[HN Gopher] Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar?
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Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar?
Author : MBCook
Score : 301 points
Date : 2021-09-03 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctrl.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctrl.blog)
| [deleted]
| jseigj43 wrote:
| Windows sucks, what's new.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Thanks for your insightful comment.
| phaemon wrote:
| Indeed, not an insightful comment at all. Everyone knows
| that.
| cortexio wrote:
| There's some trouble in afghanistan (that's kinda new)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I wonder if the LTSC version will have this nonsense in it.
| nicholashead wrote:
| I had a weird issue the other day (two days ago?) too where
| trying to load Microsoft Store/check for updates would just
| completely freeze the program. And also my start menu would not
| execute apps - I could search for them and hit enter to run them
| - but nothing would happen.
|
| I'm wondering if it was related to some of this. You're
| absolutely right that an OS should never "soft-lock" on
| cloud/networking issues. It's insane to me that we still deal
| with this as programmers in the year 2021. Write asynchronous
| code. Expect network slowness or weirdness.
| d2wa wrote:
| If I remember correctly, then your specific issue was
| supposedly fixed in one of the recent Insider builds.
|
| Windows Search is heavily cloud-dependent, and yes it's
| performance suffers under poor network conditions.
| eplanit wrote:
| How can people trust a company with a product like this, and a
| product history like it has, with their code on Github, or with
| their personal/career info on LinkedIn?
|
| I've always considered Microsoft as the "McDonalds of Software"
| -- they sell billions of copies, but the product isn't of quality
| or healthy.
| hpoe wrote:
| Just saying I've been using Ubuntu for my primary work machine
| (in a massive company) for over a year now and things work great,
| haven't had to fiddle with anything strange haven't had any weird
| issues and the UI is much nicer than Windows. I'd recommend
| giving it a try.
| dano5 wrote:
| because it's beta? ^^
| dano5 wrote:
| because it's beta? ^^
|
| but joke aside, I don't get ads in the taskbar or start menu
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Operating systems in beta are buggy, usually up until the
| eleventh hour. Yet, we continue to be surprised when the latest
| macOS preview or Windows beta eats our homework.
|
| Just a couple months ago we were bemoaning the issues in macOS
| Monterey, including VPN apps just not working. If you don't want
| bugs, don't run the beta.
|
| Edit: why the downvotes? A bug in a beta is the only news here.
| Ads in Windows are not new. Critical bugs in Windows are not new.
| Windows updates and services breaking Windows is not new.
| Literally the whole point of the beta program is to find bugs
| like this.
| jrockway wrote:
| As I always say in these threads, I would be happy to pay
| Microsoft for a Windows license that doesn't have Cortana, Teams,
| telemetry uploads, the app store, etc. I just want to run
| applications that through past probably-illegal monopolistic
| actions, require APIs that only exist on Windows machines. Accept
| that you are just boring plumbing, and don't have any "value
| added services", and you earn my money. (Oh, and ship the damn
| patch for Hyper-V that adds nested virtualization on AMD
| processors. It's been in preview builds for like 2 years!)
|
| Computers are about the applications you run and what you make
| with them. Nobody wants to know the name of their OS vendor, or
| buy anything else from them. Sorry, Microsoft. If something is
| good, I'll find out about it. (Happy to pay for Github, for
| example!)
| Causality1 wrote:
| Sounds like you want Windows AME.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| I'd like to see windows be part of office 365. Windows users
| get 'free' Windows on the desktop and Mac users can get
| licenses for parallels.
|
| Maybe they could set it up so that Windows is free with ads,
| but subscribers can turn everything off and get full control.
| eric__cartman wrote:
| Windows should have a "minimal install" option were it only
| installs the base operating sysyem and not much else. That's
| why Windows XP/7 will always be the pinnacle of Windows
| releases in my opinion.
| zakary wrote:
| I had exactly the same issue. The solution is Windows LTSC
| (long term service package). It has no Cortana, teams, or
| Windows store, no Telemetry, and only update about once a month
| and it never updates automatically, only when you allow it to.
| It's designed for applications where a computer has to be
| stable for a long time.
|
| A copy can be a pain to get a hold of because Microsoft only
| want to licence it to corporate clients, so it's usually not
| possible for individuals to buy a licence at any price.
| Microsoft really don't want regular people to have access to
| it.
|
| but if you look on your favourite piracy site you should see
| it. Then use a Windows keygen and presto it's activated.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Until it's a 'commercial offense' I will counter/refuse
| everything that contain ads.
| neogodless wrote:
| My history is rusty, but the first ads in Windows were probably
| in Windows 8 live tiles in the Start Menu. (Not including
| Internet Explorer being forced upon everyone.)
|
| But it expanded from there - there are ads in Settings
| encouraging browser choice and discouraging changes to default
| applications.
|
| Ads all over your first-run experience.
|
| Ads _in the taskbar_ encouraging you to use Edge and Teams.
|
| The ad system is heavily integrated into Explorer / taskbar.
| Which is how poorly constructed ads can break such vital
| operating machinery.
| dboreham wrote:
| MS were talking to partners about selling ads on Win95 before
| it was released.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Depending on whether you count internal properties, there's
| the MSN icon on the desktop by default on Win95.
| ByteWelder wrote:
| Even ads on the lock screen (for Microsoft Edge) and through
| MS-certified drivers (e.g. Corsair iCue, Dolby Atmos).
| drcongo wrote:
| And they charge you to use this?
| neogodless wrote:
| Sort of? I've been building PCs for about 20 years, and when
| doing it for others, I'd have them buy a license. For myself,
| the only time I can recall buying a Windows license was for
| Windows Home Server and WHS 2011. I got a free Windows 7
| Ultimate license, which I have now upgraded through 8/8.1 to
| 10 Pro.
|
| But yes, a mainstream Windows user pays for a Windows
| license, either through a direct license purchase, or through
| the baked in price of a machine.
|
| Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to
| 10, but that was a bargain with the devil, as it made it
| easier on the decision-makers at Microsoft to find other ways
| to make money off of Windows 10 users.
| drcongo wrote:
| What a horror story, thanks for the comprehensive answer.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1
| to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil
|
| Bargain with the devil? Most users didn't pay to upgrade
| machines from 7/8 to 10 because they had nothing to gain
| from the upgrade. You only bargain to get things that you
| want.
| sharken wrote:
| Part of setting up a Win 10 machine should include
| disabling telemetry, even though it's not easy.
|
| https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-
| collec...
|
| It probably won't be long before the Windows 11 version is
| here.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Barely. You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10
| years, and even a new license is like PS30.
|
| It's not surprising they're trying to add adverts. Sucks
| though.
| profunctor wrote:
| Where can I get a legit license for PS30?
| mortenlarsen wrote:
| Not the first ad related issue. Ads in Skype ran unsandboxed
| javascript, allowing filesystem access.
| chungy wrote:
| Windows 98 had the Channel Bar enabled by default, which was
| ostensibly just advertising.
| ProfessionalHat wrote:
| Yes, it looks like the ads started coming in when MS realized
| the potential earnings from a market dominant browser. Since
| they lost the browser war, they have now converted their
| operating system into a browser with integrated crap (like IE
| toolbars) in forms of bing search, cortana, app recommendations
| etc.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > However, that doesn't answer why the Windows shell was so
| poorly architect in the first place.
|
| It's simple really: Microsoft doesn't have any competent
| developers working on the Windows user interfaces. My guess is
| that if you display any competence you wind up being moved to
| somewhere they care about like Azure, PowerShell, or the
| licensing team.
|
| At this point I'm wondering if it is worth trying to build my own
| desktop on top of Windows Server Core.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm wondering what's the average programming skill MSFT takes
| in. I mean they definitely have a lot of competitive people who
| work in kernels and system programming fields, but I'm not sure
| about the other departments. Maybe the less important fields
| are for new hires to get into the game and that's why they
| suck.
| Arainach wrote:
| This is insulting and trivially untrue. The Windows shell org
| has a number of excellent engineers. When I was at Microsoft it
| was one of the most senior and highest-tenured orgs. There are
| fantastic engineers such as Raymond Chen
| (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/) and many more.
|
| Do not mistake domains you don't understand as being bad at
| things. Programs and extensions that are 26 years old are still
| running strong on Windows 10 today. The economy runs on ancient
| tools that rely on that compatibility.
|
| Throwing together a pretty context menu isn't as important as
| making sure that all of the UI elements are accessible to
| screen readers and other tools. It's also trivial compared to
| ensuring that old programs that assumed they could just click
| on the third menu item to make something happen keep working
| even if you redesign the menu.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Is your argument that the windows desktop is a good piece of
| software or that software developers who consistently create
| bad software are actually good developers?
|
| I realize most of the terrible bloat, adware, security holes
| etc are probably caused by external factors, but at some
| point I think it's important to take responsibility for your
| own work and either push back on or move on.
| Arainach wrote:
| I certainly consider it a good piece of software. It does
| more things across more environments than its competitors.
|
| I have and regularly use machines with all the major
| desktop platforms in my house - Windows, OS X, Linux,
| Chrome OS. While I cycle between them, I strongly prefer
| the Windows machines. The alternatives are all are missing
| all sorts of window management things such as snapping to
| screen quadrants and multimon borders, keyboard shortcuts
| for moving and snapping windows. Monitors with different
| DPIs is a challenge on Mac and hopeless on Linux. There are
| all sorts of UI affordances in Windows to do things like
| open new copies of an app (middle click on the taskbar
| icon), close an app (middle click on the taskbar preview),
| and so on.
|
| There are a number of changes I strongly disagree with in
| Windows 11 such as removing the ability to put the taskbar
| on the side, but as a whole I still think the Windows
| desktop is an excellent piece of software that's
| significantly more usable than the alternatives.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > At this point I'm wondering if it is worth trying to build my
| own desktop on top of Windows Server Core.
|
| Supposedly there used to be all sorts of third party shells.
| Only thing I've found to still exist are a few black box ports
| though.
| lghh wrote:
| > Microsoft doesn't have any competent developers working on
| the Windows user interfaces
|
| Oh please. Do you really think that MS has nobody with any
| level of competency on any single team in their entire org? Do
| you really think that low of others? Could it possibly be that
| sometimes... things have bugs? Shit breaks in ways you don't
| expect. Things happen.
|
| Painting an entire group of people you've never met with such a
| large brush is gross. It's just software and these are just
| people.
| burnished wrote:
| Its a little hyperbolic of them, but the root issue is still
| that a buggy advertisement in the operating system, as part
| of a non-vital cloud service, caused the operating system to
| break. This doesn't feel like an "it happens", right?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| If it would be the exception to the norm that would be fair.
