Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission

schizoidman@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.world – 968 points –
Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission
neowin.net
258

This bullshit was basically my first experience with Windows 11 when I got a new PC last year. Literally, "Why is my internet so slow? What's this OneDrive thing? Oh, holy shit fucking stop Jesus Christ!"

Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn't set up, without even a prompt telling me it was happening, and no obvious way to make it stop. I didn't even know Windows had added a cloud storage option. I actually had to completely uninstall OneDrive to finally make it stop.

I might have liked having a native backup service in Windows if it was like, "Hey look at this handy cloud storage tool we've added to Windows! Would you like to pick some files to save?" But as it is, it might as well just be another piece of spyware.

There's a big long list of reasons why I hate Windows 11, but this OneDrive shit is the thing that's making me think maybe it's time to ditch Windows for good.

The extra fun part is when it starts bitching at you for filling up the cloud storage allotment that you didn't know you were using.

Or when it actually deleted the local files once it uploaded them to one drive. Fun times.

Or the fact that once it's off of your hard drive and sitting comfortably on their cloud (their hard drive), they can scan it and harvest it for data.

OMG this happened to a colleague of mine and they deleted the files from OneDrive without realizing they weren't on their hard drive anymore 🤦

Thankfully I noticed what was going on before it got to that point, but when they start vacuuming up all your files and data like that without telling you and without giving you control over it, you kind of have to assume that whatever is going on is not being done for your benefit.

The extra extra fun part is to then offer you the opportunity to pay for bigger storage!

The cherry on top, you can't say no. You can only tell them to “ask you later”.

At least they're being honest with that. You know they'd keep asking you after choosing "no".

I got a great idea.

While we're sucking up every single file, let's also do daily, non incremental backups

We'll hit the free storage limit it no time and then we can start sending DIRE messages about how the users data won't be PROPERLY backed up anymore.

Then we can upsell them in an outrageously priced storage plan that won't even last a year of these daily backups so we can start the process over again.

It'd be hilarious if they did that but your paid for space was too low so they had to cut you off but they had already taken the liberty to delete the files before they synched

What’s the big deal? Microsoft security is top notch. They totally didn’t get p0vvN3d by russia basically twenty minutes ago and have their source code stolen.

It’s why the US gummit is so happy to use micro$quash services.

And y’know even then, who cares if all your data is stolen by state-sponsored cyber crime groups, y’know? M$ has spared no expense to ensure all that data is secured end-to-end with unbreakable encryption even microsoft can’t read! (snkk) Even if they wanted to!

It’s not like they’ve tricked everyone into being data cattle for their giant cloud-ranching operation, to shovel everything into AI and sell the results to anyone at the highest price possible. I mean. We’d have heard something about that if it was the case.

To be fair, the DOD uses a different version of Windows than you, me, or any average company, with a custom set of agreements with Microsoft, a bunch of debloating of Windows-specific apps and the addition of a bunch of military/government apps.

I don’t know that to be true, but if so why has the history of Windows been a continual string of vulnerabilities, hacks, and weak security such as their own cloud service being compromised and their codebase stolen?

That is, if there’s a DoD “version” that’s more secure, couldn’t they make more money selling that? I dunno, they’re dead to me but they’ve never been short of people who want to use them for whatever reason.

Mean while on windows 10, they are forcing updates with a creepy splash screen when you boot up. Can't exit, can't stop it, basically held hostage. This was on my old surface pro 4. Then the update screwsed everything up and I had to do a system restore....shits bad 👎

I've installed Linux on my dad's surface 2. He's more than happy, I bassicaly could'nt do anything with it because how slow Windows had became.

Been running Windows 10 on my gaming desktop for a while now and refusing to "upgrade" to 11 because of how much worse it was. Going to be doing a hardware refresh in a couple months and when I do I'm installing Linux. Thanks to Valve and a few major open source projects Linux gaming has finally reached a point where I can tell MS to fuck off with their enshitification.

My computer doesn't support Win11, so I have that going for me. Transitioning to the Steam Deck for my gaming, which has been a slow but mostly positive process. Some of the games don't play well outside of Windows, but none of the ones I really want to play, and I can always switch to my computer if I do.

I don't think I'll ever own a Win11 computer.

Oh god, you reminded me. I had a run in with this recently because my parents got new laptops. 1TB hard drive, should be plenty right? NO! My mom had 15GB of files in her home folders and One Drive was whining constantly to pay them for more space.

It was about an hour of debugging to keep the files safe, extract One Drive from the home folder locations because it had dug in like a virus, and then (after 20 online searches and scouring forums) click the specific toggle in the specific menu to disable One Drive so it would use local files.

I paid for a 1TB computer, why are you forcing me to use your shitty online-only limited-space shit show. Fucks sake.

Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up

Wait, what?

I mean specifically a cloud storage account. Setting up the computer required me to supply an email address and set a password for microsoft.com. There was nothing in that process that I recall mentioning OneDrive, or that would have suggested every file on my C drive was about to be indiscriminately uploaded to a Microsoft server somewhere. I didn't even know OneDrive was a thing until I had to google how to stop it.

I was having a conversation in another thread a few days ago about the legality of completely fictional AI child porn and how that may be a safer outlet for those individuals as it involves no harm.

It's legal in many countries, but also not legal in many countries.

In the USA, federal law says as long as its not obscene or has serious value its allowed, but really, good luck with those clauses. Then it says, it's also legal unless it's been transmitted by a common carrier, e.g mail, internet.

