25
Microsoft kills official way to activate windows without internet (www.neowin.net)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.today
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/44849946

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.

Linux is this way, guys.

all 15 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 4 points 10 months ago

I remember the first time I called and it was staffed by people.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 5 points 10 months ago (13 children)

    That might be a win-win situation, actually. Imagine they all come to Linux and here the great battle will begin -- between crazy vimers who remember crazy commands and newcomer crazy Win-admins who keep a bunch of register(reestr? What was its name? Win system config with stupid key names like "ADDA-4534-FA45-4532" ) keys in their EULA-heads.
    I hope both sides will lose :)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 13 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] -2 points 10 months ago (12 children)

    Windows has sucked for a while, and watching them keep making mistakes like this is fun to watch.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    20 years ago internet was the main pro-Windows argument, actually. Windows was completely comfortable without the internet, while Linux was barely usable offline without access to online repositories and forums to keep the system working.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    now now, 20 years ago was 2005. cable internet, xDSL and some fiber were around and semi common. distrowatch.com was just starting but plenty of distros had complete ISOs with full environments. source forge, freshmeat and ibiblio were all big on hosting ISOs.

    now in 1996/97 redhat 5.x series had the anaconda installer that installed all components without touching anything Internet related (though it could)

    94 had slackwares release and it was as you say

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    So? Yes, we had CDs with packages.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    point was many flavors of Linux did not need internet for functionality 20 years ago.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Formally? No, they didn't need the Internet. De facto -- you weren't able to actively use it without the Internet.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    whaaat? I don't understand your de facto to argument if it pertains to 2005. I incidicated there were some difficulties in the mid 90s but not mid 00's. Just boot up knoppix CDs? they were very popular at that time and perfectly usable without internet. usermodelinux could run Linux within Linux without network stack as a poor man's docker back then.

    people post about the old QNX bootable floppy that had a browser and desktop environment.

    TL;DR there were tons of usable mediums of *nix 20 years ago that did not require internet connectivity.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    I had a winmodem at the time, which of course wasn't supported. 😓

    EDIT: I say "at the time" but I mean late 90s, not 20 years ago.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    I had one up until about 2003 probably. We were out in the country and couldn't get cable or dsl. I remember trying out linux and fighting with the wintel modem and gpu drivers, writing down the errors, rebooting the machine back into windows, going online and researching the errors online, writing down the commands I needed to use to fix it, or downloading the rpm packages (red hat or fedora can't remember which) I might have needed, rebooting, trying again in linux, failing, etc.

    When i finally tried ubuntu on my laptop around 2007, it was amazing that the WiFi and graphics "just worked".

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] [S] -1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I remember when Linux was a bear to install. While the pro-Linux people were kinda assholes and not cool with helping complete noobs. Things have changed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • 137 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    29 comments in c/technology@lemmy.zip view that post
    15 comments in c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se view that post