bavaria...
> I have no idea why the EU isn't going after Microsoft with a heavy club for all the crap they're pulling lately.
Did someone get a O365 license reduction or a nice dinner out. MS rep used to take me out to dinner in the 90s to get us to use NT+Visual Basic. Free dinner with asshats - worth it. We used Solaris in the end and Sun only gave us hats.
I think the 90's Antitrust battle was long and painful for everyone, and the hope was that the lessons from the fallout of it from it would carry forward in OS design.
But the staff has turned over and nobody remembers it anymore, so here we go again. (see also: The rise of Fascism worldwide as WW2 veterans die off)
That said, a Web Browser was/is a disproportionately significant application for the OS, where preferential defaults and bundling raise anti-trust concerns. Not so with a cloud backup option. TBH, Apple has been/remains equally annoying with iCloud integration/upsells on both OSX and iOS. And nobody cares.
Microsoft bundle edge still and it can't be removed, even in windows 11 LTSC. Constant nagging if you don't accept O365/OneDrive unless you eviscerate the machine thoroughly or use a cracked LTSC build.
As for Apple, no. Literally I get asked once about stuff and then never again.
I've been wondering this too. The stuff Microsoft has been pulling for the last decade is just ripe for them to go after, yet all you hear is crickets.
Why is Win11 such a pain though? I don't get it. You had Win10 that worked just fine and they went on and fucked it up to what gain? Did they manage to sell more of other products in their lineup? And you do all that when Apple has its own silicon and produces superb laptops that could lure a lot of people in their ecosystem. I understand that Windows isn't the cash cow it used to be, they've moved to greener pastures like Azure, but still why mess up your main trademark product and piss off so many of your users? What's the end goal here?
The data they collect for the AI and the advertising opportunities enable more profits and more revenue to keep infinite growth happening. Even with Azure, even with Github and everything else. If you're not using all the profit opportunities, you are not delivering enough. The economic system doesn't reward or demand stable profits or sustainable growth, it demands compound growth.
This, exactly. Things will only continue to get more shitty as long as the expectation, and often requirement, for businesses with investors is to make infinite money, forever.
That has been the expectation the entire time computing has existed. It will always be the expectation. There is no future where that isn't going to be true.
What actually happens is a cycle. Things rise, things fall, things die.
On the initial upswing things tend to get better while profit and growth are aggressively pursued. Once market dominance is achieved, things tend to get shitty thereafter until someone topples the stagnant product.
This is a legitimate opportunity for Linux + hardware partners, if someone can finally realize they need to build and market to average consumers, rather than expecting average consumers to skill-up / knowledge-up just to use their software.
Or until republicans ruin the earth and make things bad enough that even they agree to introduce legislation relegating what businesses can do to the extent other developed countries have.
At least the version number increment is probably necessary because of the "breaking change" of requiring TPM, so they can move into a locked-down ecosystem like the iPhone, which I'm guessing is MS's goal within a few years.
But the terrible UI/UX? I guess they saw they had to entice users to move by changing the look and feel, but didn't give the programmers enough time, so it was mostly unfinished garbage when it was released, and maybe still is the case.
On that note, I have Win11 and Office version whatever at work. I really fucking hate new Outlook, it's a garbage web app, the whole "NEW" label on the icon makes me always think "Oh I've got some new emails. Oh no, it's just Microsoft being fuckwits". Also, the UI for modifying email signatures is a confusing maze of unfinished UI.
Microsoft painted themselves into a corner with Windows and backwards compatibility.
They do crap like UI mixing (old and new versions existing together) because backwards compatibility is what got them the marketshare they have in the enterprise (well that and anti-competitive practices). At some point, to improve their products, they are going to have to break compatibility and just push forward, and yet they can't because that would immediately alienate a significant portion of their enterprise customers that rely on that compatibility to run old software from vendors that no longer exist, that are critical to operating some niche equipment - hell, it's not uncommon for me to see air gapped windows XP machines still in production running some critical workload.
So they're stuck because they both simultaneously need to move forward but also can't break the old stuff without screwing over their customers.
Oddly enough, it's not an unusual pattern for Microsoft, other motivations aside like data collection. Generally, only every other version of Windows is good.
98 good, ME - bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good. Par for the course, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of refinement, and some changes rolled back for Windows 12.
Microsoft makes it a pain, but you can still jump through some CLI hoops to use only a local user account to log in to Windows, rather than the cloud-conmected Microsoft account they try to funnel you into. Not logging into a Microsoft account prevents OneDrive from doing anything other than spamming you with notifications about how great it would be if you logged in and started using it. And you can still uninstall OneDrive after every major OS update that brings it back.
The hardest thing is really just creating the media and booting on the key. Once that's done, it's smooth sailing for most user-friendly distro. I swear, I've had my parents install Linux on 50 computers for their school, and they are really non technical.
Or if ordering a new PC you can get one with Windows 11 Pro for a few $$ more, choose the option to domain join (during initial setup) to create a local account, and create user accounts with no Microsoft account.
Makes it easier to do minor little things like drive encryption as well.
There are a surprising number of laptops where getting Pro edition simply isn't an option. Lots of brands no longer offer detailed build-to-order customization and instead only sell online the same three or four configurations per mdel that retailers stock.
You can but it's more expensive ($100 vs $35ish?) and is done through the Microsoft Store and a Microsoft account which is what some people are trying to move away from.
This. Way easier than any CLI workarounds, and pro is very available. Just don't buy your laptop from Best Buy and the likes. Stick to the better product lines. ThinkPad, XPS, Precision, Latitude, EliteBook, ProBook, Surface, etc. almost all come with pro as default or as an available option.