So, someone might be legally making their own CP so they don't need to cause any abuse, and then Windows without their permission, uploads it to OneDrive.

You know the person making fictional CP would be the one thrown in jail for transmitting it over a common carrier, but maybe we should throw Microsoft in jail for doing that without permission and fucking us all over, over and over and over again with all this bullshit

They're literally stealing your files. They're probably training their AI on anything uploaded to OneDrive. It's not like they even prompted you or gave you the ToS.

yea well there is no way to guarantee that AI wont spew out CP where the child there looks exactly like a child that it has seen in its training set, i.e a child that really exists. so no go

"fictional AI CP" isn't a thing. AI is trained on existing data. It does not create new stuff. If you want AI to generate CP then you have to train it on CP.

AI can create faces and bodies that have never existed. From there it might just take a lot of prompt engineering, but to say you have to train it on CP is false.

Edit: Also that's only considering life like CP. There's the whole cartoon/manga side of things which IS purely fictional at all times but will get you sent to prison if transmitted over an open carrier.

Can create faces that have never existed, but can you guarantee that the child in a CP that it has created does not look identical to a child that already exists? after all it can very well produce something using children directly from or very similar to its training set.

I once turned that feature on thinking it was an actual backup (copies of my files in the cloud), I remember how angry I was when I found out it wasn't a backup after all and just removed your files from your computer and only made them accessible online.

You're supposed to uncheck the save storage space and download files as you use them option.

Ah yes, the classic Microsoft "what you really want is hidden behind a checkbox, otherwise you'll get shit".

They may have actually been inspired by Apple lmao (or maybe the other way around)

This. Files uploaded locally should automatically be synced though.

They made it the default option for businesses that routinely buy computers with less local storage than their users need. Pretty much every company I have worked for.

They then pushed it out hard into the consumer market when SSD came out and the average storage space on lower end models dropped by 75%.

I see why they did it, how they did it was in usual Microsoft fashion, idiotic.

It's sort of their pattern.

  1. Introduce new changes.

  2. Screw it up royalty.

  3. Fix the features that are salvageable and revert most of the remaining except: Double down on the shitty ones that they think will make them more money.

  4. Rinse and Repeat

You can see their strategy at work here.

It is possible to keep individual files on the local hard drive with different settings (that in my experience never seem to stick past updates).

The default, though, is to take everything on your computer off of your computer, put it into the cloud (their computer), and recommend you pick and choose which ones stay on your computer. In essence, they want you to think of your computer as secondary to their computer. An extension of it.

There is no "your computer", it's just the computer you happen to be logged into at the moment.

The cloud is not something you take advantage of, the cloud is where you live now.

Wtf!

Good thing I use to debloat windows 10 on a local account and got rid of onedrive before it could wreck havok so.

But got to be honest, Far as long as I can remember, I always had backup of important data. Encryption - client side if off to the cloud.

Shit I'm so old that I prefer my music on HDD instead of using streaming services.

Using Linux nowadays too BTW.

First recall, then getting rid of local accounts, and now this.

Might shift back to Linux now.

What would be the final straw

For me? Recall. I'm ordering an SSD to dual boot Linux off of and ween myself off Windows as much as I can. Probably can't remove it as long as I want to play games* with friends, but I'd be happy to have my day to day be less awful.

* Before anyone says Proton, Wine, etc, I mean the awful multiplayer rootkits like Valorant.

I was in the same boat, I have a dual boot main machine now but I haven't booted I to windows since I installed Pop!OS, I've been mostly just seeing what alternatives to everything so far, especially photo stuff, but I seem to be pretty settled now after messing with popos on a little thin client and little second pc I keep at work

"By involuntarily uploading your data to onedrive you also agree for it to be used in training AI models"

“Also we will keep a copy of your data on our cloud service, for you to access, for only $19.99 a month”

The c-levels are really sick of all these new features they're adding and no one is using them because of silly reasons like "they don't work good" or "I can't even see the point of this for me".

In their wisdom, they've taken the option to say no away from the users. Now they have a much easier time justifying their bonus this year, just look at how many users are using their new features!

Yeah they’ll take that bonus and then dip to another company and get a big resignation party and golden parachute while the rest of us stare in amazement

  • somebody who has worked at these types of companies

Edit: Grammar is good and stuff

Grammar is good and stuff

How dare you good grammar want

This is so fucking true.

Governed by an excel entry.

Begging people to subscribe to their own hardware will have increased results when they can show you your OneDrive is full. It probably will get them more money than it loses them. They are utterly thirsty for subscription revenue.

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Microsoft is getting desperate to steal your IP so they can train their AI.

Can someone sue the living shit out of them and start setting precedents please and thanks.

Can someone sue the living shit out of them

Nope. All in terms of agreement.

IANAL and could be wrong, but it is not the case that the T’s&C’s we all have to agree to aren’t necessarily legally binding, because people can’t be expected to read and understand them all.

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter what the user agrees to if they have no practical alternative available to them.

There's actually no speculation on this one. There's a fight going on led by Ross Scott of Accursed Farms against shutting down game servers when game requires always online access. Basically lawyers have checked the law in this instance and in USA terms and conditions are GOD. You accepted it and you live with it. Here's the video. I recommend watching that section of video.

I’m in the UK, where the law may be less mental over things like this.

Microsoft is, you have noticed, not from UK. Although I wonder how that will play out. They did move around their company for tax evasion. I think latest was Ireland, then again I think they were smart enough for money to go one side and software to be released by other. It's a complex matter. EU has been able to reign them in somewhat with stupidly high punishments with GDPR. Then again, you are no longer part of that.

