Vitalik criticizes Microsoft Windows: Cannot start offline, is this still called system freedom?

【Crypto World】 Recently, I saw a rant from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik on social media, which seems to represent the sentiments of many open-source enthusiasts. He said he bought a new computer and planned to install Linux to use it properly, but after trying to start Windows once, he found that without internet connection or logging into a Microsoft account, the entire startup process would freeze and couldn’t proceed.

He used a term: “Dystopia.”

Thinking about it more deeply, it’s indeed a bit terrifying—users buy their own computers, and how they want to use them should be their own business, but they are forced to be connected online, authenticated, and surrender data to third-party servers just to complete the most basic startup operation. This kind of mandatory dependency is completely opposite to the user sovereignty and data autonomy advocated by Web3.

That’s also why concepts like open-source systems and personal privacy protection always resonate within the crypto community. After all, in a decentralized world, users are the masters of their own data.