Just stay away from the more consumer oriented product lines
I was trying to install security updates into a ~8 years old laptop the other day. It's been updated to Windows 10 before. The updates were OTA, but after it completed there was no way to log into the local account without logging into a Microsoft account first (while it being connected to Wi-Fi). Here's the kicker, since this still being on the pre-login setup screen, there was no option to disable Wi-Fi either.
I consider myself fairly technically apt and I can google solutions with the best of them, but I gave up after windows 10, they are just data mining everything, being privacy hostile at every turn. I liked windows 10 as far as looks and usability, but eventually I just gave up and went to Mac and I’ve been a linux user as well (at home desktop)for 15+ years so it felt like home anyway. I requested a Mac laptop for work as well, and while I miss out on some resources at work (mostly limited IT support) because of it, it doesn’t hinder my work or get in the way.
Who knows for how much longer this CLI escape hatch will exist though. Maybe at some point MS will implement mandatory online checks into their OS, similar to how some games DRM schemes work. Then you'll only be able to use "offline mode" if you connect to your account every XX days, or subscribe to a business plan for longer durations.
I'm working on a personal Win 11 Pro machine right now using a local account. I never made an online one. Also I wonder if I uninstalled OneDrive over a year ago, because I don't see OneDrive in File Explorer or Task Manager. I've had this laptop for over a year, so OneDrive has never returned in all the updates since.
Yes, you can. I just now downloaded a win11 23H2 iso and installed w11 pro without going outside of the OOBE. Sure, you shouldn't have to click 'domain join instead' etc, but you can absolutely do it without doing anything outside of the OOBE.
I've definitely seen laptops from multiple OEMs with Pro edition pre-installed that still don't offer the local account route without first going through the CLI to bypass. I think the only other route remaining is to just not have any NIC that the installer can recognize.
here are the steps I just used a few minutes ago to use a local account. You can do it without leaving the OOBE, but you shouldn't have to go through so many steps to do it.
Because on Windows, the CLI is used to circumvent the highly smelly patterns that Microsoft puts in your way to force you to act in a way that is financially interesting for them, even though you've paid for their shitty OS already
On Linux, the CLI (in a similar scenario) is used to... install the software. And you can probably use a GUI package manager depending on your distro.
They are different points of contention and I think both of your points are valid - though only really linked via "CLI dickery".
You are correct that MS is being annoying, stupid and pushy and causes me to resort to CLI-dickery/regedit/service-disable/google-what-fucking-tickbox-to-untick-now to make it calm the farm.
Linux doesn't try to mess with my farm. But I only get 80% - 90% of a farm to start with and have to google "How to do/fix [XYZ],[abc] and [123]" and the answer is always CLI dickery. Last night it was "Use Vim to edit [this] file." Great, then I had to google how to use Vim. But wait, I only want to edit a file so use any file editor! But now I need it to run under sudo...
Both OSs have their issues and CLI dickery isn't going away.
But with MS, I paid them so I feel entitled to have expectations as to product behaviour - especially when it keeps trying to change from what I bought.
> Because on Windows, the CLI is used to circumvent the highly smelly patterns
And on Linux you use CLI to investigate why the hell a modern distro (Rocky 9) hangs up if you run anything more complex than a ping. Or just hangs up if you don't touch it at all, just a bit later.
ANd it requires 9 hard resets (thankfully there WAS an option to do them, it wasn't some desktop class machine an ocean away) and digging and digging what is exactly happening, why it happens and what magik incantations needs to be CLI'ed on this exact version of the distro, because other versions are reporting what everything is correct... yet the machine still hangs.
Source: just spent 4 hours in CLI dickery for that great, stable and unkillable operating system.
But of course, if MS OS - it's 'CLI dickery' but if Linux - then the only time you touch CLI is to 'dnf install magic'
And yes, the real difference is what for the most part you don't need 'CLI dickery' on Windows, so when someone argues for the Linux-like OSes as an a better alternative to Windows it doesn't sounds good.
> ...you can straight up block OneDrive and other cloud functions with Group Policy.
The world has certifiably lost its mind if this or any of the workarounds mentioned by the parent are acceptable to the baseline UX of a major paid OS.
And QuickBooks Enterprise, and CAD, and Windows-only CRM systems, and Windows-only internal financial programs in banks/credit unions, and Windows-only programs in government environments...
It's a lot more than just Office that requires Windows.
Anything I need from ms office I can do with their online apps. They’re good enough for the company I work at and like 99%of other possible places I might work. For my personal stuff markdown and libreoffice are fine
Is there a case where Google Docs or LibreOffice cannot open a docx or pptx correctly?
I haven't used Word or Excel since their '97 version. Even at work I can't remember a situation where I specifically needed the MS implementation.
Google sheets just is no way superior to excel. I’m not even sure how one can say it’s superior. Keynote is fine though. My presentations are just pictures and texts. I refuse to do transitions and all that other garbage.
Feeling vindicated in having gotten rid of my windows comps and gmail. I used to have a dedicated linux box but lately have been preferring the ease of macs. Maybe one day I'll get another linux desktop up, or just run it on the m2.
I don't think I have had a Windows machine in my home for over 15 years now. I also have an air gapped Haiku OS Machine for when I just want to get some work done.
I did also have a 2011 Macbook Pro until last year, it was used daily until the entire thing just packed it in one day in a spectacular fashion. Plugged a tablet in and the entire power system just failed. It was already on its death bed before that.
I'm not the target market for Windows, haven't been for a while.
But I genuinely cannot figure out what Microsoft's vision for Windows 11 is. Or if they even have one beyond "idk, shove crap in, meet OKR, get promotion... maybe?"
