Linux

Claim: you don't need a Microsoft account to run windows. Here's how.

Step 1: set up a Microsoft account.

Reminds me of the most traumatising conversation I've had in a good while, which included the following (abridged) exchange:

Me: You do know that, if payment for your yearly M365 fees fails for some reason, or you simply don't want or don't care about it anymore and let your subscription expire, you will get read-only access to your OWN data, which is stored in YOUR computer, and unable to create new files in Office ?

Him: So what? If you have a newspaper subscription and you stop paying, you won't get the newspaper anymore, that's just how subscriptions work.

...

I am not talking about a 10 year old. This is a 50+ year old dude who does entrepreneur's consulting for a living.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer

David William Plummer (born August 9, 1968) is a Canadian-American programmer and entrepreneur. He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[2] for the Amiga and many other software products.

2025: The guy that wrote Windows' Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.

Dave is amazing, and his content on YouTube is very entertaining. This is a pragmatic answer for those who want or need Windows in some capacity, and then want to go on a use local accounts. Have some decency and recognize good advice when you see it.

David Plumber is a former Windows engineer, and has a YouTube channel where he shares stories about his time at Microsoft.

Of course he has positive Windows opinions, and of course he yaps about it like he’s an expert: because he is

The only thing you need a Microsoft account for is to play Minecraft. And use other Microsoft products and services that Microsoft keeps pushing their terrible account system on.

With Windows 10 eol coming up, I installed Bazzite on my buddies computer. All he uses it for is games, browser and editing the occasional document. The transition has been really seemless so far, and he is not technologically adept in the slightest.

Idk about you guys but I got sick of using an os that obviously doesn't want me to use it.

Since everyone is dogging on Dave for his MacOS comment - I doubt he even realized MacOS has a "skip" option for the Apple ID.

Weird hill to die on, guys.

Funny that this comes from a Windows dev.

Linux install: maybe 10 or 15 minutes tops from booting USB to desktop access, login is local, network connection is optional.

It's not an awful take to say something like "Hey, you can get around this requirement by creating a burner account, then creating local accounts". His wording is a bit off but he's an odd guy, who also used to scam people, so this isn't that bad in the grand scheme. He's also heavily biased to windows.

On the topic of the account, I moved to Linux and I threw an LTSC build of Windows 10 on another nvme drive so I could play a couple games that use anti cheat. I figure by the time that's no longer supported developers will just accept Linux in their games or i won't care anymore.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but you don't need to smell shit while eating it.

You do need to get it down your throat, but you can just keep your nose pinched with your fingers, same as MacOS.

After that, throw up as much as you like. It's what I do. Total calories delta: 100 kcal

Just make a burner first-born for the initial sacrifice pledge & then make other local children as you please.

Microsoft will continue to eliminate workarounds. Copilot needs your data for training purposes. Snapshot, Onedrive, mandatory accounts, are all ways of forcing users to give up their data.

Can't tell if he's joking considering all of his videos as a former MSFT engineer.

Then again, he is a former MSFT engineer lol.

So in other words, just switch to Linux already

3 what

He's a former Microsoft engineer for those who don't know

You don't need an account on Windows either (just pirate the pro version)

Dave Plummer is the same guy who thinks Linux is a disease

You can open the powershell during install to get around the Microsoft id, and make a local user.

You actually don’t need to setup an Apple ID to startup a Mac.

Yeah I was about to say “since when” about MacOS, good thing you added the note. Windows is objectively just more data hungry than MacOS. The fact that you need to sign in to use the default calendar says it all on Windows

Does that read as justifying it? It sure seems like he's providing a workaround, same as all the people who used to point at the simple shortcut to work around the requirement when that worked smoothly.

I mean, I, for one, hadn't thought about it. It's not a terrible way to go about it. Doesn't help me, I need a MS account to do Office stuff so I may as well, but if you're really hung up on this and can't avoid Windows it's a decend solution.

Total time delta 🐱