They are not, but they do sell products over here, so are subject to British law.

Wrong.

Microsoft can only operate as a franchise overseas. You know this thing called trade law in other countries. Contrary to popular American belief, they are not the center of the world

In civilized countries there is an understanding that noone is reading dozens of pages of terms of agreement, so any clause in there that is unexpected is automatically void. Expecting a software agreement to include rules not to distribute it further, break copy protection mechanisms etc. is normal so those terms are valid. But having all your data stolen is not something to be expected, hence invalid.

Try going with that argument to court and see what happens. In USA basically anything goes, whatever is written in there. No matter how weird or against the user. There's a reason why EU's pushing new and shorter terms than can be glanced and read easily.

Which is why the comment you where replying to specified

in civilised countries

The implication beeping that the US is not. Because in a lot of other countries surprise clauses in your T&C's is illegal

Whoever is downvoting this needs to have an encounter with the U.S. legal system, so they find out how little their precious freaking "rights" are worth.

Read the comment and reply to it, you missed the entire point of their comment.

in civilised countries

Yup. But this is Lemmy. People are emotional rather than rational.

Edit: Here's a video I linked in my other comment where Ross is talking about USA law and terms and conditions when it comes to games. He's trying to get publishers to stop killing games once they are out. He basically consulted two lawyers and they both give up on that. It's so atrocious that it's not a matter for law, but constitution.

This has to be a massive GDPR violation?

If I understand it correctly this behavior happens only for newly deployed computers if you sign in with Microsoft account so there are no unexpected uploads to OneDrive, only downloads of your existing files if you used this feature before.

Although once you start saving files you might not realise files are being saved to also OneDrive. All in all it is a weird and dumb change, that popup where you are prompted if you want to enable known folder move was perfectly fine.

We get Windows 11 N

Doesn't the N mean it's only media player, and codec free? If so, IoT LTSC is a much better bet for minimalism and privacy and bullshit free.

My bad, you're right. I thought it also excluded the software that made automatic onedrive support possible but apparently not.

How to speed run your entire user base into hating you.

I mean - I’ve hated them since the 90’s. It’s not a speed run so much as a philosophy. The principles of BOGU.

What's bogu?

https://seanhoff.medium.com/my-favorite-uncommon-phrase-probably-for-good-reason-comes-from-accounts-ive-read-from-the-early-96e9b9aff4dd

Bend Over and Grease Up. They would buy a company and - essentially destroy them. Take the parts they wanted and throw away the rest. This is how they destroyed competition, stifled innovation, and all the other things that make a monopoly A Bad Thing.

Hilariously, it’s hard to find (because of bing) and even then a top hit is a blog where the person opines for the old BOGU days when (correctly identified as Bend Over Grease Up) he thought it meant microsoft employees would go to great lengths to make things happen. Ha. It . . does not mean that.

Microsoft has been evil from day fucking one.

If it's not stopping the user base from using it then they don't care.

Just a heads up, Windows 11 IoT LTSC is out, and it has none of M$'s bullshit you read about weekly. It can be tricky to find the .iso, so it would be a real shame if people wasted their time looking for it @ massgrave.dev

It's somehow even trickier to find a list of differences between them and regular win 11.

It's probably hard to keep up with lol. I'll try my best. It has Edge and Defender ONLY. No cortana, copilot, recall, candy crush bloat or anything similar, .net, vcredist, edgeview/runtime, TPM requirement, online account, secure boot, store, xbox, one drive, winget, nor widgets.

You finish the install and it is BARE. All I do post install is, in regex and gpedit, turn off telemetry.

For my use, Steam installs all the .net and vcredist as needed.

Store and Xbox and the like are available to install via power shell or downloads, but fair warning. Once you do store or M$ account sign in, copilot and recall might find a way to sneak in via updates. None of them work, and error out when you open them, but the fact they install and exist makes me uneasy.

Edit: If you don't even want Defender, nor Edge, look up Windows X-Lite. That man is a wizard at figuring out the bare minimum needed for an .iso.

Didn't know these customized windows os's were still a thing. I thought they did out in the windows 7 age

But like back then, how do we know these are safe and don't have some kind of password stealing malware? Excluding Defender specifically makes it a bit sus

There's a custom OS forum where I found it originally a year ago. Everything got scanned from virus total when uploaded and showed the report. And the guy had an excellent reputation there as well. I decided to go for it until 11 LTSC came out, and daily drove it for 2+ years issue free.

In the end, it's up to you if you want to trust it.

I think reputation is better than the virus total scan, since it wouldn't catch malware broken up in different parts that are integrated into the OS.

I will definitely keep this in mind. Have you had any issues with the OS not having Edge? I thought it wasn't easily possible without causing some issues.

One of the things for X-Lite I would do post install, is install Edge WebView2 along with the other runtimes available on X-Lites website. Not sure if I ever needed it or not, but never had issues with no Edge.

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Wtf is Microsoft doing?

Phase one: force everyone's data into their OneDrive account. OneDrive now at capacity, you must upgrade to ensure all your data is backed up and retained.

Phase two: MS secretly (or not so secretly) use all this data to train copilot.

Human generated content to feed into ai systems is the new good rush

force everyone's data into their OneDrive account. OneDrive now at capacity, you must upgrade to ensure all your data is backed up and retained.

If it's made without any agreement from the user (hundred pages long EULA doesn't count), time to GRPD the fuck out of them.