| But the bugs and regressions in the Windows desktop UI are so
| numerous these days that there must be a reason why the
| quality is so much below the average. Poor management driving
| the good developers out could be one of them (or it's just
| because they fired their QA, who knows).
| aspaceman wrote:
| It's gross incompetence.
|
| If you have Microsoft's resources, you should be able to
| compete with a good UI. They can't. To me, that's a sign of
| complete incompetence. Excuse it however you like, but those
| guys are getting paid and failing at the job.
|
| I don't understand the need to apoligize for shit software.
| It's shit. I don't care that some idiot spent their whole
| life taking that shit. It still smells, looks, and tastes
| like shit. I'm not going to enjoy it as a delicacy because
| they "care".
| seph-reed wrote:
| As a competent developer of user interfaces, I'd consider
| working for Microsoft career suicide.
|
| It would look bad on my resume. And given how much of a mess
| it is, it sounds like a terribly stressful job. I think any
| dev who doesn't see those red flags (or care about them) is
| very, very likely incompetent.
|
| Honestly, even they weren't it's like a self fulfilling
| prophecy. It's fairly incompetent to take a job that people
| believe is for incompetent people. Unless you totally turn
| shit around, which obviously nobody has.
| sk5t wrote:
| Might it be that not everyone would view taking on a big
| challenge with a potential ton of impact "career suicide"--
| or, would you shun an industry peer who tried to make
| Windows better?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Shit breaks in ways you don't expect.
|
| Well, to be fair, the cause and effect in this case shouldn't
| even be connected in a way that allows for this. It's like a
| bad CD in your car stereo causing your engine to fail. A
| smart car manufacturer makes it so that the data bus cannot
| send information from the public areas to the engine area. A
| bad car manufacturer does not put up those blocks.
| habeebtc wrote:
| It is unlikely. But that can actually happen.
|
| A catastrophic failure of the head unit can impact the
| electrical system which can do weird things with the spark
| plugs or other systems.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Cars aren't always the greatest either - never mind the CD
| player, the radio receiver can be an entry point:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33622298
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Automotive EE here. Worth noting that almost every
| infotainment system is android or Linux-based right now.
|
| They crash all the time. They're absolutely awful
| quality. they are made almost exclusively with cheap
| foreign engineering. It's really the wild west when it
| comes to things.
|
| There vehicle interfaces are usually subsystem modules in
| the radio. Your Linux side talks to your "vehicle side"
| over usb, uart, SPI, etc. There is still a good module
| there most of the time, but it has 100% trust of its main
| processor.
|
| Since 2018, US vehicles since almost all come with a
| firewall to separate the radio/telemetric/infotainment
| busses from the vehicle busses.
|
| Their solution wasn't to harden the fancy systems, it was
| just to separate them from the important ones.
|
| I despite these big stupid complicated displays that
| encourage accidents.
| api wrote:
| Really really good developers are in high demand, and they're
| hard to find. At the top there's a ton of salary competition
| with the FAANG companies and other large companies, or with
| startups that offer equity and more interesting work. MS is
| neither of these.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Oh please. Do you really think that MS has nobody with any
| level of competency on any single team in their entire org?_
|
| He said no such thing.
| Arainach wrote:
| " Microsoft doesn't have any competent developers working
| on the Windows user interfaces"
|
| Verbatim quote. The commenter being responded to said
| exactly that.
| bbarnett wrote:
| And?
| lghh wrote:
| > And?
|
| It seems the did in fact say such a thing that you said
| they didn't say.
|
| I imagine you're misinterpreting what I said. That's
| reasonable, I can see how I was not clear.
|
| I was saying that there's no way there's a single team at
| MS that does not have a competent person on it, not that
| there's no way ALL teams have 0 competent people on it.
| [deleted]
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Shit breaks in ways you don't expect.
|
| It broke because it could not hit an unessential cloud
| service. This is absolutely something someone should have
| expected.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> This is absolutely something someone should have
| expected_
|
| It's ok, we rushed the implementation to meet this sprint's
| goals, the fix is part of the next sprint. /s
| laumars wrote:
| In fairness, this kind of mistake is the kind I'd expect
| a junior to make, and only the once.
|
| Putting time outs and other error handling around remote
| endpoints is prettier much the first lesson you're taught
| when interfacing with remote end points.
|
| Yes mistakes happen and I've seen other companies ship
| products that have failed in similar ways, but I've
| always believed Microsoft is thought of as a FANNG and to
| see a school boy error in their flag ship product a
| couple of months before it ships really makes me question
| the standard of leadership running the team.
|
| Who's QAing it? Why wasn't those functions covered in
| unit tests? Who peer reviewed that code? And who's
| running the development teams that allow all this
| guardrails to fail? It's not just one engineer who had to
| fuck up to cause that bug.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I had the misfortune of working with a vendor that did
| work in sprints. I couldn't see it as anything other than
| an awful way to work that caused things to take longer
| than they needed to because priorities couldn't be
| shifted on the fly and anything other than break fixes
| couldn't be released mid-sprint.
|
| That fixed release cycle might make certain things
| easier, but it also causes a forced lag on all changes
| and encourages shipping code that isn't actually complete
| so you don't have to tell people to wait another 2 weeks
| for the change.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| This pretty much sums up sprints, extra meetings at start
| and end, less flexibility (we don't want to change the
| scope of the sprint) and generally worse for everyone.
|
| I wish some of Kanban was more widely accepted,
| especially things like making sure you have enough worked
| planned in the backlog to just keep taking tasks and
| working on them till completion.
| robocat wrote:
| https://apenwarr.ca/log/20171213 - "An epic treatise on
| scheduling, bug tracking, and triage" includes comments
| on software Kanban and has same well written hate on
| sprints.
| [deleted]
| hulitu wrote:
| Taking into account the mess win 10 UI is together with Teams
| and Office 365 i would say that, yes, they don't have any
| competent developer in those teams.
| cortexio wrote:
| watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99dKzubvpKE&t=70s
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Oh please. Do you really think that MS has nobody with any
| level of competency on any single team in their entire org?
|
| I dunno, let's see:
|
| > Microsoft doesn't have any competent developers working on
| the Windows user interfaces
|
| Looks like I am specifically calling out one subset here in
| particular. So I would say that no, no I don't believe what
| you're implying I believe.
|
| > Could it possibly be that sometimes... things have bugs?
| Shit breaks in ways you don't expect. Things happen.
|
| Bugs happen to everyone, but the people working on the
| Windows interfaces have poor architectural choices,
| nonsensical user-hostile decisions, and a history of
| reinventing the wheel with slower (and buggier!), less
| featureful, interfaces.
|
| > Painting an entire group of people you've never met with
| such a large brush is gross. It's just software and these are
| just people.
|
| This is the image they project into the world, if they want
| to be thought of differently then they should actually do
| something to project that image instead.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I suspect the nonsensical user-hostile decisions are not
| being made by the devs themselves. And if I was in their
| position (of implementing nonsensical user-hostile
| decisions) I would probably not give two shits whether it
| was done well or not.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| And I don't think anyone would blame you as a person for
| making that choice, but I also wouldn't call you a highly
| competent developer.
| jerhewet wrote:
| It's very refreshing for me to find someone that can
| succinctly describe how fucking incompetent almost all of
| the UI / UX designers and developers at Microsoft are
| without being hammered down as "a troll" in the comments.
|
| There are a LOT of us out here that remember how well
| things were designed and implemented 20, 30, and 40 years
| ago, and how disgustingly broken everything is now, and how
| everyone nowadays ACCEPTS THIS AS NORMAL.
|
| Microsoft Teams is a steaming pile of shit. Windows Desktop
| Explorer is a steaming pile of shit. The XAML bullshit
| they're using for the Start Menu button in Windows 10 (and
| I'm guessing Windows 11, since I am _not_ going to be
| installing it) is a steaming pile of shit. Microsoft 's
| invasive advertising and telemetry IN A DESKTOP OPERATING
| SYSTEM is a steaming pile of shit.
|
| People need to stop pretending this shit isn't broken.
| People need to stop calling people who point out how
| fucking broken this shit is "trolls".
| tapoxi wrote:
| It's part of the HN Cycle(tm)
|
| * Blog complains about Windows being a mess
|
| * Comments about how the Mac workflow is better
|
| * Blog complains about how the Mac is too restricted
|
| * Comments about how Linux is finally good now(r)
|
| * Blog complains about Linux desktop
|
| * Comments about how WSL2 saved them from the nightmare that
| is GNOME/KDE/etc
|
| repeat ad nauseum
| prewett wrote:
| This is hilarious because it's so true... There's also a
| conversational/argumentative style where you take the
| opposite position, either because you like to go against
| the flow or because you want to see how well the other
| guy's argument stands up to yours. I think if you look at
| my comments I tend to have a lot that are "well, no,
| <contrary idea because reasons>". If I'm at all
| representative of HN, it would surprise me if part of the
| HN Cycle(tm) is contrarianness.
| AQuantized wrote:
| I do think it's finally become true (for me at least) that
| desktop linux is Actually Good (c)
|
| Previously on more user friendly distros like Ubuntu I
| didn't feel that the advantages over Windows were
| significant enough to warrant certain software suites being
| unavailable (adobe, autocad, etc.). And lightweight distros
| like Arch caused too much headache even with the wiki and
| knowing "what you were doing."
|
| Arch now feels both relatively easy to use day to day,
| while still being incredibly customizable with almost no
| bloatware. The only real problem is certain almost non-
| negotiable utilities like PulseAudio not necessarily being
| as high quality as most of the user utilities.
| criley2 wrote:
| I'd be willing to try linux again, but the thing that
| stops me every time is having to go into terminal and
| start building my f'n software and manually updating or
| fixing some terminal only setting that is breaking things
|
| I absolutely refuse to use an operating system for casual
| use that requires daily terminal knowledge and endless
| googling to remember and use.
|
| It is what it is, but I do enough of this stuff
| professionally that I want an operating system that works
| from the second you push the power button with
| peripherals and software that work instantly after
| plugging in.
|
| The second I'm digging through old forums looking for
| some multi-line arcane terminal script to paste to make
| things work, I boot back into something else and delete
| the linux partition
| [deleted]
| Closi wrote:
| Linux desktop is awful. At least WSL2 saved me from the
| nightmare that is GNOME/KDE/etc
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I like the Mac workflow a lot better.
| bogeholm wrote:
| I think the Mac is getting too restricted these days,
| with the T2 and SIP and all
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Except it's not a cycle, those are different people
| commenting different topics.
| hapidjus wrote:
| Its a cycle on HN.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yes, if someone from one group states a position, someone
| from another group will rebut it. It's not a quirky
| pattern, it's just how discussion works.
