How much does Microsoft make from being able to tie logged-in user behavior to a particular email address? It seems the answer is "a lot," from the ever-increasing hostility to offline/local only accounts.
Every time I have to touch Windows, it seems there's some new, shiny, irritating thing I have to dismiss. I want my operating systems to run things I tell them to, not try to drag me into their clicktrap ecosystem, or randomly reinstall "free to play" games, etc.
I'm aware I can disable this stuff, but I shouldn't have to. And it's annoyed me enough over the years that I no longer run Windows on the iron on anything - even games are "decent enough" under Linux now.
The joke’s on them because I have relegated my windows box to gaming only. When another OS meets my gaming needs, microsoft’s os will be finally gone from my network.
I was shocked just how many things work well with Steam on Linux (Ubuntu LTS is what I run). I'm not a big fan of the "aggressively online, kernel anti-cheat" stuff, which I consider malware in a shiny package, but I've been surprised by just how well stuff works, either natively (more than I'd have expected), or with Proton.
Not the GP, but the areas I use windows still for gaming is VR since I apparently have to do a lot of hacks to get it to work on my system that I'm not willing to try and fail. And then I play Lethal Company and similar, but that starts to struggle and have problem when you want to do anything modded since the modding tool available have trouble with it not being windows and break often when run though proton/wine. I've eventually got it to work, but only with hacky work arounds like changing the launch options in steam since the "Start Modded" button refused to work. I think most things running in electron fail to run through proton/wine right now (on my machine at least.)
In the end if I was playing a game alone I'd hack on it for days just to get it working so I can enjoy it on linux (hacking away at the game specifically not the linux install like needed for VR). But when I want to play a game with friends spending days (or even hours) isn't an option since they'll be onto something else by then.
I'm using r2modman on Arch for Lethal Company and RoR2, has that worked for you? I have it and steam installed from the AUR/Repo's, I suspect flatpak would cause issues.
I definitely get just keeping windows around. I'm lucky enough that things usually have Just Worked, and I don't use VR.
r2modman is also what I use, at this point I think I have 3 versions, Windows Exe, AppImage and pacman. I don't remember what one worked in the end but I remember one couldn't find the game even if manually located. One failed to render anything other than a black image and the last (working) one is just really slow until I get into the actual mod selection, then as before the working one can't actually start the game for some reason, it does give you the parameters you need to throw into steam to start the modded version instead. Maybe I'll poke at it again soon, I just don't want to run into issues when my friends are already ready to play the game.
Indeed, however there are still a few legacy games that I love playing that still do not work on Linux so I still keep Windows around for these. One of those long tail problems I guess.
Proton is good enough, that I haven’t booted windows to play a game in 3 years. Lutris has been good for those not on steam. I tend to play a lot of indie games with a couple multiplayer competitive. YMMV
* Some of your preferences will be reset with the next update
* Some of your preferences will be reset at random
* Some new stuff will be introduced and you will need to disable it individually
* As for some stuff, you will never know unless someone smart figures out something grey is going on under the hood, publishes their research, this research reaches you, and you decide to act on it
Same thing with Windows Mail. I just got a message telling me, "We've decided to move you to Outlook (which I don't want) instead of the Windows Mail client that you're happily using." Now I've got to go searching for the magical wizard spell I need to cast in order to stop it from doing this.
I really wish a Windows Product Manager could comment here and explain why the hell they keep doing this shit despite the user not wanting any of it. I know they won't. They're ashamed of what they are doing, and/or hide behind some "do not post online" corporate policy.
Why can't operating systems just stay out of the user's way? Go schedule the CPU, manage the filesystem and network peripherals, and stop with the user behavior modification experiments.
I switched back a few times but it keeps doing it automatically more and more frequently, and the new app is absolutely crippled and hideously slow (all operations are over the network and the latency is insane).
I just switched back to Thunderbird (which I haven't used since the 00s) instead. It's still ugly, but it isn't getting in my way.
Default choice of fonts, mishmash of visual styles from across decades of development in the various widgets, non-native/non-pixel-aligned font rendering, context menus that relegate the most common actions to submenus while elevating actions that you're not going to use as much, alignment issues abound, use of modal dialogs for things that are taking place in the background and should be progress bar widgets instead, dialogs that need focus being placed under dialogs that can't be used until the backgrounded dialog is interacted with, etc.
It's dense, and requires a pixel perfect pointing device to use.