For a while, it seemed like they were focused on making sure that they could link as much of your activity on your computer to you, as a person - witness the ever-increasing challenge of an offline-only account, which means the value of knowing the email address of the signed in user is substantial. And then they embedded ad delivery as a first class participant in the platform - the sort of crap that used to be common from people who installed Bonzai Dancer Cursor Free or such is now literally part of the OS.
... and then it's just gone weird. AI with Copilot, Recall, etc. There doesn't appear to be a coherent vision of what it is, beyond a place to shovel crap, deliver unwanted applications (that they get paid to shove at people, presumably), and install lots of updates.
Linux has problems, but there are no shortage of distros that just run apps, without delivering all your behavioral surplus up for collection, and that's what (IMO) an OS should be. Windows 11, from the outside, doesn't look like it's serving me. Except in the sense that it's focused on "serving me to Microsoft for further subversion of my will."
... and apparently Windows will now orange screen? Last time someone offered to let me touch a Windows machine, it orange screened in protest before I could even touch anything. At least the feeling is mutual.
> But I genuinely cannot figure out what Microsoft's vision for Windows 11 is. Or if they even have one beyond "idk, shove crap in, meet OKR, get promotion... maybe?"
100% agreed
I can't figure out who MS's target audience is for Windows now. They're losing marketshare to Apple in the casual home user market. Heck, based on my last two jobs, even developers are switching to MacBook, though I acknowledge that that's confirmation bias.
Technical users are happily switching to Linux or Mac.
That leaves who else? Gamers? They're still stuck on Windows depending on the games they play. Anything written in a cross-platform like Unity is fine, and Proton is getting better and better, and now even many anti-cheat software has a native Linux client, but some major games with proprietary engines still struggle under Linux. Hopefully more games start getting native Steam Deck support, which ends up making them Linux native.
But like...how many customers is MS going to burn for short-term gains?
> But I genuinely cannot figure out what Microsoft's vision for Windows 11 is.
I wondered that also, before WSL. After WSL I think they're squeezing every penny out of Windows while preparing to transition to a hybrid OS which over time could become more and more similar to Linux, except for some MS closed source sauce (module, library, driver, ...) that would make some very popular app developed under it not run, or run slower|crippled on real Linux.
A question I ask of a lot of thinking is "What is your end game? Do you have even one?". Not saying you need one but it is a helpful question to get some context.
Regarding Win 11, this looks like thinking towards the next quarters engagement metrics. Who knows what change will occur for the next quarter?
Probably incorrect conspiracy theory: with the success of Azure and also due to basic common sense, anyone inside MS that gives even the smallest shit about OS quality is a huge Linux fan. But, they have this awful legacy OS dragging them down, they can’t get rid of it because of various contracts and general shareholder expectations. They added as much Linux to it as they could really get away with, and their only good program (VSCode) has been ported and works perfectly fine on Linux, so things are mostly looking OK.
The only thing left to do is to tank Windows and get rid of that legacy support burden once and for all.
I think it's that, plus following where the money is coming from. While it's nigh-impossible to get retail customers to pay for windows and they want to get enterprise used to the idea of bringing everything into their 365 services, windows will be seen as a loss leader for other parts of the business, which includes advertising. Similarly I think google's purchase of doubleclick had a large influence over the years, android and chrome were in part ventures to present their ads.
>But I genuinely cannot figure out what Microsoft's vision for Windows 11 is.
An operating system for the common man (and hopefully a subscription revenue inlet).
We need to acknowledge that cloud backups are a good thing for most people, we're talking people who otherwise never take backups no matter what and then cry when they inevitably lose their data.
The only problems here are OneDrive is absolute roasted garbage with how it actually executes the concept and Microsoft account integration is far too fucking obnoxious.
I run a cloud backup service. Cloud backups are good for you, the user.
Therefore, I have the right and moral obligation to break into your computer and upload all of your data to my own servers without your knowledge or consent.
I've never found any compelling reason to set up Windows 11 (or 10) with an online account. Things like this just reinforce my decision to stick with a local account.
The only one I ever found was that it made new installations of Windows free with a digital licence associated with your account. I don't know if this is still true of Windows 11.
I ended up making an MS account to store the license info but I just use it once per install to log in/activate then create a "real" local account. Hopefully this still works.
OOBE\bypassnro still works. I've been setting up a bunch of new machines recently (last was yesterday) that I've had to connect to a local domain, so this made it so much easier to just make a local account then domain join the machine.
Hit Shift + F10 at the Windows 11 setup screen to open a command prompt, then enter `oobe\bypassnro`. After this, skip connecting to a network and this will allow you to create a local account.
It's extremely obnoxious that they've made it this difficult.
It's not possible to install a local account any more. Apparently all the loopholes have been closed. It just loops you back to the "oops looks like you lost internet access" page.
I made a new account - installer<date>@outlook.com with no@thankyou.com as the backup email (which you have to give). Microsoft didn't like that, so it made me go through 10 minutes of captchas (captcas in the OS install - wtf)
Then it forced me to give it my birth date, ostensibly to check if I'm of age. Could just ask "are you older than 13" but then you don't get that sweet data.
Finally I booted into the OS, and I made a local account.
I spent 30 minutes going through the awful menus trying and probably failing to disable all the crap that sends all my data to Microsoft. Some of which can't be disabled in the Home edition.
Then I tried to delete my "installer" account. Oops, sorry, we have to "verify" who you are by sending an email to no@thankyou.com. Oh, you don't have that? No worries, just give us your real email address and we'll allow you to log you in after 30 days.
