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You don’t even need to “pirate” Windows anymore. You can download an ISO from Microsoft’s website, install it, and when it asks for your license key, you click “I don’t have one”, and that’s the end of it. If you look in the activation settings, it’ll say “not activated”, but nothing will ever become of it. This even works if you install it as Pro. It’s not like the Windows XP/7 days where you’d get a 60 day scare timer. They just don’t seem to care anymore, or maybe all that telemetry they siphon up from you is just that much more valuable.
PSA
If you see Windows 11 online DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT!!!
It will install a virus called Windows 11 and it will run Windows 11 on your PC!!!
Which is known to BRICK YOUR SYSTEM in some cases.
Technically true.
TechnicallyLiterally true.only if you don’t know how to reset secureboot?
Hmmm. Yeah, I suppose. But I’m thinking of the weird alpha-release of TPM way back in the Windows ME days. Some laptops that were advertised as built for ME were bootloader locked, basically, and fighting that would almost guarantee you brick the thing.
So, I guess if I have a point it’s that these assholes have been at this for decades.
“technically”
Even Windows 7 actually didn’t care if you had no key.
You could leave it unactivated forever and the worst thing that would happen is it would have a “Activate windows” watermark message bottom right over the desktop, and it wouldn’t let you change the personalization settings eg theming (oh no).
Never had to pay for a key anyway. I just hopped on eBay and looked for machines that were “for parts only” where the seller took a very nice picture of the bottom of the computer.
It was very nice of them to share that software with me once they were done using it.
It’s way more profitable to audit corporations than fight Eastern European crackers and Asian “distributors”
I miss all those super weird XP editions seemingly made by colourblind and hyper 8 year olds (at least in taste). Like rockets, gold or muscle car themed distros.
Nowadays all themes seems so… adult and boring. Tried to find some weird stuff in Plasma but alas
That’s not related only to windows themes. It’s an overall design shift. Cars, phones, businesses, PC parts, everything has been shifting towards this adult, boring, sleek, corporate, uniform, grey look.
Hannah Montana Linux OS keeping this proud tradition going singlehandedly. ✊
Edit: not singlehandedly, just learned of the two other parts of the holy Linux trifecta, RebeccaBlackOS & Justin Bieber Linux Distro
https://massgrave.dev/ is your friend.
Why would they enforce the activation? Window is no longer their product. You are.
To add on to what everybody else said, it’s probably not worth the time/money to have a team of developers play cat and mouse with pirates for the rest of time when they make the large majority of their sales off OEMs. Dell, HP, and Lenovo probably make up something like 80% of Windows license sales. And if it’s a business buying them, then they are also making money off of M365, Azure, and Intune subscriptions. Losing the sales from people who build their own PCs is chump change to them.
You know, and all the data slurping and ad sales etc etc.
It’s pretty annoying though. I’m sure there’s some way to remove it but until you activate there’s a watermark that shows up over every single application telling you to activate.
This seems to be the case.
You’re right, they don’t care.
The very fact they no longer care about enforcing licensing anymore is itself the strongest evidence that selling Windows as a product is not where the money is.
They want you on their operating system for any price - including zero -because once you are there that’s when the advertising, cloud service upsell and data monetisisation can begin.
And if you really do want to activate it (which is kinda worth it because some system settings are locked behind it), Massgrave takes 2 seconds.
Microsoft missed the mobile boat by a long shot.
Windows is ever shrinking as people don’t buy computers like they used to since phones can do what they need.
This means that for Microsoft growing Windows user base is a non starter. They are well into the extract portion of the product lifecycle. The os now only exists to support the products that still make money are extract what can be extracted from a shrinking user base.
Don’t they lock customization settings and updates being the license?
I needed Windows the other day and it wouldn’t even let me change the volume without activating it.
The moment the installation finished you get bombed with ads and shit and they instantly earn more than the value of a couple windows 11 licenses.
A truly blessed Steam Deck, praise be to HolyC.
God says: hop rally embark fortify joy giraffe propose
God’s messenger said A LOT of things I dare not repeat here.
That’s glorious. Now I want more information.
You’ll need a dock and keyboard if you want to accomplish anything. It took me two years to figure out how to get to that menu.