In other words, it's a desktop app, through and through.
If you're used to stuff that's mobile-first, it's a rather jarring change - I can see how one would consider it ugly. I happen to find it "dense, usable, and does the job fine." I wouldn't call it pretty, but neither do I mind a utilitarian interface to do things like "read my mail."
Those weren't my reasons, actually — I am old-school and prefer information-dense layouts designed for use with a mouse (though Thunderbird needs a lot of work to be usable via keyboard). I posted another comment with my actual reasons.
As someone who has been on the email client hunt ever since Google Inbox was taken off my feet I can say that I'm a very happy customer of eM client and it's actually one of the few apps that make it painful to leave Windows (since the devs have no intention of porting it to Linux).
It's pay once and it comes with a free version if you just wanna give it shot, the only bad thing for me was how annoying the website was with dark patterns trying to push sales, the software itself is great.
It's mostly about lock-in I imagine. Default save to OneDrive in Office apps goes right along. In the future, Windows itself will be running in the cloud, further locking you into their ecosystem and subscriptions.
"Thanks to the GDPR, users in Europe
who download the Outlook for Windows app, will be greeted with a modal pop-up dialog that
displays a user agreement and requires its users to consent. The breathtaking aspect of this is
that the dialog starts right out stating: “We and 772 third parties process data to: store and/or
access information on your device, develop and improve products, personalize ads and content,
measure ads and content, derive audience insights, obtain precise geolocation data, and identify
users through device scanning.”
TBH, a number like that pretty much seems to be what you get by default when you include any third-party ad system to your site these days. I doubt even the ad company realized how many "partners" they have until they were forced to start counting them.
And 99% of users will now give their explicit consent (due to cookie banner fatigue and/or not caring because they don't want to pay), and probably to more than before, rather than it being a grey area
Thanks, GDPR, and the law of unintended consequences!
I'd like for Linux to be an option for desktop computing, but it is not and will never be. Non-enthusiasts are not able to troubleshoot problems in Linux.
I doubt most non-enthusiast users of Windows can troubleshoot their own problems. All desktop operating systems require some knowledge to poke around and fix things. The only reason Windows gets a pass is due to its market share and support from vendors.
I'm sure if you have a problem from a piece of software running on Linux that is supported by a vendor and asked for help, you would get it.
> Non-enthusiasts are not able to troubleshoot problems in Linux.
Fair, but that does not really reflect the HN crowd. That said, at the rate MS is going, ChromeOS is looking like the better deal, and, surprisingly, it has less nagging/ads than Windows does!
Non enthusiasts are forever doomed to M$ nags and App£e premiums then. I'll keep running Linux rather than get annoyed by any of those. Best desktop ever. Even Gnome is highly ergonomic nowadays, more so than MacOS.
I was a huge Linux nerd in the early 2000s and tried my best to use it as a daily driver. But gaming forced me to keep a windows box around and eventually I got tired of the inconvenience of dual booting and Windows became primary for awhile.
More recently, I decided to try moving back to Linux as a primary desktop environment after getting frustrated and annoyed by the various dark patterns in Windows, and I was shocked to find how much better the gaming landscape looks now thanks to Steam and Proton. I’ve successfully gone all in on Linux again and hope to never use windows outside of an occasional virtual machine when I have no other choice.
Depending on your reasons for keeping windows around, it’s worth taking a look at the Linux desktop again. It’s exciting and gratifying to find it so extremely functional after many years of frustration and living on the bleeding edge of something that wasn’t ready for the mainstream at the time.
One of the reasons for me to use Windows (still) is Photoshop.
Besides actually playing the games, I use Photoshop to make skins for my cars when simracing.
There are several options online now, that implement almost all the features from Photoshop that I use.
I have used Photopea, and while it runs slower than native Photoshop, I am genuinely surprised about how good it is, and how feature complete it is. I recommend Photopea over Gimp ten times out of ten.
There are others like Pixlr I have yet to test, but now I am convinced graphic edition can be done without Photoshop.
I have a MacBook Air that I use for Lightroom/Photoshop so I’ve managed to avoid that issue when moving off of windows.
With that said, I’ve been experimenting with various RAW processing tools on Linux because I’d love to eventually move to Asahi. I do think this remains one of the weakest areas on Linux, but the tools keep getting better. Good to know about Photopea vs. Gimp. I definitely need to try this.
