CMD will open
Type (no quotes) “net user Prefferedusername /add” (replacing Prefferedusername with the user name you wish to use) and press enter.
Next type “net localgroup administrators Prefferedusername /add” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /active:yes” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /expires:never” and press enter.
Next type “net user administrator /active:no” and press enter.
Next type “net user defaultUser0 /delete” (this is case sensitive make sure the "U" is capitalized) and press enter.
Next type "regedit" and press enter.
This opens registry editor, navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE"
Delete "DefaultAccountAction", "DefaultAccountSAMName", and "DefaultAccountSID"
Right click on "LaunchUserOOBE" and rename it to "SkipMachineOOBE" and make sure the value is set to "1".
Close registry editor and type "shutdown /r /t 0"
Says a lot about what is broken, incentive-wise, about the modern Internet.
Definitely says something about your age though complaining about video versions of anything. Kids today don't even know what Google's search page looks like. They search in YouTube, TikTok type apps first. Since the location bar has also become the search bar while theGoogs pays browsers to be the default search, lots of people are not even aware they are doing a google search.
Also, some people will try things that are technically above their abilities normally. Having a video typing the commands in can be easier for them to replicate as it'll look just like the video. Text only from some webpage won't have those visual clues.
I much prefer text for this stuff too, but at least I can understand why something else is preferred by someone not me. I might be elder, but I'm not obstinate
I've always hated the trend of moving towards video as well. But if my desktop was currently in the process of installing the operating system, leaving me without a web browser, and all I have is my phone as a secondary device ... I might actually prefer watching a quick video over trying to read text on a tiny screen and having to pinch zoom and horizontal scroll. Of course this depends a lot on how the text is presented, but in general I think video is easier to absorb on a phone and text is easier to skim / read / zoom / copy-paste on a desktop.
Not so much about the best way to communicate as much as the creators see it as their best option, for them.
I've seen a lot of tutorials that really just seem to be infotainment / social media news. Often forgetting critical steps and describing why you do a thing incorrectly. It's frustrating.
For the creator: videos can be monetized trivially
For the search: YouTube results are often highlighted top of the page on Google search results.
At least with a recent video you can see what they click, it's probably up to date and you see all the stuff they do and you can see if it actually works.
I was trying to install jupyter notebook a few months ago and all the how tos failed because macos had updated some nonsense. At least with youtube you can try to find a recent one where they mention that.
But that aside I appreciate the compliment (or at least I'm going to take it as a compliment).
text with images is a pain to scroll, and in video form you have one more channel of info - sound.
the visuals are there to tell you where it is you find the different things, or so you dont go hunting for a button that doesnt actually exist on a gui, but also so you can match the confirmation, and get an idea on if its running at about the right speed
I don't know why this is being put in this "I guess I'm old" bucket. Its just another form of content and a different way of following something. Perhaps if they put the text commands in the video description you would get the best of both worlds.
I like both, but following along watching someone else is helpful. YouTube tutorials on how to do things are extremely helpful.
If you find the video an inconvenience, just don't use it.
Because a bucketload of people only interact with the Internet using a device with a tiny-ass screen and super-shitty keyboard.
So, what you are actually asking is "Why the hell are people using phones to look this shit up instead of a laptop?"
Which, to be fair, is a valid question.
It is because "modern" search engines will retrieve only links to SEO spam. The only thing that, somehow, works (50% of the time) is youtube search.
Enshitification.
Or if those malicious videos were posted and reported, then I can see why a fairly dumb AI system would see the similar legitimate ones as the same thing. Probably a particularly bad scenario for automated moderation.
Are you just playing devils advocate or do you actually believe this?
I thought Windows was the "user friendly" choice
Those sort of thing always make me nervous however because it's not easy for the average user to tell if its running any sort of malicious scripts in the process. This one seems to be safe and I'm going to give it a try to see what happens.
The article also suggests that
"reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1"
still works as well which would be even better because thats local and easier to verify its integrity. that being said I think these are both valid suggestions if they work and I'm going to give them a try.
