back
1353 comments
The best thing to happen to Linux Desktop is Windows 11, with perfect timing too as modern Linux has been a joy to use as a daily driver.

Normally I'd be unhappy when a sleazy corp forces me to give up on 25 years of muscle memory of using my preferred OS, but I'm thankful they gave me the push I needed to rip off the ad/spyware laced Windows Band-Aid that I only need to do once in my life.

It's been over a year since I switched to Linux which has been a breath of fresh-air, all my dev tools work natively, the console is far superior and I'm still able to play all my favorite Steam games.

Best of all I'm not reminded daily that I'm using an OS that works against my best interests, I can actually use an App Store again that's been designed for the benefit of its Users, imagine that.

100% agree.

I supported enterprise Windows systems for a decade, although I had Unix and Linux experience as well and liked all of them.

I skipped Windows 8 entirely. For the 10 era, I had at least one Linux VM on each of my systems, and migrated to open-source where possible even on the host OS (Blender, Inkscape, etc.).

Windows 11 pushed me to flip things around - Linux as the host OS, and a Windows VM or dual-boot if I absolutely need to do something with that system that only runs well on Windows. These days, that list is very short.

All of the many frustrations of 11 become much less pressing when it's just throwing a temper tantrum in its playpen instead of interrupting serious work; the effect is magnified by rarely needing to interact with it at all anymore on my personal devices.

Linux still has a few quirks, but IMO there are fewer and fewer of those every year, while they seem to be increasing on Windows. The most recent 11 update has made Windows Explorer unreliable for me. I'm still stunned. The last time I saw stability issues with Explorer was on 98 SE.

I switched to Ubuntu on my main machine this year and even as a heavy 365 user it's better. Battery life is massively improved. I even still run the odd game on cs2. 11 feels like toy town in comparison.
Speak for yourself, I tried again to switch to Linux last year with standard Ubuntu and had multiple issues, the machine wouldn’t wake from sleep, would lock up with a grey graphics glitched login screen when locked, I tried to upgrade the OS and it broke all my graphics drivers, after I spent another few hours trying to fix it (and seeing a lot of very unfriendly and unwelcoming “help” from the Linux community), and running into other issues I didn’t list here, I gave up and switched back.

I’ve been a multi-os user for years, tried Linux on and off, but for now I have a windows machine I just use for gaming and a mac that I use for development and everything else. The truth if I struggled as much as I did and I’m a software developer with years of experience with this stuff, the dream of the general public using Linux is doomed. Every few years I hope Linux has gotten its act together so that it can actually grow again, but it’s still behind the times.

But my experiences aside, the truth is 99% of people would rather just make a Microsoft account than have to learn and switch to a whole new OS. It might be the breaking point for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s the breaking point for many. If the Linux community continues to stay blind about this and about the very real problems people experience that they insist aren’t problems, then they’ll continue to have a tiny market share, that’s all there is to it.

I used Windows since always and switched to Linux two months ago. On one hand I still run into lots of Linuxisms on daily basis and I cannot recommend the system to a non-IT personn - bluetooth crashes, GPU driver crashes, applications crash, devices crash, all that stuff that's always been there. At the same time I have to say that the switch was easier than expected, and last weekend I removed Windows from my drive. I thought I'd keep dual-booting for a while, but no. Wine and Proton are marvelous pieces of software, pure magic. Moreover, I cannot recommend Linux to my parents until it gets MS Office. My parents specifically need MS Office.
I made the jump to Linux 3 years ago, when I learned that Windows 10 support was coming to an end, and I really didn't like what Windows 11 looked like.

3 years, and not a single time I had any regrets. Not a single time I thought about moving back.

I went for Mint because I am a filthy casual, and as you put it, that system is a joy to use. On Windows I needed to do yearly fresh installs as I could feel performance degrading as time went on, On Linux the laptop is performing as well if not better than when I freshly installed it.

It's so good that I even donate 20 bucks to the project every year. It has no right of being that good and also free.

About games - not only I can play basically everything in my Steam library, but even installing things from other sources is very easy with minor tinkering. At least to me, Windows became nearly superfluous nowadays.

I daily drive Ubuntu, the user experience is comparable (in many cases better) to Windows 11. The only sticking point for me is display drivers. HDR on Wayland is barely functional (in my experience), and getting things like hardware accelerated AV1 encoding, full Vulkan API support etc to work has been extremely difficult. Every time I login using a Wayland desktop, only my main monitor is detected and it defaults to 60hz. I have to go through a whole process of unplugging the "undetected" monitors and plugging them back in. X11 doesn't suffer from this, but of course does not support HDR.