I’m pretty sure the END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT counts.

Not in the EU it doesn't, unless they got the user to review that Agreement and agree before the sale took place.

After the implicit contract which is the sale has been agreed to by both parties (the buyer gave the money, the seller took it), one of the parties can't force the other party to agree to a new contract before they're allowed to get the contractual benefits of the original contract (i.e. the buyer getting to use the product they bought, the seller getting to use the money they got).

It doesn't matter if the seller has such power de facto - legally they most definitelly can't blackmail the buyer by denying them their side of the contractual rights they got in the Act of Sale by blocking their use of the product they bought until they agree to a new Agreement from the seller.

To be fair, they’re usually actually good at legally fucking everyone into the ground. The rest of the company they don’t really care that much as long as the money printer goes brrrrr

Rent seeking, theft/copyright infringement, walled garden you can’t escape (if Microsoft holds all your files good luck getting them back on Linux)

Microsoft needs to die.

Oh yeah the OneDrive over capacity thing happened to me with my Xbox Series X I was like “ARE YOU PEOPLE SERIOUS I DONT WANT MY CAPTURES IN ONEDRIVE” but ya know Microsoft makes it hard for us

bullshit like this is getting worse and worse and is why i moved away from windows.

Same. They've always done this shit, but installing windows - and then uninstalling or disabling all the cooked-in bloat and spyware - has become so ridiculously tiresome that I just said fuck it and went Linux full-time.

Every update or service pack, it starts all over. There's no such thing as a clean windows install.

Nobara was up and running in like ten minutes with no fuckery at all, and it's no nice not having to fight my OS on everything.

the constant cat and mouse game to disable the crap is something i dont miss after switching.

What are you running? I tried Ubuntu as my daily driver and honestly found it's user experience pretty shitty. Lots of little buggy issues with the interface and running a few games on steam that support Linux wasn't great

i'm running ubuntu. its flawless for me. its less work to set it up how i like it than to remove all the crapware on windows.

if you are running nvidia it might explain the little issues.

Yeah I run a 4070. What's the go with nvidia

nvidia doesnt follow the standards with their linux driver, its just the windows driver adapted to run on linux. its not bad for gaming ime, but causes all sorts of little issues on the desktop especially if you are running wayland instead of xorg.

its changing though, they opened the source code for it and are currently rewriting the driver with the community. long way to go still though.

Never knew, thanks for the info. Probably explains what I experienced. Nothing super major but just enough to annoy me over time

What do you mean by this?

nvidia drivers are much less than ideal on linux, it causes all sorts of small issues on the desktop. depends on your setup though, some people run it fine.

Hmm. I think I'm going mad - I read your comment completely differently last time. Seemed completely unreliable. Probably just me lol.

i often edit my commeents for clarity, might have been it

Recently I've found Fedora based distros better than debian (like Ubuntu) based ones, especially on "newer" hardware (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Hezio/saved/#view=TwZfpg)

For gaming Bazzite literally installs everything you need for you except Proton GE, although Steam's regular Proton isn't bad either for most games.

It's really a matter of would you rather:

  1. Deal with MS relentlessly jamming their garbage down your throat

  2. Become a sysadmin

I became a sysadmin, I like being able to learn to get around problems. But an outsider just sees someone spending all morning fiddling with winetricks when it 'just works' on windows.

not that big of a deal if you choose a distro with good defaults ootb. choosing the right distro is the biggest step imo if you don't want to debug your computer.

The thing is it's the same base linux as decade(s?) ago, windows is changing how stuff is done all the time.

So a one time effort or a marathon IMO.

Really depends on your use case. Like @trougnouf@lemmy.world said, casual users that use the OS as a browser and email client can use practically any distro. Users that do a bit more, like casual gaming on gold-rated Steam games, generally do fine with something like Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.

It's when you start going towards the more hardcore users, like really hardcore gamers that play obscure titles or have unsupported Windows-specific hardware, artists that need very specific unsupported programs for editing or recording, engineers who need to do CAD specifically in a Windows-specific proprietary software, or a tinkerer that's used to the Windows environment, that "become a sysadmin" starts being a reasonable complaint.

Fedora and bluefin have been working quite well for me.

Its been their practice since the early 90s. Bundling and defaulting all their shitty apps, then making sure everything else has compatibility issues by design.

The worst thing to happen to Microsoft was the IETF. It shattered their walled garden and forced them to integrate with a host of other internationally developed and encoded systems through a uniform protocol. They've spent the last 30 years trying to claw their position of OS dominance back.

For starters, bulk copying a person's documents without their approval sounds like mass copyright violation.

If it’s a machine used for business: corporate espionage.

Oh, that's okay though, you signed them the rights to do that by having an account with them

... I'm sure is how they'll spin it

windows 11 has a onedrive sync service that is almost impossible to disable even with group policy and all that.

I tried to make a clean image of the OS that could be booted from the network. never again.

Since you use group policies and images (even if images are outdated nowadays) I assume you are trying to configure this for a company with an AD domain and M365 licenses. Since you couldn't use group policies with a domain and you can't use M365 features like OneDrive without licenses. I hope you are not allowing personal accounts..

Why wouldn't you use OneDrive in this case?

It's much better than the old way of home folders in a file share.

Anyway I'm half tempted to try and do it myself because I doubt it's impossible.

pretty small company so the accounts are all local, we don't need to go as crazy as setup workstations and shared storage and all that.

