Bad news for those planning to activate Windows 11 with a Windows 7 or 8/8.1 key: users noticed that the latest Windows 11 preview builds no longer allow activation with old license keys.
My first legit Windows Version I installed(not pre-installed) was when my university gave keys out for free.
Before that I used sketchy tools to activate my Windows. Since I am using Linux only my vms don't get activated. Windows 10 runs fine without activation.
Space Engineers has no Linux Dedicated Server so I'm forced to run a Windows VM. It's the only piece of software I've encountered that problem with and it boggles my mind why they chose to do that
Space Engineers. There are dockers for it but since Single Player on Linux is already suffering in Performance I don't think the server in docker on wine will perform better.
And I used a Windows Image that I used for personal installs and never had the issue that it shutdown unactivated. Some settings aren't available though. Nothing usually you need.
Getting Space Engineers to run on Linux is a constant experience of "Ooohh, it works. Now don't touch anything or it'll break!". There are some docker containers out there that seem to work but then I'd lose the advantage of Torch and I'm not about to do that.
Really hope they provide a Linux Server for Space Engineers 2 (I assume that is what they will work on once Vrage3 is done)
I've got an entire set of windows test VMs running unactivated for about 4 years now. We have a few at work too (we actually have keys for those but nobody has bothered putting them in).
The worst that happens is you can't set a desktop background.
What you're describing is for bare metal Windows Server only or all editions in a VM. And that's on purpose. You can probably guess why. Windows Home through Enterprise will run indefinitely on bare metal. It just locks down personalisation. Microsoft explicitly offers a VHD of Windows that doesn't require activation.
Nope. On all of my machines I installed Windows 10 using an official usb boot disk with a distro straight from Microsoft. It was 100% free, I didn't need an account, and I'm not being prompted to activate, nor do I have the annoying little watermark in the bottom right of my screen.
I seriously don't understand how people are paying to use Windows when Microsoft gives it away for free.
Were those OEM machines? Often times OEM computers will come with a Windows OS license during purchase and I think Windows may check the hardware thumbprint of the machine and license it automatically. Windows 10/11 is certainly not free for people who build their own machine from parts.