Yes, this is almost entirely Nvidia's fault, and yes I should know better than to use NV graphics cards on Linux distros; but frankly, the barrier to entry should not be having to replace an expensive piece of hardware to achieve feature parity. (Obligatory "Nvidia, f*k you!")

Also, the new look and feel is kinda botched. Win10 was sharp and sleek. Really a bad turn imo.
Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.
I swear I saw these exact same comments when Windows 8 released.
My biggest annoyance is that I specifically bought a Windows 11 license, from the MS store, using my MS account. I did this because I assumed that if something went wrong, I would always be able to recover it. I could never 'lose' the key if it was tied to my account.

Well unfortunately, MS screwed me. When I upgraded my PC I was apparently supposed to transfer the license before deleting the old PC from my account. Doing it in the wrong order lost the license forever - no way to transfer it.

Despite having one license, one account, and one PC registered, MS refused to help. I tried to call support, but there are NO on-call support anymore. Only automated online support. No chat. Nothing. I tried over and over for a couple days and got nowhere.

Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand. My first experience with Windows 11 was figuring out some dumb workaround to use a local account.

When I think back to Windows 7, the good feeling isn't nostalgia. It was the last user-focused Windows.

Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs. Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will realize very important parts of Windows are going downhill and remember what made Windows great.

Two weeks ago, after Microsoft reset my default apps twice in a week, I bought an external drive, backed up all my stuff and wiped Windows.

I’ve got Linux all over the place, in many cloud envs, and on older hardware. But I finally committed to it on my big, meaty, main desktop. The one I use for coding and banking and accounting.

I’m running a Linux distro full-time. I had to hack a few minor hardware things. Nothing ChatGPT couldn’t solve.

I’ll never do Microsoft again. I will prob add Apple MacBooks to my life, but my main grunt machine is likely to stay Linux. I’m fully vested.

I know I’ll never engage with Microsoft shenanigans in my home environment ever again.

I doubt it’s going to happen, but a part of me prays that people will eventually get sick Microsoft’s increasing bullshit and it really can become the Year of the Linux Desktop. Gnome has genuinely gotten pretty great in the last couple years, and I think a lot of former Windows would genuinely like it if they gave it a chance, and virtually any Linux you install will have less tracking bullshit than Windows.

I suspect, though, people will realistically just migrate to Chromebooks, which I suppose are “Linux”, but not what I would consider the “Linux Desktop”

The stated "reason" makes no sense:

> While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use.

If they're only worried that their users may end up with an incomplete Windows install, surely the solution is to provide a better way to set up Windows with a local account? It's not like people are digging around in CMD and RegEdit during the install for the fun of it, they could immediately stop everyone from using these workarounds by adding back the "set up with a local account" button

Rufus and Massgravel still function as a pressure release valve to prevent too much outrage from building up, but Microsoft is working hard to direct more and more of the flow into the channels that get them the most revenue. If HN readers want to set up a machine without any of the bloatware, with all the "developer-mode" switches turned on, without a Microsoft account, there are still ways to get it done.

I actually just set up a new laptop this morning with Windows 11 LTSC 24H2. I'm an engineer, I can edit config files and burn bootable USB drives and install Intel storage drivers in the setup environment and validate sketchy batch files and compare ISO hashes. Now that I'm done, it's got a pair of fully-offline user accounts, it stays out of the way, it boots in seconds, the Windows-only software I have to use for work is no longer nagging me about being out of support, I'm quite happy with it.

But it was not trivial. Had I not known what I was doing, there were a dozen ways it could have gone wrong. I suppose it's nice that I'm not vulnerable to Mossad surreptitiously installing a MITM-patched OS while I sleep, but secure boot makes it scary simple to turn your new laptop into a $1800 brick. And I have a good sense for which links are the tools I actually want to download and run, and which links are scams.

But it's nowhere near smooth enough for me to point a non-technical peer at it and say "Oh yeah, if you don't want your OS to do that, just install LTSC."

I do remember to have read a couple of years ago that the Windows Ui team got replaced and now only consists of Mac users, never having used Windows themselves.

If that is true, it's now wonder that they do not understand all the value that Windows NT has brought, why having a standard on menu structure, a standard for all UI controls etc made sense. And to understand that while Apple's mission is to provide a walled garden, Windows has been and is used in a million different scenarios. Taking away options will ALWAYS hit some of your customers. And there are a gigantic amount of applications where you want local system accounts only. Yes, Dear Microsoft, computers without an Internet connection do exist and are a common thing.