Except, then Microsoft adjusted their account infrastructure, and now it's also an Xbox Live account. Then it became also a Windows Messenger account. Then it was required to login to Visual Studio. Then it ate my perfectly working Mojang account. Now I need it to install stuff from the Windows store like the damn Windows debugger you use to analyze BSOD dump files
I do not want my computer preferences saved across machines. I want to set up each computer separately. I do not want cortana. I do not want to connect my local computer to my account.
I gain nothing by using my microsoft account to log in to my local computer.
The singular goal is that I just want to use my damn computer, to do local computer things.
Download .iso of LTSC version of Win. Make bootable install disk via Rufus and tick options to create local account during install. Install Win from created bootable device. Done.
> Next type “net user defaultUser0 /delete” (this is case sensitive make sure the "U" is capitalized) and press enter.
Why do we have to delete them?
präferiert (dt.) is often pronounced praefferiert in my head, too, but it is always written with only one f, in german and in english.
I originally had “ net user Prefferedusername/active:yes” but there should have been no space before "net" and I should have put a space before the "/" after prefferedusername.
so the corrected instructions are below. (hopefully without typos this time)
at the first setup screen instead of answering any of the questions press Shift + F10
CMD will open
Type (no quotes) “net user Prefferedusername /add” (replacing Prefferedusername with the user name you wish to use) and press enter.
Next type “net localgroup administrators Prefferedusername /add” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /active:yes” and press enter.
Next type “net user Prefferedusername /expires:never” and press enter.
Next type “net user administrator /active:no” and press enter.
Next type “net user defaultUser0 /delete” (this is case sensitive make sure the "U" is capitalized) and press enter.
Next type "regedit" and press enter.
This opens registry editor, navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE"
Delete "DefaultAccountAction", "DefaultAccountSAMName", and "DefaultAccountSID"
Right click on "LaunchUserOOBE" and rename it to "SkipMachineOOBE" and make sure the value is set to "1".
Close registry editor and type "shutdown /r /t 0"
90% of Windows games run on Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736925
LibreOffice is an okay office suite (good enough for my purposes): https://www.libreoffice.org/
GIMP is a good image editor: https://www.gimp.org/
VLC is a good media player: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
VLC walked so MPV could run.
writer, perhaps. calc, not even close - google sheets is unfortunately better in almost every way, and google sheets aren't great either.
This really depends on your needs. I'm sure it's not enough for someone who does Excel wizardry for living. But I use it for tracking personal finances and other simple tasks and graphs, and it is completely sufficient.
This in my book easily earns it the "okay office suite" badge. To be honest all office suites in the last 20 years have been good enough for most small scale needs, including OpenOffice back in the early days.
CSV import in Excel sucks. LibreOffice Calc is far better there.
Best feature of all in LibreOffice Calc: highlight current row/column, so you have a cross-like cursor.
Easier and better embedding of Python and other languages, not the "Python in the Cloud" crap that Excel does.
Less crappy conversions like "oh, that surely looks like a date, let's mess up your data"...
> writer, perhaps. calc, not even close
For what I see 99% of people do in excel (make a table, then sort it and draw some charts), calc would support all their uses just fine.
For those using it for actual accounting/financial stuff with equations in the cells, and custom macros, etc ... then no, calc won't be sufficient.
excel runs the world, and I mean that unironically.
The Linux answer is often repeated but unfortunately, some users depend on various Windows software that only runs properly on Windows. E.g. CAD/CAM, Quicken finance, sewing embroidery, etc can't run in a Linux WINE emulator nor QEMU/KVM virtual machine. And avoiding the WINE/KVM incompatibilities by switching to "Linux-native" software such as Gimp often means having less features and/or not having ability to open old files because they use different formats.
Sure, there's the idea that "90% of users just use email and surf the web so they can just get by with a Chromebook" ... true, but there's still a lot of users who can't because they use other productivity software.
For me, there's always some unexpected situation that requires a working Windows computer. Last year, I had to do an unplanned firmware update on a digital audio interface via a USB cable. There was no Linux updater. They had a firmware updater for macOS but it didn't work. Based on the tech support forums, I had to download the firmware updater for Windows platform and that finally worked.
reply to: >What software do you have that doesn't work in a VM?
