I mean you don’t even have to install, just boot the iso and click try now
start ms-cxh:localonly or one of those rufus unattended things are the only ways i could ever set up Windows anymore, their stock config is some bullshit
Shift + f10 for cmd. Then do “start ms-cxh:localonly” and hit enter. Enjoy local user profile without internet.
RUFUS will build you a Windows installer that automatically bypasses the Microsoft Account requirement.
It also lets you bypass TPM 2.0 and lets you remove a lot of bloatware so it doesn’t even get installed in the first place.
The lower half of this meme is getting old to the point of being a bad joke. No-one does this except normies and people who buy pre-built systems that come with Windows already installed.
The point isn’t that an easy option for the bypass exists, but that a bypass is required at all. It shouldn’t be.
So… Every business ever, then?
The other one I’ve noticed is that they’ve stopped shipping necessary drivers with the install iso now, so if you do make the decision to install fresh, enjoy using the nipple on your Lenovo laptop because the trackpad and network driver didn’t come with the iso.
I’m so unbelievably tired of being a windows admin
Source: I did the windows install song and dance this morning
So tired of keeping like 10 different ethernet dongles, 5 of one model and 5 of another, because half of the new laptops can’t even connect to the internet with the windows install ISO due to lack of drivers.
Sometimes one of those 2 models will also refuse to work with the windows ISO, so ig fuck you if you’re trying to install windows on more than 5 computers at the same time.
Oh and of course you still need to do the bypass even if you don’t have drivers for the network card. Ig also fuck you too if you don’t know about it, because you’re never gonna install windows on that laptop.
Actually insane how far we’ve regressed in Windows land
It really feels like Ubuntu in 2008 whereas current Ubuntu or any other Linux Distro is infinitely easier to deal with nowadays.
MS has just fumbled the ball at every turn.
No-one does this except normies and people who buy pre-built systems that come with Windows already installed.
So the majority does this, then?
Still true that bypassing TPM means major upgrades are disabled and requires manual install by iso?
mfs will learn powershell to debloat windows 11 and wade through regedit but the intuitive linux terminal is STILL too goddamn scary
intuitive linux terminal
Which one is that? Powershell is way more intuitive than bash and I like bash.
Is it? I find them both equally unintuitive tbh. You really just have to memorize the commands you frequently use, or keep looking them up.
Powershell is just json with jq abilities
But it is intuitive. There’s no arguing that.
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My main gripe is the clicking.
Clicking clicking clicking.
I’ve got keybord navigation down to an art-
But sometimes you have to click.
You have to move your hand from your… Keyboard, let’s say, and switching to mouse, and that split second matters because it throws everything out of rhythm, causing friction where none is needed.
Clicking, clicking, clicking.
That’s my main gripe.
The clicking.
I am Anna, and this is my testimony.
Commit your testimony to an archive.
You could even name it… Anna’s archive.
You can, though. When it prompts you to make a Microsoft Account, select Other Options, Domain Account, and create a local account. You don’t actually have to join the PC to a domain :)
I think only business/pro SKUs allow this though?
Very possible, I am dealing with business/pro SKUs most often. I think it works on all editions, but not sure.
That’s still a ridiculous dark pattern, in my opinion no better than tabbing over to the command line. Nice to know that you can though, next time I need windows 11 for anything.
I agree it it dumb that it’s hidden away in a GUI menu, but it does exist. But why let something as silly as facts get in the way of a good WindowsBad! circlejerk?
Worry not, Canonical will have you holding its beer in no time.
Until people can buy a computer CHEAPLY and easily at Walmart with a distro preinstalled, Linux isn’t going to make a lot of headway very fast. They are too lazy to be bothered to download a distro, make a bootable iso, wipe and do a fresh install.
And yes, they are that lazy unless really pushed to do it.
they used to sell them, but it was all shit-tier hardware and didn’t sell.
We call this “monopolistic behavior”
Whatever comes with the thing is going to be most popular by default. Windows knows this. Apple knows this. Linux simply doesnt have the funds to buy out manufacturers
For most of them it’s not “laziness” but ignorance. They don’t know it’s an option, they don’t know why you’d want to do it, and the don’t know how to do it.
Oh, they are at least dimly aware they could do something else. But they choose not to because they resist learning.
You mean headway… on the desktop.
Even when I offered my father to do this for him, even picking Zorin OS (since it seems to be decently close to a Windows look and feel). He refused stating that he’s not techsavvy enough to use it.
Do you know the Secretary Problem?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
Your father’s been using computers for some number of years. It’s possible he’s been using computers for longer than he will continue using computers. From his perspective, the current edition of Windows is better than anything that’s come before it, so it’s the rational choice to stick with it until the end.
To get around this, you would basically need to set up a second machine with Zorin so that he can get some context before making a decision. That way, in the very realistic scenario where he decides it’s not for him, he hasn’t lost anything.
My conspiracy theory/pattern recognition shows that anyone unironically using the words “Tech Savvy” in 2026 are either well meaning pirates or just straight up ignorant on purpose. Computers have been mainstream at the very least for 2 decades and you havent bothered to learn anything about them??