Then later I check my real name gmail account and there's a Microsoft email with a login code. I never gave MS this email address. What the hell??
>It's not possible to install a local account any more. Apparently all the loopholes have been closed. It just loops you back to the "oops looks like you lost internet access" page.
This simply isn't true, I did a computer with Windows 11 Home 3 days ago with local accounts.
Yes, it does. I'm not the only one in this thread, the other Windows thread from today, or online that has installed Windows 11 Home in the last week and successfully setup local-only accounts.
When dozens of people say it still works and one says it doesn't, chances are the one person did it incorrectly.
I'm not sure what to tell you. Friday, 3 days ago, I setup a brand new Windows 11 Home computer.
I didn't connect to Wi-Fi, I did OOBE\bypassnro, and I created my local account. Nice and simple. There are other people in this very thread who also had the same experience as me.
having performed the oobe bypass , it has not been possible on machines by some vendors , while continuing to work on others ... on a side note it seems hypocritical to use anecdotal evidence while denying others the opportunity ...
>use anecdotal evidence while denying others the opportunity ...
They said "It's not possible to install a local account any more.".
I'm sure you can understand why my own memories of just recently doing the apparently impossible thing will hold more weight -- to me at least -- than a comment saying the thing I just did is impossible.
That might not be super convincing to an outside reader, but for me the alternative is to conclude that I'm having a multi-day hallucination.
It'd be hard for me to pretend like the anecdotal evidence is equal in this situation.
I mean, you're answering a question here, so it doesn't really make sense to start your reply with 'Or'. I get you're trying to be snappy back, but it doesn't really work here.
That aside, the point is there are a ton of possibilities why it worked for you and not another user. Just because it worked for you and the other people reporting it did (and dare I point out some confirmation bias for you dismissing the other people saying it didn't) doesn't mean it still works universally or in newer/older or even different regional versions of an image.
I feel like a crazy person, trying to convince strangers on the internet that I really did manage to install Windows with a local account. Why? I'm not even sure. This isn't how I imagined my future when I was a kid.
You can take the win here, I probably used an obscure regional version from 1998 or something. To quote the OP: It's not possible to install a local account any more
I appreciate that I came on to see you say this, because I was about to reply quoting you saying I can take the win, saying I wasn't trying to compete and maybe that was an issue.
FWIW, I don't doubt at all that you could create a local account. I have yet to move to 11 from 10 for my VM setup and want to avoid doing so as long as possible, so I've been sort of tracking the issue, as that they may remove it permanently is a slight concern and interest to me.
> Then later I check my real name gmail account and there's a Microsoft email with a login code. I never gave MS this email address. What the hell??
I was with you until that part - everything else seemed plausible and likely true. This one is a lie, I don't know why you felt the need to include it.
No idea how they associated it - possibly taken from my chrome login on previous install and then tied it with some combination of licence key, hardware id and IP.
I certainly never gave it to MS nor did I request the reset, nor did I log in to gmail on the new install.
Sure it could be random but come on, this is the first time I got it and it was just after I installed W11.
Forgot what it was (not Ms for once) which started discriminating against 124 year old people since you could not enter 01/01/1900 as a birthdate. Usually it's cut at 100 (I always say I'm born on 01/01/1900, there is no legal reason other than the "are you an adult" question)
It'd be so nice if Windows went back to offering three tiers: home, which assumes you want to log in and get on with your life and you don't care what the defaults are as long as things just work(tm); Pro, which assumes you know what you want and doesn't give you that unless you ask for it; and Enterprise, which assumes you're made of money and it's literally several people's jobs to manage your windows installs org-wide.
So we can just buy Pro and know we're getting an OS that we can configure instead of an OS that gets hijacked by Microsoft every single windows update cycle.
And this is another example of why i left windows. No matter how much customization I make, microsoft makes it very clear that it's theirs and that I am along for their ride. I find this absolutely intolerable, a total violation of privacy, and totally in poor taste; which, is at least on brand for microsoft.
It seems like microsoft can do whatever they want to windows, and treat the users with as little disregard as they please - and there will be no consequences. Their users will either allow it, or jump through the config registry to disable the latest unwanted behavior.
They're going back to dark tactics. Ads galore to nudge you into signing up for a Microsoft account, then an office 365 account. It's annoying and I'm going to switch to Linux.
At least a Mac alllows you to have a local account without iCloud. We are not allowed iCloud accounts on our work lappies due to the risk of client data leakage. It seems to me, unless the Microsoft cloud is 100% trusted you would not be able to use it at many places.
(We do have centrally managed computers and accounts).
> We are not allowed iCloud accounts on our work lappies
Is it possible to have an Apple account for apps and security updates, without iCloud? On iOS, the default login panel in Settings will sign into both iCloud and App Store. To avoid iCloud, one must use the App Store app to sign into "Media and Purchases", rather than using Settings.
Yes. It would be a pretty useless lappy if I did not get updates.
Oh, no app store as well. Installations come through something called jamf.
Updates are controlled centrally. In fact if you find one of our lappies on the street, it's pretty much useless as it's somehow connected to apple and our account. A full install from USB comes right up to a work login. I got a broken one once and fixed it (PCB level repair) thinking I'll just use it myself as it was to be thrown out. In the end I just sent it back to the mothership.
I have a home desktop as well, and I don't find the work one much harder to use.
maybe for macs. in ios, however, icloud backup for EVERYTHING is enabled by default IIRC and you need to manually toggle everything off before you run out of the paltry 5 GB you get.
m$ finds a way to bring together the worst of everything together.