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| True the gist of it is that people just like complaining
| and that the grass is always greener.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I think someone is angry he failed his interview in
| Redmond...
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| As others have pointed out, the very reason they're facing
| this much criticism is because this bug was very foreseeable
| and avoidable.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Its a controversial opinion (I think) but I'm inclined to
| agree. I do tend to find that devs are often much harsher to
| other devs, sometimes unfairly so, than any other profession
| that I know of.
|
| If you complain your mechanic is slow and expensive, a load
| of other mechanics will come and tell you (and probably
| rightly so) that the job is more difficult and complex than
| you know of. But you don't see that often with devs, which is
| a bit disappointing.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Probably because your mechanic isn't actively making your
| car perform worse, gluing ads onto the body, or redesigning
| your steering wheel based on the latest fads.
| nhinck wrote:
| > gluing ads onto the body
|
| Surprisingly I have heard of this being done. Mechanics
| placing stickers on windows without permission.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I see this in Europe a lot. Brand new cars often have the
| dealership name and logo on a sticker on the back window,
| or the license plate frame, or even the body of the car.
|
| Jesus Christ, is the dealership playing me to advertise
| their business on the item I just paid them money for?!
| If not, then take that branding shit off!
| jagger27 wrote:
| This happens in North America too. I explicitly asked the
| dealer where I bought my car not to slap their unpaid
| adverts all over it, and they still put a sticker on the
| trunk lid, a license plate frame on the rear, and an
| inventory tracking sticker on the windshield.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I highly doubt the devs themselves run microsoft. I could
| be wrong but theres probably a manager or two in there as
| well. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I was under the
| impression that devs build the thing, others decide what
| it is thats built. If that is the case, then I personally
| wouldn't call a dev 'incompetant' because of a decision
| not made by them.
|
| Of course you could say they should stand up against
| this, but again, whilst theres this hostility towards
| other devs, why are you going to risk not being able to
| put food on the table for someone on the internet who
| thinks your an idiot?
|
| (As an aside, the analogy doesn't really stretch that far
| since developers are hired by companies whereas mechanics
| are paid directly by customers. Perhaps car designers
| would be a better fit here, but again, other car
| designers would be quick to point out the problems with
| your complaints, but thats by the by)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Of course you could say they should stand up against
| this, but again, whilst theres this hostility towards
| other devs, why are you going to risk not being able to
| put food on the table for someone on the internet who
| thinks your an idiot?
|
| Very few developers are in the position of starving if
| they refuse to implement terrible ideas. If they are in
| that position, fine, but at least feel an appropriate
| amount of shame for the garbage you're making.
|
| > Perhaps car designers would be a better fit here, but
| again, other car designers would be quick to point out
| the problems with your complaints, but thats by the by
|
| I think the car designer version supports what I'm
| saying: Tesla wants to replace the steering wheel with a
| yoke and people are rightly criticizing them for it.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I'm a contractor working for a consultancy who is working
| for a tobacco company, I was told it would be a retail
| client and I feel bad, not bad enough to quit immediately
| as i do genuinely need the money right now but I'll leave
| when I can.
|
| (I tried passive aggressively quitting by insisting they
| put my day rate up expecting them to say no but they did)
| shawnz wrote:
| Anecdotally I think it's pretty common for mechanics to
| claim that their competitors don't know what they're doing.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Maybe that was a terrible example, although I could be
| wrong.
|
| It kind of makes sense actually, of course I hear of more
| developers being hostile to other developers compared to
| say mechanics, but that could be because I hear from more
| developers full stop. There's probably a term for it and
| everything.
|
| That being said, I'm sure I've come across a lot more
| camaraderie amongst other professions than developers.
| Anecdotally, I know theres been a few times I've
| complained about or seen people complain about a certain
| profession and seen a wave of posts come in from other
| workers defending them. Then again, its possible those
| just stick out in my mind more than the many times that
| presumably hasn't happened.
| ralgozino wrote:
| I think that you have this impression because you are
| comparing the inside of a professional environment with
| the outside of others. I'm pretty sure that in inner
| circles of other professions they speak trash of others,
| but you don't see it from the outside, just like a random
| Joe won't never read HN whrrry devs speak trash of other
| devs
| dylan604 wrote:
| I see you've never been in a video editing bay. An editor
| is where all of the results from the other crafts of trade
| all land in one pile. Plus, it's actually the editor's job
| to get rid of the crap and pull out the gems. The vitriol
| I've heard (and given) from an edit bay would make for a
| great niche series that would only be understood by other
| editors (meaning it would not be succesful).
| bodge5000 wrote:
| That sounds more like banter (or something like that) to
| me to be honest, I haven't been to a video editing bay so
| yeh I have no idea, but to be honest in my experience the
| vitriol given is inversely proportional to how serious it
| is.
|
| As I said, could be wrong though, maybe developers arent
| alone in not liking each other
| dylan604 wrote:
| >As I said, could be wrong though, maybe developers arent
| alone in not liking each other
|
| of course there are other groups of people that don't
| like other people. have you seen the world today?
| monkpit wrote:
| > today
|
| Sorry, this bugs me. Forming groups of humans that
| dislike other groups of humans is as old as humanity
| itself.
| dylan604 wrote:
| fair play, which only solidifies the point further
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I assume your joking, but there has been a problem of
| people taking things far too literally in this thread, so
| in case not, I meant developers being often unfairly
| harsh to other developers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >maybe developers arent alone in not liking each other
|
| Of course I'm not dead serious, but there is some
| seriousness implied. You called out devs specifically not
| being alone in not liking one another. I made a reference
| to another profession that doesn't like their direct
| related counterparts. What in the world did you think
| that meant? There are not chefs that don't like other
| chefs or that there are not chefs that don't like devs?
| veltas wrote:
| I told my current mechanic about my last mechanic's quote
| for a job and they laughed and said it was a rip-off and
| otherwise derided them. And my current mechanic works fast
| and doesn't waste my money.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Have your wheels fallen off yet :)
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Other professions have professional organizations that have
| strict rules about maintaining the public trust in the
| profession. Challenging each other's competence publicly is
| really discouraged. By contrast, many trades people can
| criticize each other and do so endlessly... even though
| those trades have a higher bar for being allowed to
| practice than software does. It's harder to make a
| spaghetti mess that somebody else has to build on because
| of standards and physical constraints too
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I think that might be it, mechanics wasn't really the
| example I was going for, but I couldn't think of the
| actual profession (something like an architect I guess).
| I guess it might just be a trades thing, which as you say
| makes sense
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| > _At this point I 'm wondering if it is worth trying to build
| my own desktop on top of Windows Server Core._
|
| Oh, I'm not the only one thinking this then! That's good to
| know. For years I've been tinkering at the edges of this by
| having my own app launcher, and my own desktop widgets, and an
| explorer style start menu navigation app.
|
| All I need is to hook into the systray (although, do I need
| that? it's just a distraction), and put together a good/fast
| app switcher app, and I could ditch explorer.exe and the
| startmenu app completely.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Honestly I'm surprised I haven't yet stumbled across a
| community of people doing this. If I had to guess, there's
| probably a stumbling block that makes it unsuitable for a lot
| of desktop use cases that I'm not aware of.
| pacifika wrote:
| It used to be the case that directx 9 wouldn't install, and
| several software would detect the server is and refuse.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Retrobar will work with the systray, that is
| if you're into the classic Windows taskbar experience.
| mathattack wrote:
| This is also why they never bother getting cut and paste to
| work between apps from companies they buy.
|
| It's compounded by clueless salespeople who don't know their
| products well enough to push the improvements that their
| customers want.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The inconsistency in the way copy/paste works just inside of
| Outlook is maddening.
|
| Copy text and an image from an email? Images paste in all
| broken.
|
| Copy just the image from the email? Sometimes it works,
| sometimes it doesn't.
|
| Copy the image from the email, paste it into Paint, crop the
| canvas, then copy from Paint into whatever? Works every time.
| sixothree wrote:
| Excel is even worse. Perform any action between the time
| you copy and the time you paste and everything on your
| clipboard is lost.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah this really sucks. Fortunately I'm largely away from
| the spreadsheet world. My motto is stay as far away from
| business as you can and have a happy life.
| joenathanone wrote:
| Excel is insane, the undo button is universal, meaning if
| you are editing multiple spreadsheets, you can't just
| undo changes to one of them if you made a mistake between
| editing, you have to undo all changes to all open
| spreadsheets to get back to your desired undo point.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Joel Spolsky used to work on Excel and he has written
| some brilliant stuff about it (at least, in its early
| days). My personal favourite is the revelation that the
| Excel team had their own C compiler, which kind of takes
| Not Invented Here into the stratosphere.
| officeplant wrote:
| This is why I always open up multiple instances of Excel.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's still an MDI app under the covers (not that that's
| any excuse).
| quakeguy wrote:
| Yeah, this is so unproductive, it boggles the mind.
| hughrr wrote:
| Oh god this is one feature that literally makes me want
| to jump on a plane to Redmond and throw my own excrement
| at them like a deranged chimpanzee.
| [deleted]
| RubberbandSoul wrote:
| I have the habit of "washing" everything with Notepad to
| get rid of inconsistencies:
|
| Copy text, data, etc from wherever
|
| Paste it into Notepad
|
| Copy it again
|
| Paste it where you want it and then apply any formatting
| according to the destination app's formatting rules
|
| Not a great workaround but at least it works.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I have the habit of "washing" everything with Notepad
| to get rid of inconsistencies_
|
| I also do that. I 100% attribute that to browsers and
| people who want to copy/paste HTML and have it all
| colorized and formatted in the destination app.
| klyrs wrote:
| FWIW, this is necessary in linux and android too.
| toto444 wrote:
| I used to do that and then I learnt about Crt + Shift +
| v. That pastes the text without any formatting.
| TorKlingberg wrote:
| Ctrl+Shift+V is great, when it works. Which it doesn't
| annoyingly often, such as Atlassian's Confluence wiki. So
| I paste and re-copy things in the URL bar all the time.
| Ctrl + L V A X
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That's broken in Outlook 2108. Now they want you to paste
| (CTRL+V) and then hold CTRL and click on/navigate to the
| obscure icon for the paste variant you want.
| jon_richards wrote:
| That used to work in Google sheets, but now it only
| pastes the last thing copied _from_ Google sheets. Really
| frustrating.
| orangepurple wrote:
| In Windows programs another shortcut for unformatted text
| is Control Alt V where Control Shift V does not work
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/407113/shortcut-in-word-
| or-e...