Example would be software that use hardware USB dongles for DRM. E.g. embroidery software for sewing machines. The passthrough USB emulation to the vm is not invisible enough to fool the software searching for hardware dongles. Another example was Trimble software for LIDAR that depended on DirectX which crashed in a vm.
reply to: >A good-enough compromise is a dual boot with a tiny Windows partition for the rare cases
That is a very techie solution that's not practical for "normies". Dual-boot creates the "2 os file systems" issue instead of having a single unified disk mount. Windows doesn't have a built-in way to read Linux ext4 file system. Linux doesn't have a bulletproof reliable way to read/Write NTFS partition (various tech forums mention data corruption). Unless one goes external with external NAS hardware and store all documents on an SMB mount -- but that also layers on more technical issues and doesn't work for laptops on-the-go being disconnected from the NAS.
What kind of software isn't working?
(Krita is pretty awesome though, it's up there with Blender for me)
Modern GIMP doesn't have the features that Photoshop 6.0 had 25 years ago, and GIMP had a 5 year head-start on it.
Unfortunately, the authoritarian PIAs that develop GIMP have a rigid and inflexible mindset that stop GIMP becoming the default for millions of Photoshop users and or those who cannot afford Adobe's outrageous prices, and those who can no longer accept its draconian licensing terms.
In short, millions would switch to GIMP on Linux if it worked 'properly'.
I don't know why the Linux community doesn't put more pressure on GIMP's developers to comform. The percentage of Linux desktop users would increase considerably if they would.
Look at it this way: here's just one GIMP issue that turns away Photoshop users: why did GIMP's developers remove the perfectly functioning Fade feature in GIMP?
Yes, I know their stated reason and I also know the workaround but it's a damned nuisance to use.
By removing the Fade feature GIMP's 'high minded' developers have effectively done what mathematical types tried to do with the calculator when they introduced RPN/Reverse Polish Notation in place of the standard way of entering data.
Except for mathematicians, engineers, etc. RPN failed spectacularly—sure it is better but just too hard for mere mortals to grasp.
The bloodymindedness of GIMP's developers are deliberately holding back GIMP's adoption. They could have easily left Fade in place and just added their fancy sophisticated option for their propeller-head brethren to use.
Fixing some of GIMP's problems seems so obvious I sometimes think Adobe has placed a Trojan on GIMP's team to thwart competition.
Players like mpv are way better unless you want to use nightly build of v4
I really appreciate VLC for how it can play just about anything, but it's a "player of last resort" for me.
I have always preferred pinta for normal usage editing and although this might be shunned but idrc, but sometimes photopea can be also good software.
Regarding desktop environmnents, Just try anything you find interesting, KDE,XFCE,Cinnamon etc., you would be shocked by how snappy/minimalist somethings like XFCE are.
Personally I am on hyprland in cachy os.
And VLC is a superb media player, I use it on all platforms for like 10 years, nothing even compares to it.
that is never the solution. that is the workaround. workarounds are not solutions.
There is enough issues running games on Linux that there are specific distros created for running games because everything from the kernel version, X/Wayland, Compositor and the pipewire version can affect immensely how well the game runs.
If you play single player games with no or limited online features you'll be fine in 99% of the cases (number pulled from my ass).
VLC is a broken mess and has always been a broken mess.
Well, I am certainly chuckling now. That is a joke I have never heard before, but I get it! How witty you are.
Tee hee.
In general, unless you need advanced Excel features, you can switch to linux.
[0] e.g. https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-cant-help-break-window... and couple others
Or maybe you're talking about needing Exchange integration? I don't know what the state of that is on Linux these days.
It is the poster child for enshittification.
It is really not the limiting factor in Linux desktop adoption. The inherent fragmentation and HW compatibility issues are much more pertinent.
Buy the wrong laptop, and you have to fight with X, wayland and Nvidia graphics like a terminally inclined caveman in danger
As for GIMP, while I understand it can do many things as Photoshop, it is not close in terms of features and the UX is unfortunately terrible.
