For example, RDP'ing to a Windows Pro computer with a Microsoft account becomes a lot more difficult. Another example is that Windows still needs a local username and password, even if you've logged in with a Microsoft account, and this can get out of sync if you change your Microsoft account password online, meaning you now have a different local password to your online account.
It's a frustration that power users don't need and this is probably going to force me to relegate Windows to a VM.
I log in with my personal Microsoft account on one profile. I use a local account for a work profile that also has a MS365 account added to it (to avoid being joined to the domain). I have a second MS account for a side project. I have a second local account for a second job that uses Google Workspace.
I use Windows over Linux because it’s more convenient. Although that’s only because I’m forced into Office for work. I could probably switch to Linux for 80% of my stuff. I have a Linux install for development, but rebooting to do a quick task is a pain.
I think the government needs to break up big tech. The anti-consumer behavior they’re engaged in because they have no competition is crazy. IT costs for small businesses have skyrocketed in the last decade. Everything is a subscription and costs 3-10x what it used to.
Well, shit me.
I've not used Windows since 8 came out. However, I would have loved to have had that workflow for a multiple desktop type thing.
Why didn't I think of that 20 years ago?
(for a long time, windows has internally supported multiple desktops, but it's not quite the same)
I'm of the exact opposite persuasion. RDP'ing into a computer with your Microsoft account is easier, along with file and folder permissions across network shares and other account related things.
I used to have to manage an AD domain to have the same set of accounts across all my various Windows machines. Now that I can sign in with my Windows account, its the same account across all my machines. Permissions are easier on network shares, its the same account. Friends that come over and want to use my machines can log in with their own account. Sharing files with them is then just granting access to their Microsoft account. Its pretty much entirely replaced the desire to run AD at home, which IMO makes things loads easier.
As for your password being out of sync, I've only experienced an out of sync password in cases where the device could not have an internet connection. Once the device was able to get an internet connection, it prompted for me to refresh the current device credentials (lock and log back in), and it then authenticated against the cloud Microsoft account. In the 10 years and ~30 different machines used I've yet to experience a single real frustration of the online account and local account getting out of sync for more than a single password change when literally in the wilderness. In which case, it was just the last password I used to log in to the machine, and then updated when it got network connectivity again.
Only if you use the same account on both computers. What means the GP will have to use his work account on his personal computer just to jump into another machine.
Here is where it gets complicated, what you say is true for personal accounts and Hybrid Azure AD accounts, but it becomes super difficult with pure Azure AD accounts.
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/windo...
In general, animations don't seem like a "power user" feature at all. Animations hint at new users ("hey, where did that window go when I minimized it") but aren't useful once you understand the abstraction.
I tripped over this when I first started using Windows 10. It felt so unbelievably frustrating to be locked out of a local system because I couldn't remember my MS account password anymore.
As a reward for that, I discovered MS was indexing the contents of all my hard-drives, could suddenly look at my local hard drives just by logging into my MS account from any other device.
Even tho I went out of my way to disable as much of the home-phone functionality as possible; Just takes one auto-update to default a lot of these settings without ever informing the user about it.
If it weren't for specific .Net framework parts and my hate/love relationship with Visual Studio I would have probably moved on from Windows a long time ago
Oh well. Minecraft and an Xbox 360 are my remaining use cases for my Microsoft account. I've long left that ecosystem. I do miss my windows phone though.
Nope, Windows Pro is targeted to businesses.
I agree that this will be a frustration point some power users don't need and while make some relegate Windows to a VM. Many power users have already done this and I don't see them changing direction based on this news.
Perhaps your license is OEM?
Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.
Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.
So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.
My hypervisor OS is a Linux Mint install, with Virtualbox. I use Mint as a daily driver. I also use Cloudready[0] for interacting with the Google ecosystem. I can't recommend Cloudready enough, although I think Google bought out[1] Cloudready and it's now called Flex[2]
[0] https://www.neverware.com/freedownload
[1] https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Neverware-is-no...
[2] https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/products/chromebooks/chro...
On my main PC I have an RTX2070 Super and a GTX 1070.
I pass the RTX2070 Super through to a libvirt Windows VM and via Scream & looking-glass I can play any and all Windows games at full speed. Elite: Dangerous, No Mans Sky, and so on, run at full speed inside this VM.
An alternative is to run a lot of games via WINE and/or Proton-via-Steam for Linux, which also works fine.
Turns out Windows is basically a gaming OS these days for me - the rest of the work I do gets done on Linux.