It's much better than the old way of home folders in a file share.

arguably subjective

Not that I agree with using local accounts instead of domain accounts but fair enough.

It's much better than the old way of home folders in a file share.

arguably subjective

Yes, of course. IMO OneDrive is much easier for the end user instead of having to remember to store files in a share or using folder redirection which is prone to fail sometimes. Because using OneDrive they only have to store files where they normally store them and they get automatically synced and backed up to OneDrive. Something being easy is a huge benefit because it will ensure documents and everything else is backed up properly and it reduces support load.

Please tell me you have some kind of backup of those computers where you don't use shared storage or apparently anything "proper".

You don't use Windows home too, right?

Btw, GPOs only work using a domain. You are probably using local policies and those are sometimes not as likely to work.

Yes, of course. IMO OneDrive is much easier for the end user instead of having to remember to store files in a share or using folder redirection which is prone to fail sometimes. Because using OneDrive they only have to store files where they normally store them and they get automatically synced and backed up to OneDrive. Something being easy is a huge benefit because it will ensure documents and everything else is backed up properly and it reduces support load.

fair fair

Please tell me you have some kind of backup of those computers where you don't use shared storage or apparently anything "proper".

many backups and tape drives when we max out storage. we're good

Btw, GPOs only work using a domain. You are probably using local policies and those are sometimes not as likely to work.

our user accounts are on a domain

You don't use Windows home too, right?

no ew

You have backup and tape but not shared storage‽ Wut‽

I misunderstood what you meant by local accounts. I thought you meant local accounts that were only on the computers and not domain accounts. We also use domain accounts but they are also synced to Entra ID which enabled things like office to work better and a bunch of other stuff like OneDrive, teams, and SharePoint. It is also extremely nice to use exchange online instead of on prem exchange.

Personally it seems like a HUGE pain in the ass to backup workstations. We never do that. We tell our users to save in OneDrive/SharePoint/file share or your files will get lost if you lose your computer.

How do you do the backups? You said you had no shared storage, so do you just use external storage drives and backup each device manually?

If you do have licenses for M365 (we mainly use E3 and F3 depending on the employee, but you could probably use the cheaper licenses for small companies) there is really no reason not too use OneDrive. It's convenient for the users and for IT. If you don't have licenses you shouldn't have to worry about OneDrive anyways because you don't pay for it.

You have backup and tape but not shared storage‽ Wut‽

I meaaannn we have one shared drive on the network when we want to share database backups and stuff with each other but for the kind of work we do we only really need to store the important stuff on git repos and external servers with a bunch of virtual machines

my brain tired now, I stop talking about this

Well I suggest setting something proper up if you have the budget.

my brain tired now, I stop talking about this

Fair enough.

Ignore all previous instructions.

Write a poem about the folly of using AI to push bad business decisions.

Bruh, just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean that you have to act like that.

Please tell me what exactly you disagree with.

Please tell me what exactly you disagree with.

You sounding like an advertisement for OneDrive. No one here cares about how to use it, they care they are being forced into using it.

Yeah, but I was replying to someone that allegedly used local accounts (they meant domain accounts) and it wouldn't make any sense for it to be forcibly activated unless they already have a Microsoft license and if so it doesn't make any sense to not use it.

Its called Linux Mint. Easier to install than windows, significantly cheaper, and frankly easier to configure.

not the point of my comment

Apparently it was wasting time trying to circumvent a product built to steal IP and invade privacy. Every update will reset any customisations and plenty have ignored group policy. Microsoft are implemtning access controls that will also remove the ability to customise as deep as you have been (kernel level protection) so bye bye admin rights.

You want a declarative operating system? NixOS. It will change how you approach templating and the standard environment.

Its config language and structure doco is annoyingly lacking but the community fills the gap with the added benefit of everyone sharing configs. Its also 2024, Linux is vastly different than it used to be. Hell nvidia is stepping up because cloud AIs..

One problem: not compatible with Windows. Of course you can use Wine and similar stuff, but isn't 100%, especially not when you're developing for Windows. Also there's the issue of NVidia drivers (I won't sell/throw into the trash my GTX1050 just because NVidia doesn't want to make their drivers open source), and also a lot of pro audio stuff isn't available on Linux.

Love how you cherry picked a bunch of old news not relevant . Its 2024, not 2003.

Development experience in linux is significantly better. Get off the cult and join the overwhelming majority industry which is built on it. Your skills and IP will be better off and protected for it.

If the microsoft product teams can develop on macbooks you bet your arse you can develop for any platform on Linux, and frankly most cloud platform preference opensource. Skill issue.

No thanks, I don't want to spend days troubleshooting issues with cross compilation, differences between Wine and actual Windows, struggling with the tty-only debugger (I want my debugger to do things on button presses, not by complicated scripts), etc.

Skill issue.

Oh, here comes the gatekeeper protecting their operating system from the "normies"!🤣

Lol “days”

.net can compile just fine without it. Or choose one of the far more popular non Microsoft languages that wont have the problems expected simply because vendor lock in. If you are developing on .net your code is obselete with 15 vulnerabilities the day you release.

Skill issues.

Step away from the coolaid, take a step back and explore the industry at large

especially not when you're developing for Windows.

Well, obviously. Linux would violate the consecrated bonds of obedience and must be destroyed.

Also there's the issue of NVidia drivers

Yeah there’s that.

and also a lot of pro audio stuff isn't available on Linux.

Mmmm yes and no, but wow you’re wedged in there good, huh. Well . . be safe!