Read this: https://gist.github.com/stdNullPtr/2998eacb71ae925515360410a...
People who work with Photoshop have never worked with any other thing. The way they learned to edit bitmaps was through Photoshop. They can't separate the act and the product in their heads. Thank god for Affinity getting into the mix.
One just has to deal with GIMP as it is, and stop trying to project Photoshop paradigms onto it. People just need to stop thinking of FOSS as the generic, off-brand or ersatz versions that pass or fail due to their degree of imitation of some other product.
IMO, every step GIMP takes towards Photoshop UI is a regression. GIMP's problems have been technical, such as color management and non-destructive editing, and they're gradually falling away.
Really liking Linux doesn't make Windows worse, and it doesn't make Linux better.
Watch someone who is not familiar with Linux and how it works attempt to install it and use it. Do not intervene. Now do that with a dozen different people on a dozen different machines which you do not preselect.
On Windows it is a much smoother experience.
I am making zero statements about any application compatibility or application comparisons between platforms. I am talking only about UX, UI, and installation.
Linux still has so, so very far to go.
And, honestly, there is no operating system which a complete newbie can start using without help in some form. Linux is not some golden child, here.
You like Linux on the desktop, and that's fine. Keep enjoying it. Just be aware that your experiences color your viewpoints, sometimes completely.
I am not a fan of Microsoft, I use Windows about once a month these days, but the UX difference between Linux and Windows is still very large. Very large.
Also installing is way easier for beginners with Windows. I’m happy that Linux installation now at least reached the level of Windows 98, but I still need to search for things every single time, even when I do it about every other years for several decades now. Just because somebody thought that it’s so important to ask simple users about an implementation detail which almost nobody care about. And this is before bugs… which I encounter quite frequently.
It’s getting better, but by not much. It could be a very stable OS with the right hardware even 20 years ago. That didn’t change, you still need to be very careful if you want a good experience with Linux and a GUI. I had no laptop or PC in the past 30 years on which I could install Linux without serious hiccups if I wanted anything more than terminal. I could almost always make it usable (it was impossible with one laptop), but I always had to give up something, like battery life, game performance, my headset at the time, etc. And of course a ton of time.
What a dumb analogy. My mother can use Windows very well, it doesn't mean she could also install it. The same rule applies to most Windows users. That's why it comes preinstalled, and not with an attached bootable USB stick.
UX of recent Windows versions is crap. The bearish tendency started with 8 and have never recovered, with Windows 11 being the cherry on top of the crap. Telling that as a user of almost every Windows version since 3.11. Microsoft completely changes user interface with every recent version, this is an anti-pattern in UX world. How is that I can smoothly switch between Debian and macOS major updates, and when Windows does the same it is a nightmare? "Oh no, where are the network settings again..."
Have you done this, or is this just a science fiction story? Have you watched a dozen people install Windows on a dozen different machines?
The reason people sorta know Windows is because they've already used it, not because it is good. And if you don't give them something straightforward like MATE or Cinnamon as a Linux desktop, you might as well compare it to new Vista users, not Win11 users.
You don't have to convince me that Gnome is bad. But everything else now pretty much follows the WinXP paradigm that we're all used to.
When you're looking at consumer usage of a PC for anything that remotely makes sense to do on that platform I think windows has the advantage of decades of a different software ecosystem. Cumulatively there's a huge broad library of software that linux can't touch, or gets partway there but falls short. For example I can tag music files on linux, but it's painful compared to something like Mp3tag (which has been going for about 17 years). Or if I want fan control on my 9 year old intel platform I need to learn about and add a kernel parameter and manually detect sensors before I get started whereas it's straightforward on software available on windows.
Every time I see a gnome app without a menubar I can't help but feel like Linux shoots itself in the foot just because Windows has two feet.
Linux people (myself included) are utterly blind to the rough edges on Linux. Even something like Mint, which is probably the best starting place for someone coming from Windows, can have weird issues depending on your hardware.