And lastly I think I'll be stopping at Windows 10. Running nice and snug in a VM.
Windows 8 is still supported upto 2023. As for Windows 7, ESU and turning off a lot of unnecessary stuff (ATMFD, Windows Installer unless you're installing an update, etc.) can get a reasonably secure configuration.
[EDIT: ATMFD is a dll for old Adobe Type fonts which almost nobody uses. It doesn't exist on newish Windows 10 builds and above. Given its security history and the nature of Turing-complete font hinting, the odds of there not being another security issue are IMHO low, and since nobody's looking there anymore...]
If they could get their act together, I wouldn't mind. Most software these days requires a log in for full use, including most major web apps (even HN, you can't comment without an account of course) and services like gaming consoles, Steam, Spotify, etc etc. It's normal. The only problem is Microsoft sucks at it.
On the plus side, I was able to contact support. MS is a lot better than some other tech companies that way.
- username
- password
- 2fa
- username
- password
- 2fa (but not too soon, or they’ll say I’ve used up my token supply for the day)
- maybe logged in, maybe do it again
I guess it's a good thing Skype isn't the mainstay it used to be.
That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise.
So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.)
My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.
It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of it being required.
Separately though, I think it's a good idea to have different Apple/Microsoft/Google/whatever accounts for different purposes. I'm not sure if it makes a whole load of sense to have your (business?) high importance Azure account on the same Microsoft account as your Xbox/Minecraft profile.
Story: I have two Minecraft accounts (I used to do plugin work and it made testing easier to have an alt.).
I migrated my main one to my MS account (one that's been in use with xbox and O365 for a decade+ at this point), no problem.
I migrated the second one to a new account a few weeks back after they pushed that it'll be mandatory after 10th March; usied a gmail address for the new MS account because I'm done dealing with outlook.
It all worked, for a week.... I'm now locked out of that second account, with them demanding a mobile number to "verify" it's me...
I haven't had the energy to go yell at them yet. It's the same bullshit I hear happens with twitter accounts where they also demand a mobile number.
The truth is I think my "primary" account has my mobile number already attached... and I'm scared that I'll lose access to that as well if I try to use it to unstick my second account, getting "auto-banned" in much the same way they described my second account (which ONLY ever got used to login to Minecraft) for suspicious automatically detected activity and violation of TOS.
Benefits really depend on your threat model. Login process uses same credentials which can access everything. But afterwards, the credentials stored in Minecraft has limited access, if third party has a way to steal them.
Developers by the very nature of their job are OK with torture, so I guess this will go un-noticed. Hopefully it will be unobtrusive as well, I mean how many more roadblocks can MS put up on that path to WSL prompt/environment. Its a small price to pay - (negative shout-out to System 76). But hopefully Win11 is more intuitive/bearable for people who live on the CLI.
Not if you're a back-end coder or a system admin/DevOps. You might tolerate some level of torture, but you for sure won't be happy about it. Ripping out Cortana, Edge and the Windows 10 start menu are literally the first items on my "setting up a new machine" checklist.
Aside from that, I have never been okay with Teams (beyond voice calls, that's the one thing I'll defend them on) or SharePoint, even if I do have to use both occasionally. It's not like I have any say, but when I have a chance to say my piece, I complain about them openly.
So far, doing most of my work on a Linux VM on a laptop that was well managed by the internal IT team (and with local admin permission granted as needed) was the only reason why I put up with the nonsense that was Windows 10 anywhere.
And it sucks so much, there is no good reason but short-sighted greed to push for this, I'm happy to pay for a windows version I own and feel like an owner of, this kind of product just isn't developed anymore apparently.
I don't think users of Windows have been the primary focus for a long time.
Sure, there are extensions now that almost make it an IDE (integrated debugger, support for some build systems, etc.) but if you need the real thing, get the real thing.
For debugging native code I always bring up Visual Studio or WinDBG, but as an editor, VSCode is significantly lighter and faster (despite it being built on Electron) than full VS.
And it's all due to how Code is both open-source in spirit and in truth, and aren't beholden to silly sales targets. You can see what this sort of thing does to a project when the Visual Studio 2022 team tried to move `dotnet watch` HMR functionality to Visual Studio 2022[0] instead of leaving it in VS Code.
If I remember correctly, when you install Win11 Home, it forces you to login with a Microsoft account. But the easy workaround is to unplug the ethernet cable, windows will realize it can’t connect and the local account option should appear.
