Who was calling MS in the first place?! If you want it activated with a local account, do the OBE\\bypassnro thing. Who would this really affect?
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
759 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
86580 readers
3204 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I don’t think I called Microsoft to activate windows since 2012 at the latest to activate a copy of XP SP3. I’d be surprised if they got 100 calls the last decade to activate a copy of windows legitimately. Their amount of airgapped or remote systems that run windows that can’t be activated over the internet has to be miniscule
I've done this at some point. Didnt look up the source, but this might affect other ms sw as well, namely older office. If activated lets say within 90 days twice for a certain cd key, you were easier to call the number to get the windows activated (legally).
Yeah I use linux myself so dont give a fuck all, but I've offered support for small companies which can be affected.
Such a fucking PITA, as a small IT shop, I don't want to have to full on fucking go enterprise to keep my users from needing to make Microsoft accounts.
SteamOS Desktop can't come fast enough.
Cachy will do if I need to jump ship, but I would like to only make one distro hop and be done with that for at least a decade.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Been using Mint since last April. Haven't missed a thing.