I…what…does Tongues -> God Doodle do??
I see, so this is what he saw in those visions.
I used rufus to put windows on an sd card. The steam deck can boot from the card if you hold a volume button when you power on. Valve provides drivers for both lcd and oled. It’s worked perfectly since maybe a month after each model came out. It touches nothing. Rufus is the only trick, since microsoft is the uncooperative part.
I did it for modern warfare 2019. It wasn’t worth it. If you boot into windows every six months, you get to update for an hour. If you get logged out of steam, you should plug in a mouse and keyboard. It’s my only windows install since 8 came out which was my only attempt since 98. And it only convinces me to stay away.
JOIN TEAM LINUX INSTEAD
Does linux even work on steamdeck? Has anybody tried?
Nah, Valve would never allow it
Good joke, I did mean Linux on Desktop though.
I bet you can get some version of BSD running
More-or-less bog standard amd64 with amd graphics? Assuming the generic AMD video drivers work FreeBSD should be able to get to a graphical UI out of the box. Might not have controller or gyro drivers, but a keyboard and mouse should work fine.
Now I have a project. Thanks, Droechai…
I assume this is some joke about Steam OS I’m not understanding.
… no. I was dead serious about trying FreeBSD on the Steamdeck. FreeBSD supports almost all mainstream hardware you’d see on a normal desktop. Figured it’d be similar for the steamdeck. So now my weekend project is to try out booting FreeBSD 16 off a USB stick on my steamdeck.
After a small amount of duckduckgoing I found that it somewhat works already. GPU hardware is detected but can’t initialize. That’s a reasonable starting point for someone like me who isn’t afraid of kernel-level code :/
Be ashamed of using Windows. If you paid for it, more shame.
I do regret paying for windows once years ago. I always hated Microsoft a lot, but truly never thought they could sink as low as they have.
I run a Legion Go. it’s all I could afford at the time. Plays factorio and satisfactory fine. Wish I could afford a “real” rig but… it’s just not in the cards. Apparently buying wife’s car a new tranny is “important.”
When I bought my Legoin Go, the first thing I did was to turn it on, see it’s W11 asking for network settings without a way to continue without. So I turned it off and installed Bazzite instead. Much better experience.
Why does your wife need a transsexual for her car?
To fix the transmission. Lilith’s Tranny’s, it’s like femboy IHOP but with beautiful transgender women working on engines.
How about:
Tammy’s Tranny’s: “Transmissions & Transitions”
Okay, you didn’t have to completely one up me like that in public. That absolutely is so much better.
Are they hiring? I have experience in both fields
Femboy IHOP: Home of the wiggling wangs.
This guy trannies.
Girl* is* 😅 But maybe it wouldn’t be cool to say it that way, lmao
lol. come fix my wife’s car. :p
So the truck nuts can be installed properly. Can’t transition your car without a proper expert around to keep things going right.
He means “transistor radio”. It’s what people used to call the wireless.
Slap Bazzite on that bad boy ASAP.
thinking abt it!just gotta get some downtime.
A buddy of mine bought one of those a while back. We recently switched it over to steam OS and the performance improvement was substantial.
Nothing wrong with the Legion Go hardware at all. I like that it’s got those Switch-like removable controls, tho I’m not sure if I’d use them.
If you’re interested in a non-Windows experience, Steam OS supports the Legion Go. There’s also Cachy OS a rolling-release Arch Linux distro, Bazzite an immutable Fedora distro with atomic updates, Nobara a customized Fedora distro maintained by Glorious Eggroll who is known for Proton-GE, and Chimera OS.
thanks!
I thought legion go ran steamOS??
Not at launch. Now it can
nope. win11. i mean i can run whatever but yeah. default is win11
Guys! Relax, it’s fine. We still have a VM for the Linux experience. It’s basically the same thing!
Be ashamed when using windows and any microslop product.
I dual boot SteamOS and Windows 10 IoT LTSC mostly because there are still some game developers that can’t figure out how to enable anti-cheat for Linux.
And does Windows rewrite my boot sequence every time?
Sure, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Hate to admit that when I first got my deck at launch, I immediately set up a dual boot just so I could play Destiny 2 on it.