Just this weekend, I've decided to nuke my Windows 11 drive because of Recall and all the shitty practives and give a sweet extra 1GB SSD to Linux Mint for storage. Didn't know Microsoft would give me additional reasons to feel good for doing it.
I'm not missing anything. I've got the newest Nvidia drivers and kernel which were all very easy to install and one search away to find instructions on how to do it. Everything is rock solid. No surprise dark patterns, no enabling/disabling of issues. I keep Timeshift backups of the last 2 days and one for last week and month. If whatever I am playing with on the system goes haywire, I just restore my system with Timeshift.
I've also been giving up on modern gaming, too much enshittification (loot boxes, engagement driven gameplay, messages for modern audiences, etc.) happening lately, but everything I've thrown at Proton ran great. I've been rediscovering the great libraries of retro gaming consoles, especially the DS and 3DS so my computer is actually a workhorse now and my gaming is single player retro bliss.
I'm all for hating on Microsoft for their continued destruction of the local Windows 11 experience, but I actually think this is a good decision. Assuming you're logging in with a Microsoft account, and assuming you have a OneDrive account, it's a better experience to set up the folder backup feature as early as possible in the set-up process. If you really don't want it, it's easy to undo.
I still don't like being forced to log in with a Microsoft account as part of the set-up. I prefer to log in locally, and then incrementally turn on the cloud features. But I've voted with my wallet and have moved to Linux and macOS for day-to-day desktop computing. I still keep a Windows 10 VM around for when I need it, but am doing all I can to avoid the "modern" Windows desktop experience.
What happens when your files are considered Bad and Microsoft removes them? When the OneDrive backend suffers bit rot or misconfiguration? What happens when your Microsoft account is compromised? When the photos of your kids in the bath are sent to the police? When you have a 10GB file that's frequently modified and the client then constantly scans it and uploads it? When your abusive partner, relation, co-worker or boss uses this to surveil you, tamper with or remove your files or even plant evidence? When your business or organisation now suffers from liability from not performing due data protection diligence of something they were not informed nor asked consent for? The list of reasons why this is terrible just goes on and on.
Any of this would be an implementation level fault, and Dropbox, iCloud, Google Photos and Meta's chat apps have had this solved for decades. I don't see why OneDrive couldn't.
If you hate the design, don't let your arguments rely on a bad implementation of what you hate. Make them work with a perfect one.
iCloud sometimes silently fails to download files. Dropbox have, on multiple occasions, resurrected years-deleted files, Drive is a dumpster fire - it doesn't even support exclusions, so will happily (try to) sync multi-gigabyte PST files, causing drastic CPU, drive and network IO saturation and Outlook faults. But hey, at least people consent to this trouble.
Linux and macOS is a great combo. I recently bought a full-spec UM790 Pro (Ryzen 9 with 64GB RAM), installed Ubuntu and colocated it with my router. I run vscode on my low-spec Mac Mini (M1 with 8GB RAM) with all the grunt work handled by the Ubuntu server thanks to the Remote-SSH extension. I saved several thousands of dollars by not buying a Mac with a decent amount of RAM, get the great macOS user experience, and develop on the platform (Linux) that I’m deploying to.
What happens when small-firm doctors, therapists, dentists, etc. are suddenly having your (their patients') medical information backed-up to OneDrive? Microsoft only provide HIPAA compliance if a certain paid tier is purchased. If they automatically turn OneDrive on how will this not be a privacy nightmare?
From what I've gleaned from my social worker/therapist house mate is that you're not supposed to be storing any of that data on a non-compliant device to begin with. They can't keep anything local, and use some portal to a company that specializes in HIPAA storage.
I agree in general though, there are plenty of documents that really shouldn't be suddenly dumped to the cloud
This is light on details, but according to the article, this only happens during the initial Windows 11 set-up, and not for existing users: "Quietly and without any announcement, the company changed Windows 11's initial setup so that it could turn on the automatic folder backup without asking for it."
Surely this has happened with this latest change? It got turned on for my work machine a few months ago and tried to upload some very large modelling files to the cloud. I have to keep that stuff in the root dir now, but most PC users don't even know what the root dir is.
> Assuming you're logging in with a Microsoft account
The whole issue lies within this assumption. Microsoft does not want you to use a local account, and they make it extremely difficult to setup your Windows machine without one.
Yep - I agree with that. I set up a Windows 11 machine recently and was still able to create a local account. I'm sure there will be ways to defeat the new requirement. I haven't tried this, but even if they forced a Microsoft account during set up, couldn't you just create a local admin account once logged in, then log in with that account and delete the first profile?
Replying to myself - I just tried this and it works as expected. After initial set-up with a Microsoft account, you can create a local account and log in with that instead (and also delete the first Microsoft account too).
Except when it doesn't ask you if you want it to do that, and suddenly after investigating why my games are patching slow as shit it turns out my OneDrive is full from game patches that it synced from my Documents/My Games folder and my network speed is being destroyed by OneDrive syncing the patches up every time the launcher replaces a patch file.
I'm all in for automated backups, but let the user know that their entire user folder is gonna get synced and give an option to disable it (opt-out) on the OOBE. Make this optional and explicit.
Note that this is only during set-up, so at that point you don't have any personal files on the machine. And this is only if you're logging in with a Microsoft account with a valid OneDrive account. The article is light on details, but I assume (hope) there's some UI to explain what's going on.
This isn't only during setup. The article says it turns on backing up of your user folder. Which even if it doesn't have anything on install, will soon
It’s better to make it optional. I may have files I don’t want Microsoft sniffing through. It’s great to have a backup as an option. But to just upload “Documents”by complete surprise is pretty dirty. I’m sure it’s buried 20 pages deep in their EULA somewhere though.