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Ah yes - the "sheepdip" as we call it
| hughrr wrote:
| How bold of you to suggest they have anyone competent working
| on PowerShell or Azure.
|
| Everything I go near from them is a monumental crapfest these
| days. They could be a good platform if they stopped this
| schizophrenic direction changing and actually fixed shit rather
| than hiding it behind layers of new shit.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That's the reality of modern software development: creating
| new shits on top of old shits. They don't have the time to
| clean up the old shits. I guess we have to accept that.
| hughrr wrote:
| The problem is if it was a zoo this deep in shit it'd be
| shut down from an animal welfare point of view.
|
| Perhaps we should consider software welfare as well.
|
| "Clean up your shit or we'll fine you"
| nitrogen wrote:
| If copyright terms didn't last so long, then other people
| could take the old layers and "compost" them into
| fertilizer for new code.
| marcodiego wrote:
| only if the code was available.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I think you have an excellent point.
| alkonaut wrote:
| The Windows Shell works the way it does because it worked that
| way before. If I wrote an extension for explorer 15 years ago and
| it used a bug or even an undocumented api it probably still
| works. That's the good thing. The other side of the coin is that
| things can never fundamentally be fixed. It appears that explorer
| must block the UI thread while waiting for a network share
| operation (for example) due to some fundamental eternal
| compatibility promise.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Not any more. I mean, they'll still work, but shell extensions
| are now hidden behind another layer in the right click menu on
| Windows 11.
| kwonkicker wrote:
| Wait, why are we ok with the fact that windows has ads in them?
| fron wrote:
| The choices are to accept Windows w/ ads, or reject Windows
| altogether
|
| It's not about being ok with it, it's about only having the
| nuclear option, switching OS entirely, as the alternative
| phreack wrote:
| They coupled the OS to cloud stuff so tightly they break
| together? That's so absolutely bonkers, even if it's a boiled
| frog situation, I'm speechless. I'll start dual booting Linux to
| get used to it because this is finally unacceptable.
| pas wrote:
| Well, considering that real frogs jump out when the water gets
| too hot, maybe people will too. (If there's an alternative, and
| they really feel the inconvenience.)
| unanswered wrote:
| Expect more of the same. My impression from my years in the
| Windows org is that the only team with any devs remaining working
| on the desktop version of Windows is the shell team, and that is
| being staffed more and more by webdevs.
| blibble wrote:
| I for one can't wait for explorer.exe to be entirely replaced
| by Electron
| alexeiz wrote:
| Microsoft Teams was installed on my test Windows 11 box without
| asking. When the Teams notification appeared, I was like "WTF is
| this shit?" I had to go, search for Teams in the start menu and
| then uninstall it. After this incident upgrading to Windows 11
| I'm not.
| a13n wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Teams came with installing office for me, not
| installing Windows 11. I could be wrong though.
| nicce wrote:
| Teams is intended to be part of the Win 11. They have had
| even ads about that; no need to install it anymore!
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548738/microsoft-
| teams-...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Well, it's a surface so therefore sooner or later it will be
| plastered with ads and functionality is secondary to eyeballs. So
| this is more or less by design. Every time you see a surface that
| does not have advertising on it you have to wonder how long it
| will remain that way.
| adamdusty wrote:
| This happened to my girlfriend's laptop that she uses for school.
| By the time they released this fix I had already backed up what
| she needed, wiped the SSD, and installed a clean version of
| windows 10. After that, we'll both be on windows 10 as long as
| possible.
| MBCook wrote:
| She was running a pre-release OS?
| bitwize wrote:
| Well, she is dating a Hackernews.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Which is why it's mystifying. If she was running an obscure
| distro, compiled from source after checking each line for
| nefarious code _like everyone should do_ , and after having
| prepared the hardware (carefully consulting the
| compatibility list), that would be normal.
| post-it wrote:
| Best not to use a beta OS on your main workstation anyway.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Why would you ever run a beta/ pre-release on your main
| machine? That seems like asking for trouble.
| adamdusty wrote:
| She can do whatever she wants with her stuff. I told her I
| could run it back for her if she wanted when I saw she was on
| 11 but she said she liked it.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > How come that it would stop responding just because of one
| failed cloud service?
|
| Because the network the developers are on ALWAYS connects to the
| cloud service so nobody ever ran into an issue.
| grishka wrote:
| Unless the main purpose of your software is to be a client for
| an online service, you should always assume that the normal
| state of the user's network connection is offline, and being
| online is an exception.
| emn13 wrote:
| Sigh, now I pressed Win+C because the article mentioned it... of
| course that opens cortana, the app that insists on being
| unclosable and sticking around in your alt-tab order, no matter
| whatever you do.
|
| Lovely.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Really wish I could meet the idiot who closed that bug as WNF.
| Just know they have some dumb as rocks reason for keeping that
| behavior.
|
| "The user may want to return to Cortana. WNF"
| lostlogin wrote:
| Siri on the Mac isn't this bad but it is also horrible.
| Getting it too never appear and never try to help is an
| irritating step which is required on a new install.
| emn13 wrote:
| It's also just plain weird and inconsistent - like so many
| windows apps by MS. The default OS behavior is fine, and
| works. Why are they going to the extra effort to _break_ it?
| Other apps sometimes decide to minimize to the tray, but even
| those don 't stick around in your alt-tab order o_O. You'd
| think first party apps would adhere _more_ strictly to OS
| norms, but no...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Dark patterns make money. MS likes making money. If you
| don't want to be a pawn in their social experiment use
| something else.
| Piskvorrr wrote:
| ($_$) Why indeed...?
| neogodless wrote:
| Ah in Windows 10. It's slightly harder to close, but... task
| manager > end task does it!
| d2wa wrote:
| It's C for Chat in Win11.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Used to be C for Charms in Windows 8. RIP
|
| (Global Share/Print/Cast/Project was a good idea, just needed
| more apps to support it.)
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Well, ultimately because the new taskbar is a half finished mess,
| and the idea that it is ready to push out a month from now to
| mass users is completely bonkers.
| Piskvorrr wrote:
| Windows (a product that you need to _buy_ a license for) has
| builtin ads. Well, good for MS, I guess...as for me, I 'm quite
| happy that MS has pushed me away from its stack already with
| Vista: it sure isn't getting any better.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Windows 7 was a perfectly decent OS. In my opinion, the best
| one they ever made. Rock solid in the end, able to run on
| anything from ultra low cost embedded stuff to high performance
| workstations, no ads...
|
| Only thing that bugs me to no end is that they never released a
| "final" version that has _all_ available security and quality
| updates included, so one does not need to run Windows Update
| for hours after a fresh SP1 install (after wasting hours
| getting WU to _run_ in the first place, it broke thanks to some
| signature hashing update).
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| ? In your 1st paragraph, you praise Win7 as "rock solid," and
| in the 2nd, you point out the incredibly lame and
| showstopping bugs in their SHIT updater which show just how
| jello solid their OS is. I have the same types of updater
| issues on Win10 boxes I have to support. I assume that the
| new clusterfuck will be more of the same.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Remember when 70% of iOS apps stopped working because the
| Facebook SDK crashed on launch after Facebook servers started
| sending slightly differently formatted JSON crap? And then, it
| happened again?
|
| Looks like this innovation has finally landed in Windows!
| chadlavi wrote:
| That was third party apps. This is the OS itself.
| stefan_ wrote:
| A distinction without a difference, my favorite.
| chadlavi wrote:
| It's not my fault if you can't tell why a third party app
| crashing because of its developers' choices and the entire
| operating system crashing because of the OS developer's
| choices are very different things
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| The fact that we're no longer shocked and aghast at the idea of
| Microsoft pushing advertisements to the desktop - but rather that
| those ads have bugs in them - shows how far the Overton window
| has shifted. Boiling the frog.
| city41 wrote:
| A good time to thank Stallman for seeing all this coming and
| preparing way back in 1983. As far as I know he was the first
| person to kick off the open source OS effort, and of course
| quite a few people have helped over the decades.
| sneak wrote:
| None of the OSes that Stallman suggests are acceptable are
| actually acceptable, though.
|
| No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the
| art feature film on free software.
|
| Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was
| right.
|
| It turns out that a few hundred billion dollars of paid
| software engineering effort can't simply be waved away as
| "nonfree, so irrelevant". The whole world moved on to devices
| where not only is the software nonfree, there is not even an
| option of choosing free software, and, even if there were,
| there is no comparable free software to choose.
|
| Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more
| things done in less time.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| What OS's RMS suggest are irrelevant to the gp's comment
| that RMS saw this slippery slope in computing coming long
| before most.
|
| > No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of
| the art feature film on free software.
|
| Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you
| can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is
| getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some
| of the foss-cads.
|
| Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the
| feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion
| of the industry is moving more and more towards at least
| OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/)
|
| > The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the
| software nonfree
|
| This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the
| fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the
| internet that allows those non-free devices to function?
| You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of
| every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into
| an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who
| tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing
| top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you
| mentioned "state-of-the-art".
|
| > there is not even an option of choosing free software,
| and, even if there were, there is no comparable free
| software to choose.
|
| In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS
| alternatives to choose.
|
| > Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more
| things done in less time.
|
| Why? Because the school system got locked into to
| proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all
| they train people on for the most part. Not because of
| inherent issues in the software interface.
| danudey wrote:
| > Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but
| you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to.
| It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates
| to some of the foss-cads.
|
| And if you have any issue at all and need technical
| support, the company will say "That is not a supported
| configuration, sorry." and you're on your own.
|
| > This is a blanket statement and not true. What about
| the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of
| the internet that allows those non-free devices to
| function?
|
| And non-free software runs the networking hardware that
| that internet runs over.
|
| > Because the school system got locked into to
| proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all
| they train people on for the most part.
|
| Because the school system trains people on what is
| actually being used, and not on what should,
| theoretically, be used, in a hypothetical scenario where
| everyone has weeks or months to relearn everything they
| know about computing (like how to install and use Linux,
| and then how to install and use Wine, and then how to
| install and use their proprietary business tools on Wine
| on Linux and solve any bugs that come up).
| sneak wrote:
| I was always perplexed at Blender's quality and polish,
| given that it is F/OSS. It turns out it started off as
| proprietary software, and was open-sourced later. (It's
| also impossible to create a feature film, start to
| finish, with Blender alone, which was my point; not that
| there aren't 3d animation tools that work on linux.)
