In this week’s Windows 10 Build 19045.4353 announcement blog post, there was this little gem in the changelog.
This update starts the rolls out of account-related notifications for Microsoft accounts in Settings > Home. A Microsoft account connects Windows to your Microsoft apps. The account also backs up all your data and helps you to manage your subscriptions. You can also add extra security steps to keep you from being locked out of your account.
↫ Windows Insider Program Team
It’s worded a bit cryptically, but this means there will be banners in the Windows settings application pushing you to switch from using a local account to using an online Microsoft account. The latter aren’t exactly preferred by quite a few people – many of you belong to that group, I would presume – and Microsoft is doing whatever it can to get people to stop using local accounts.
Luckily, this banner ad is easily removable – if you close it, it won’t come back, and you can disable it by going to Privacy > General and toggling “Show me suggested content in the Settings app”. For now, of course – knowing how Microsoft is treating Windows users these days, these nag-ups will surely increase in both frequency and persistence as time goes on.
You’ve been warned.
This is why i finally switched to Linux ~6 years ago. I was using W7 at the time, and it was nagging to upgrade to W10,
There are a lot of cases you set people up with local accounts because the internet access they have is not what you call stable.
Trying to log in on a computer using a 4G modem that connect to a congested mobile phone tower using Microsoft .account instead of a local account is kind of a very bad experience.
–Luckily, this banner ad is easily removable —
This is Microsoft we are talking about. Removable for now. You can 100 percent bet with some future update it will come back and the user setting will be undone. We have seen this enough times with user default browser and other things. After Microsoft has goofed it back with updates at least 6 times then there is a chance that it will be removable.
I recently had to use Windows as a Mac user and I was surprised by the poor user interface. Of course parts of that is because I’m biased by what I’m used to, but aesthetically it’s such a mess.
I feel most of what Linux provides on the UX front is actually much better now. The only reason why I’d stick with Windows is gaming.
Linux is actually great for gaming nowadays. Everything works except some popular online games with unsupported anticheats.
Linux gaming is definitely getting there. When it works, it works really well, in my experience. My issue is that not “everything” is easy enough to use for the non-technical crowd. Steam is fine, but the other stores are another matter. But things are happening, progress is being made. Here’s hoping 🙂
Introvertgeek,
I agree, it’s definitely getting better, but I wouldn’t want to mislead people in thinking that windows titles are consistently working flawlessly because we’re not there yet and that sets false expectations. While an increasing number are working, many still do not and one should understand this before deciding to go linux for gaming. Setting up realistic expectations is important.
Alfman,
I would say “many Windows titles work better on Linux” instead 🙂
And not only the older games Windows broke compatibility with. For example, the 2022’s top title “Elden Ring” ran with less “stutters” on Steam Deck than Windows:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/valve-proton-team-kinda-fixed-elden-ring-stutters-on-steam-deck-linux.557236/
And yes, older titles of course run better, as older DirectX versions and Windows intricacies are emulated in a Linux container than the modern Windows desktop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/10fqdfl/fallout_3_runs_amazing_on_steam_deck/
(Most users there says it crashed much less)
sukru,
I agree with you here. Sometimes the wine stack is more optimal that windows, with better performance and less stuttering. But I also feel this overlooks the problem, which isn’t performance but overall compatibility.
I’ve mentioned it before, but my most recent example is the game “stray” I bought my kids. It performs really great on linux, it’s entirely possible that it performs better than on windows….but those crashes. All the performance in the world doesn’t matter if you aren’t able to play a game without it crashing mid play.
Technically the bug is probably in the game itself and not proton/wine, some race condition that by some coincidence doesn’t happen on windows. Nevertheless to a gamer it is irrelevant where the bug is at if it works better on windows.
PS. Since we spoke about it last, I’ve found that specifying “-dx12” solves the crashing issues, but at the cost of GPU running constantly at 100% load, fans ramping up, gameplay stuttering, and introducing visual artifacts. It’s probably trivial to fix, but sadly the developers can’t be bothered to fix it on proton/linux.
Alfman,
Thanks for the tip
Everything is. Also, Nothing is. They’re both fine UX. You can argue otherwise of course, but its such a silly hipsteresh argument. To non UX heads it doesn’t matter. An employee isn’t going to be more or less productive based on the UX of either.
They both have their pros and cons. Windows lacks some of the polish and consistency of OSX. Whereas the window management and overall productivity of the Mac interface is worse than Windows.
I don’t know on why they don’t simply cancel local accounts altogether. It’s not like anybody would do something about it.