How is hardware acceleration and Widevine support right now? I use Windows 10 (IOT fwiw) largely because I use MS Office and want smooth videos on the browser.
There are Linux builds with widevine IIRC, but those aren't the "from source builds" from the distros. I also recently saw a video of someone running PowerPoint via Wine. Dunno what they did or if it was a plain Wine build, but it was running and it did do stuff.
Good enough that I haven’t had to think about it since switching back. With that said, I don’t have specific knowledge of any edge cases where that might be a problem.
I’m using an Nvidia RTX 3000 series with 1st party drivers and Firefox for my browser.
I really really want to get off of Windows because of the dark patterns. I'm even satisfied with the state of gaming on Linux based on my SteamDeck. So I've been test driving my SteamDeck as a portable PC when I travel. There are still a few things that give me pause when I think about eventually switching my primary PC to Linux:
1. Two apps: I use OneNote daily for work and personal notetaking, use the OneNote app on my iPhone, and have shared notebooks with several (non-technically minded) family members. There is no other free (or even paid) comparable software that does all of this. Sadly, the best you can do on Linux is use it through the clumsy web interface. And then, Autodesk Fusion360 for my dabbling in 3d printing, also without native Linux support.
2. Very basic things like mouse scroll wheel and mouse pointer acceleration are at best somewhat "off" or at worst impossible to tweak, depending on which which display protocol / linux flavor you're using. Every time I rathole on it, I end up at the same place: some spat between libinput and Wayland. I don't care about who does it, I just want it to work.
I could probably get by with a windows VM or other alternatives for the unsupported applications. So then it's a wash between Windows enshittification and Linux rough edges. I suppose within a few years as the enshittification continues worsening while the rough edges get fixed, it becomes an easier decision.
Regarding the apps, you might want to check out this project on GitHub [0]. I came across this while doing some research about Fusion 360 on Linux and while I haven’t tried it yet, it is well trafficked and looks promising. In general, Wine has matured a lot making more things like this possible.
Regarding OneNote, the P3X project is worth checking out [1].
Regarding cursor acceleration, I’ve stopped trying to use Wayland and generally find that X11 is pretty rock solid. Many distros now focus on aesthetic optimizations, and coupled with ChatGPT as a configuration assistant, I haven’t gotten stuck on issues like this.
Thanks for the tips. I did try the wine wrapper for Fusion 360 a while ago but ran into some known issue with the startup dialog not being able to open up the browser for Fusion360 (sigh, more unnecessary enshittification - I also tried FreeCAD but it wasn't easy to use).
> ...it's a wash between Windows enshittification and Linux rough edges.
I thought I would feel this way as well, but I came to the realization that, ultimately, my productivity is still better with Linux. And, well, I feel a little better knowing that I'm no longer subjected to Microsoft's monetarily-derived whims.
I have moved to Arch Linux 100% for work and personal use. I too have a Windows 10 machine for gaming -- but it runs LTSC, which is _much_ more super user friendly, less user hostile.
Only reason to remain on Windows these days is certain video games that have a Windows-specific kernel-level anti-cheat. The gaming situation on Linux has come so far these days (thank you Valve, Proton, and WINE team) that this gap is getting tighter and tighter. A lot of games run even better on Linux!
I am quite surprised at how easy it is to run modern titles like Helldivers on Linux. Hate to sound like a cliche but I think the era of desktop Linux is truly here. If you are a Windows user, the shift to KDE is a very small pill to swallow.
I've been running LTSC for a while. Just about everything works, until I downloaded the latest Forza Motorsport. It won't start because all the xbox "apps" are missing. It's the only game so far that doesn't work that I have tried.
Ironically your comment probably explained why my Forza Horizon 4 fails to launch, thanks for the reply. I'd probably rather not have the game than have the xbox apps to be honest. (Though game bar still seems to exist when I search for it...)
worst mistake of my windows days: accepted a MS account, was then blocked forever from transferring a windows pro account from one pc to another. both the one that had home and the one that had pro are happily running linux, can't wait for MS to stop being an OS company
Using my MS account is actually how I transferred my Windows Pro license. I unlicensed my old PC and then logged in on the new PC and licensed it there.
(It was also originally a Windows 7 Pro license that I've moved through 4 different versions of Windows)
I swear I really tried hard and looked very hard for information. I never could transfer that pro license from one computer to another, an inifinite maze of unhelpful Microsoft web pages, wasted hours on this.