Nevertheless, It’s stupid that MS wants this behavior by default
I'm sure, somewhere, there's a Microsoft VP whose "New MS accounts" KPI looks great...
When was the last time you used an iOS device without an Apple ID?
Now what? More telemetry, more cloud-as-default, required Microsoft accounts, Edge sabotaging Firefox and constantly making itself the default browser. I actually like Windows, I understand its flaws and how to configure it to get out of my way. But this is plain creepy. Why bother with all the "Microsoft ♥ Open Source" stuff? With VSCode? Their strategy makes no sense. I know they don't care about making money from Windows anymore, but surely they want to keep/attract power users and devs?
PM1: grow developer tools usage to get yearly bonus
PM2: grow bing cash back usage to get yearly bonus
Well look at how many people are fooled. Appearances matter, not just matter, make and break an entity. So PR is ramped up to 11. Propaganda works even if, and in a certain case, especially if there are contradictions like that.
>this is plain creepy
Always has been. For one example, which was a major turnoff for me from Microsoft, was them pushing the idea of Trusted Computing, back in the mid 2000s. Always-on internet was getting widespread adoption, so they tinkered with the idea: what if we would always check the software's and files' authenticity, every time they are opened?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing
Make no mistake, they're past the point where they need people to like them. With enough clout, all they (or any other large corporation) need to do is offer competitive prices while they retain their influence. The rest will take care of itself.
A couple of weeks ago I made the first step. Still running Windows 10 as base but with VMWare Workstation running Ubuntu LTS. I do all serious work in Ubuntu. Before that my whole dev setup was on Windows.
Still hesitant to move to something like ESXi (also because of the limits of the free version). But something like this is the next step, I guess.
Or Windows in a Linux VM. I haven't discovered that enough yet. Linux still needs more setup and maintenance IME.
It's the zeitgeist of computing. Can you point out a single large established entity that doesn't do this?
Mozilla's trademark policy forbade using their trademarks with custom builds that weren't Mozilla binaries, or at least with ones that might contain non-Mozilla modifications. (I can't remember the exact details of what was allowed.) In addition to that kind of creating a bit of a conundrum with the idea of free or open source software, it would also have forbidden Debian from custom-patching Firefox with their own security fixes.
The Debian policy was to keep stable releases static and only make security and bug fixes to packages in the stable release. Firefox didn't have extended support releases at the time, so the only ways of keeping the browser patched were to constantly update to new releases or to backport patches to older releases, so Debian was still patching Firefox by themselves. The Mozilla trademark policy made it impossible for them to keep doing that, or to even maintain their freedom to do that, and keep using the Firefox trademarks.
Debian is just generally very strict about licensing and playing by the rules. (They're also strict about adhering to their free software guidelines, which might be considered ideological. And yes, the distribution is opinionated, but that doesn't mean the rationale is always ideological.)
Some other distributions, especially smaller and less formal ones, might have just ignored the entire trademark policy and kept doing whatever they wanted despite it being potentially in violation of the conditions of Mozilla trademark use. Or they might have just shrugged and decided they didn't care about being able to patch the browser themselves anyway, especially if they were a rolling distro.
So, they're just like Apple and Google :-)))
BTW before people come and try to tell me how to change my billing address, I know how to do it. I did it everywhere. It shows correctly everywhere on the websites, but as soon as Microsoft creates the PDF invoice that I need to send to my accountant it has the old address on it, despite it being updated EVERYWHERE. I gave up on it. I basically doctor the address myself and then take a screenshot of the pdf with the corrected address and send the image to my accountant so he stops annoying me that the billing address is wrong.
My minor example of Microsoft address stupidity is that when I make a purchase at the Microsoft store, and provide a shipping address that I only want to use for that purchase, that address becomes the new default for subsequent purchases even if I specifically turn off the checkbox asking if I want to make the address the default. (I've had dozens of opportunities to test this.)
From a purely practical point of view, I just hate that using a MA auto generates your local username (typically into something painful) this way.
So if your name is "Jonathan Smith" and you like to use "jsmith", bad luck, here's your "jonat"!
If you could specify that at least, it wouldn't be so much of an issue to myself.
A local account that I later link up has given me this control. Now I'll need a throw away, new local account, then link to my real one. What a PITA.
(If anyone from MS is reading this, would love if you could fix this. Just add a username field to the online account please).
Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?
For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.
LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029
LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)
Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.
LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.
LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.
If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.
LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).