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Almost all of Blenders development has been as FOSS
| software. It was open sourced in 2002.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of
| the art feature film on free software.
|
| I don't know much about building skyscrapers, but we
| neither need "state of the art feature film" nor are
| incapable of producing _perfectly adequate_ film with the
| tools currently available as free software. There are also
| countless feature film and animation tools that run and are
| used on Linux all the time.
|
| Irrespective, I do actually think your viewpoint is valid
| generally speaking in that FOSS operating systems are
| inadequate for general purpose computing. They're great for
| servers or specific tooling, but they suck horse chestnuts
| if you just want something you can install whatever you
| want on them and just expect it to work as well as you can
| on something like macOS or Windows. Those who deny that
| usually are power users that don't see things from the
| perspective of the average person who isn't a software
| engineer or tinkerer.
|
| Of course, this is a failing of both the system and society
| itself. We ought to know better, but we are too lazy and
| too hooked on convenience to care enough.
| boudin wrote:
| That's far from being true. Installing software on
| Windows and Macos is a shitshow.
|
| Dealing with updates is such a pain that it built the
| habit of ignoring updates as much as possible by default.
|
| The only thing that made things a bit better for users
| with little technical knowledge is the fact that more
| things are done in the browser nowdays, and this is true
| for any operating system.
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| Feudal serf: without the master we would have nothing.
|
| Reality: a really tiny, almost microscopic group of free
| software enthousiasts have brought forth at least a couple
| of the best OSes the world will ever have, one of those
| being more successful than all others combined (Linux).
| There is more to computing than the desktop (and mobile).
| You have been lied to and will be lied to forever until you
| stop being a serf. Hard pill to swallow but no, proprietary
| bullshit "products" build by slaves don't hold a candle to
| anything produced by a group of skilled and competent
| enthousiasts not driven (and distracted) by morally
| repulsive and objectively suboptimal incentives.
| y4mi wrote:
| Most of the apps on my phone are from f-droid so your
| premise is void.
|
| It's true that it's unreasonably hard to get a decent
| mobile device that's also free by his definition, but there
| definitely are free app choices which are often superior to
| their closed equivalent if you step outside of the apple
| ecosphere.
| sneak wrote:
| How about the baseband? How about the tools used to
| design the CPU? How about the firmware in the handheld
| scanner that the delivery person used to bring it to you?
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was
| right.
|
| When it comes to predicting the future correctly, 50/50 is
| a pretty good track record IMHO.
| sneak wrote:
| The >=50% he was wrong about (I phrased it carefully, it
| could even be 99/1, as he has been Quite Seriously Wrong
| about many other things (how to lead FSF, how to
| communicate with the public, how to behave at
| conferences)) is likely of vastly greater importance than
| the few minor technical aspects he was right about.
|
| I'm on Team Free Software but I'm also on Team
| Productivity and it turns out that software engineering
| matters a lot to the latter and the quality and quantity
| of engineering effort put into free software is a tiny,
| tiny fraction of that put in to nonfree software.
|
| I doubt the right way to change this is by yelling
| at/chastising users and developers. If it were, Stallman
| would have been successful. As it appears, he's been
| mostly a failure.
| city41 wrote:
| Why does it have to be an either/or? Of course Stallman and
| a large group of volunteers can't compete with giant
| corporations. But their contributions are very valuable and
| needed.
|
| It also turns out that few hundred billion dollars of paid
| software engineering was greatly subsidized by volunteer
| open source work. Every Android phone in the world uses an
| open source kernel as one very obvious example.
|
| I for one am very grateful for Stallman and everyone else.
| I use Linux for everything. Works great, meets all of my
| needs with zero complaints. If it wasn't for them, I'd have
| no choice but to use Windows or MacOS.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Of course Stallman and a large group of volunteers can
| 't compete with giant corporations._
|
| If they (or their ideology) can't, then nothing else they
| say has any relevance.
|
| > _But their contributions are very valuable and needed._
|
| How so? Decades of their braying has not solved the
| problem; indeed things have gotten much worse.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not really, the only reason why UNIX got widespread was
| because originally AT&T wasn't allowed to charge for it, and
| its source code was available for a symbolic price alongside
| the source code, which eventually lead to the UNIX V6
| annotated book.
|
| Had AT&T been allowed to sell UNIX from the get go, Stallman
| would have had to base his endevours on something else.
|
| Then again, it doesn't matter given the amount of GPL-hate
| nowadays that everyone goes with business friendly licenses.
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is the inevitable result of Win10 being "free". They have
| to generate revenue somehow.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| but but... _microsoft of today isn 't like the microsoft of the
| 90's, right?_
|
| So glad I saw this coming about windows 8/10 and left windows
| land never to look back.
| Joeri wrote:
| I'm ok with cheaper products that are funded with ads. I'm not
| ok with not having the option to pay more to not see ads.
|
| - How can I pay microsoft to never see an ad in windows?
| (paying for office 365 gets rid of most of them, but not all)
|
| - How can I pay my cable provider to not see unskippable ads in
| on-demand content?
|
| - How can I pay my newspaper to have an app that doesn't show
| me an ad every couple of pages?
|
| - How can I pay google to just show me the results, without
| filling the majority of the page with ads? (Paper cut: this
| used to exist, but google got rid of it before I ever found out
| it existed.)
| jabbany wrote:
| This also potentially gives rise to perverse incentives like
| the one described in this comic: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/2012-01-12
|
| Basically if there's an option to remove ads the platform
| hosting ads will be incentivized to pick _worse_ ads to get
| people to pay up the removal fee.
|
| A lot F2P smartphone games are examples of this in action...
| they offer a way to remove ads by paying but then in return
| have some of the worst unskippable ads before you've paid.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The fact that all software seems to be migrating towards
| being totally funded by ads or subscriptions is distressing.
|
| I just want to pay a fixed price and own something again. It
| drives me nuts that now-a-days everything is about rent
| seeking or shoving ads into view (or both, see streaming
| media services).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| By giving you the option of paying to avoid ads, the entity
| selling ads drastically lowers the price of their remaining
| ads since the people buying ads are very interested in
| advertising to those who have the ability to not pay for ads.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Perhaps people buying ads are interested in advertising to
| people with the money to avoid the ads... but is it wise
| to?
|
| I would be interested to see how effective ads are for
| different groups of people. Are the people who are paying
| to get rid of the ads more or less susceptible to buying
| products based on an ad?
|
| As a person who gets annoyed at ads, I would be LESS likely
| to buy something that I've seen from an intrusive ad.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Huh, insightful! I never thought of it that way.
| zdragnar wrote:
| We have had ads in windows since st least the release of 8 many
| years ago (many in tech time at least). On top of that,
| manufacturers have been pushing ads onto windows for even
| longer in the form of preinstalled crapware.
|
| The bug is really the only thing that is new here.
| Jalad wrote:
| Reminds me of this Leslie Lamport quote:
|
| _A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer
| you didn 't even know existed can render your own computer
| unusable_
|
| Although I wasn't expecting a Windows 11 desktop machine to be a
| distributed system!
| glecedric wrote:
| Does anyone know if the Windows 11 pro version will have the ads
| and privacy shenanigans ?. Or you require the enterprise version,
| which is not easy to get for the average joe.
| CTOSian wrote:
| last week I tried the w10 enterprise (latest iso) and -holy
| crap- on the start menu search , there was an ad "for
| minecraft", I did run those removeappx scripts but even then...
| yes I am back to linux (not everything is fantastic there, I am
| talking about theming) but when I remove the m$-edge and the
| darn thing is being reinstalled AGAIN after an update, that is
| absurd -not to mention I had to play with the policy to cut off
| the telemetry - at least on linux I have the friggin control.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| On this note, is anyone familiar with the state of alternative
| Windows shells? The last time I played with them was ca. 20 years
| ago when the cool kids were running LiteStep on Windows XP.
|
| The LiteStep web site and forums still seem to be up, but I don't
| think it's been under active development for quite a while. I've
| also seen some scattered praise for Classic Shell / Open Shell
| (although I'm not sure whether that's a full shell replacement)
| and heard of a handful of people running the ReactOS shell on
| Windows.
|
| Is this still at all viable, or has MS made an intractable mess
| of the relevant APIs over the years?
| [deleted]
| jumelles wrote:
| I'm not crazy! I had to reinstall Windows last night, extremely
| frustrating.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Everyone blames Microsoft for this shit, but the real blame
| should go to everyone who STILL chooses to use their user
| hostile, buggy, platform.
|
| If you want to see stuff like this change then use an OS that
| actually views its users as more than ad revenue.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| It saddens me that a developer decided to stuff json into the
| registry, when it's perfectly possible to instead store nice and
| compact binary data structures. But this is 2021, can't have
| efficient data representation anymore.
| rdiddly wrote:
| I was, not quite saddened, but surprised, to see JSON in the
| registry recently. I forget where it was though or what I was
| doing.
| yabones wrote:
| I've seen XML hex encoded before. That was from a Toshiba
| printer driver on win 7. This seems like the logical next
| step...
| babypuncher wrote:
| I prefer data be serialized into something human readable
| wherever there is _any_ chance a person might want to edit it
| manually. Storage is dirt cheap and de-serializing JSON is very
| fast.
|
| The registry isn't the place to do it, and I'm surprised anyone
| still bothers with it in 2021. All my software relies on config
| files, and this is the pattern Microsoft themselves have
| promoted for years with .NET
| dimgl wrote:
| I'm trying to break away from Windows but Linux OSes are in such
| poor shape as replacements for workstations... In particular I'm
| talking about desktop environments, not so much the OSes
| themselves, although the kernel and the OSes at times have their
| own problems too.
|
| I decided to try GNOME 40, everything was sort of okay until I
| couldn't even even pin custom applications to the dock... I had
| to write .desktop files or something and I just gave up. I also
| tried ElementaryOS but still ran into tons of usability issues.
|
| Granted, a lot of those issues are because some apps are missing
| Linux specific functionality and developers aren't really focused
| on supporting Linux, but honestly there are power users waiting
| to get away from Windows right now. Every other week my friends
| are talking about how once there's a good Linux alternative
| they're switching and never looking back. Now with Valve's Proton
| things are looking better than ever for gaming, but it still
| feels like Linux has a long way to go.
| walteweiss wrote:
| Before I switched to Linux (from macOS) I believed such
| commenters as they gave me the plausible excuse.
|
| This is wrong. Linux is very good for an average person.
|
| Well, if that average person wants to do something unusual and
| doesn't want to invest even a fraction of their time into
| learning the system... well, blame on them. Making a desktop
| file is no rocket science, and something you can learn how to
| do within half an hour at most. Don't listen to someone who
| makes such a bold statement as 'Linux in such a bad state' and
| then immediately shows their lack of competence with showing
| they are unable to make a desktop file. It is not Linux, it is
| you and all those guys who upvoted you to become the top voted
| comment on this thread.