On the other hand, Windows users are hilariously misinformed about the state of the Linux Desktop. To hear them talk you'd think we're still back in 1997.
All of that said, for anyone curious, it is 100% worth trying out. Linux has come a LONG way. Mint is great for general usage, Bazzite is a good choice for gaming. Unless you're playing competitive shooters it's basically a guarantee the games you want to play run on Linux. There will be some rough edges and stuff to get use to, but IMO it's worth a try at least.
Presumably the it here is Linux? That’s not what I would have said. The terminal makes maintaining your own systems much easier because it’s all text. Opposed to having to mix screen shots and instructions. Which is to say, I don’t imagine people who can’t handle the terminal (and are on Windoz) are doing any maintenance or configuration beyond a few GRRR items they’ve convinced themselves is ultimately intolerable.
From a small business I’d say what keeps the accounting office on Windoz is software (ie. quickbooks, excel). But a close second would be tighter integration of file management and core office apps (ie email). It’s very easy to rename, move, copy, files on windows. You can perform many of these file management tasks inside an app experience (ie saveas dialog box). Apple has the mindset with their suite of Apple productivity apps, Chromebooks are very easy for general users to get their head around. If Linux could roll up a Chromebook environment with a QB clone into an expert system (e.g. no. We don’t need pictures, videos or games folders), I think our firm would consider the switch. It would certainly have the appearance of stability productivity, and simplicity which is always a plus when your job is not maintaining IT systems. (Now we just need to find new outsource IT for troubleshooting)
When I upgraded to 7 I tried Linux and I simply hated that I had to deal with the terminal and install strange third-party programs from strange forums to get anything working. Then I had to upgrade to 11 and I had to run strange terminal programs to install it without without creating a Microsoft account, and everyone recommends using some third-party Windows power tools to fix what Microsoft did to Windows. I could not believe it. IT IS THE SAME THING!
Now I'm using Linux, and I don't like it, but least it isn't spyware.
Most Linux distros have come a long way in the last decade and a half. Windows is worse, yes, but Linux is also better.
I’ve tried emulators but performance is abysmal for these apps. There are also all sorts of weird networking things that don’t work.
And generally when you work with a new team which has a different tech stack, there just isn’t time within the context of a race weekend to faff.
I’m unfortunately locked in.
A time will come when the easiest way to run these beasts is in a docker container running wine, and I don't think it will be long.
New features are few and far between, but that doesn't mean that they're not doing a good job. The current state of the industry is not a reflection of the developers working on it today, it's a decades long legacy.
At what level of motorsports are you working? It sounds like you both semi-regularly work with new teams. And are you working with them as a programmer? I'd be curious to know what kind of applications you're then working on, if so.
With a small team of software engineers and data scientists, I'm building a cloud based motorsports data analysis platform which eliminates the friction involved in handling motorsports data and the differences between different manufacturers' software systems, and quickly gives drivers & coaches insights on how to improve their driving. So this involves getting into the weeds of a lot of this legacy software.
There are a few teams I work more closely with where I've set up their entire trackside network/tech stack, although nowadays I'm more focused on the software. Over the years I've done a bit of everything at the track, up to and including physically laying cables in a bare garage or setting up the systems on the car, although I don't do anything related to vehicle dynamics.
This is an open source reimplementation of winxp. I think they can even run drivers made for windows now.
https://www.howtogeek.com/heres-how-i-made-linux-feel-more-l...
So I would assume, if there is a way you can temporarily disable networking (e.g. in BIOS), then that would be the easiest way to avoid creating a Microsoft account.
Step 2: Install W11 with the autounattend.xml.
Step 3: Powershell as admin -> irm https://get.activated.win | iex
Mirroring "the unix way" it is often a collection of single-purpose tools composed together to achieve the desired goal. Samba is quite powerful these days, it does more than just SMB sharing. FreeIPA is another software tool that I believe is more common in Red Hat deployments.
Time for something new. No idea what, but we need a way for people to share with people... That's what made usenet, then the web so awesome. Both were mostly wrecked by the same commercialization.