Us old people are often adverse to learning new things. It’s not a surprising thing. You are getting the same way yourself about some knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong but installing Linux is easy but when new people try it, they run into hardware issue, and I know its no one’s fault but new users spend a lot more time to troubleshoot those issue.
But also since people are switching to Linux, I think hardware manufacturers will support Linux so most of the things will be just plug and play.
This feels like a 10 year old comment almost. Hardware issues with Linux must be super rare now except for Nvidia, which is because Nvidia has closed drivers and doesn’t care about Linux.
super rare now except for Nvidia
Which for PC gamers holds the majority of the market…
Except even this is no longer an issue. There’s nvidia-open driver, and, at least to my knowledge, it works without any problems.
Tell that to every one of my installs.
Literally every time I try a distro, I have to hope the NVIDIA drivers download and actually work. Then I have to hope the distro actually switches between it and the integrated GPU.
uhm… you don’t have to hope…? You can literally check which driver is installed. You can even install preferable driver version via your package manager and delete mesa drivers if you don’t want your system to ever use the integrated gpu.
even for currently running PCs, sometimes i swear to God it’s like dejavu : my laptop suddenly asks if i want to use the OneDrive and Office sub. You know that screen when you do the Win 11 setup.
The only way to exit is via the “Remind me later”, which is even more BS. You cant even Decline.
Or dont connect to a network during setup and do this.
OOBE mode.
- Ctrl+shift+f10 or shift+f10
- Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
- Create local account
Finish initial windows boot, then follow up with O & O shut up 10 at minimum before connecting to a network.
Then there is the fun of going through the task scheduler to remove telemetry.
And they still tell me that Linux is scary because terminal
AFAIK the BypassNRO method doesn’t work anymore, instead:
“When it asks for one’s Microsoft account, press
Shift + F10, and typestart ms-cxh:localonly. This prompts the window to create a local account instead. 🖕” ―Bypass Windows 11 Microsoft account promptIf you’re installing pro, you can just say it’s for work and click “join a domain instead” and then just never join a domain
I had to use bypass to get around the network part. Because for some reason it wouldn’t let me go past that step, and it also doesn’t offer static ip settings. We don’t have dhcp for our main network.
It’s even worse for notebooks. I had several new machines where Windows Setup didn’t even have the required network drivers.
Worked for me yesterday, but this was on a laptop just booted, no connection to internet so there’s no telling what version it was on.
If the install media is old enough it will still work.
Do it all again when msft undoes your work on the next update
Not even next update. I ran a debloater script that removed OneDrive and within two hours it had been reinstalled with no intervention from me.
Is there no solution to this?
My first thought is an IP ban list outside of the computer itself. Put it on your home router maybe.
I guess it could be getting installed from a binary that exists on the OS already.
I haven’t used windows in a long time. But it’s wild how much work people have to do to decide which programs are or are not installed on their PC.
Is there no solution to this?
Linux…
That’s been my solution. The nerd in me just wants to know. I feel like windows and “windows debloat scripts” or the like have gotten worse together. It’s like all the people that use to write cool programs or apps for Windows left for Linux and never looked back. (Except the game cracks I guess? Maybe that’s even dead now though idk)
I mean, it’s a good thing. But, it surprises me how awful the nerd support is for Windows now. I guess it’s so annoying to work with that no one even bothers anymore.
It just feels like something that should have a universal solution by now.
It’s like all the people that use to write cool programs or apps for Windows left for Linux and never looked back.
I have no idea if it is true, but it would make a lot of sense. Why spend your time fixing MS’s for-profit shit, for free, when there is a viable open source alternative?
I wonder if there will come a tipping point? MS is making Windows really hard to love, so who in the altruistic group will stay on Windows when the mythical Year Of The Linux Desktop truly comes?
Group policy settings will let you kill it off permanently. But windows likes to reinstall things every time there is a minor update to the OS, and if you don’t have a group policy setup it’ll do it too.
The solution for a lot of these random issues with reinstalling stuff is to not use weird scripts to do things you can just handle normally.
Just uninstall it like a regular app and it doesn’t come back on its own from my experience. I’ve literally never had it come back on any of my systems, my family’s, or customers, by doing it that way.
I don’t have that issue with script either, my guess is that’s a regional thing, do you live in the EU too?
Ran into this shit yesterday trying to set up a laptop for someone where I had no internet access.
Imagine having everything ready to go on a USB drive and you can’t get past the second screen unless you find WiFi.
At least this command still works, but damn.
Next time during setup do this: 1.don’t connect to a network
- Either shift+f10 or Ctrl+shift+f10 to bring up a command prompt.
3.Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
-
Hit enter and the create user box will pop up.
-
You can now create a local user account.
Video games have gone this way too. Pop in disc or cartridge, go to play, forced to download updates that fix what was shipped in a broken state.
And then they have the gall to point to sales of physical media being down.
