Comment on Report: Microsoft quietly kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 5 days ago
It’s 2026, when are people going to stop whining about things requiring the internet? Who on earth would this change actually negatively affect? Who is buying Windows 11 but doesn’t have the internet? No one.
Even with the internet “available” you can get in chicken-egg scenarios like “the network card is not supported on the OS disc, and it won’t let me complete the OS installer so I can install the driver from external media later.”
Even Windows 10 got pretty testy about that in late releases.
What you suffer from is a failure of imagination.
Have you ever had to install a Windows OS without the internet because the network card you have doesn’t work without setting up, and setting up requires an OS? I’ve encountered this twice in my life. The first time I actually paid money to Microsoft for Windows 8, and it was such a disrespectful fuckaround I pirated the next one, and am dropping Windows altogether after that.
For once, internet is a subscription service which not everyone can afford, just because you and all your friends can afford internet doesn’t mean everyone can, computers can be gotten for free, internet there’s no way around it.
But for the biggest issue, windows is spyware, the only way to use it while warranting privacy is by airgapping it from the internet and running it standalone, it is also the only way to be sure to contain cracked programs to make sure they don’t distribute illegal content from your IP.
It’s the way I run windows (when I have to) and I don’t like the prospects of not being able to run proprietary software securely when there aren’t viable libre alternatives.
Also, software being dependent on internet and therefore some company’s server means that eventually when said server or company shutsdown the program or device becomes useless.
Why make the computer do a thing that it doesn’t have to? The answer is control and profit. Control by monitoring installs and requiring Microsoft accounts, profit from advertisements for Microsoft services and data brokerage, and so on.
We should not happily embrace Microsoft’s desires for greater profits and control over the public.
My internet is so bad it can sometimes take me over a dozen tries to get a web search to load. It likes to flicker on and off so a lot of times it’s a matter of being lucky that it is on when I try and load something or when a program does a check. Depending how the requirement is built it could make it nearly impossible for me to install windows (not that I would, I use Arch btw, but I’m on the same infrastructure as a bunch of students also suffering from shit internet and they mostly use windows).
For example I can usually download things it just takes a long time. There is a mod list tool though I would love to use but during it’s verification check if any mod fails to respond then it aborts the whole operation. I have roughly a 100% chance of several mods’ pages failing to handshake the first couple tries so the tool is useless to me.
Why are you defending a feature being taken away by one of the largest companies in the world? They pay a lot of money for PR. They don’t need your volunteer work.
I spent a whole weekend in 2025 with no internet. Optical fibre connector broke Saturday morning, repair person would only come Monday at noon. It wasn’t a big deal; my work is mostly offline, and I got a bunch of anime seasons, music, and games in my hard disk.
It wasn’t a big deal because I don’t use Windows 11. My login is offline. My login was not made by assumptive codemonkeys who bullshit the user is always online, because their boss sees users as cattle and wants to herd them into a new pen called “cloud services”.
And it isn’t just that. This is an unnecessary security risk; if MS login servers get compromised (and MS is damn sloppy regarding security), then your machine gets compromised too. Then there’s chicken-and-egg problems like HakFoo mentioned. And weird issues like this user experienced.
I live in the middle of nowhere and while my home has 10/1 Mbit DSL option my workshop 250m away has nothing and no mobile signal. Am I supposed to drag PC used for CNC home to activate windows or should I get 2nd starlink subscription?
Why are you not using a 2.4ghz or 5ghz wireless bridge?
I’ve got a 5ghz bridge between my garage and house, and it goes through 2 trees and still gives me around 900mbs. It’s over 350m away too.
Not saying that the guy bitching about people who don’t have Internet to active win11…just offering you an idea to fix your lack of Internet in your workshop.
Because I don’t need an internet connection in the workshop. I don’t want to install a bridge just to activate windows.
Ok then why bring it up? Are you doing stuff in the workshop that requires you to activate multiple windows machines?
Atropos@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Not really advocating for freedom there, friend.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They don’t do that. Just based entirely on their wealth of comment replies.