Nowadays, I feel many problems are emergent from economic and legal structures, and a new software project is often just temporarily treating a symptom.
How should that look like and what could one make differently?
What we currently have could easily used to share with people (like it was years ago). Nothing really changed but people use it differntly now...
Google is already bad enough at government collusion, divulging data, as are other infrastructure providers.
Best-case is gutting Alphabet and breaking it up to the effect of decentralization of its pieces.
I think if anything regulating the current instruments would just harden their social/political position which furthers their interests more than anything.
Deregulation is the solution here- get rid of DMCA and all the other laws that are used to bankrupt any competitor to YouTube, so that instead of a single video hosting site, we have tens, hundreds or thousands.
The dream of the early web was that everything would be resistant to censorship and centralized control because it was a true network of many independent hosts, globally distributed, independent from the whims of any government. Then we let a few billionaire copyright holders and authoritarians who want to control what is published and seen gradually strangle the open web and replace it with a handful of corporate sites that can be controlled.
But they are in private hands, aren't they ? Welcome to capitalism my friend. And don't forget to vote on the next election.
I use it since 2021 on my gaming PC. Zero problems, it’s a trimmed down Win 10 with most of the bloatware removed
Win 11 has a similar trimmed down LTSC version
Just install it, MS doesn’t care about piracy
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended...
This isn't to say it's a good idea but that it can be done.
If you plan on running win 10 anyway Ask Leo has a video called "how to keep using windows 10 safely after support ends" with some solid advice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpAIOcYPYgo&list=TLPQMjkxMDI...
I would suggest just switching to Linux and using a VM for things that NEED to be Windows. Games that run kernel level Anti-Cheat won't run, but tbh nothing I would suggest installing anyway.
And a GitHub repo: https://github.com/BrowserBox/windows-dosbox-x
I tried different AIs to make the scripts to automate installs in DosBox-X as long as you have a product key and ISO or other media.
Most interesting to me was the different quirks between OSeS. NT was the most tricky in getting to work on DosBox-X and syncing up internet, IIRC. But overall a very fun project. Brings back nostalgia of 3.5" disks and seeing those install screen. Very cool times in the 90s ha! :)
Please read the Linux Advocacy HOW-TO.
Shitting on Windows and MacOS does not make you look authoritative, honest, or credible. It makes you look like you have a very strong opinion and shut off from anything that does not conform to your opinion.
AFAIK an apple account isn't strictly required, but a lot of MacOS won't be functional without one.
How is a Macbook better than Windows in these senses?
I would rather be subjected to fingernail torture than deal with the productivity implosion that is using macOS. It isn't meant for users who do more than stare at webpages. And the workaround apps to give it more productivity such as actually useful taskbars are buggy as hell fighting Apple's trash.
Linux or Windows or bust.
I'd rather install Win 11 on my laptop than buy another Apple computer. Did so once and it was the worst experience I ever had. Never again.
"You don't need windows for gaming, 90% of games work on linux!" -- except the 10% that DON'T are all of the new, massive titles that people want to play. It's like saying "90% of the gears in the car work fine, just not 1st gear".
"There are 0 driver problems" -- obviously not true as some hardware only ships with windows hardware. Yes it's true your new network card or mouse won't have issues, but a lot of hardware simply doesn't have support, and a lot might be supported if you spend enough time fanagling.
"it's just as easy use as windows or mac" -- until you need to change one of many settings that hasn't been included in a control panel, because linux users have been more than happy to drop to config files and cli usages to tweak things (i.e. lots of stuff left out of system GUIs)
I don't know why people do this. Especially in communities that are technical (and thus tend to be "technically correct" about things), why people essentially lying (by omission, if nothing else) about Linux?
That's not true? Arc Raiders, arguably the most-hyped game of 2025, is day-one compatible with Linux devices. I played the Server Slam free weekend on my NixOS machine, clearly not all of the new massive titles are broken.
You can't abuse hyperbole like this while accusing other people of lying.
But yeah, I run Windows as my daily-driver for pretty much the reasons you give.