If Microsoft is determined to make money from One Drive, could they please improve the product? My work laptop routinely pegs a core doing who knows what. When there is something to backup, the throughout is beyond atrocious.
Microsoft has all of the apis available to monitor changes on its own file system. Why does their solution seemingly run naive file comparisons to detect changes? What is it doing burning all of that computation time? Why does it struggle with tracking 100k files? A bubble sort written in Ruby should be able to handle 100k anything in seconds.
Interestingly, OneDrive is likely the only Microsoft QT app. It's amusing that the applications they aim to integrate most into their system are no longer native. Last month, they crippled Windows Co-Pilot by replacing the native app with an EdgeWebView, which has significantly less system integration.
Indeed. After being brow beat into using it MS rewarded me by syncing my personal PCs desktop shortcuts to the family PC resulting in a screen full of broken shortcuts. Good jorb MS.
Does anyone seriously use Microsoft OneDrive for backup?
It's 300,000 file limit means pretty much no developer would risk it considering the thousands of files in a typical app.
Believe me when OneDrive lost a heap of my files this year I was not impressed to learn of this serious limitation. To be fair GoogleDrive and DropBox also have similar limitations.
Azure Storage on the other hand doesn't have the limitation, is much cheaper and much faster. It's UI sux though.
I'm still searching for a reasonable cloud backup solution. Until then cheap external drives are the answer.
I love windows, but OneDrive made my experience on 11 nearly unusable. I never knew where anything was saved because of these indistinguishable, parallel file systems. The implementation was awful.
I just use it for playing games on steam, but lately it’s annoying even for that. I tried steam on Linux with proton and whatnot. It works okish, but there were too many issues with screen flickering. The Xorg/Wayland/nvidia info out there made it too confusing to deal with work arounds. A younger me would have persisted though.
So it looks like I’m in it for another Windows-issued flogging at least.
Microsoft will shrug off their "experiment" in cramming something they want down your throat as an "accident", like they always do after public backlash. If they get away with it, "great!", otherwise "sorry we stepped on your privacy, again."
Mean time, they got all your personal files to train their AI on, didn't they?
Definely part of tge Copilot iniative. Remember when openai and dropbox had to clarify that you had to agree to let openai scan your box for integration?
This is basically the same. They want your files to start doing copilot in the cloud for you'
It doesnt work to keep your data even if you acceptbthe premise that they wont keep yourbdata.
So what kind of Windows 11 is running on my PC? System info says Win 11 Pro, but I am only using a local account, was never prompted for an MS account, get no ads nowhere, no nag screens for upselling office/OneDrive/etc. What kind of magic did the PC vendor perform for me?
Is using server editions of Windows as desktop OSs any better? I mean in regards to making such changes (without explicit user's consent, at least) and wasting system resources with [background running] junkware, for instance.
At some point they had a 6 month trial for Server editions. It was a bit clunky to setup (audio support is not installed by default and I had to dig the old Xbox controller driver for W7 I think) but is otherwise a pretty good experience. Absolutely zero bullshit features installed and never changes things on its own.
The only issues I had were the version check of the Oculus installer (praise the soul on reddit who described how to bypass it with dnSpy), and some COD game refused to work on it too (too old, maybe it wanted a newer feature update).
> Absolutely zero bullshit features installed and never changes things on its own.
That's it.
For me, that's [unfortunately] the only "realistic" alternative out there, if one wouldn't mind the extra bucks, is somehow dependent on Windows environment and/or has no time to keep hacking and experiencing with Linux desktops.
I've grown to love Linux as a wonderful server OS, and as an occasional Desktop OS to play with on a VM.
Unless you're a hacker (at both work and in your free time), it's hard to keep using Linux as a main daily Desktop OS.
I am a lifetime Windows user (30+ years) and generally a laggard when it comes to adopting new products. However, during the past year, I've given more than a passing thought to biting the bullet and enduring the pain of moving to another OS (probably some Linux distro.) I'm a power user and a lover of good UI and it makes me very angry when a company destroys their product's user experience through awkward, clueless, and invasive marketing initiatives. Its weird how Microsoft seems intent on making their otherwise loyal customers increasingly distrustful of them by threatening to record everything that happens on their screens (if I recall correctly) and now by copying all their files to the cloud, whether you want to or not.
Hey, Microsoft: If you want to turn Windows into a bigger cash cow, how about charging a yearly fee for security patches, but then leaving Windows just the way it is (ideally at around the Windows 7 or Windows 10 mark), instead of encouraging your most loyal users to despise your product and start fantasizing about otherwise-uncomfortable alternatives? In any case, it's now increasingly likely that I won't follow you onto Windows 11. But go ahead, feel free to jump off the cliff by yourself, if you insist.
Copying your files to the cloud is not a backup when deleting a file means it's gone forever. What if you accidentally delete some files and need them back? You need a real backup for that, not a cloud.
Yesterday I found out that OneDrive was silently running on startup on my Windows 10 machine, only because I went to disable the EA launcher. Have never used it on that machine.
How is this not a compliance risk? Automatically transferring data, including personal data, to the cloud without explicit consent raises GDPR concerns.
To me Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook they all seem by a degree or another totally out of control. They seem to be so careless of any short-long term consequence that I wonder if there is any accountability at all or if it’s just a shitshow of who does perform better and get bonuses
They’re all monopolies. We just need to formally redefine the terminology around anti trust to punish the anti competitive nature of all these tech giants
Remember the MS case from the 90s? It didn't bring the supposed split and instead, end-users got an option to "hide" various software. The company kept its dominant position and is abusing it as we speak. Even the browser choice window enforced by the EU didn't change much IMO. Surely, Firefox managed to cut slice of market share but lost it to Chrome which heavily "promoted" their browser. In the end, we're living in a Chromium-dominated reality where even Microsoft uses it.
