Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything

anorphirith

they also force you to give a recovery account. i’m thinking microsoft’s hands are tied in this matter, it might be the government forcing a kyc strategy

jmclnx

If only Windows users fully understood why M/S wants you to create an account, people would leave en-masse. The ID along with their telemetry, M/S can map you to what you do and from where. That pretty much makes their builtin disk encryption useless.

johnea

It does make me wonder why people keep running this OS...

xg15

> "To avoid the next problem: 'Microsoft locked my data behind bitlocker, and now I can't get it back.' they need to store that key on the MS account." Doesn't that make the account requirement even more scary? So now if MS decides for some reason to lock my account, this will make even the data I have on my local disks inaccessible as well?

hollow-moe

That's a long article ridden with ads just to say "a redditor complains about shitty Windows OOBE requiring a Microsoft account (this has been the case for 10 years already)". Alternatives exists and are viable, now people still prefer pouring energy into complaining to a wall instead of actually moving. Getting abused is deserved at this point, it's been more than 10 years now, get a grip.

h4kunamata

Yet they use it, they do not really care, they even install Windows games that requires kernel level spyware read anti-cheat. There are Linux distros that are newbie friendly and looks like Windows. An end user that does not depend on Adobe, if you are still using that for whatever reason, they have no excuse to don't move to Linux distro OS.

password4321

I was in a hurry trying to log into my kid's Minecraft account, wound up clicking something to associate it with the Windows account... now the PC is in restricted mode and I'm having a hard time restoring the previously associated Microsoft account (among other things, have to ask permission to open the browser and approve the requests logging in on my phone)! Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.

throwaway81523

There's a similar thing with Google accounts and Android, amirite? I've avoided having a Google account but it hasn't always been easy.

esalman

I have used a Windows OS almost every day of my life since 1999 or so. Last December I had a choice and switched to MacOS for work laptop. Since then I seldom use Windows and I don't really regret. I still use an Xbox almost every day so there's that. In the last couple of weeks there's been some good news coming through for Xbox so we'll see.

ActorNightly

This may get buried here, but there is one important distinction missing from all these articles. Win 11 Pro allows you to enable local login, and disable all the intrusive microsoft stuff. Ive been on win 11 for the past 5 years and don't even remember my microsoft password at this point. IIRC you still have to set one up when you first install, but then once you switch to local login, any time you open up a microsoft app it makes you login in the app. Its not a "good" solution, but given that Win11+WSL2 pretty much lets you run any software out there, its worth while doing.

zer0zzz

I have not needed to use windows for anything productive for 15 years.

everyone

I'm doing more and more on Linux Mint these days, but there are a few niche things that still only work good on Windows. Windows 10 LTSC 2021 IOT is great tbh.. Install it without internet and you dont need a MS account at all.

madduci

Windows has reached the point where it deserves only to run in a virtual machine for some needs. Otherwise leave it behind and move on to Linux, BSD or whatever doesn't require a cloud account to work

freediddy

I was forced to switch to Windows 11 despite promising myself that I would never do this. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I INCREASE THE WIDTH OF THE TASKBAR? I have a 30" monitor, I can afford to have 3 or 4 rows of windows in my task bar. But I can't, not because it's technically feasible but because a human at Microsoft that believes they are more important than their customers made a decision to remove that option because they think they know better. Whoever you are, I hate you.

moomoo11

godspeed for anyone still using windows in 2026 i’m happy on mac even with its ux regressions, and my ubuntu workstation.

giancarlostoro

I ditched Windows in 2022. I'm not going back to Windows unless Microsoft makes an OS for professionals that is stripped down out of the box to show how serious they are. No ads of any kind, no garbage online account features, nothing, just core offline-ready Windows. I bet it would perform drastically better too.

awesomeusername

Linux succeeded in the datacenter because of some atrocious choices MS made early on. Now it's going to succeed on the desktop for the same reason Bye bye windows

donkeylazy456

asking account for insider program is evil.

cm2187

I enjoy windows 10 hugely now that it is out of support. It became way better when microsoft started tormenting the users of win11 instead of win10, and now that windows update doesn't bring new catastrophes and unexpected reboot, the OS is finally not interfering with usage anymore.