Computers don"t HAVE to work this badly....

[LPBBEAR]

Some of us don't live in the computing world described in this article. For those of us using Linux based systems these issues are unknown. Our systems work as faithful friendly tools that assist us in our computing needs..... not time sucking nightmares.

https://www.osnews.com/story/143376/dark-patterns-killed-my-wifes-windows-11-installation/

[CentralMass]

1. I encountered an almost identical issue with my pin code on my HP laptop running Window 11 a few weeks ago

I also had an issue with recovering my pin code and the "Windows wants us to use a second factor using my wife’s phone number, but this throws up another weird error, this time claiming the SMS service to send the code isn’t working. " happened to me as well. My S21 bricked itself a month or so ago, actually the cellular connectivity on it died and I replaced it with a Samsung S25. I suspected it not wanting to let my new phone work as the the second factor authorisation was due to that switch. Without rat holing on it, after several days I got around the issue and recovered my pin. During that trouble shooting I could not access my Microsoft 365 account to use use word and the rest of the office suite. I ended up installing LibreOffice and while I have access to the MS365 subscription again after fixing the pin code issue I will not re-up the subscription when it is time to renew, I'll stick with LibreOffice.

I'm actually replying to this on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Debian Linux based RaspberryPIOS that I'm doing some IOT related project development on. I recently picked up a Raspberry Pi Xero 2W as well and I dusted off an old Toshiba Satellite that I run Fedora Linux on.
I updated it to the latest version of Fedora and used SCP to transfer some python code and other files from the laptop to the raspberry Pi.
Several years ago I developed a little IOT project using Grove sensors to measure humidity, temperature barometric press, air quality and light levels. I used Flask and Django to build a webapp that could grab data over the network and display the data with gauges on a webpage,.
I also signed up for an Amazon AWS developers account and learned how to write Alexa Skills to interface with my IOT device to allow me to request the readings from the sensors using an en Echo Dot .The hardware that I used to interface the Grove sensors to the network 4 or 5 years ago, boards called Wio-link, have been discontinued so I order a "Grove Hat" for the raspberry Pi to use as a replacement, It will require modification to the old code and I plan to use Amazons AWS services like AWS IOT to send the sensor readings up to the cloud, etc.. It's a hobby for now,

If Windows 11 ever breaks on n my HP Laptop, I will switch to Linux on it as well.

[usonian]

2. Here are the root causes.

DARKEST OF PATTERNS

My wife and I fell victim to a series of dark patterns that nearly rendered her Windows 11 installation unrecoverable. The first dark pattern is Samsung enabling the OneDrive synchronisation feature without my wife’s consent and without informing her. The second dark pattern is Microsoft reinstalling OneDrive onto my wife’s PC without my wife’s consent and without informing her. The third dark pattern is OneDrive secretely downloading 280GB of photos and videos without once realising this was way more data than her root drive could store. The fifth and final dark pattern runs through all of this like a red thread: Microsoft’s insistence on forcefully converting every local Windows 11 user account to an online Microsoft account.

I haven't been to a bookstore recently, but I remember the presence of (ta da) included dvd's of various linux distros.

What are people using lately?

I just posted on the latest version of Tails (7.0). The way is to wite a thumb drive. You can also burn a dvd.

The system runs off the media, not your internal drive.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10114529

Homepage. (Good explanation and downloads)
https://tails.net/

A good explanation of why
https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/01/29/installing-and-using-tails/

As I write this, I have to wonder about whatever treasure trove is still on your computer's internal disk.

I'm going to leave this question open, because it can be an infinite rabbithole thanks to security chips etc. For a separate post.