I'd like to believe that we still can found politicians, govt officials eager to work for the public interest and against wealth of the corporations, their monopolies. But it seems almost impossible considering lack of significant and damaging to the monopolies antitrust proceedings in last 20 years. I'd assume there are deals behind public eye where govts turn, well, a blind eye - perhaps getting something valuable in return.
Is this even new? Pretty sure I dealt with exactly this setting up a Windows 11 install last year. Had to do it multiple times too due to a flakey SSD I ended up returning.
New cancer from Microsoft is exciting news. But I'm still dealing with the candy crash AIDS. How can I remove this crap from my computer? And also is there a way to remove the ads? Do they have some kind of an extortion plan like Google or I'll have to hack myself through it?
They've been at it for years. I'd genuinely be surprised if this cracked the top 10 worst things Microsoft have done to Windows users.
I think there would need to be a concerted effort at a grass-roots level, say from r/buildapc, to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows.
> ...to get new PC gamers onto an alternative for there to be a considerable shift away from Windows.
Have you tried Steam on Linux? It works amazingly well, either with native Linux support in games or through Proton support (their Windows emulation layer). Quite a few people I know have gone that route and are shocked at just how well it works in practice.
I recently purchased a Steam Deck and I've been blown away by how games just work. I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss (and Codeweaver for Office support). Proton is amazing.
> I used to use Wine a lot for applications in the early 2010s and it was always hit and miss
IME Wine is still hit and miss for applications in general, even old ones. Games are just a particularly good fit here—they rarely care how well your COM marshalling or shell namespace or transactional NTFS or weird SQL-like inside Windows Installer is implemented. Not to imply that getting games to work is a simple task, just that the API surface is much less spread out, and any emulation improvements for a single game are more likely to improve support for a wider range of other games.
I think the discussion is tainted actually by technical people who used Wine in the bad old days, haha. I fought Wine a decade ago and it was pretty bad. If anyone had asked, I’d probably give the “dual boot, may as well keep Windows around as a glorified console” spiel.
A non-technical friend got a steam deck, when I asked what OS he’d used I got a response along the lines of “oh, I guess it must be Linux.” It the thought about what OS hadn’t even occurred.
I just wish Proton supported macOS. It being Linux-only always felt like their goal was never actually cross-platform gaming, but specifically SteamOS being able to run everything.
The Nvidia experience on the beta channel is shockingly good now, too. The big sore spot for gaming on Linux was trying to convince Nvidia users the experience was worth their time. Using 555-series drivers on GNOME Wayland right now is pretty much flawless.
Proton has been huge for Linux gaming, especially since the Steam Deck launched. Apple’s Game Port Toolkit is also quite promising on Mac side. Unix based OSs are seeing something of a vg renaissance.
YMMV there depending on the specific game, both of those anti-cheats can work on Linux but the developer of the game has to opt-in to allow it since their Linux implementations are much easier to bypass than their Windows ones. There's games like Rust which use EAC but have refused to enable its Linux support for that reason.
Offer to install it to people who experience difficulties with Windows, and never lie about it being much simpler or N times faster; don't forget to ask first if they use any special software/hardware that requires Windows or has only Windows drivers. Offer alternatives, but always be clear that they're not the same thing. 99.9% of non professional Office users wouldn't even notice the differences with LibreOffice, but that's not a good reason to tell them that the two products are identical: they're not, but one is open and free, both in price and in how it respect the user, which for many people could count a lot more than the extra features MS Office has over LibreOffice.
One thing that worked for me many times is that I always offered full support for any problems the user would encounter, and to install Windows back and for free if after a given period of time they didn't find Linux usable for them. One has to understand that the common non tech user trying Linux can't easily phone their friends, coworkers, kids, nephews, etc. not even the PC repair shop down the street and magically find a Linux expert, so they must be given something that works and is well supported.
Word of mouth will do the rest: most users don't care about pervasive advertising or spyware, Closed vs Open Source etc, but others do, and they're the ones telling about Linux and bringing other users in.
Which do you think is the bigger risk to ordinary users?
- someone hacks into Microsoft and accesses their files from onedrive (for passwords/blackmail-info I guess?)
- Microsoft looks at their files in onedrive and does something bad (not sure what)
- someone hacks into their computer and accesses their files. Or someone does so by causing the user to download something bad
- the user’s ssd fails or is corrupted because they have consumer grade hardware that is not treated particularly well, taking all their documents with it.
- the user accidentally deletes some important document (or eg drag-and-drops the contents of their document somewhere else and autosaves the now blank document, or they lose it some other way)
I think the benefits outweigh the risks for a lot of users for this change. I don’t know how onedrive works but one could imagine it working in a reasonably secure way by encrypting data at rest (secure keys on device would be nice but bad UX; key-derivation function probably better). IMO the real problem with the feature is typical big-company lack of coordination (the amount of free storage isn’t enough for how much people typically need, even right away) and lack of incentives to fix it (the increase in paying customers is probably worth a lot more to whoever caused this change than the increase in annoyed users due to drive-full warnings) and the idea that that people might pay Microsoft for more storage (that you can’t easily pay for remote reliable automatic backup storage when you set the OS up does not feel like a particularly big advantage of free software to me).
I think there are things not to like about this but it doesn’t seem to me to be the obviously terrible thing your comment suggests. Certainly it seems less bad than lots of other recent windows changes.