Needless to say, I no longer play Destiny 2 or even use Windows at all on any of my machines. Hell, I even installed CachyOS Handheld on my deck over SteamOS for shits and giggles.
How is it? I considered trying it, but SteamOS just runs so well. Not sure what I’d gain
I won’t lie, it hasn’t been flawless, as it’s a bleeding edge distro with a much smaller userbase than its desktop counterpart, but it’s served me well enough for 6 months or so now. Only ran into one major bug, which promptly reported after finally finding a workaround/root cause (i.e. steam’s background recording seems to break their latest customized gamescope).
If you like to tinker with your devices and SteamOS wiping out anything installed via pacman after an update pisses you off like it did me, then it’s worth a try, but if you literally just use it for gaming and never really touch desktop mode, it’s not really worth considering.
This really goes against the whole purpose of buying a Steam Deck considering on Windows you will have a poorer user experience due to the lack of Gamescope and Windows’ very poor non touch friendly UI. Maybe there’s somethings that can make it better but it won’t ever be as good as just using Steam OS or any Linux distro set up to use Gamescope and proton.
One of the great things about the steam deck much like Linux is that it won’t stop you just because something is stupid and a bad idea.
And do not write this into an admin PowerShell window to activate it.
IEX(IWR get.activated.win)
@PerfectDark@lemmy.world article on your attempt at this, when?
I remember when I used to write ridiculously long and detailed guides on Steam Deck things, so many people asked me to do the same for installing and tweaking Windows for the Deck! I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to install and use it, but it sure isn’t my scene. Or recommendation.
Or if you do, plz look into O&O ShutUp 10+11
I bought an ROG Ally X specifically because it runs Windows. Steam just virtualizes Windows anyway. If you don’t know how to whip Windows into your bitch that’s on you.
It’s hot garbage, learn to recycle.
Meh, I’d prefer if they all run Linux, so that we dont have to pay more for the privilege of being data mined. We need to stop supporting these monopolies, they push out such hot garbage software.
Or just use the thing that’s more functional, more user friendly, and isn’t garbage that doesn’t need to be ‘whipped into shape’. Will never understand the fucking Stockholm syndrome some people have for Microsoft’s bullshit.
Or just use the thing that’s more functional
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
My hardware doesn’t work on Linux. It’s not Stockholm. I’ve been using Linux for 39 years.
Steamdeck is emulating Windows. It’s got computational overhead and compatibility issues for many games.
Consumers didn’t make it this way. I spent my life loving Linux while being a gamer who had to use Windows.
I’ve been using Linux for 39 years.
That’s quite the achievement considering the first Linux kernel was released in 1991, 35 years ago.
Steamdeck is emulating Windows.
Again, it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
No code emulation or virtualization occurs
You don’t actually understand any of this do you?
Steam just virtualizes Windows anyway.
No, it doesn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
No code emulation or virtualization occurs
It’s an additional layer of abstraction.
Many games that run on Windows do not perform the same, and sometimes don’t run at all on Linux or wine.
Linux enthusiasts used to know what they’re talking about instead of pasting wrong info about my own hardware.
Linux enthusiasts used to know what they’re talking about instead of pasting wrong info about my own hardware.
You’re annoyed at yourself for being wrong about the Steam Deck using virtualization to run Windows games? Like, do you know what “virtualization” means? Are you just stringing together words and hoping they form coherent sentences?
I pasted a link to the Wikipedia article for Wine, which you – having “used Linux for 39 years” – surely know is what Steam Deck uses to run Windows applications. Which part of it is incorrect?
Don’t throw these stones until you’ve tried using a steam deck as a work computer
I’ve done a good amount of maintenance on my home server setup through my deck on the couch. Just a keyboard and the touchpad. Works just fine, no Windows needed. Basically just a weird shaped laptop.
Install a different distro, attach a connect bt keyboard and it’s a decent substitute for a few days.
I’d be interested to hear a potential use case where both applies:
- Steam deck is a viable option as work computer
- MS Windows is the better choice for the task
SteamOS is a better work OS for most use cases than Windows. The few cases where it isn’t, Mac OS is the superior choice.
Have you tried it though?
I have and I can whole heartedly say that using Windows 11 on the Deck is an awful experience no one should be attempting as a daily runner.
