Up until now, it’s always remained possible to activate Windows offline, by calling a phone number, going through a lengthy phase of entering digits on your phone dialpad, and carefully listening to and entering a string of numbers on the device you’re trying to activate. For a while, even, this was, as far as I can tell, one of the easiest ways to fix activation issues caused by replacing one component too many, causing Windows activation to think you had a new machine. Phone activation was always remarkably more lenient and forgiving than online activation.
Well, as part of Microsoft’s crusade to make Windows progressively more shit, it seems phone activation is going away.
However, that seems to no longer work on Windows 11 or 10 or Windows 7 either, as another user Ben Kleinberg has documented on his YouTube channel. Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following: “Support for product activation has moved online. For the fastest and most convenient way to activate your product, please visit our online product activation portal at aka.ms/aoh”
↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin
They’re going after your local, non-online account, they’re going after offline activation – what’s next in line on the chopping block? Are they going to actively start blocking the various debloat tools that make Windows 11 at least slightly less of a block of concrete chained around your neck?
Please switch to a real operating system.
I am not happy that MS is going down this path. Billions depend on Windows for their day to day computing. It would be nice if MS could just deliver a no nonsense OS and for once help ordinairy souls to do their computing in peace.
That said, I am wondering when the breaking point will be reached. Up till now what I’ve heard the most is that you can turn it of, you can work around it, you can circumvent it. When do we get to: Enough, no more faffing around. Bye MS!
It seems the threshold for pain is high with Windows users.
It’s not harder to use a given flavor of Linux these days, than it ever was to use Windows – it’s just different. I know there’s momentum, and sometimes some compatible software issues (some legit, like complex win 32 apps, some not legit – like anti-cheat) – but yeah, it’s never been easier to get up and running on Linux.
I personally recommend Bazzite with Gnome. I just find KDE to be terminally ugly, and if you want to attract users, it can’t be that. The reason I say Bazzite (despite a very serious base setting problem https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/3409 ) is that the immutable nature of it makes it harder for new users to mess up (similar to Steam OS), and I’ve also found it more stable over time, than a traditional disto.
The issue with Linux, and alwayus will be it’s Achilles heel, is fragmentation.
If i have an issue with windows. Lets say the taskbar doesn’t load, i can simply google “taskbar doesn’t load windows”, and i bet the solution will be there.
With Linux on the other hand, you can’t just google “taskbar doesn’t load Linux”. Which linux? What desktop environment? What version of your distro? There’s so much fragmentation, finding the correct solution for your particular flavour of Linux is hard.
I’m an avid believer that the only FOSS operating system with any chance of beating Windows, is Haiku, and even that has a very long way to go before joe public wil adopt it.
That has a very long way to go before joe public will even hear of it.
I also agree with your point on fragmentation. Couldn’t put it better myself.
Another reason people still linger on Windows is Office. Businesses don’t dare/bother with adventures into libreoffice incompatibilities or the fear about when will Google kill docs. So won’t their employees.
I doubt the average joe would have problems with the taskbar in linux. They might have problems in windows, and thus the need for such searches.
The reason that “crashing taskbar” is even a top tier search item, is due to it happening too often. The reason that plasma or fxce4-panel crash is so seldomly searched for is simply because “it happens less often”. Yes it is a marketshare thing to some extent, but it is also a quality of code issue. Taskbar (explorer) is a poorly designed piece of software that “rules” your desktop in windows and does almost anything from window management to hardware detection and windowed graphics acceleration. xfce4-panel does nothing like this, it is just a panel.
Explorer is also the default file manager.
That’s funny. After many many years i had to deal with a windows 11 system and i was looking for some basic customizations like changing the size of the taskbar.
Google was giving me a pile of garbage results of old information and AI hallucinations. Looking on reddit i figured that it’s not possible to change the size of the taskbar anymore and, depending on what thread i was looking, people were recommending one or the other totally sketchy applications that supposedly could do what i was looking for.
So yeah, i think i can very much say in confidence that searching “change taskbar size linux KDE” is not a huge feat simply because it might require to add couple of extra words in your searches due to the diverse nature of open source software.