Buying LTSC licenses as an individual is not particularly easy or cheap.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
>LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)
LTSC 2019 IOT is supported for the same amount of time as LTSC 2019[1]. Maybe you're talking about LTSC 2021 IOT? That's the one that has 10 year support[2].
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
Edit - Typo
yes and no
ios devices must hook to internet to activate. they must phone home. That said you can navigate the dark patterns and don't need to use apple id (but you also can't install apps, etc)
for mac you can say this device doesn't connect to the internet. but as soon as you do it phones home.
Yes, but to clarify the specific point, you still do not need an Apple account to use a Mac, even if it's phoning home.
Some optimizations for laptops with graphics switching is great too.
It'll handle casual web dev without breaking a sweat.
Later on, you may want to branch out to More complicated Distros, but Ubuntu (or Debian) is the easy choice.
It's so easy you can't even be smug anymore using nearly any linux distro. Damn their eyes, I worked hard in the 90's getting my linux cred. Now, grandma is using it. Time to switch to Gentoo I suppose.
I still have to use Windows and other MS stuff for work, but I have work-supplied machines for that. For personal use, no more MS anything, not even VS Code or .NET, I'm done with them.
I will likely get rid of all Windows installations in my house (about six at last count) and replace them with Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution as soon as Windows 10 goes out of support. If I'm still writing code at that time, and assuming the developer division at Microsoft are not corrupted, I'll switch to Rider to be rid of the commercial Visual Studio and Windows dependencies.
No way in hell am I logging in to my operating system with a cloud account.
If you think M$ suxors, you're not the target demographic. I'd much rather manage 200 users with M365 than some fucked up combo of slack, Google, Dropbox, and libreoffice.
Yeah, you’d do that until the development team at your organisation would insist on working on macOS and linux, not Windows.
Then you’d have a field day, because we all know how well M$ tools work on/with non-Windows machines.
Better hope for complexity some times (:
I guess I should learn how to develop unity games on linux sooner rather than later.
If you are worried about gaming or other apps, Win7 won't be much better than Linux (won't have latest DirectX or anything), and may end up far worse by then.
When Windowds 10 is EOL you may want to look into acquiring a legal version of Windows 10 LTSC (or whatever they decide to call it at that point).
If you are not consuming their cloud product AND providing a stream of your telemetry data for them to monetize, you are of no value to MS and so invisible.
Also, guys be ready to make your phone number ready because Microsoft seems to require it. They have successfully impinged their tentacles on people's privacy.
This is how I've always setup 10 and 11 Pro, I never knew about the whole unplug the ethernet method. I knew that was required for Home, but not Pro.
For me, if a good OneDrive linux sync client was out there that would be a good reason for me to finally jump ship off of Windows. I suppose I'm just waiting for the right push to move away from Windows. Maybe this is that time. Hell, I already know that my personal PC (which I built early January 2021) "fails" the Windows 11 upgrade readiness check anyways so I already feel burned. All of the reasons why I used Windows for decades was because of its "value" for me. Lots of convenience, tons of community support and tons of software, etc. But not anymore. In my opinion, what Microsoft is doing with Windows is similar to what Disney is doing with their parks. "Value" is being removed while increasing prices and limiting "choice". Maybe I still do have _some_ "convenience" in using Windows. But I'm losing more and more reasons to stick with Windows over time as more of Microsoft's business decisions are impacting you and me, and not necessarily for the better.
> Are you sure you don’t want to use a Microsoft account? (tiny text-only button “I don’t want to use a Microsoft account”)
> Last chance, are you really sure you don’t want to use a Microsoft account? (tiny text-only button “I don’t want to use a Microsoft account”)
At least it was something like this during the beta.
You can use Apple ID voluntarily to sync all your settings and data across macOS, iOS on iPhones, iOS on iPads, watchOS and Apple TV.
Microsoft:
We have no tablets, watches and not even a phone. You just have a PC and we force you to use a Microsoft account so you can sync all your data with our marketing and sales department and the government if need to be.
Updated to Monterey, and suddenly 3 or 4 of the iCloud items were checked. Maybe there was something buried in the Monterey OOBE, but I honestly don't remember even getting a new EULA, and I'm usually VERY careful about looking for the anti-patterns that push cloud stuff.
Just popped System Preferences back open to see what the current state is, and it says I have 4.99 GB of 5GB available in my iCloud (presumably because of the iMessage stuff). Private Relay (Beta) has no checkbox and is spinning a spinner that says "Loading". No idea if that means it's turned on, or how to make it stop loading.