For us it's Win10 IoT LTSC so we have updates for a couple of more years, and by then hopefully the last remaining software and hardware we have will be usable with Linux.

Had to edit a .docx today to refresh my CV today...and realised oh...I don't have any more windows machines on hand anymore. Interesting how smoothly that faded away psychologically after 20+ years of windows use without me even overtly noticing.

Think MS is in for a rough ride on Windows. Short of corporate world - Excel/Sharpoint/AD - there is just no moat. Browsers work fine on all platforms, dev work is better on linux anyway and gaming on linux is rapidly becoming usable. And mac side is obviously competitive on various fronts too.

There's never been a better time to switch to Linux. For the longest time I was using Windows on my personal machine (for gaming), and MacOS for work. Not sure why, but one day I decided to try out dual booting Kubuntu (KDE Plasma + Ubuntu), and haven't touched a Windows machine since. Using MacOS feels bad now. I don't see myself ever willingly installing Windows again. MacOS is unfortunately something I still have to use.
Notice all the potential revenue operations for Windows: exfil your data, show you ads, sell your data, sell you cloud services. All these things require you to have an identity. Windows is not the product any more.
Discovered Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC edition recently. It's great! It is supposed to get security updates through 2032. It doesn't have Cortana, OneDrive, CoPilot, Edge, etc. (Which is a good thing IMO.) Nor does it require a cloud account to use.
Autounattend files are about to become far more popular...

And on that note, have to recommend this tool for them: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

Search for "Local-only commands removal" on the page for the relevant section:

  Local-only commands removal: We are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE). While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use. Users will need to complete OOBE with internet and a Microsoft account, to ensure device is setup correctly.
This is connected with windows 11 requiring a TPM. If all their users have a Microsoft account and that Microsoft account is needed to access all their passkeys, then they end up with a privileged position where they can aggregate info about user behavior based on their logins which, thanks to the TPM, the user is cryptographically locked out of interfering with, and their competitors are locked out of participating in by the fact that Microsoft controls the client.

As always, it's about controlling users via high switching costs. I hope we come up with an improved webauthn spec which ruins this for them.

How likely is it that this is a coincidence with all the pervasive "digital ID" (read: mass surveillance and control at an unprecedented scale) schemes also being discussed recently?

As long as WinPE and the core of Windows exists in its current form, there will always be a way to use Windows entirely offline. The modding scene also still exists, and although it's a fraction of what it used to be (the peak of Windows-modding was probably in the 98/2K/XP era), some extremely talented individuals remain and fight. (One might ask why they haven't moved to Linux; the answer is usually "because Windows is still more familiar, and it's more fun to hack and rebel". To them, to migrate to a different OS is to surrender.)

There was a great expression I read in relation to Microsoft's Xbox division, they recently increased their prices in some cases by 100% but one commentor said "They're too big to care".

I think this applies now also with their complete disregard for the windows 10 EOL. Exposing, if I remember correct : ~40% of the windows market [0]. This seems to me as negligence in their duty to ensure a level of security and quality.

The people who've made these decisions don't seem to realize that there are more options than ever to replace them. It's almost as if they're actively pushing people to find them. Their Azure offering is making ground though [1] and maybe that's where they want to put their efforts in. If that's the case, good riddance.

> “While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use.”

Imagine being able to use your device however you wanted to. Apperantly that luxury is no longer yours. I've had to setup windows 11 on machines with no wifi drivers from w11 and without the oobe overwrite I would not be able to complete the installation. What possible reason could they have for that.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk... [1] https://turbo360.com/blog/azure-market-share

I know that there are enterprises and individuals who need Windows. I also know that I had been on Windows my whole computing life and made the switch late in 2023 and there's never been a better time to switch to Linux. I could have switched much sooner!

I have found my Windows apps for everything work (or have equivalent or better Linux versions) and will soon be switching my non-technical wife over to Linux to avoid Windows 10.

For her, I've looked at her workflows and setup a configuration that I can use on her new machine that will setup all of her apps and menu settings so it's as seamless a transition as possible. She rarely needs to update her computer or apps, the latest Debian 13 "Trixie" release is what I'm going to try for her.

Bit the bullet and deleted the Windows partition from my Fedora dual boot. Good riddance. Will never give Microsoft another dime as long as I live
I wonder which teams are working on these features. I'd like to meet with them in person. There are a lot to discuss.
Microsoft doing this with Windows, Google doing that with sideloading...

It's a horrible situation. Specially what Google is doing, as there is no real alternative, like Linux is for the desktop.