Like, if you make your physical media shit on purpose, you can’t use that to support your argument for digital-only distrubition. It’s actually infuriating.
For the record, the majority of games ship on disc. If you had auto updates off or no internet, the game will play after installing.
If you use Rufus you can create the USB that automatically bypasses the Internet requirements. Still annoying af though.
windows didn’t have the drivers for my mobo, so i could use neither ethernet nor wifi.
imagine having to have a usb to ethernet dongle ready to set up windows.
what a fucking shitshow…
Yup. I have a whole bunch of devices to bypass random shit to setup client devices on site.
I use this when I have to install windows.
https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/Fully automated the install
I work in IT and half the time spent deploying a new device is getting around Windows’ bullshit.
You can’t be serious, or you must not support Windows much.
I don’t think much of my workplace’s Windows desktop “engineer” but even they’ve put together (and keep updated) an image that can get from blank drive to fully installed, updated, baseline programs for our company installed, all settings tweaked to get rid of 90% of the dumb Windows bloat (have to leave the shit the execs like in place) in 30 minutes unattended.
The server builds my team oversees are 10 minutes setups, if that.
Like, I’ve been desktop support, and installing and configuring the department specific programs could be such annoying shit that you’d end up saving more time reimaging when something fucked up than to try and fix it, but the initial OS install was rarely the issue. Maybe for the first few days with entirely new hardware while we figured out the right drivers, but that was it.
Linux is leagues better than Windows, but some of this shit I keep seeing in these Linux communities is batshit. You personally not being familiar with Windows isn’t a reason it sucks, any more than people saying Linux is complicated is a reason for them to hate Linux.
It could also be a pre-prepared disk image.
I am not unfamiliar with Windows in any sense thank you. Windows is objectively bad, there is no good reason that one must maintain their own custom image to install an operating system to a usable capacity because the vendor image is so disgustingly bloated that getting any real-world use is a chore.
And it’s not even recent Windows enshittification that is the problem, it is the foundational architecture of the NT system. With a Linux operating system, you install, and you’re done, on Windows, you install, then you need to go out and do 15+ updates that for some reason aren’t done during install, then you need to go out and get all your drivers for your hardware. It’s poorly designed, slow, clunky, and, especially considering that Windows doesn’t have a package manager and a curated software repository (Winget + MS Store does NOT count), unbelievably insecure.
My organization has pretty much decided that Windows is on the way out, it’s just going to be a very long time for us to transfer to Linux-based operating systems. Even after getting Windows to a just-about acceptable standard, it’s still far heavier than any Linux-based OS would be, which for our thin clients is genuinely proving a problem as many of our staff have high memory usage workflows and are frequently seeing programs crash due to memory limitations.
Unless you are severely, clinically deluded, there is no way you can genuinely state that what you hear in Linux communities is “batshit”; everyone knows Windows is dying, even Microsoft…
He’s talking about corporate environments that have the resources to have done the work to make Windows work, they’re not starting from zero - they’ve either got an SCCM environment with a PE that has all their configs and drivers preloaded or they’ve worked hard to make intune autopilot work (which still requires either the OEM or a curated image for the hardware configs).
He’s not talking about setups that are doing installs 1:1
If someone asked me to install Windows for them I’d very politely tell them to get bent.
Network installers
NixOs is in shambles
Every time i see a comment about NixOS it makes me even more wary about trying it.
Everyone jokes about Arch being the ‘from the ground up’ OS, but Nix feels like it embodies those memes.
Yeah nixos is a lot of learning and a lot of writing and tweaking .nix files.
That being said, once you have a setup you like that works it means installing on a new machine is mostly just running a couple of install commands and all your apps/settings/environment secrets/anything you’ve declared in your nix config (like dotfiles for apps unsupported by home-manager) come with you and are version controlled on the system and in code.
But it doesn’t work like a normal Linux system, there is no /bin/bash among thousands of other things, so it’s for a niche audience where it’s either a server with infra as code or a desktop that requires a lot of work to maintain but has some incredible advantages (like generations)
Yeah it was my pipeline. But be wary, this is a hard path to take. The os is great. The package manager is great. The nix config language? Hahaha welcome to hell! It takes at least 6 months to get comfortable with it. And still, sometimes you can still come across a config file that will be totally alien to you. And when you need something not in the repos… time to learn how to package stuff!
It’s not to discourage you, but be warned. It takes time. I had 5 attempts at it before it became my daily driver.
Keep a working distro on the side. And when you start your computer, think about what you want to do. If you think you can do everything you want today in NixOs, boot it. If you have a lot missing/do not feel like configuring it, boot the other distro. Just start small. Do some little challenges like turning your config into a flake, create a nix os module, split your configuration in smaller more maintainable files, create a systemd service, wrangle with that damn home manager that keeps making everything so confusing.
And arch is actually the one from scratch. NixOs is intimately linked to systemd. Nix also requires some base dependencies like git and curl, so it’s not from scratch. However you could argue that NixOs is a “make a distro from the kitchen utensils and a recipe”.
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