Sending/receiving emails from it on Hotmail. As a cloud storage to my files on OneDrive. To prepare documents, tables, presentations on Office. To listen to music when there was Groove. Logging into my two Windows 10 computers. To purchase/download software to my convenience on the Store. While signing in to other websites, either using my email, or via Microsoft sign-in.
Yes. I refuse to go to Windows 10 because of that sort of thing, but some day, Windows 7 will no longer be usable. Running my Android phone without a Google account keeps getting tougher with each update. The jaws are closing.
Of course, Linux has a different set of problems. I just spent most of a day getting audio to work again on Linux after accidentally turning on HDMI audio. This is the 16-step procedure for fixing "no sound" problems in Ubuntu Linux.[1] It's a cut and paste of ten years of hacks for fixing sound problems.
(I took a stab at writing a sane audio troubleshooting procedure.[2] It doesn't have to be that awful.)
There are other distros out there, I'd take Debian or OpenSuse over Ubuntu any day. Switching audio outputs from HDMI to analog and vice versa isn't a nightmare in normal Gnome (its usually 2 clicks), but it looks like Ubuntu has heavily modified Gnome to match their theme, and perhaps their modified Settings panel didn't bother to include that.
I didn't get to that stage, for now at least. I am still thinking of just starting a new Microsoft account, which unfortunately will not be my namesurname@hotmail.com this time, that was priceless.
Another $80 is still less than many other cloud providers for 4 years, and going down the Linux road is way too rocky for my preferences, though, may change.