Not defending MSFT, this sucks, and I say that as someone who uses W11 Pro as my daily driver. But between them, Apple, and what Google does on Android, it's very frustrating that my only _reasonable_ option for truly offline local accounts is a Linux machine. I WANT TO PAY MONEY TO HAVE A WELL-SUPPORTED MACHINE
So I did it with a temporary email address. Then I removed the account. Still on Windows 10.
Now and then I do a web search to see if other people ahve had this happening to them, but I've not been able to find anything. Then again, <insert the "search engines are crap" today discussion here>.
Given she had signed in with a Microsoft account, we were able to get the password reset there as well as retrieve the key from there. If it was a local account then I imagine both would have been much harder. So for 'most people' it is probably a good thing.
Suprisingly I needed to hack into an old admin account password on a laptop (that I setup on a family member's laptop) and it was suprisingly easy. After installing some software on a USB stick and choosing it as a boot device I was able to bypass the login password completely. Forgot the name of the software I used -- but there are literally a bunch of competiting alternatives.
When you see the “Let’s Connect You To A Network” page, hit “Shift” and “F10” simultaneously. This will bring up the Command Prompt to which you type the command: taskkill /F /IM oobenetworkconnectionflow.exe
When Windows 11 setup detects networking is not possible, it will let you create the local account as always.
If so, I suspect that Microsoft have succeeded in their goal to get everyone to use their accounts, because I don’t see the vast majority of users going down this route.
It was not mandatory in Windows 10, thus there was nothing to bypass (on Home maybe you had to ensure you are not connected during OOBE though, at least on some versions)
IIRC in the official specs of Windows 11 Home they specify that you must have an Internet connection and an MS account for the initial setup.
I doubt killing processes during OOBE is officially supported...
You actually have quite a bit longer than that if you're willing to go with LTSC. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
I have to provision computers for users. I have to supply them with accounts and passwords. This becomes impossible.
I always wonder when I see stuff like this - isn't this a business opportunity?
but then the businesses that do it with linux start doing the same things (like canonical getting ubuntu to phone home and force updates, etc)
When I build myself a new gaming PC, I highly doubt that I’ll be running Windows on it. I’m basically done with Microsoft at this point.
I've already got my Slackware system set up for doing 99% of what I do.
Solidworks, I'm gonna miss you, but that's about all.
Not completly ruling out Ubuntu too.
- Windows requires some user authentication on release to prevent piracy
- ... but always caves or puts OEM backdoors for major corps/customers
- and those get pirated.
And I can create as many accounts as I want, without worry that MS will be mining the user data for advertisements.
And then delete the Microsoft Account? Would that leave traces?
what a poorly managed company, crazy
You should have stopped using windows years ago. There is no excuse, especially thanks to Valve for their work enhancing wine ecosystem and making your games work.
While Proton is great, it helps no one to suggest it's a solution to making all games work. There are absolutely enormous multiplayer titles still unavailable on Proton, if you can't play the games your friends play who cares if 99% of the rest of the Steam library works?
Again, I think Proton is great, and only getting better. It is not though a drop in replacement for a Windows gaming machine, for most people, yet.
I let my keys sync to my MS account. I mainly want to protect against untargeted theft of my computer, so having recovery keys online makes more sense than a recovery key printout or USB key in a drawer.
Why does your trust model include "running a proprietary OS that can do anything at any time" but not "the OS explicitly requires a user account tied to an online account?" That doesn't make any sense.
To be clear: there are plenty of great reasons to dislike this change. But they all fall under "user-hostile" or "creeping surveillance capitalism," not "shady conspiracy to steal your encryption keys." They can already have the keys if they want them, and there's nothing you can do about it as-is.
A very small portion of the market is even aware a Windows license costs money. If they've bought a Windows PC since 7 it's pushed them for free all the way to 11 and the vast majority don't build their own to find out they need a license (and heck it really doesn't do much against you if you don't buy the license these days anyways).
The real money in the consumer side is in the services and data, O365/teams/onedrive/bing/edge(browsing), which is why they push these so hard on default installs. It wouldn't matter if they used Linux as a base, their push would still be to push users towards these services.
That a few people who even know what Linux is would be more likely to use thire services if they stopped pushing them to the average user isn't going to sound enticing to Microsoft as they'd be losing a lot more than gaining.
It's just like how airlines used to make money with plane tickets, but now they mostly lose money with the tickets and make it back with everything else (both nickel-and-diming you and frequent flier miles). Flying is cheaper now, but incentives were better aligned when tickets were the cash-cow.