I was extra paranoid and make sure I copied the license key somewhere, etc. I can't remember if I had any small issues but I think it was pretty straight forward.
I recently had to turn on my old PC and even though it's unlicensed it still works is if it was "Pro" licensed.
The only thing that keeps me on Windows is the extensive hardware support. I know I can buy almost anything and there will be Windows drivers. I don't like the Apple GUI, nor their ecosystem, and while I like Linux it's still too much like driving shift stick. But man, Microsoft does go out of their way of making it harder and harder to stay on their plaform with every single release they make by forcing ever more unwanted bile down your throat.
Kinda funny, just yesterday, my kid found a solution for the issues he
was having with fallout 4, and it was switching to use a local account
fallout 4 , was opening in window mode only, and no matter what we did
it refused to read the setting to open full screen, also the game was
not saving anything
he kept searching online, until he found someone suggesting to use a
local account, and bingo, it fixed everything
i am not sure exactly why , but it seem it has to do with your home directory
going through onedrive if you use an ms account , and this messed up the game
ability to read settings and save progress
Always remember those keyboard shortcuts! They will save you when weird stuff happens.
With regards to OneDrive - just remove it and things work better. On older Win10 releases you have to manually remove it (shell extension and everything) but Win11 and latest Win10 you can just uninstall it from what I have seen.
Other two cents; when installing Windows, to skip Microsoft account creation / setting up ann internet connection, use shift-f10 to open a terminal and in the command window use the command oobe\BypassNRO.
I really want to switch to Linux full time. I’ve done it in the past for years at a time, but nowadays I stay on Windows because of a specific game I play with some friends that requires a kernel anti-cheat…
For anyone looking to switch to Linux (especially people who play games or make video content), Nobara[1] is the best desktop distro I’ve used by far — it’s the one I used most recently and it’s the only one I actually wanted to stick with. I’ve tried a bunch of different distros but this is the only one where I truly felt like “it’s the year of the Linux desktop”. I didn’t need to use the terminal at all, or manually set up drivers, or custom kernels, or edit config files, or anything. It just works out of the box and I install stuff with the built in app store. The only things that didn’t work were all caused by some company being stubborn (games not enabling the Linux support that comes with their anticheat, Nvidia not adding some features to their driver related to screen capture)
When I read this kind of stuff I think i should form some kind of party with the goal of reaching some position of power in the EU structure in order to prosecute microsoft and friends as much as possible.
I don't care which party, i don't care which power position.
I just want to prosecute and harm Microsoft and other companies adopting this kind of predatory and abusive behaviors.
My main issue isn't with the Microsoft account itself, but with how it truncates usernames in the file system to just five characters. For instance, my preferred username 'unsignedint' is shortened to 'unsig.' It's perplexing why there's an assumption that all names should be five characters or fewer.
Luckily I can make my username a nice 5 letter word (Nekko), the terrible part: They for some reason decided to the email name as what should be truncated, which isn't related to my username.
I remember it taking me forever to figure out the exact incantation of clicking tiny text and unplugging network cables at the right time in order to do what should be the most basic setup tasks in an OS: Setting up an account. I'm so tired of companies begging/forcing me to do things on my computer that I as the user don't want to do. The user is supposed to be in charge, not the computer or the manufacturer.
It's gotten to the point where I am afraid to type in my actual Microsoft account anywhere near my Windows PC, lest it decides to spring the trap and say "AHA GOT IT! Now you're logging in with your Microsoft account now and forever! Muahahahahahah!" I won't even speak it aloud, in case Windows has the microphone on listening for it. I'm only half joking.
I just started to distro-hop again to find the flavor of Linux I like. My current plan is to use a lightweight but slick distro for day-to-day stuff, to maximize battery life, plus GPU pass-through to a VM for gaming. If I don’t get that to work, I’ll just dual boot.
Any distro recommendations for a good small-footprint distro? So far Void, Sparky and Manjaro have caught my eye. If I decided to commit to gaming in Linux, I’d choose Pop!_OS though, just for the great nVidia driver support.
If you really want to minimize the footprint, Alpine Linux is amazing. Be forewarned that it has some sharp edges by virtue of being very different from most distros (musl, busybox, openrc). But like, I run it on my desktop and it's perfectly fine. Even runs the Steam flatpak with only minor effort; that was my main gaming rig for a good long while.
I migrated to Linux due to the recurring nagging coming from Windows 11; looks like Windows 10 users will start to have a compelling reason to migrate as well.