Gnome? Really? There is nothing more different than Windows than Gnome. I will recommend either XFCE, Cinnamon, or Budgie. Even Mate with the “redmon” mode will be better.
r_a_trip,
I would saw the “enshittification” of Windows would have been a great boon for Linux on the Desktop,
However Linux, too is going a similar, but not exact process itself. We have recovered from systemd, at least. But every now and then a new “great divider” comes up, breaks things, alienates people, and basically turns people away from Linux.
I would say maybe the upcoming “Steam” gaming console could change things. A mini PC under your TV with gaming capability, and if they stick with it, an optional Arch Linux desktop + KDE.
We will see soon.
Sukru, you are forgiving towards upheavals in MS land and lambasting Linux for the same. systemd is a much needed standardization in the low level Linux plumbing. I get it that many virtuoso sys admins didn’t like it that their kick-ass init scripting skills lost appeal overnight, but the low level stuff is now basically identical on most mainstream distributions. Yes, it has downsides, but over all it has been a net positive.
The next big thing is Wayland. Yes, painful for some. Or a no go out of principal for others, but it is a necessary overhaul of the graphic stack. X.org is too much duct tape and zip ties to carry us further in the 21st century. The base x11 protocol is ancient and the numerous extensions tacked on basically circumvent what x11 is supposed to be. For better or worse, Wayland is the modern replacement. Since nobody presented a truly better alternative to make Wayland obsolete, Wayland it is.
Windows has its own cadence of good release, bad release, good release, ad nauseam. Where good release doesn’t mean perfection, but good enough and not fully annoying enough to leave behind. So MS stays in the saddle by inertia. Better the devil you know.
As a long time Linux user, I know the eb and flow of Linux and through professional means I know the cadence of Windows. Linux isn’t worse than Windows and has the boon that nobody is trying to make it into a money extracting machine. It does have a few weak spots when it comes to commercial software and if you depend on that, Linux isn’t viable for you.
That said, a lot more people could use Linux perfectly fine, but cling to Windows because that is what they know. The too much choice thing is BS. If any other industry would operate like the Windows mono-culture, people would be wailing over the lack of choice. No one is paralyzed when they have to pick a car. No one has an aneurysm when they need to pick a breakfast cereal.
r_a_trip,
Don’t get me wrong, I used Linux as my primary desktop for… decades. But I was talking about the average user (I switch between platforms every now and then depending on needs, work and convenience)
I get that Microsoft has invested vast amounts of money into AI, and that they need it to pay off. However, going full-douchebag blatantly trying to force everyone into being strip mined for their personal & private data is not the way to go about it. I know people who’ve never thought twice about using a non-Windows OS that are now actively looking for/at alternatives thanks to the garbage Microsoft is pulling. The pretend Windows 11 hardware requirements, shoehorning people into things they didn’t ask for and don’t want, the hostility towards regular users who resist and are sick of Windows 11 constantly breaking or completely f’ing them over via forced “updates”, turning Windows is an ad-spam platform, and etc etc etc.
I hope all of Microsoft’s hot trash efforts fail spectacularly. Enough is enough. *middle finger emoji*
friedchicken,
They are moving the cart before the horse. (or whatever the saying way)
There are really good ways to integrate AI into the system. Yet, they push things before they are cooked. And not even with a “beta” label. Add breaking essential parts like Start Menu or Task Manager… people get a sour taste.
This is true. It is a slap on the face to those who actually paid for their license. But Microsoft assumes you’d most likely be pirating it, or getting it extremely cheap with the OEM route.
The sad part is there is no more “premium” option. If they had an “unlock” for those who actually paid… there would be less backlash.
Despite the “death” of windows 10. I have yet not seen a single windows 11 machine in the wild in my professional life. I see a LOT of OS/2 machines and some windows 2003 machines and a LOT for linux/bsd machines.
I might be limited by the wood industry, sawmills and paper pulp factories dont like to change too often.
I already can’t activate my Office 2010 copy any more. Online activation gives me an error.
Unopposed0108,
I haven’t tested this myself, but it’s only a matter of time before all remote software activation servers go offline. It’s a DRM-pocalypse! Doesn’t matter if you own a perpetual license if owners are prevented from installing/running the software by DRM.
Cracks/activators may be the only option for legitimate owners to run their software, but since there’s no official source for activators (obviously), it’s hard to know if your getting them from a trusted source free from malicious payloads.
