I…. I can’t believe you are defending (or more accurately saying “it’s not that bad”) losing access to the root of your hard drive. It screams incompetence on Miroslop’s part.

While I hate Microslop as much as the next guy - critical thinking like this is woefully absent on the internet…

Rufus like tools are becoming a near necessity to install windows these days.

I recently wiped my drive and performed a clean install. I started with fedora and about 15 minutes later I was 100% back together - programs and all.

Then I moved/installed my RETAIL copy of win11 pro to a virtual machine. It took like 4 hours, and I swear I’m not dumb! :)

• getting the iso onto a flash drive without a windows machine was way more difficult than it needed to be. Ventoy ftw.
• then you have to either: bypass the tpm stuff with Rufus, or set up a vm based secure boot/tpm module via vm additions. Not too hard, but annoying. Why it can’t be a normal option to install in a vm without a tpm module is beyond me.
• the install took forever. It asked SO many questions and shoved so much crap in my face “subscribe to 365”. “Turn on one drive”. “Try this syncing thingy with your phone.” “Here let me turn on all the telemetry - oh you don’t want that, here’s more screens to click through.” It was endless and annoying.
• activation was surprisingly difficult. It of course detected the hardware change being moved to a VM. Then I had to pick some obscured hyperlink to get to a screen where it showed literally dozens of machines (like every install I’ve ever done over decades) to pick the install I was transferring. It was not as easy to find the right install as you’d think. It kept complaining “that copy was already in use”. Or “already transferred” but they were all the same pc installed with the same retail license. I realized right there how screwed up it all is behind the scenes. I eventually clicked on one that activated thank god.
• mind you, it was REAL EASY to skip the above step and PAY for a new license. That screen is shoved right in your face.
• once it was finally installed and booted, then the worst part came - updates. It literally took like 2 hours to update. No my internet connection isn’t slow, and no, the VM isn’t resources strapped. I couldn’t believe how many times it updated and rebooted and started another update. Why a freshly downloaded iso required so many sequential updates is beyond me. It was connected to the internet during install, why didn’t you grab the latest then? /facepalm.

The whole process was extremely painful. And I gave in years ago and I login with a Microsoft account - you’d think the ONE advantage I’d get for that would be: “oh hi sir, I see you are installing your one and only retail copy of win11, HAVE A NICE DAY!” NOPE.

I’ve been installing OSes since the days of dos 5.0 and I couldn’t believe how low Microsoft has fallen with the shovelware and bad updates process.

And after all that - I don’t even use the win11 VM. I just installed it because I had a valid retail license and “why not? I can move the VM around I the future if I want”. My software runs just as fast, if not faster in Linux - but I’m much faster because my OS gets out of my way, doesn’t shove ads and crap in my face, and I’ve tailored it to match my workflow.

Windows is dead folks. If you’re stubbornly hanging on, you really shouldn’t.

Good to know, I hadn’t heard that. I still am leery though - they showed their hand.

I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.

Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.

WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.

I read what sounded like an intelligent follow-up on this subject. But I’m not smart enough to verify for myself, so I still refrain from using ventoy - even though I’d love to start using it again.

It was basically “wacky code from all over the place, poor coding practices, can’t find anything bad, but methods used are sus af”

Says one dude I read on the internet :/