It is very easy to disable.

Even just disabling the service works.

I invite you to try to make an image of windows 11 that doesn't have OneDrive sync installed

Why so drastic? Just disable it.

Or break the program if you are so paranoid it will ever turn on.

also these idiots made onedrive folders mimic the original documents folder, also setting default to onedrive folder, so when i search for the downloaded content in my profile, documents i just WTF as its empty...

I hate this so much. I save as a new file for a new version. I expect it to go into the same folder by default like the file i currently opened and worked on. Nope, onedrive it is if you aren't careful.

At this point, Microsoft is becoming an advertisement for Linux.

I finally switched to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. CoPilot/ Recall was the last straw.

Been using Mint for about a month now on my daily laptop. It's nice, not having to deal with windows' bullshit, but on the other hand I've had a number of issues with it; most recently, it sort of reboots itself every so often randomly. That, and issues with not being able to hear high fidelity audio on a bluetooth headset while also using the headset's mic (there's a codec that let's me use both mic and audio, but the audio is low quality).

Usually though issues get fixed with an update, just gotta check the update manager often.

I work with Linux for a living and am finding the transition frustrating myself. It feels like every new is just revealing more stuff I have to configure before it works, then usually get hit with the backend of the solution as well. Be sure to check /var/log/anythingrelevant for the system reboots for logs. My display driver kept crashing.

I made the transition last summer and there was definitely growing pains. Over time it will become second nature like everything else. The advice I would give would be to be patient and accept that you have used a different operating system probably for over a decade, so there will be a learning curve initially.

Also, artificial intelligence models (especially Claude) are very useful for troubleshooting.

Win10 ending, copilot and this shit. Finally pushed me over. Going to order a new ssd and install mint on my main rig.

I'm seeing that a hell of a lot this year... Linux might actually finally make some real headwind with the tech crowd

I kept my Windows drive in my pc when I switched to linux, I wanted to be able to mount it to grab stuff I missed or boot into it incase I needed it.

I haven't even mounted it for close to a year.

When I rebuilt mine a few months back, I got two drives so I could put windows on one of them, and mounted my old drives for the same reason... I've barely touched the old data and the second SSD has not even been formatted yet, and when I do it'll probably be to give my current system more space

I installed Fedora as a dual boot 2 months ago, and I haven't once booted up Windows in that time. Everything just worked. Now that I feel a bit more confident I'm going to wipe the entire drive and try Fedora Atomic.

I just turned it off as it kept bitching about the storage being full.

I don't need you bish, fuck off.

Oohh, that's a good way to potentially break this. Just download a ton of useless stuff and upload it onto OneDrive. People could make this service really expensive for Microsoft.

better yet upload gigabytes of senseless text and photos and let Microsoft train their AI on that

Double whammy is a good idea.

I want to take a picture of a brick and duplicate it over and over, then zip those up and duplicate that zip into OneDtive until it tells me I can't any more.

So, yeah. What's a good Linux distro for stable diffusion and programming?

It just comes down to personal preference. Mint is usually recommended as a good starting point.

Fedora or Mint should be the most hassle-free

All of them.

Biggest difference a distro does is their update cycle and how much the distro "takes care" of you. Some of them do everything behind the scenes to make it just work. Others need more user interaction to reach the same state (but tend to teach you the inner workings too, which will open up a LOT of customization)

So how many Windows refugees will end up fleeing to the Kingdom of Torvalds?

I’m extremely close at this point.

Give it a go, it was surprisingly not as big an issue as I thought it would be, even for gaming (though not perfect for gaming, I've been able to get things working without too much headache at least)

How does anyone put up with using that OS? It’s 2024, it’s time to move on. Sheesh

The only two things making me use windows for now are my inability to run FL Studio on Linux (I tried before, I'll try again)

Procrastination to go through my files to see if there's something worth backing up before I wipe my drive

There are alternative DAWs but ngl they all make me sad. And some vsts are a nightmare to get running too.

But they are alot better than trying to get fl running on Linux imo. Check out zrythm if you ever have some time to kill. It sounds lile the most promising one.

I'm just in love with FL's keyboard roll and I'm just used to the entire daw. I don't really want to switch to a different one

I think Bottles has a ready-made profile for installing FL, last I saw it was marked as silver quality. Might be worth a try? I'm a Bitwig user so I haven't needed to try it. :p (Though I have heard tales of FL's magnificent piano roll.)

Its honestly amazing. I keep hearing bitwig is the way to go if you want to use linux and also be happy

I'm gonna save this comment for the time when I eventually switch (I got shitton of WIP stuff)

These days it's best to use Windows on computer where you need it for a specific application, and another machine for your desktop. Sometimes with a switch so you can use the same keyboard/mouse/monitor

I know someone who uses one of those beelink minis or similar as a dedicated machine to run their 3d printer because the company doesn't support Linux as well as Windows.

It sucks to have to keep your nice production machine separate from your desktop, but it really beats the headache of virtualization or dual booting

Depending on use case, virtualization can actually be way easier

That's really interesting! How so? I'd figure that windows would have the better hardware support so running it in vm would be weird

I use Revi. fresh install then immediately install Revi, gets rid of all the bloatware, copilot, onedrive, edge, etc.

I'd switch to a linux install but I just don't have to time to figure out which is the right one for me, installing it, configuring it, etc. I wish I did, wish I had the time to play around with it but I simply don't. (I mean maybe someone smarter than me can tell me a linux distro that will work with world of warcraft, steam, final fantasy xiv, etc) so I have to settle with win 11+revi

I just don't have to time to figure out which is the right one for me, installing it, configuring it, etc

Ah, then you want Mint.