We grew up with computers where you could install anything, code programs to run them for yourself on your machine. This was also valid for smartphones to some degree, and it's terrible to see that you're now in a position that you can't "just code an app" for your phone, everything has to be vetted by the big ones.

Once Recall spreads across Windows installs, let's say this takes 5 years, then all of the devices are no longer your devices, but just surveillance machines for those companies and their governments, granting you permission to use certain apps.

Maybe the biggest problem are companies like Qualcomm because it feels like they only grant companies like Google the permission to use their tech, and not us, even if we own the boards they sell.

Two things:

- I wanted to install minecraft for my boy. I couldn't just start a game. It required me to tie in account to the system. First I don't like that. Second is that we have lost pin, and could not remember password or something, so we have gone through maze of xbox, microsoft online settings and whatnots. On Linux? Pass account, and password, we are set to go

- The second encounter was with playing a older FIFA game. After launching it complained about some dll file. Turned out it was missing VC redistributable. You had to manually find, and visit, Microsoft page, download old type installer, which my kid was not familiar with (Next, Next, C: program files, I accept).

After so many occasions I see that linux is even easier than Windows. I use bottles to play Warhammer Boltgun. Sure it stutters some times, but not that much. The pros and cons of having Linux looks better every day.

The saddest part is, Windows 11's MS account lock-in feels like the logical next step for an OS designed by committees and PMs playing metrics games. The user-hostile design isn't isolated––it's just another symptom of a company where stock price and engagement numbers trump every other concern. What I miss is the era when engineers seemed to have more say, and features existed because they were actually useful. At this point, moves like this are basically an advertisement for Linux and Mac. Every time MS doubles-down, the free and open alternatives get that much more appealing.
Time for me to go all in on Linux. Ubuntu has been my daily driver on dual boot with windows since MS started using dark patterns to opt in to OneDrive.

My next build will be solo boot!

My work machine is a Mac though I don't get any say in that.

They've been marching towards this since Windows 8. Sysadmins have said this was coming since then. As soon as they added Microsoft account login integration this is what we all knew they were going to do.
I guess I'll be the contrarian in the thread: My main machine is Windows 11. I recently bought a refurbished laptop to make it a Linux torrenting machine with ProtonVPN. I first installed Fedora, which I hated. Where's the mininmize window button? Why are scrollbars practically invisible? What's with the hideous cartoonish desktop? I switched to Ubuntu, which I'm more familiar with. Installing ProtonVPN was an absolute nightmare. If I hadn't had so much experience with computers and if I didn't have AI helping me I would have given up. Windows 11 is a pleasure to use. I can't say the same about Linux desktop.
The biggest issue I have with Windows insisting that I use a Microsoft Account to log in is that I have a long and complex password set up for the account which is stored in a password manager. I don't want to dumb down that password, I don't want to use biometrics, I don't want to use a passcode or pin to log in as that is arguably less secure. I just want a local account which I can set up a convenient password for.

I'm fine with using online services, I just don't want my online services account being the thing that controls access to my local computers. Especially when it can be locked or deleted by Microsoft for whatever reason.

After my recent (and dismayingly poor) experience with a new PC on Windows 11, I wonder: Windows 11 installer did not recognize my wifi card (integrated in asus motherboard), so my installation was purely offline. I had to install manufacturer's drivers via usb key to get the PC online.

How is this possible in a world where MS wants installations to be online?

Meanwhile, Linux installer recognized the wifi right away and worked perfectly fine at full speed.

Even though the article says that Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” workaround earlier this year, I just used it earlier this evening to set up a new Win11 PC for a neighbour successfully (she didn't have a Microsoft account on her previous Win10 laptop, and wanted it the same way).

At the part of the initial setup where it asks to connect to a network, press Shift + F10 to open the Command Prompt. Then, type oobe\bypassnro and press Enter. The system will reboot and start the initial setup again in a non-network mode that allows you to create a local user account.

I was using Win 11 for a year or so until recently but I'd had enough. It was laggy and I was scared to download updates as they break things way too often.

I understand the complexity with the Windows codebase... it's fkn massive! However, to be able to push out a Windows update and break something literally every single time is something for the history books!

Anyway, I need Windows for some of my software, like my VST's (Roland Earth Piano, XLN Audio) so Linux isn't an option unless there is something I'm missing!

I use Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC with the Massgrave activation... that's me until I retire hopefully. I'd encourage everyone to do the same.

If I was Microsoft I would want the latest version of Windows running on every machine there is - old/new/slow/fast.

