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Comment by moonshinefe | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I was bugged by several 'system notifications' the other day on my Win 10 laptop (it took focus over my RDP client in full screen, too) that various people were trying to add me to Skype, and that I needed to sign into Skype to fill in some details they wanted about something.

Thing was, I'd never installed Skype on the system or even signed into it for several years, and here it was out of the blue asking me to accept friend invites from a bunch of spammers. It's now part of the "desktop experience" built in I guess (it may have to do with using a Microsoft account vs. purely local account, in my discussions with others).

The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives.

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> The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore

This is a really good way to describe modern non-free OSes (Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, the gamut). They're all asking me to sign into their services and always be connected and let them monitor everything I do and make suggestions and store everything I own on their servers. And when you try to turn all that off, everything falls apart. This is OK on my phone, which is really just an Internet portal, but on my desktop I expect my stuff to be my stuff. I guess many consumers like this (?), but I sure don't.

These days, I use Arch Linux and laugh haughtily at the crap proprietary OS users have to put up with.

While you're mentioning Skype, fun fact: since Windows 8 (or 8.1, not sure), there's absolutely no freaking way to sign into Skype with a local account. Like, at all. You just can't use it what so ever unless you log in with your Windows account.

EDIT: about this:

> The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives.

I had the same feeling since Windows 8, then I moved to Linux-based distributions. Never regretted it. I still have to deal with Windows when someone at work screws something up with their computer, but that's about it.

Windows now comes packaged with a version of skype that uses their 'app' system. You can still get their non-app version on the site. That version allows you to sign in to whatever user you want - it's not tied to your windows account.

http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/

Though I agree that skype and windows have some serious user experience issues.

Yes, you can tell the difference in search because one has a solid background and one has the blue Skype symbol in the background.

wish I was kidding

I haven't used Windows 8 much, but I do run Skype on my family Windows 10 PC. Microsoft has stopped updating the Skype Metro app. Users are encouraged to upgrade to 'classic' desktop app - which is what I have.

The desktop app does not pick up your Windows login - you actually have to log in and ask Skype to remember your credentials. This works on local user accounts as well as accounts authenticated with a Microsoft account.

> You just can't use it what so ever unless you log in with your Windows account.

Try downloading Skype Portable. My Skype account is still just a username (not tied to either a Microsoft or Facebook account) and works great without any integration into the OS.

While we're bitching about Skype, let's talk about how it monopolizes port 80, for no good apparent reason.

Super fun when you're trying to do a Skype call with a remote coworker and debug a web server at the same time.

I bought a new machine with Windows 10 for my kids the other day. It has secure boot, which is fine. Via procexp (part of SysInternals) I checked the signatures of the running processes. Only skypehost and ias (some intel security app) did not have verified signatures.

Not sure what to make of this.

I've had to uninstall Skype on Windows a bunch of times because it defaults to install it in Windows update. You can hide the update, which I finally did. Very annoying.

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