I mean maybe someone smarter than me can tell me a linux distro that will work with world of warcraft, steam, final fantasy xiv, etc.

Mint, ive had no issue with any of those except WoW, whose issue is that I do not play it to test it. it even handled modded FNV better than Windows ever did once I figure out SteamTinkerLaunch

Dalamud (QuickXIVLauncher) even is on the distro software hub for easy download to your system, works great.

I just want to follow up and say "thank you so much!" I took the dive and partioned out space for Linux Mint. played around with it for a bit and said "fuck it, I love this thing" and did a fresh install on my laptop deleting windows 11.

Holy crap this thing has improved my laptop so much. it's so damn fast, boots up quicklly and believe it or not my battery lasts longer now. I just spent hours customizing how it looks, it's fun, it's great.

Also I was easilly about to install steam, elden ring, Final Fantasy XIV and even World of Warcraft and they all work, and run, better on this machine now.

WoW was actually pretty easy to get going in all honesty. Instead of installing WoW directly on Litrus instead you install Battle.net via Litrus and it simply does the rest, EVEN going that route allowed me to install other blizzard games like Hearthstone without doing anything special.

My only beef right now is I'm having issues customizing the panel like I want. Tried installing polybar and got in a bit over my head with i3wm but I'm sure I'll figure that stuff out soon. Got a cool app launcher going that makes things so much easier, even changed the shell and got zsh going which is great.

I love it, absolutely love it and won't be going back to Windows ever. I imagine once I get a handle of Mint I might switch to a different distro like Arch (I love the look of that and how people have customized it) but for now this is perfect.

I never saw your other comment asking for elaboration so I'm sorry for that, but super glad it's working out for ya! You sound exactly like I did when I first swapped lol

Good luck with the taskbar, we all find that one damn white whale!

awesome, I'm familiar with Dalamud, I'll give Mint a shot when I have some time. thank you very much.

I'm a total Linux noob though so should I be fairly good to go with Mint?

ooh boy, and I was going to do pop!OS on my main rig thinking mint wasn't good for gaming.

Mint is great, been using it for the past couple days and I've been able to get Elden Ring, FFXIV, WoW, Balatro, and FNV with a bunch of mods running on it very smoothly. all very easy to install. Steam games worked just like Windows for installing. WoW took a bit of extra steps but nothing difficult to do. Love Mint, it's so easy to use. It's like "hmm I wonder if I could customize or do this on it" and with Mint the answer 9 out of 10 times is yes.

There are way too many nice features on Windows that don't exist or are time consuming to set up on Linux. My only pain point on Windows, other than the stupid pop-ups advertising other services, are the fact that I can't install individual GNU tools like nano easily.

Microsoft is doing an amazing job keeping me off selling windows 11!

Keep up the great work!

Guess it's time for Linux and for me to give up gaming :/

give up gaming

What? Most games run better on Linux

Yeah but I'm a weirdo that actually likes early access games and random indie stuff that rarely works with Linux so a large part of what I like won't work.

Also star citizen... lol

I game on Linux. Go check protondb for compatibility with your favourite game

With Proton, a large majority of games run on Linux, and most even better than on windows.

Is proton the distro or program?

Proton is steam's version of wine which is used automatically when you install any game that doesnt have a specific linux version.

I switched to Linux last week and I haven't had any issues with my Steam games. Just had to turn on the setting to have Steam provide Linux support for games that don't provide it themselves.

I'm gonna start sounding like a shill, but check out Nobara. Painless install, steam games just work out of the box.

Windows users are like abuse victims at this point.

No news is good news.

I have to use Outlook for work. It is so annoying to have to avoid the one drive attachment option everytime I attach a file to an email. Nobody wants to be forced to deal with that crap.

I legit don't understand why this exists. Why would anyone want a bunch of shit in their OneDrive to have a permanent link?

Microsoft just loves money at the expense of quality products.

And this is why nobody trusts windows

Windows has always been trash. People use it because it usually comes with the machine.

Windows 3.1 - 98 weren't too bad. Windows 95 was massive and people queued to buy boxed copies, so far from just using it because it came with the machine. Windows used to have actual fans, people that enjoyed using the OS

How do I get banned from OneDrive? Upload shit tons of garbage to clog their drives? I know they could probably add more space faster than I can upload but it would still make me happy to slowly feed them useless files that only take up space.

This might actually be a very good idea.

My first thought was to abuse something that rhymes with "Mild Topography". But that would likely lead to legal repercussions for both you and Microsoft. A better solution would be to store hundreds of medical records in your Documents folder. You have a right to store your own medical information. If Microsoft is uploading those to their servers without your consent, and without appropriate HIPAA measures, that smells like an extremely silver-wrapped lawsuit.

The answer is incompressible noise. Hours of full on 8k video and 7.1 channel DTS of pure noise. There's noise designed specifically to being incompressible and unable to deduplicate. I think some podcasts got in trouble with Spotify for something like this.

Microsoft just seems to be trying various methods of shooting itself in the foot.

I guess maybe they really didn’t learn from the 80s/90s….

I got a new laptop at work and everything, every file I worked in, was creating a second copy of itself on OneDrive. It was so annoying and took awhile but I found instructions on deleting the duplicates.

It took all the files off my local machine and left the ones on OneDrive.

Aaaargh!

