Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
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I'm so happy now that I've finally fully migrated to linux.
What'd you end up on, out of curiosity? I was on Fedora for a couple years, but with the whole Red Hat thing (that I don't fully understand the implications of), I switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed. Still have love for Mint, though, after all these years.
The whole red hat thing (you mean the centos drama?) has no implications whatsoever on fedora, fyi. If you liked it feel free to go back to it.
I'm using endevour os now, though I started on mint a few months ago and loved it. The wife is using mint now and just commented yesterday that it was a very seamless transition from windows. Only problems have been related to nvidia being dumb.
I'm still a Fedora guy, started on Ubuntu years ago, tried arch (loved AUR) and all the Ubuntu derivatives but once I hit fedora it just stuck.
RedHat still pushes their changes upstream whenever possible, and is one of the largest OSS contributors. These changes were to make it harder for companies like Oracle who feed off of RHEL. The same reason you can’t view RH support docs any more, Oracle used to reply to their paid users (running RHEL clones) with copy/paste from the RH docs.
I always thought microsoft allowing HWID activation was a deliberate move to get as many people to use windows and got them enrolled into windows updates, which bolster their market share and allow them to push ads/promotion for their various services to windows start menu. I think microsoft got a lot more to lose from ending HWID activation.
Good thing i switched to linux
How do you know if someone runs Linux? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Good. Free and Open Source Software should be the standard.
Hopefully I don't need to point you towards the endless list of enshittification for why.
How do you know someone participates in pirating?
Don't worry, they'll tell you.
I also use linux btw
enshittification continues. windows activation is such an annoyance more than anything. one part change and your activation is gone.
This is why I’m very happy with Valve’s efforts to port Windows functionality to Linux/GNU kernel. The clock is ticking for my main desktop to become a Linux desktop, my only holdouts are games and some of my music production plugins. I could probably abandon some if I had to honestly.
People have been saying "the year of the Linux desktop" for 20 years now. I definitely think it's closer than ever now that gaming (aside from some anticheat stuff) is mostly there thanks to Valve putting in the work, for sure. Once Win 10 hits EOL, this being the last Windows holdout I have, it'll get Linux like the rest of them.
I guess Microsoft didn't like that their support staff cracks Windows with HWID activation using MAS when their infrastructure breaks down for legit licenses.
K38 still works. But yeah just switch to Linux.
Sorry for possibly a stupid question, but what's the point of activating Windows?
I never seriously used Windows, but I have a Windows 7 VM that's not activated, and it works. Just the wallpaper is black. Also most of our school computers don't have activated Windows, yet it seems to work fine, there's just the watermark. And on some it shows the "You may be the victim of..." message. Same seems to be the case for Office 2016 installed on those. Other than the "non-genuine" message, it works.
I guess it's just a personal thing. I personally cannot stand the "Please Activate Windows" watermark and MAS is such an easy tool that it just makes sense to do it. It's not like this announcement kills MAS, you can still use the other activation methods
Possibly(?) related official notice https://devicepartner.microsoft.com/en-us/communications/comm-windows-ends-installation-path-for-free-windows-7-8-upgrade
Never spent the time to figure out what KMS actually did but seems like licenses weren't validated when upgrading from 7 -> 8 / 11
Now, you can't perma-crack your new PC with a "real" HWID key, then years later reinstall Windows and keep your "real" license anymore! And you can't upgrade anymore on that new PC either! You have to patch Windows every time!
RIP HWID
By the way you can still use a windows 7 key for windows 11, I just have an old laptop with the OEM sticker on it, works fine on every computer I ever tried. Consider just trying to find one in the trash or just take a photo of one on a computer in public that won't likely get reinstalled.
Microsoft is stupid, someone high up is getting greedy or desperate.
Patching HWID is annoying and doesn't stop piracy. In fact it will break a lot of legacy systems in general; which is probably what they intended and why they are guilty of corporate greed in this case.
I hate Micro$hit but I am REQUIRED to use Windows by too many stupid fucking different idiots, apps, and games to count. Linux is still not there yet for me usability-wise; though it probably is still improving.
No; I will never accept that CLI is an acceptable end-user implementation; GUI is required; along with ease of use and the polish that comes with it. I don't mind CLI interfaces; but I do feel they're not user-friendly enough usually. They REQUIRE YOU to LEARN a few things to get used to them; which is the opposite of an intuitive interface.
NOTE: I am very FLOSS accepting when it meets my needs; but I will not hold back criticism. Do not try to shout me down. You will always be wrong. Windows is factually more user-friendly and application compatibility diverse than Linux.
I genuinely hope that Linux finds more ways to 100% match Windows functionally without forcing the user to compromise. We need to punish Microsoft for all these years of monopoly holding and reclaim computing more effectively.
It’s funny how computers are almost the only human invention that for some reason must be able to be used without learning anything.
We don’t do that for almost anything else. We expect people to learn how to drive, how to fill taxes, how to buy things on the store, how to cook, how to play chess. It seems like the only cases when someone decides learning stuff is an inconvenience is when tech people get into another field and tries to disrupt it.
I am all about making things as simple as they can be, but not simpler. Intuitive is a super relative term that depends on your knowledge and life experience. People find Office intuitive after using it for twenty years, but for me is a nightmare where legacy features intermingle with weird cloud and AI shit, and most of the time I only need a markdown file. No interface is intuitive, they are only familiar, clear, accesible, discovereable, etc.
Interface Design goes in cycles of skeuomorphism and simplification because computer stuff is not Intuitive, you have to open the way with metaphors people can understand, and when they are part of everyday life you can make the app for the virtual credit cards not look like it’s made of leather.
After reading through the docs on the MAS site, KMS38 still looks pretty robust. I get that it’s not ‘permanent’ but are there any major drawbacks aside from having to re-run MAS after a fresh Windows install?
I hope this means we'll finally get activation methods that patch windows itself rather than playing along with their key system. Obviously it can be done since Windows AME has activation Functions completely removed yet it will never try to deactivate itself.
what is MAS?
Microsoft Activation Scripts
EDIT: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
RIP. We hardly knew ye.
I tried doing a full swap from Windows earlier this year. I do a lot of local game streaming from my gaming pc to my laptop and I had issues getting this working. Didn't have the energy to keep looking for solutions so I just went back to windows. Next time I try I will probably keep my pc on windows and only swap my laptop to Linux. One step at a time.