There's no justification here for turning the feature on for users who have already explicitly chosen not to use it, or for not presenting them with the choice.
I mean, the person who caused windows to behave this way surely had some justification, even if it was self-serving. I think a choice would be better but I also think that being on is a reasonable default for users.
I don’t understand the point about users explicitly opting out (and that being switched?). I would chalk such a thing down to the kind of big company systematic nefariousness you get (no one needs to say ‘make it ignore the opt out’, they just implement a default wrong and don’t notice/fix/investigate the bug because KPIs increase)
Having external backups set up correctly is pretty good for users, and I think that would justify trying to make it more of a default. This seems pretty obvious to me, but I expect if Microsoft did surveys they would find people complaining about how terrible losing a document or disk was for them in the past. I don’t know what ‘explicitly chosen not to use it’ means, but I think you or I would probably consider such an action to be more deliberate than the average user doing that (guess: trying to get rid of notification or reduce steps in install or just randomly clicking through screens is reasonably likely).
> I don’t know what ‘explicitly chosen not to use it’ means
This is the giveaway that you aren't saying anything in good faith.
> but I think you or I would probably consider such an action to be more deliberate than the average user doing that
Nice appeal to our superiority or whatever you want to call it, but this is irrelevant. The "average user" is no less deserving of the choice and naturally it's up to them to make the right one for them, not Microsoft.
Your whole argument is just diminishing the value of peoples consent.
I thought I must have been missing something so I reread the OP, but I still don’t get where one ‘explicitly choos[es] not to use it’?
For a new computer I think it looks something like:
1. Set up with your Microsoft account which you may need to create
2. Now, if you were already using onedrive, your files are synced from the internet. If you weren’t then the default contents (ie empty/trivial) are being synced.
I don’t really see that as the user making any explicit choice not to use onedrive and the default doesn’t seem very bad. It doesn’t feel terribly different from other defaults like windows defender or scanning for nearby WiFi networks.
But maybe there are alternatives that do feel more like the user making an explicit choice which the OS overriding that? Eg if you upgrade an existing installation or go through some ‘transfer from other computer’ process so that the directories being synced aren’t trivial. The OP didn’t mention such scenarios so I’m reading between the lines/guessing here.
Do you have some scenario where the user clicks some ‘don’t use onedrive’ button and has their choice overridden?
<< Microsoft looks at their files in onedrive and does something bad (not sure what)
Some of us use documents that should not just end up 'in the cloud' for various reasons including legal, regulatory or just 'I don't want Redmont to have copies of my kids pictures'. It does not even have to be that they do something bad to it. It is merely that the act of taking it without user permission is a major violation of trust.
I definitely see why businesses might be hesitant about such a feature (obviously they could also read whatever onedrive-related contract they have with Microsoft and make an informed decision). I mostly think users don’t really think of this as some stark distinction, though perhaps they should. I still think the real risk of expensive (in the general sense) data loss is worse for users than the cost of this kind of ‘major violation of trust’.
What you say is true. And what you say completely misses the point.
The problem isn't that cloud sync/backup is (or isn't) useful. It's that Microsoft isn't respecting users' agency to adopt it or not. If the product is indeed useful on its merits, then there's no need to turn it on by default or continually nag users who say "no thanks." And it's not like Microsoft doesn't have a history of underhanded moves to capture users into its ecosystem; see what happens when you search for Chrome or Firefox in Edge https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...
I think this particular change is less ‘evil’ than lots of the recent ‘evil’ Microsoft things, so I’m not very convinced by comparing it to bad Microsoft behaviour.
I think the big advantage of backups is that they’ll have been on for ages by the time you need them. That is, their main failure modes are:
- not backing things up because of some misconfiguration
- not backing things up because of running out of money/quota/having a card on file expire
- not having been set up
- deleting files you later want to retrieve
I think it’s actually somewhat hard to protect users from cases 2 and 3 without also ‘nagging’ other users. Causing a user to set things up could be a lot better for them than not setting it up because they quickly clicked through some screen during installation. There is some balance to be had and I think that as tech-savvy / high-literacy users, we should expect to feel like it is more on the nagging end of the scale than we would like.
I don't make that distinction myself. It all falls into the bucket of "Microsoft doesn't respect user agency." Their design decisions are a direct reflection of their (broken) values, full stop.
Let's say I don't care about privacy. Still left with a software that does what I don't want it to do without asking me, and making it hard to reverse it. It's a software I paid my money for, not some kind of evil "free" product.
And why do I need Candy Crush on my computer? Who knows better than me what I want my machine to do?
I think the bigger risk to people comes not from the consequences of actions like this but from this attitude. Who is in the center? Who has the freedom? The same goes for countries as well.
I’m not totally sure what the point you’re making is? I don’t love the thing where OEMs are paid to sell computers with a bunch of extra crap like candy crush installed.
Is the complaint just that windows comes with a feature you don’t want? (Does this all come from being strongly pushed towards / requiring having a non-local account?) I think that’s a reasonable opinion to hold but it feels somewhat different from disliking candy crush being installed.
Perhaps I’m too stupid to be able to think about the abstract power-balance consequences of turning on onedrive by default, or of similar things.
Windows 10 is very solid. I'm going to assume it will get updates for about as long as Windows XP did... I'll re-evaluate when they actually EoL it. Who knows, maybe that will be the year of the Linux desktop! (Spoilers: no.)
Agree re: Windows 10 (Pro). Though even with all the crap I’ve turned off, I can’t help but wonder what Microsoft is taking from my machine without my knowledge.
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged. I only ever boot into Windows nowadays when I need to compile and test a Windows build of software. I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this. I avoid MS products, they cannot be trusted.