|
| ElementaryOS is trash, just get yourself Fedora Workstation or
| even Ubuntu, if you have no idea of how to deal with Linux,
| changes are it will be much easier for you with those distros.
| dimgl wrote:
| It sucks to say this on Hacker News, but you're being really
| naive. If I, as a power user, have trouble installing and
| even running Linux, how can you expect a normal user to do
| it?
|
| I run into non-stop issues with Linux. I ran into a bug where
| I can't even boot into a Linux OS without artifacts if I have
| more than one monitor turned on. I ran into sound driver bugs
| where my microphone pitch is completely off on Discord and
| other apps. The Fedora installer didn't even open for me.
|
| Linux is not accessible. If it was, you'd see hundreds of
| power users moving to it. You're doing the Linux community a
| disservice by writing it off as "people being impatient".
| lostlogin wrote:
| The completely different experiences people have make me
| wonder what's going on and what broken to cause it.
|
| I have no great skill set and mess around with machines at
| weekends. I got Ubuntu desktop running on the metal and in
| a VM on both Proxmox and ESXi with everything passed
| through and working nicely and did so without any
| particular issues (bar thunderbolt, but that turned out to
| be hardware and a new machine was shipped to me and it now
| works).
|
| This was on a Nuc, but the different experiences point to
| something being very wrong.
| 188201 wrote:
| I wonder how do you solve the technical problem if there
| was driver issue in Windows.
|
| When I am facing issue in Windows, I google it, then I got
| some regedit trick to perform. If that works, that's great.
| If not, then I need to search for another trick until it
| works. Since windows command line sucks, I have to hop
| through different configuration windows to try solving the
| issue. A very frustrating experience.
|
| Could an average Windows user could able to diagnostic
| their problem and confidently perform an action knowing it
| will work? My experience is they just ask their friend,
| family or ask for immediate solution on social media. If
| they can't solve it, then maybe just buy a new one.
|
| I think Windows is just as accessible as how many friends
| and family using Windows.
| kempbellt wrote:
| > Linux is not accessible
|
| Linux is _extremely_ accessible.
|
| Most popular linux variants can be downloaded for _free_ ,
| and it's easy to find solutions to most common issues you
| run into. I'd be surprised if there isn't a StackOverflow
| post or two that have solutions to the issues you ran into,
| and even if there aren't, you can usually get answers just
| by asking.
|
| Some linux variants are better than others, and YMMV per
| use case, but saying "linux is not accessible" is
| incredibly inaccurate.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I refer to this technique as the Distro Distract. I first
| ran into it during my first experience with Linux in the
| mid-nineties.
|
| I install a distro, I experience problems, there's not a
| lot of info out there. I hit #linux or some forum and I
| am told that what I really have is an XY problem, and the
| real problem is that I am running the wrong distro.
|
| So I install Distro #2. And my problems have vanished!
| But ... but there are _new_ problems that were not there
| in the first distro. So I hit the forums again and get
| someone nearly identical telling me that what my actual
| problem is is that I just have no idea how to pick a
| decent distro, and what I should _really_ be using is ...
|
| People do not want to cycle through one distro after
| another. That is not accessible. It takes time to pick
| out the next one and install (less now), and then you go
| through your stuff until you hit yet another brick wall.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >It sucks to say this on Hacker News, but you're being
| really naive. If I, as a power user, have trouble
| installing and even running Linux, how can you expect a
| normal user to do it?
|
| It has less to do with technical abilities of the user and
| more to do with their general outlook and what they value.
| If you look for deficiencies, you'll find them. If you
| value the freedom and no bullshit experience, research the
| hardware and put in some effort to make it work.
| [deleted]
| walteweiss wrote:
| Forgot to add about the distros: I didn't mean Ubuntu and
| Fedora are bad in any way, but the opposite. I think they are
| very good for an average person who looks to escape Windows.
| Personally I think Fedora Workstation is much better than
| Ubuntu, but very similar in that very departments: being very
| popular and yet working out of the box.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| C'mon man, throw a try/catch around that sh*t!
| nihilmu wrote:
| how can you people live like this?
| nihilmu wrote:
| how can you ppl live like this?
| intrasight wrote:
| I'll stick to using Windows Server as my desktop.
| dimgl wrote:
| I've been thinking about this more and more. Is it worth it?
| tomxor wrote:
| That Windows has ads in it sounds completely insane to me... you
| buy an OS.. and you _still_ get ads? Makes my memories of win95
| seem fonder.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Microsoft pushed a promotional message
|
| which is why "I'm out" after 20 years or so on Windows.
|
| I don't want an OS that sends me messages like that, supports
| adverts, or (initially at least) demands to be always connected
| to the internet to store my "stuff" in their cloud.
|
| I haven't booted into Windows for (checks `uptime`) about 4 weeks
| now.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The biggest deal breaker I have seen with win11 so far is the
| following:
|
| https://chromeunboxed.com/windows-11-insider-preview-chrome-...
|
| Microsoft was already overriding your default apps regularly. But
| now to change back the default browser it looks like it will
| require many manual steps if I understood correctly. Multiply
| that by multiple machines...
| neogodless wrote:
| But why would you want to default to Chrome and not Firefox...
| ?
|
| OK OK the point is, it should be the user's choice to (easily)
| switch. Even if they are wrong!
| C19is20 wrote:
| The user is never wrong, just sometimes incorrect.
| philipov wrote:
| > _Windows 11 Insider Preview makes it more difficult for users
| to default to Chrome_
|
| Are they implying that it won't be more difficult to default to
| Firefox? I ditched Chrome already.
| criley2 wrote:
| I wonder if users who are unwilling to deal with increased
| hassle in browser changing will also give up things like
| iPhone/iOS which outright ban competing browser engines.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Nitpick: they _don't_ ban competing engines. They disallow
| JITing JavaScript outside a WebView. Firefox or Chrome could
| include their own, but the wouldn't be able to JIT the
| JavaScript. A distinction without a difference, but it's a
| lie to say they ban other engines.
| csande17 wrote:
| Yes they do:
|
| > 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate
| WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
| code_duck wrote:
| Do you think it would be accurate to say that functionally
| or effectively bans competing engines by forbidding a major
| component? I believe Mozilla or Google would prioritize
| including their own engine if it was reasonably possible.
| diamondo25 wrote:
| Yes. But I don't think its allowed to run a virtual
| machine of any kind in the App Store, which the browser
| javascript engine is/has been.
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Unlikely.
|
| I have nothing against Edge. I just already know where
| everything is on Chrome. That's why default changes annoy me.
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| Welp... Good thing Wine and Proton keep getting better...
| Because unless Microsoft pay for my computer, I won't allow
| them to act as if they own it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I hear you. Don't get me wrong, I have _plenty_ to complain
| about in Linux too which is why I 'm still on Windows, but
| the day is coming where Microsoft has finally made Windows so
| shitty that it drives me away.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I switched over to ElementaryOS for my
| movie/music/games/3d-modeling/video-editing/daw machine a
| bit ago.
|
| It's pretty, and it (mostly) "just works." I legitimately
| believe this project is on its way to eat Windows and
| Apples pies.
|
| Worth watching the progress of: https://elementary.io/
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Which applications do you use for video editing and DAW?
| How does the experience measure up to the competition on
| Windows?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't particularly appreciate Linux distributions that
| try to pretend they're not Linux distributions by
| slapping "OS" in their name. Regardless, Elementary
| doesn't fix any of the issues I personally have with
| Linux Desktop that keep me from switching today.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Eh, IDK. The Arch and Ubuntu experience are very far
| apart for me, especially as far as hardware support goes
| (beyond just kernel drivers, I mean - lots of devices
| need userland utilities to support their functionality,
| things like remote scanning for instance). They are
| different OSes that happen to share a kernel, but that's
| it. Even the userland close to the kernel can be very
| different.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| They share a kernel, shells, package management as an
| application distribution model, and many disparately
| developed complex systems. They all run the same software
| more or less.
|
| Once you've used a few dozen different Linux distros,
| which I have over the 20 years I've used Linux for
| things, you find that almost all of them are basically
| the same. Occasionally there's an outlier like Gobolinux
| or Rox that everyone ignores but even they still has most
| software in common.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Meh, for all of Linux's minor inconveniences it works
| pretty damn well and the freedom to not deal with MS and
| Apple's bullshit is a pretty big win.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| That's subjective. There are deeply ingrained paradigms
| on Linux that infuriate me to the point that, thus far,
| I'm more willing to put up with MS's bullshit than I am
| with Linux Desktop's.
| jmholla wrote:
| I'm curious what those are. If they're around the UI,
| I've found Cinnamon is a really good approximation.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'm already getting downvotes just for mentioning the
| things I've already mentioned. Unfortunately this is the
| common reaction whenever anyone brings up having problems
| with the way Linux Desktop does things. It's apparently
| ok to complain about lacking hardware support because
| that's a problem people can dismiss easily with "just buy
| different hardware", but if you say something like you
| don't want to use Linux because you think package
| management is a stupid way to manage applications then
| people just want you to shut up.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| > but if you say something like you don't want to use
| Linux because you think package management is a stupid
| way to manage applications then people just want you to
| shut up.
|
| In my experience people respond better when you actually
| explain and provides arguments to why you think "package
| management is a stupid way to manage applications" and
| not simply say this blanket statement.
|
| For instance, I believe that *not* having a package
| system is a stupid way to manage applications because:
|
| - you have to trust many more parties than a single
| repository;
|
| - you incentivize people to do unsafe things like running
| downloaded exes from sites;
|
| - now you need to also trust that no one tampered with
| the websites and have to manually checksum and verify
| authenticity of each application whereas a good package
| manager should do this for you;
|
| - Removing applications without package managers is a
| worse experience.
|
| Now I would love to hear your arguments and, maybe,
| change my mind.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > In my experience people respond better when you
| actually explain and provides arguments to why you think
| "package management is a stupid way to manage
| applications" and not simply say this blanket statement.
|
| I have done this many times on HN, and it almost
| universally results in downvoting.
|
| > Now I would love to hear your arguments and, maybe,
| change my mind.
|
| Fine, whatever. I don't need the fake internet points.