Honestly, if you're not playing video games or require Windows for certain apps and if you're a little tech savvy, why are you still using Windows?
It's not a rhetorical question, it's a real one. I'm really interested in what's keeping people on Windows nowadays, considering all the spying, nagging and overall hostile attitude Microsoft has against its users.
I'm a linux developer and I run Windows 11 Pro on my devices ( a mini PC desktop & a laptop).
My development is done with VS Code + Windows terminal into WSL2, linux VMs and remote instances.
I use Windows for the great hardware support : power management, printers, scanners, webcams, usb microphone, usb wifi adapters, yubikeys. HyperV is great for VM management. MS Edge has great performance and cross-device sync. One-Drive has excellent OCR & search indexing. I use it to search & manage legal documents for various partnerships. MS Co-pilot is excellent for engineering & legal research. MS Designer (image gen) has been great for generating logos & designs. I've learned more about Powershell https://github.com/tonymet/powershell-scripts
I've spent time to remove all of the recommendations, news, online content, ads and bloatware features from Windows 11. I turn on "max performance" and everything is very snappy.
It's been the best OS experience I've had since Windows 2k.
Every tool requires time investment. I also don't like Windows 11's online /entertainment content. Many industries are going in that direction e.g. automotive.
Having things "just work" can be really appealing. I once had an issue where my Linux distro of choice was having a tough time with my monitor orientation. I got quite a few linux gurus involved and none could figure it out. I'm sure it eventually would have worked, but that's not an experience I'm particularly fond of.
And then software that does exist will often have bugs for Linux that are overlooked due to how small the market is.
Inertia. I don't have a lot of mental energy to think about operating systems. Which distribution should I use? Will my hardware be supported? I ponder these things for 2 or 3 minutes. Then I defer the question for another year.
What will happen is that they’ll loose lifetime Windows users like me! I was using Windows both at home and professionally but had enough and bought a used MacBook Pro M2 and I could not be happier! If I really need to use Windows software I can use Parallels/CrossOver/UTM or remote into a VM. Far superior experience
In a way I'm kind of glad of the recent acceleration in Windows's enshittification, because it's now got me to the point where my Steam library is the only thing I haven't yet migrated to NixOS!
Windows 7 was great from a technical point of view (as was XP with the later service packs), but parent is correct that XP started the erosion of users rights. It was the first version of Windows that required users to agree to an EULA upon installation. Prior to this you simply had to follow the law (copyright, trademark, etc).
It was the first version of windows that required external activation (via internet or telephone). Prior to this you just needed the activation code that came with the packaged software. IIRC it was also the first version that tied OEM software to the hardware you purchased it on.
It required you to agree to telemetry for the first time.
It was the first version of Windows that included DRM baked into the OS, and required you to agree to install updates to that DRM as needed.
It required different licensing for based on the number of processors in your computer, and the number of computers that connected to it over the network.
The EULA seems mild (and short!) compared to those today, but it was a big deal in technical circles at the time, and started the slow boiling of the frog.
Windows 7 was peak windows, past the mess of driver signing in vista, before they started screwing up the start menu search and turning the whole os into an ad platform.
Windows 7 was the first version that finally implemented 1970s-style user-based security successfully. XP was useless if you weren't an administrator, and Vista broke too many things too often.
Search in the start menu has absolutely been making windows worse, not better. If I recall correctly, it did work well in Windows 7, but since internet search and more crap has been bolted on, and combined with other anti-features, has made the windows start menu frustrating to use.
Games work pretty good on NixOS right now, just FYI (if you have good GPU drivers, that is). I've gotten pretty much everything working that I was able to get running on other distros. The biggest issue is native Linux titles, but most of those work fine with Steam Linux Runtime selected.
Just sayin'. If you're not a chronic Destiny 2 or R6 Siege player, hop on in, the water's fine!
How's HDR support these days? I'm super excited that it's getting close, but I really like my colors vibrant, my water sparkly, and my metal surfaces shiny -- so much so that I'll reboot into Windows if I have to. Is HDR in the "can work with a modest amount of off-roading" phase on linux yet?
The pipeline should be working for some games that run in fullscreen, if your monitor's supported. Valve hauled ass getting it out the door in time for Steam Deck OLED.
