You shouldn’t have to sign into any account just to use your operating system.
This is wrong regardless of OS. It’s wrong and bad on iOS and proprietary Androids, and it’s wrong and bad on Windows. Also, it wasn’t even a thing on Windows before Win8. Don’t just blindly accept such enshittification. It would be tolerable if it would be opt-in and purely optional, but MS is pretty much enforcing this crap upon their users, and that’s more than a red line being crossed. That’s simply hostility towards their users.
MS noticed that people do this willingly on iOS/proprietary Android and thought hey if we do this on Windows we can harvest even more data from the logged-in users and we have a confirmation of identity and also always get their current IP address and more device data.
To better sell this to the average user, they offer some minor benefits such as settings synchronization across devices, for which they also harvest your settings data, obviously (and even more they’re not telling you directly). Either way, the only real reason they want this is to know who uses their OS, to control access (they could disable your account) and to harvest even more data from the logged-in users. With local user accounts, as it should be, this would not be possible.
Online accounts make sense for online services, not for your OS which should work independently from online services.
Either use a Linux distro (desktop/notebook/server/mobile) or an open-source Android distro such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS, LineageOS (mobile).
I just don’t understand why would a regular user using android/ios switch to Linux from Windows just because it requires an account now as well. They still get all of the benefits of Windows, and all that’s needed is to sign in.
You shouldn’t have to sign into any account just to use your operating system. This is wrong regardless of OS. It’s wrong and bad on iOS and proprietary Androids, and it’s wrong and bad on Windows. Also, it wasn’t even a thing on Windows before Win8. Don’t just blindly accept such enshittification. It would be tolerable if it would be opt-in and purely optional, but MS is pretty much enforcing this crap upon their users, and that’s more than a red line being crossed. That’s simply hostility towards their users.
MS noticed that people do this willingly on iOS/proprietary Android and thought hey if we do this on Windows we can harvest even more data from the logged-in users and we have a confirmation of identity and also always get their current IP address and more device data.
To better sell this to the average user, they offer some minor benefits such as settings synchronization across devices, for which they also harvest your settings data, obviously (and even more they’re not telling you directly). Either way, the only real reason they want this is to know who uses their OS, to control access (they could disable your account) and to harvest even more data from the logged-in users. With local user accounts, as it should be, this would not be possible.
Online accounts make sense for online services, not for your OS which should work independently from online services.
Either use a Linux distro (desktop/notebook/server/mobile) or an open-source Android distro such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS, LineageOS (mobile).
I just don’t understand why would a regular user using android/ios switch to Linux from Windows just because it requires an account now as well. They still get all of the benefits of Windows, and all that’s needed is to sign in.
It’s like saying people want to switch to electric cars because it’s quieter. While it is true, it’s not all the advantages. It’s just one of them.