| Let me start by saying my complaints here are
| specifically in regards to the way Linux packages, repos,
| and managers work to avoid someone from Haiku showing up
| to tell me I'm wrong:
|
| - Repos are no better than walled gardens except that
| they are typically maintained by unpaid third parties
|
| - Said unpaid third parties sometimes introduce bugs or
| arbitrary changes to the software
|
| - You can't install applications to different disks or
| have multiple versions of the same application
|
| - Copying applications from one computer to another is
| massively complicated because most package managers never
| consider this use case at all
|
| - Package managers encourage the kind of interdependency
| hell and reliance on fixed paths that makes them
| necessary in the first place
|
| - The proliferation of package formats and package
| managers has made packaging binaries for Linux an
| incredible pain in the ass
|
| To address your points specifically:
|
| > - you have to trust many more parties than a single
| repository;
|
| This is true even in the repo world. You have to trust
| the developer of the application and the maintainer of
| the package for that repo at the very least. There is no
| reason someone cannot curate a repository of software
| that is not managed by and tied to a package manager and,
| in fact, there are many of these to choose from.
|
| > - you incentivize people to do unsafe things like
| running downloaded exes from sites;
|
| Yes, but I think that speaks to a failure of non-mobile
| OSs to implement proper application sandboxing once the
| internet became the dominant distribution medium for
| applications. I also think this threat is given far too
| much weight in comparison to being constrained in your
| choice of software.
|
| > - now you need to also trust that no one tampered with
| the websites and have to manually checksum and verify
| authenticity of each application whereas a good package
| manager should do this for you;
|
| Yes. Again, I don't think this is a big deal, especially
| when compared to restricting my choice in software. The
| thing I think makes personal computers valuable is that
| people can install pretty much whatever they want, make
| their own stuff, and easily pass it around. Package
| management and repos overcomplicates this.
|
| > - Removing applications without package managers is a
| worse experience.
|
| Only under "installer/uninstaller" paradigms. "Portable
| Applications" in Windows, or Application Bundles on Mac
| or NeXT, or the original Macintosh's single-file
| applications, or RiscOS AppDirs, or even DOS's buncha-
| files-ina-folder paradigm make removing an application as
| simple as deleting a single object. Not to mention they
| make copying or moving applications, or running them on
| different media, as trivial as any file operation.
|
| I probably won't change your mind as a lot of this is
| subjective, equally your arguments do not sway me.
| Suffice it to say, the Linux community agrees with you,
| and that is part of the reason I don't want to use Linux.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| You can use the "buncha-files-ina-folder paradigm" on
| Linux and Unix as well, but generally, applications are
| written with the assumption that they will be installed
| at a particular location, and can unexpectedly fail if
| you put them elsewhere.
|
| The RPM Package Manager itself is an example of this. It
| can be configured to be installed to a custom location
| via the build system, but it has hard-coded paths in some
| scripts so the package manager would break when it hits
| this code months after appearing to work correctly.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Right, theoretically Linux applications _can_ work this
| way, there 's even AppImage to really prove the point.
| The problem is that basically nothing in the Linux world
| does do that because it just isn't the way things are
| done.
|
| At the end of the day, it's the same difference to me.
| BugWatch wrote:
| I'm a Windows user with as-portable-as-possible software
| catalog, and I approve of this message.
|
| Jokes aside, I am mostly in a complete agreement with you
| on it. I'd only add that both approaches should exist,
| and that the package-people should (learn to?) provide a
| more portable variant of their software. I don't have
| much experience with Linux (which some of my comments
| just might show), but all that "black box magic" that
| happens behinds the scenes never sat right with me...
| especially since I have a supernatural ability to hit
| some edge cases where install fails halfway, and now you
| can't deinstall nor reinstall, and you're stuck in limbo.
| (Or finishes, but just won't run on account of something
| not working in the background, and, well, good luck
| finding out what exactly and how.)
|
| Sure, portable-style applications on Windows are not
| immune from not working here and there, but across two
| decades now - it's mostly been set it and forget it.
| Different versions of software can usually co-exist, or
| even the same one (e.g. I specialize one for specific
| purposes), some even co-run.
|
| I do miss some features of the Linux (file system
| versatility, mostly), but I've grown to live with it. And
| while Microsoft is increasingly making Windows
| unbearable, as long as I can bypass/block their idiotic
| decisions (Start menu, telemetry, updates) and make them
| work when I want, and how I want... I guess I'll stick to
| it.
|
| [[Now, when the hell does Microsoft plan on fixing up the
| Exporer shell and its antiquated 25X-char path issues?
| (LONGPATH is enabled, but Explorer still shits itself on
| such a path. But I try to use DOpus, anyway...).
|
| Also, custom(izable) open/save dialog replacements, I'd
| kill for those.]]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I'd only add that both approaches should exist, and
| that the package-people should (learn to?) provide a more
| portable variant of their software.
|
| The great thing about portable applications is that you
| can still put them in a repo and use software to manage
| them, you just don't actually have to!
| asddubs wrote:
| good news for you is that linux is moving a bit more and
| more towards the portable application paradigm, with
| things like snap packages and AppImage. E.g. for
| texstudio I found that the version in my repos was
| outdated, so I just downloaded an AppImage file off their
| website and am using that now. Same for ultimaker cura.
| And you can use multiple versions in parallel.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Snap and Flatpak are very much not portable (in the
| Portable Application sense). Snap relies on a repo and
| Flatpak heavily encourages one, although it does have a
| single-file bundle concept. Sadly both of them suffer
| from many of the other restrictions I mentioned.
|
| AppImage is pretty great, I wish more projects used it.
| Raineer wrote:
| My only gut reaction to this is a bit of surprise. There
| are almost limitless variations of the "Linux Desktop",
| but Windows still wins out in your mind as the correct
| way to run a desktop.
|
| No judgment, just bemusement. I will always choose the
| freedom to configure over a set-in-stone approach.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I wouldn't say that. I hate Windows these days quite a
| bit too, I just hate it less than I hate Linux Desktop.
|
| I also strongly disagree with the "limitless variations".
| Most Linux distros are just another distro (usually
| Ubuntu) pre-bundled with a specific set of packages.
| Almost all of them use the same shells, the same
| application distribution model, and roughly the same set
| of disparately developed software. The differences are
| largely cosmetic.
|
| > I will always choose the freedom to configure over a
| set-in-stone approach.
|
| Ironically, this is why I don't like package management
| and repos: I like to have complete freedom over what
| software I install and that model is restrictive. One of
| the things I like about Windows is that if I go to some
| rando's site where they've written some niche
| application, I have nearly 100% certainty that the
| executable I download from them will work without me
| doing anything special. In Linux I usually end up having
| to go through the hassle of creating a whole build
| environment (in a container because I'm not insane) to
| compile their github repo... after I hunt down and
| compile their dependencies that also weren't in my
| distro's repo of course.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| You've made 4 posts bashing on Linux with more complaints
| about supposedly being attacked than actual substance
| about why you don't like Linux. Could it be that the
| backlash you're getting is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
|
| At any rate, I would be genuinely curious to hear what
| specifically you don't like about Linux beyond
| tautological statements like not liking its paradigms and
| calling package management "stupid" without any
| supporting rationale.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > You've made 4 posts bashing on Linux with more
| complaints about supposedly being attacked than actual
| substance about why you don't like Linux.
|
| I have repeatedly complained about Windows[0] in this
| thread, and the very _second_ I mention not liking Linux
| people _really_ seem to want to recommend me Linux
| distros or ask me to tell them why. I have never seen
| anyone do this for any reason other than performative
| argumentation.
|
| > At any rate, I would be genuinely curious to hear what
| specifically you don't like about Linux beyond
| tautological statements like not liking its paradigms and
| calling package management "stupid" without any
| supporting rationale.
|
| I don't even need supporting rationale for an opinion. I
| could say I don't like any of the distro logos and that
| would still be a perfectly valid reason not to want to
| use Linux. At least in a sane world it would, but Linux
| users apparently have some bug up their ass about needing
| everyone to agree with them about how great it is.
|
| [0] With great hostility and in the context of expecting
| it to eventually drive me to use Linux
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| > I could say I don't like any of the distro logos and
| that would still be a perfectly valid reason not to want
| to use Linux
|
| It's not perfectly valid if the purpose is to have a
| discussion that's meaningful to other people who don't
| have your exact set of preferences and pecadilloes.
| Saying you don't like a logo isn't a useful piece of
| information because for 99% of people that's not going to
| be a reason to use or not use a piece of software. Either
| you don't realize that or you're being willfully
| combative for its own sake.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It's not perfectly valid if the purpose is to have a
| discussion that's meaningful to other people who don't
| have your exact set of preferences and pecadilloes.
| Saying you don't like a logo isn't a useful piece of
| information because for 99% of people that's not going to
| be a reason to use or not use a piece of software. Either
| you don't realize that or you're being willfully
| combative for its own sake.
|
| While I disagree strongly with GP, your argument seems to
| completely miss their point. GP expressed her opinion as
| to the utility/viability of Linux _for their use case_.
|
| We both disagree with GP's arguments, but even we almost
| certainly don't share the same "set of preferences and
| pecadilloes."
|
| Mostly, I think it's pretty closed-minded to denigrate
| someone who expresses an _opinion_ (unrelated to _facts_
| presented in an objective reality).
|
| Give the GP a break. If their "preferences and
| pecadilloes" don't match yours, why is that any skin off
| your nose? As such, why do you feel it necessary to
| belittle the opinion of some rando on the 'net?
|
| I'll say it again just to make sure you understand that
| it's your tone and attitude that disturbs me and not the
| content of your argument: widespread use of package
| managers have completely changed Linux for the better
| IMHO. What's more, I find the arguments provided by GP to
| be both weak and unpersuasive.
