Technology

My guess is that's it's easier to neatly package your data up for when they go to sell it.

No, your guest VM still requires TPM enabled

That's what they're disabling now

Nope, you need an internet connection to get past initial setup. Unless you use pro, there you can select to domain join computer instead and it'll let you create a local account

I think that option was removed even on Pro a pretty long time ago, no? At least the last couple of times I installed W11 Pro the graphical option was nowhere to be found. It used to be available easily enough that anyone could choose it if they didn't blindly click Next, then it got more and more hidden away and now I'm 99% sure you need the command unless you prep the ISO using Rufus and its function to create a local account for you. On that note, I wonder if this will affect the Rufus method too..

This is only for the Home version of win 11.

For people with "that one game" there is a middle ground. Mine is Destiny 2 and they use a version of easy anticheat that refuses to run on Linux. My solution was to buy a $150 used Dell on eBay, a $180 GPU to be able to output to my 4 high-res displays, and install Debian + moonlight on it. I moved my gaming PC downstairs and a combination of wake-on-lan + sunshine means that I can game at functionally native performance, streaming from the basement. In my setup, windows only exists to play games on.

The added bonus here is now I can also stream games to my phone, or other ~thin clients~ in the house, saving me upgrade costs if I want to play something in the living room or upstairs. All you need is the bare minimum for native-framerate, native-res decoding, which you can find in just about anything made in the last 5-10 years.

Can I run multi-monitor high refresh rates without the desktop slugging? Last time I seriously tried switching to Linux, this seemingly simple setup in 2024 was too much for it to handle.

Proton is amazing though. I got Lego LotR working on my steam deck by installing some DirectX 9 dependency to fix a graphical glitch with the game. Runs like a dream.

I don't know what is going on at Microsoft. I'm starting to think that they are trying to pivot to a completely different business model. In addition to this Windows 11 crap and XBox seemingly being given up on, they appear to be losing their embedded market as well. In the past, if you saw any screen in an industrial setting, there's a good chance that there was the embedded Windows version behind that screen. Lately, all the new products are moving over to Linux.

companies do things like this when they feel they have the power in the business/customer relationship and there's no regulations to stop them.

They have done that for years, and every time there is an army of geeks and gamers who look for registry hacks or PowerShell scripts to install Windows anyway. If even those geeks do not want to spend 5 minutes looking for doc on how to install Ubuntu (which is a billion times easier to use than Windows), you can be sure Windows will never die.

I wouldn't say that, more just abusing a monopoly.

The sad thing is they know the large majority of users will comply. Most people put familiarity and convenience above their own privacy and general well-being.