It's a platform which means you need it everywhere.

Microsoft Windows has really lost its way.

Normies that are upset with Windows will switch to macOS.

You guys are smoking crack if you think regular people are going Linux.

I recently bought a Windows laptop, and the first thing I did was figure out how to not create a MS account, and next was to remove all the spyware/bloatware, and then after that configure WSL.

When you get past all the garbage, it's a fine OS to work in. Then again, so is MacOS, many flavors of Linux, etc. As the importance of the OS itself becomes less and less important for general consumers when most people live in the browser for their day-to-day job, Microsoft will find it harder to sell licenses (maybe they already are?), and they will resort to more ways to extract money from users, driving more of them away.

fwiw, I prefer the ergonomics of Windows to any other OS for daily activities and non-dev work, but it's such a weak preference that I wouldn't hesitate to switch if they ever actually force any of this MS account or always-online spyware without recourse.

Surely, at the lowest level, there needs to be some kind of a local account. I would imagine ripping out the very concept of a local account to be totally infeasible. As long as that's true, I'd expect there to be a way to create one, even if that way ultimately no longer comes from Microsoft.
This is really going to screw over small places that still do manual setups on their PC/Laptops because they don't have the resources for a full automated setup.

They gotta make back those hundreds of billions they lit on fire to chase the dream of eliminating all their employees with AI. This will force a lot of places to pay for Azure Endpoint to setup their stuff if you really can no longer sign in without an online account.

Anyone still using windows should plug that hole and switch to linux or apple.

If you are trapped on windows due to a specific piece of software running a virtual machine on linux is your friend. Boot up windows only when you need it and the only thing MS gets is one datastream of your single use of their product and not your entire digital existence. Same also applies for Apple + vm.

Either choice on its worst day is better than what windows has become on it's best.

'We'll never require you to need an online account to log in to your system'

Look how that changed.

Windows Recall 'We'll never use this in any bad way whatsoever' Sure thing.

Windows 10 goes EOL in 8 days, with the EU forcing Microsoft to give their customer bases security patches. Not anywhere else though, and not in the U.S.

What was the end goal with that? Move everybody over to Windows 11; on their EOL page it lists places you can donate your old non-working hardware to. Forcing users to do what? Buy new overpriced hardware when what they have is fine?

People jumped to Windows 7 out of spite; with Linux Desktop marketshare still slowly, steadily rising over the last 10 months. Windows 7 is EOL and no longer receives security patches, so security wise people are a lot worse off than what was anticipated.

Here's the thing, I started up an old iPad last night and the e-mail no longer exists nor can be created, so I can't do a lost password, I can't log in, so I can't install apps, or even format the device without some 'Account Lock'

I own this iPad, as in: it's mine. Why should I, and why would I want to put MY device's access and security on the whims of company?

They want to own our hardware, and our software.

I for one preach Linux Desktop, Manjaro XFCE for me. I think people are sticking with Windows 7 despite it being EOL because games and their software will for the most part not run in to issues linux gaming may be facing.

That ain't the way. Your computer. Your choice. No cloud accounts/everything being logged on the desktop that people do, no 'requirements' to utilize the new software, and no 'requirements' to connect people to cloud backup systems to later coerce and push people to buy.

For those who don't know, there's an open-source script that automatically enrolls your Windows 10 copy for Extended Service Updates, which increases its life by another three years: https://github.com/abbodi1406/ConsumerESU
Can you use a Macintosh without an Apple account?

Sort of, but with similar limitations: The App Store, iCloud syncing, iMessage, FaceTime, and other Apple online services are unavailable unless an Apple ID is used.

What's the difference here?

I've been running Linux on my main desktop for decades (from when VMware workstation gave me access to windows on the same PC without rebooting). A couple of years ago VMware became worse and worse and KVM/virt manager is still missing critical features (gui performance is horrible on Nvidia unless you want to dedicate entire card and monitor to windows).

I'd love to have a nice solution to run run old windows XP and 10 on modern Linux with even 50% native performance (on Nvidia) but it's not looking like my wish I'd getting closer to being fulfilled.

So perhaps it is better Microsoft is actively trying to kill windows. Once it is dead it will be less of a moving target. We have amazing ways to run DOS. I hope one day the same can be said for windows. I have decades and decades of software I like to fire up once every few months to use (ham radio antenna simulation, PCB design, etc. Software I own actually own fully paid licenses for that becomes a pain to run). Currently I use kvm/virt manager and I'm suffering the bad GPU performance and crashes if I try to standby the PC.