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| > If their "preferences and pecadilloes" don't match
| yours, why is that any skin off your nose?
|
| You're right, that specifically is not skin off my nose
| or anyone else's. By the same token that you're not
| disagreeing with the content of my argument, I'm not
| disagreeing with GP's[0] opinion per se, but just
| pointing out that the hostility they're getting is a
| self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the way they're
| expressing it. I'm not belittling their opinion, I'm
| belittling the fact that they are coming to this
| discussion with a position of 'Linux is bad because I
| don't like it for Reasons(tm) and if you disagree with
| that you're just another hater I don't have to explain
| myself to'. It's lame and unproductive and combative and
| not a quality contribution.
|
| [0] Sidenote: I've never seen the term "GP" before -
| clearly you're referencing u/AnIdiotOnTheNet in some
| fashion similar to "OP" but would be curious to know what
| exactly that means.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| GP: Grand Parent, as in the parent of this post's parent.
|
| > I'm belittling the fact that they are coming to this
| discussion with a position of 'Linux is bad because I
| don't like it for Reasons(tm) and if you disagree with
| that you're just another hater I don't have to explain
| myself to'.
|
| I didn't come in to this thread to argue about things I
| don't like about Linux or convince anyone that my
| unpopular opinions are right [0]. I offhandedly mentioned
| I didn't like Linux, and then people came out of the
| woodwork to ask me why. As I've mentioned I've been
| through this many, many times and the result is always
| the same: they ask me why, then they engage in
| performative argumentation with my reasoning. They don't
| care why I don't use Linux and aren't interested in
| changing my mind, it's all a performance to sway others
| and I'm pretty damned sick of it.
|
| [0] Which is not to say I haven't done this in _other_
| threads where it is more on topic.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > It's not perfectly valid if the purpose is to have a
| discussion that's meaningful to other people who don't
| have your exact set of preferences and pecadilloes.
|
| I don't see how what other people find meaningful has any
| bearing at all on whether or not I want to run Linux.
| Remember, before everyone crawled out of the woodwork to
| talk about Linux in this 'fuck Windows 11' thread I only
| said this:
|
| > Don't get me wrong, I have plenty to complain about in
| Linux too which is why I'm still on Windows
|
| An offhand remark about not liking Linux is apparently an
| open invitation for every evangelical Linux desktop
| asshole to berate me until I give them arguments to
| attack.
|
| > Saying you don't like a logo isn't a useful piece of
| information because for 99% of people that's not going to
| be a reason to use or not use a piece of software.
|
| By that reasoning everyone talking about privacy and
| security in regards to their choice of Linux should shut
| the hell up too because the market is pretty clear it
| doesn't care.
|
| This whole "blah blah blah other people blah blah blah
| 99% blah blah" is what I mean by performative
| argumentation. It isn't about my preferences, which are
| really all that matters when it comes to what I should
| choose to run, it's about putting on a show for other
| people, evangelising and advertising your favorite OS.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| I agree with your assessment that folks should stop
| bashing on you for your unpopular opinion.
|
| I happen to disagree with that opinion. However, it makes
| no difference to me whether you run Linux or Windows (or
| CP/M, RSX-11 or AmigaOS for that matter) as your daily
| driver.
|
| It's both rude and obnoxious to pound on you for your
| unpopular opinion, especially since that's based solely
| on your personal preferences and not objective facts.
|
| As for the downvotes, they are just shorthand for "I
| disagree with you but don't feel like putting the time
| and effort into rebutting your argument."
|
| And the obverse (WRT upvotes) is also the case.
|
| tl;dr: I think you're wrong and disagree wholeheartedly.
| That said, I'm glad you chose to express yourself and
| hope you continue to do so in the future.
| alerighi wrote:
| Package management is to me one of the biggest benefit of
| Linux. Whenever I have to deal with Windows/macOS
| machines I find myself in the middle ages having to
| install the software manually downloading it from the
| internet and having to keep it updated. Even now that
| Microsoft had finally integrated some sort of package
| management in Windows and a store, there are not even the
| Microsoft products such as Office or Visual Studio on it!
|
| While on Linux I type in my terminal:
| paru -S <software name>
|
| and install it. If the software for some reason is not
| packaged (very rare, since with the AUR repositories of
| ArchLinux there is everything) it's trivial to make a
| package and publish it so other people that have to use
| the same software can install it.
|
| On Windows each time I install the system from scratch I
| have to spend a day downloading and installing all the
| programs, on Linux I can install all the software that I
| need by simply launching a single one line command.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| To each their own. I like having the ability to install
| applications to different disks, and to have two
| different versions of the same application installed at
| the same time, among other things package managers and
| repos restrict.
| ravar wrote:
| Ditch the Desktop, embrace i3.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Even if I liked tiling wms and keyboard-only GUI that
| wouldn't actually fix many of the issues I have with
| Linux Desktop. The issues have to do with the multitude
| of disparately developed complex systems that are kludged
| together under the hood.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Or Sway, which is more or less i3-upon-Wayland.
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| Well, I did spend a few days finding a modern version of
| Linux that can run on a Mac mini PPC... Its OS X was
| outdated so I installed Yellowdog on it, then Debian and
| now that Debian don't support 32 bits G4 anymore all I
| found was Void Linux. Plus side: there's so little loading
| at boot, it start very fast. Downside: I had to install
| Linux like it's 1995. So I know well Linux is far from
| perfect... But it has become at least as good as the
| competition for my uses.
| alerighi wrote:
| I recently switched back to Linux after not using it as my
| main OS for a couple of years.
|
| I was surprised how better it got, one example, everything
| worked well out of the box, and I installed Arch Linux not
| Ubuntu, no problem at all, GNOME 40 is great, fonts are good
| out of the box, gestures that works, things like screen
| brightness works, Wayland is finally stable, printer installs
| without too much trouble.
| orf wrote:
| You're damning it with faint praise there rather than
| selling it.
| chris37879 wrote:
| Eh, give it a day or two, someone will make a tool that sets it
| and keeps it set just like they did for Windows 10, or, leave.
| That's what I'm doing, Windows 10 currently only gets booted
| for me to play a couple e-sports games with bad DRM that some
| of my friends and I play together, other than that, I'm in
| Linux full time on Pop_OS!
| themulticaster wrote:
| Somewhat related: I removed Edge a few years ago because I
| didn't use it and thought it's just a regular application. A
| recent Windows update however just wouldn't install: Every time
| it would abort and roll back the update installation just after
| the reboot, reporting one of those mysterious and very helpful
| Windows Update error codes. After a few days of scratching my
| head I found out that due to a bug, that specific update [1]
| can't be installed unless Edge is installed (prior to the
| update). IIRC the reason is that helpfully Windows installs the
| lastest Edge version for you during the OS update, so that "you
| can experience the fastest web browser, Microsoft Edge!" (or
| something like that, you know the drill.
|
| Nowadays it's not even supported to remove Edge since -
| according to certain Windows news outlets - Edge is somehow
| integrated into Windows 10 so by removing it you could break
| the OS. (Just why??) The aforementioned news outlets also ask
| why you would ever want to remove Edge - "Have you tried the
| new Edge browser? It's quite fast nowadays!"
|
| To clarify: I am not opposed to Edge itself in any way, but the
| whole "Why would you ever want to do that?" rubs me the wrong
| way.
|
| Another "Why would you ever want to do that?" story: IIRC, in
| Windows 8 there was a semi-official way to place your home
| directory on a different drive than your system directory. Back
| then I had a 128 GB SSD I wanted to use as a system drive for
| Windows, but because my downloads folder quickly accumulates a
| lot of baggage (> 50 GB) I wanted to place it on another drive.
| A few years down the road the upgrade to Windows 10 failed with
| a mysterious error code. Again, after a few days of scratching
| my head I found out that my setup (with the home directory on
| another drive) is not supported for the Windows 8.1 to 10
| upgrade.
|
| Common Windows news outlets and forums also commented this
| issue along the lines of "Why would you ever place your home
| directory on another drive?" I guess I was too spoiled with the
| UNIX way (of separate mount points inside a unified hierarchy)
| to see the error in my ways... (/s)
|
| [1] Sorry, I don't remember the specific error code or update
| number anymore. Perhaps the 2004 update?
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| > Edge is somehow integrated into Windows 10 so by removing
| it you could break the OS. (Just why??)
|
| One technical reason is probably that the majority of it -
| the engine - is also what drives Webview2 (a web view that
| you can embed into your applications just like you could
| embed IE into your applications).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Because Microsoft sees the 1/10 of a penny it gets from the ad as
| more important than your Desktop and your Taskbar.
| Ballas wrote:
| It seems that in this case they would get 100% of the money. Of
| course that would be clear if you read the article, as the ad
| is for Microsoft Teams.
|
| Edit: I am dumb. Please disregard.
| misnome wrote:
| I think OP meant that the 100% of the value of the ad does go
| to Microsoft, but that the value of a single ad would be very
| low, in fractional pennies.
|
| edit: <snark now unnecessary>
| Ballas wrote:
| What you are saying makes even less sense.
| yial wrote:
| I believe what they're trying to say, is that for
| Microsoft the revenue that they're "booking" per ad is
| 1/10th of$0 .01. Not that they're only getting 1/10th of
| the ad revenue.
|
| And that they'd rather is $0.001 over your desktop
| experience as your desktop usage doesn't generate them
| income.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Actually I think they are being penny wise and pound
| foolish. Alternately, they are distracted by the new
| shiny.
|
| Early sources, such as this classic book
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Image-Guide-Pseudo-Events-
| America/dp/...
|
| frame public relations and marketing folk as cynical
| manipulators who don't fall for the illusions they
| create.
|
| The post-modern environment has had about 60 years to
| develop since that book was written and I think the
| culture has deteriorated and I believe that, today, the
| image makers really do live in the "the matrix" they've
| created and have trouble distinguishing it from reality.
| (I think of how Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons really fell
| for his victim Madame de Tourvel.)
|
| My contacts with local business people and people who
| sell ads for radio and newspapers have convinced me that
| prices for advertising were too high for a long time
| because the people who buy advertising get gratification
| from hearing their name on the radio and the people who
| advertise won an auction because they get more
| gratification from hearing their name on the radio more
| than anyone else.
|
| Years ago somebody who was an "influencer" would try to
| appear authentic (not an "influencer") but today
| authentic people will try to look inauthentic ("i pretend
| to be an influencer even though I don't get paid") to get
| credibility.
|
| People under this spell will run ads in situations when
| they clearly shouldn't and they'll be astonishingly
| resistant to anyone who tries to talk sense into them.
|
| (Your desktop usage does make income for Microsoft since
| your OEM bought Windows for you. If they annoy you enough
| you might switch to Linux, MacOS, etc. Unfortunately your
| OEM probably wants to wreck the value of a $2000 computer
| they sold you by selling $2 worth of annoying ads.)
| Ballas wrote:
| Ok, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I am
| slow today. I apologize.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Don't worry, Fridays are supposed to be read-only.
| marcodiego wrote:
| If the OS has ads out of the box, it is already broken.
| inetknght wrote:
| So... also Ubuntu then
| officeplant wrote:
| Yes? Ubuntu has its fair share of problems over time as well.
| Luckily there are hundreds of other distros.
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Where are the Ubuntu ads? I remember the Amazon ads back in
| the day, but there haven't been any in quite some time.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Ubuntu has weird ads in the apt upgrade or something like
| that promoting their other services. They also sneak in
| their Snap package for Chromium even if user asks apt to do
| it. In general the Snap push feels like making proprietary
| apps normal on Linux desktop.
| daxelrod wrote:
| They promote other technologies of theirs via the MOTD,
| which some consider an ad. See
| https://news.softpedia.com/news/canonical-under-fire-for-
| put... .
|
| Here's the current MOTD: https://motd.ubuntu.com/
| hbn wrote:
| It's hard to even make the "this is what you signed up as an
| Insider" argument when they're supposedly releasing this thing
| next month. This launch is gonna be a mess.
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