DRM sucks.
Alfman,
It is not only the DRM, but also requiring online components for critical parts of the software.
Anthem, for example, a fun, but economically failed game will shut down in a week. Even if you paid full price, you can not even have a “single player” experience.
Back then, games would come with their own separate dedicated servers, but even multiplayer would work if everything was “shut down” (That is why many older Call of Duty games are still active, while more recent ones are completely offline.. To be fair CoD is better on this area than Battlefield)
Movies, too. When Sony bought Funimation and integrated into Crunchyroll… they just “deleted” everyone’s purchases.
(Why regulators did not even make a single noise about this is a mystery)
You “buy” something, just for someone else to disable it anytime in the future.
sukru,
Yeah, I agree with everything you are saying here. Things that should be local get tethered not because it makes engineering sense, but because corporations want to keep customers leashed.
Even if a CEO promises to keep things running, that’s not the way the real world works. Like when revolv (home automation products) got bought out by google and google bricked products within a year. I consider myself more knowledgeable than typical consumers, so I intentionally purchased a wifi thermostat that ostensibly offered local control functionality, yet low and behold I was furious when I learned they had a time/activation bomb and said local functionality stopped functioning when they ceased operations. God damn these corporations that lock everything to their servers.
From games, movies, operating systems, home automation, even cars, trying to vote against it with our wallets is becoming less viable over time. This is the future whether I like it or not and there’s no coming back from this. We no longer enjoy the natural rights that are supposed to come with ownership even though we’re paying for it. Many people in tech circles including myself have been vocal critics, but being outnumbered by sheep lets corporations erect tech jails without fear of widespread customer revolts.
Alfman,
What was the saying? “You’ll own nothing, and you’d be happy”
I personally won’t, but that is where they want to take us.
But… it is more than that. Many things align against local customer control.
The client server model is definitely much easier from the engineering perspective. Peer-to-peer systems require complex algorithms for things like network balancing, discovery, nat traversal and fairness, which are either easy to do, or extremely trivial when you have a central server.
Add in the increase security, and we also lose the ability to reverse engineer stuff. People used to make community servers for thing that never had that option. Like “World of WarCraft” classic servers. However today Wireshark (Ethereal) will only show encrypted noise.
Anyway, I get your sentiment. But there is really no easy fix. Even Linux is commercialized, and prefers centralized server – thin client setups.
People will have to expressly choose “inconvenience” over cheaper, easier methods.
sukru,
I’m not anti client/server paradigm. But in many cases, especially with local games, coercive tethering is the entire goal behind it. It wasn’t called for to make the game work.
In multiplayer games, naturally client/server programming is more important and I’m not against the model, however multiplayer games used to make the server available to run locally. This adds reassurance that even the game’s multiplayer components will continue to function without being tethered to the publisher’s own servers. The move to publisher controlled servers has been regressive for game ownership.
I agree things have gotten harder, but in this specific case it’s more akin to security via obscurity. In principal a “hacker” debugging the local progress technically has access to crypto keys and clear text. As is often the case with DRM, it can come down to discouragement via high effort rather than through mathematical impossibility.
Anyway, I’m not really proposing the fact that something can be debugged/hacked is a long term solution to the problem – it’s not. I don’t believe there is a pragmatic solution for consumers, if you want to participate in the future of tech, this is the reality of it.
Alfman,
It is about making things easier or harder.
Anything is possible. We had successful compatible servers or clients for many software in the past. Like chat (Pidgin for AOL/MSN/ICQ), entire Microsoft Windows Server stack (SAMBA), and other significantly challenging tasks.
sukru,
I agree it’s possible to reverse engineer the protocol from the client, but obviously it doesn’t necessarily mean someone will have done so for the titles you are interested in. Also, if server-side implementation/resources are never made public, then client-side reverse engineering may not be sufficient to authentically recreate the game (depending on how integral the server is to the gameplay). Also it’s not even a given that independent servers based on reverse engineering won’t be shut down by the lawyers.
My issue isn’t with what’s “possible”, but rather what’s likely. Ideally original devs would releases the source & resources as they cease operations, and to their credit some developers actually do this. But this is rather exceptional and more commonly defunct studios sell their catalogs to soulless corporations that that have no intention of doing right by former players.