That being said, there's caveats. You need a well-supported GPU, a super recent desktop, and a monitor that talks the right language. I don't daily-drive any HDR monitors myself so I can't say for certain where it's at now, but a lot of people are confident of improvements this year: https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-HDR-End-Of-2023
Sadly, upgrading to Debian is anything but simple. For home users, sure, there's rarely anything keeping them on Windows (I'd say adaptive equipment, but Microsoft's breaking that kind of thing faster than their new dedicated team is fixing it) – but in the corporate environment…
Yes. "If you do not want the Settings app to nag you with Microsoft Account prompts, go to Privacy > General and toggle off the "Show me suggested content in the Settings app" option."
I remember the days of issues with sound cards using oss, and how after years of frustration, alsa worked perfectly fine and the very next release of Ubuntu, they moved to pulseaudio which made it all shit again. That was the last time I installed Ubuntu, I went through Debian, then os X and now nixos.
It's so frustratingly close to being there, too. A few games with anti-cheat are non-functional, but Proton works great for the majority of non-native titles. Even my WMR headset is close to working (technically the headset is working, as long as you don't need controllers).
Wait what ? Not a single of my 239 steam games have any issue running on Linux. And I don’t even count my GOG & EGS games with Heroic Launcher.
I’m certain there may exist SOME titles which don’t work well but they are so exceptional that I never encountered them.
It’s hard saying "Linux gaming just isn’t there" while you can play more games on Linux than on any released console to this day (and I’m not even including emulation).
I have a steamdeck, so I'm very familiar with the Linux gaming experience. It's pretty damn good, honestly, but there are still a few I can't play b/c linux isn't supported.
I've used Linux before. I like Linux. But, Windows is my native language, so to speak. I've been using Windows since childhood and quite frankly I'd like to stick with it. I know there are variations of Linux that get really close to emulating the Windows experience but it's just not the same.
It's going to take a lot of straw to finally break the camel's back.
Presumably this won't happen if you're logging in using a local[1] Active Directory domain account, where Microsoft account login makes no sense, so setting up and logging in through a local AD domain is one potential workaround.
Doing this is nontrivial and not without consequences, however, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you have more interesting reasons (see below for one example) for setting up an AD domain than to avoid a nag screen.
Complications include:
1. Home editions of Windows don't support domain logins.
2. In-place migration from a local user account to an AD account without losing user profile information or ACL-protected resource access granted to the local user is neither automatic nor trivial.
3. Setting up an AD domain requires either an additional computer or VM running Windows Server or Linux[2] to serve as a domain controller.
4. While desktop Windows is supposed to cache logins to allow local login without connecting to the DC, in my experience, this mechanism usually works, but very occasionally fails for reasons I don't recall, so mobile domain login is not risk-free.
5. Cached logins only apply to local logins; remote logins using AD credentials require DC access. This is an issue, e.g., when authenticating between domain-joined VMs on a development laptop.
5a. This can be worked around by maintaining a VPN connection between the laptop and the DC's network or installing a (possibly read-only) DC replica on the laptop (obviously avoid the latter in any case where DC compromise will materially affect the security of anything beyond the laptop itself).
5b. Active Directory relies on DNS for name resolution, so either workaround requires additional care and feeding to avoid complications when traveling and connecting to other networks. Namely, use [3] to redirect DNS queries for the AD domain to the VPN or VM, and make sure the VPN or VM network isn't allowed to override the local DHCP-assigned DNS server addresses (which most VPN clients do by default).
The one significant upside that has made a personal AD domain ultimately worthwhile for me — speaking, admittedly, as someone with significant prior AD deployment and administration experience — is AD group policy, which has allowed me to set convenient defaults that automatically apply to the dozens, if not hundreds, of often transient Windows development and test VMs I've set up over the years, including disabling pretty much every other undesirable "feature" Microsoft has added to Windows in the past decade (e.g., Cortana, Bing, and advertising in the Start menu).
[1] I'm assuming local because, if you don't want to log in using a Microsoft account, you presumably don't want to log in using an Entra née Azure AD account either, given that the latter is, for present purposes, a Microsoft account that's more complicated to set up.
Every time I have to touch Windows, it seems there's some new, shiny, irritating thing I have to dismiss. I want my operating systems to run things I tell them to, not try to drag me into their clicktrap ecosystem, or randomly reinstall "free to play" games, etc.
I'm aware I can disable this stuff, but I shouldn't have to. And it's annoyed me enough over the years that I no longer run Windows on the iron on anything - even games are "decent enough" under Linux now.