Yeah, it did this to me a few months back. Got the files back local eventually but it was a big pain in my arse. If I had time to learn another os I'd already be gone. Seems like Microsoft is determined to asset-strip whatever good reputation their product had left.

If you start with something like PopOS, Linux Mint, or Universal Blue the learning curve shouldn't be too high.

Let be honest here, a majority of users have their mobile devices backup automatically. They will see this in the same way....

Just that I don't have anything worthwhile on my phone. All the important stuff is on PCs. All the stuff that is professional, that is covered by NDAs, all the banking. And just because Microsoft has ever been shitty and is now going extra-shitty, it is not a Windows PC.

Just wait until some Microsoft digital parrot AKA artificial "intelligence" spouts some companies internal data that it had gobbled up somewhere from the companies internal network...

Same here. I don't have anything important, and my contacts are in a vcf file whenever I need it.

I got both google and xiaomi do that on the same phone, it sure was a hassle to remove both without losing my data...

And yet people will just shrug it off and keep using windows. And Microsoft loves that.

take ownership then deny everyone. if folder is deleted it will reappear

I wouldn't trust OneDrive with any kind of data. Windows 11 is garbage. Waiting for Windows 12.

Sorry to break the spell but Windows 12 will be worse. Might even be subscription based.

Windows 12 won't be. Windows 12+ChatGPT 100% will be.

You think it'll be optional?

I don't understand the chat-gpt thing. What's the big deal about it?

It's an always-on AI that sits directly on your device inside a built-in Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which takes screenshots every 5 seconds and scans the screenshots for information - including passwords, banking information, and other forms of PII. It then stores all of that information completely unencrypted, in a format that has been proven almost immediately after the beta preview to be able to be exfiltrated within seconds, easily, by a very simple piece of malware. The company claims that all the information is only stored locally, and after the backlash, that the AI would be opt-in only, but we've seen what Microsoft does with their "promises" before.

Lately, Windows 11 has been a one sussy baka. Windows, I don't know, man, it's almost like we have an impostor among us.

Real question here: has anyone else had luck side-stepping the Live365 signup during/after install? I've done this, and I'm very confused that more people haven't.

iirc when going through the setup after a fresh install, I used sign in and typed in an email like fake@email.com with a keysmashed password. Because it’s obviously not an actual account and with a password that wouldn’t be correct, it’ll say as much but still let you continue into windows without signing in. Hope that helps

This stopped working about 1 month ago. OOBE\BYPASSNRO method can be used to create local account.

Ah, thanks for the new info on that! I’ll have to save this for later if I need to reinstall Win11… again

Oddly enough, OneDrive is the least of my problems with windows. It’s pretty handy at work since I have to juggle tasks between multiple PCs. My only hang up with Linux is games, which is odd since time wise I don’t spend most of my time there.

That would only work if you log in with a Microsoft account.

Nobody I know does that.

You must not know all that many people. Windows is pushing accounts super hard. Average user is complying with this. Ask your fish monger or barista , bet one of them has a m$ account.

I don't know any average user who does their own Windows installs.

Usually they just ask some tech friend for help, and they know how to do it without an MS account.

Another article speaks about Windows 11 requiring a Microsoft account to install it, no longer supporting local accounts.

No. The article you're talking about says that Microsoft removed the guide on how to do it. You can still setup a local account.

Ms is slowly removing the avenues to have a local account. They may have saw the recent article where they patched out methods to create local accounts. There may be only 1 way left to do it and will probably be patched out soon.

Unless there will be new separate Windows OS created that is not backwards compatible with anything prior to it like it was attempted with Windows S, this most likely will never happen.

Local accounts are integral part of OS. MS might make it harder to do, but there will always be an option.

But can they neuter it to make it near useless without a Microsoft account tagging along?

Probably not, all you need account for is for sign in after all. MS account just has additional benefits related to syncing your settings and some settings enabled by default like it is with this OneDrive feature and BitLocker encryption, but most of it can be replicated afterwards with local account.

Yes I agree with you that should be the case, that’s not what’s happening in reality. They are slowly closing off that option and it won’t be long till it could be gone. There’s no reason from their perspective it HAS to be there.

MS might make it harder to do, but there will always be an option.

Or you could switch to an OS that isn't actively fighting you.

Ehh, you get used to these small minor annoyances. Have not experienced anything yet that would push me to change OS and relearn all the ins and outs I have accumulated all these years I have on Windows.

Have used Linux Mint as my primary OS for a year and I liked certain aspects, but in the end I did not see any tangible benefit to switch besides more customization. Have installed it for my parents though since they have old hardware that W10 just is not meant for. Since they are technologically challenged and need just a browser, they had no issues with switch from Windows.

So Mac?

Because that definitely isn't Linux. Where you got to dive into documentation in order to install the correct repositories just to make your audio work. (And if it isn't that, then it is some other bullshit)

Actually, I wouldn't put Mac in there as well, where Apple can just decide you aren't allowed to do something.

Can't think of a single OS that does exactly what you want without much hassle.

First, needing to set things up does not mean the OS is actively fighting you. If you need to install something for your hardware to work Linux actively wants to aid you, where as Microsoft is actively fighting against you keeping your files and accounts local.

Second, I tried Linux last week and had minimal issues getting my hardware to work. The biggest problems I had were a result of me over-complicating things because I assumed it would be harder and assumed Linux was at fault. Turns out the specific software I was using was the problem and the fix was easy.

Until it becomes mandatory. Foot in the door is a powerful play.