this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024

249 points (94.6% liked)

linuxmemes

19717 readers

1040 users here now

I use Arch btw

Sister communities:

LemmyMemes: Memes
LemmyShitpost: Anything and everything goes.
RISA: Star Trek memes and shitposts

Community rules

Follow the site-wide rules and code of conduct
Be civil
Post Linux-related content
No recent reposts

Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

poopsmith

Linuxmemed

Geert

249

Greatest satisfaction (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by RedditEnjoyer to c/linuxmemes

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 26 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Don't forget to extract the product key before nuking it. For your Windows VM. 🥹

[–] hime0321 34 points 2 months ago (2 children)

No need. Use Microsoft activation scripts. https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

OK I'm a little shocked here, how does this work? Back in the day when licenses were harder to come by, we used to use cracks / activators that would patch some binary or exploit some bug to activate. Is this .. an open source version of that?

[–] d3Xt3r 7 points 2 months ago

Then it'll probably shock you even more when you realise that this thing is hosted on Github, a site owned by Microsoft... :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

MS just doesn't care anymore, because they make their money mostly with cloud and data now.

[–] hime0321 6 points 2 months ago

I’m not sure exactly how it works. I haven’t used it in a while now. It has several different options to activate, including hardware id or setting up a local KMS server. I only ever had to use it one time, per windows install, and it would keep windows activated. It also has a tool to switch windows versions, i.e. home to pro. It is fully open source and their wiki goes into more detail. https://massgrave.dev/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I believe it works by obtaining a real licence from Microsoft servers. Since MS wants to get everybody to move from 7 to 10/11 the only thing required to upgrade a win 7 install to 10 or 11 is an installation ID. And you can reuse the same installation ID infinitely.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Don't do this. Either run unactivated or do it officially.

Better option is to run a Linux VM with Wine. As it turns out, Microsoft is very happy to let you pirate Windows because they want your data and to sell you One drive.

[–] hime0321 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I run Linux with wine and if I make a Windows VM I’ll still use MAS and other tools to strip out Microsofts bloatwear. If you don’t like OneDrive so much then why even bother paying Microsoft for the trash heap that is Windows? There’s more than just OneDrive stealing your data.

If Microsoft really cared they’d pull a Nintendo and have GitHub nuke their repo.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

If Microsoft really cared they’d pull a Nintendo and have GitHub nuke their repo.

It's even easier for them, since MS owns Github.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

They want you to use Windows as they aren't dumb. They see competitors like Linux gaining popularity in the tech desktop space and they want to make it easy for tech savvy users to use Windows.

The fact that they don't care is really telling.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just ameliorate it after running the Github scripts

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's illegal

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Not here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I recently found out that these keys are nowadays embedded in the BIOS. The following command will retrieve it:

sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM

This works even if you nuked Windows and installed Linux. Do note that this key will be locked to that particular hardware; you could reinstall Win on that specific computer, but you can't use that key to activate Win on a different machine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I had no idea you could dump it from Linux.

[–] shimdidly 1 points 2 months ago

So I did this. I nuked Windows when I bought a new laptop. About a year later I changed jobs and now needed to use Visual Studio. Now I know why Windows never hassled me for a key when I reinstalled...