What Linux distro Thomas Shelby would use if he was a Linux user ?
Don’t forget to extract the product key before nuking it. For your Windows VM. 🥹
No need. Use Microsoft activation scripts. https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
Don’t do this. Either run unactivated or do it officially.
Better option is to run a Linux VM with Wine. As it turns out, Microsoft is very happy to let you pirate Windows because they want your data and to sell you One drive.
I recently found out that these keys are nowadays embedded in the BIOS. The following command will retrieve it:
sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
This works even if you nuked Windows and installed Linux. Do note that this key will be locked to that particular hardware; you could reinstall Win on that specific computer, but you can’t use that key to activate Win on a different machine.
So I did this. I nuked Windows when I bought a new laptop. About a year later I changed jobs and now needed to use Visual Studio. Now I know why Windows never hassled me for a key when I reinstalled…
