[HN Gopher] Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox's Default B...
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Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox's Default Browser
Workaround
Author : beezle
Score : 440 points
Date : 2021-12-16 16:29 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.howtogeek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.howtogeek.com)
| phreack wrote:
| What would you people suggest is the most Windows-like Linux
| distro to switch over? I'm thinking in terms of visual
| similarity, UX, key bindings, and such for everyday usage.
| twblalock wrote:
| The desktop environment, not the distro, is what really
| matters. I'd look into a distro that is easy to install and
| comes packaged with KDE desktop environment. Most of the
| popular distros fit that requirement.
| ohiovr wrote:
| Even in windows 10 in a virtual machine I cannot download chrome
| and install it. I have to use virtualbox to transfer the
| installer and run it that way. Poor Microsoft has to use such
| tactics because their software blows (they know windows sucks and
| they have no control over it anymore) and they can only barely
| hold on with these tactics. Wasn't there an antitrust lawsuit
| which they some how won because of violations lesser than this?
| seqizz wrote:
| What the hell is a "microsoft-edge:// link"? Pardon my ignorance
| since I didn't use Windows for years, but who even link something
| like that?
| crvdgc wrote:
| On Windows, apps can register URIs for them to handle. For
| example, steam uses steam://. The actual behavior is determined
| by the app.
|
| According to Microsoft's documentation[0], the microsoft-
| edge:// scheme opens the edge browser and navigates to the
| specified URL.
|
| If what is claimed in the article is implemented, it will
| provide a way to bypass the default browser setting. The system
| will launch edge even if you set another browser as your
| default web browser, bringing the problem of leaking MS account
| information that comes with the edge.
|
| [0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/launch-
| resume/l...
| TedShiller wrote:
| Use Mac?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Where the F is the EU to slap them for this BS?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Does anyone know why Microsoft even care? Do they want to be the
| dominate browser maker again? Seems like a weird way of going
| about it.
|
| What's their goal?
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Pleasing the shareholders?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why would they care if "internal" links are opened in one
| browser or another?
| ashton314 wrote:
| MS is getting desperate. This shill [^1] had the audacity to
| reply to a tweet I made praising the very excellent FOSS Zotero
| bibliography manager with a suggestion to use Edge. Like, come
| on. Amusingly, Twitter initially hid his tweet with "Tweet may
| contain offensive material." Offensive to a FOSS-loving mind
| indeed.
|
| [^1]: https://twitter.com/varadarajans
| keawade wrote:
| Pedantic musing:
|
| > Shill
|
| > One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic
| gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.
|
| Is it "shilling" if you're a project manager recommending your
| product? He doesn't appear to be posing as anything other than
| a Microsoft employee working on the Edge team.
| [deleted]
| akira2501 wrote:
| If you're just injecting yourself and your product into other
| peoples conversations without invitation, then you are
| probably shilling.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Now I am interested to learn how would you describe it!
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| You've missed the 2nd definition of shill:
|
| shill verb: 2 : to act as a spokesperson or promoter "the
| eminent Shakespearean producer ... is now shilling for a
| brokerage house" -- Andy Rooney
|
| shill noun: 1b : one who makes a sales pitch or serves as a
| promoter
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shill
|
| If you're going to choose to be pedantic, it helps to read
| the _entire_ definition, and not just paste in the top result
| from DDG 's "define shill"
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Pretty sure that to be a shill, your relationship to the
| thing being promoted has to be hidden. We don't refer to
| marketing folks as shills. Parasites maybe, badum-ching.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| I refer to anyone trying to get me to use a particular
| product as "shilling", including marketing folks.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shill#note-1
|
| "Someone who shills today may very well be employed to
| simply extol the wonders of legitimate products."
|
| Of course it does go on to say that originally its use
| was in service of a con, so secrecy is most definitely
| implied. Good stuff... I love little pedantic asides!
|
| And... parasites, most definitely.
| [deleted]
| Croftengea wrote:
| Wow. Some people even pay money for this OS..
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Basically, this means that "microsoft-edge:// links" can no
| longer be forced to open in your default browser of choice
|
| So wait... Links that specifically REQUEST to be OPENED IN EDGE
| cannot be overridden to open with an arbitrary program? So just
| don't use those links. Problem solved.
|
| The irony here is anyone who actually cares enough to be angered
| by Microsoft opening links in Edge rather than their preferred
| browse would never use "Start menu search" or other noob
| features.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| That's ok, Windows 10 works just fine.
|
| I hope one day Microsoft realises that their user-hostile actions
| are dissuading engineers from looking for jobs there. I for one
| never will. Hell would freeze over sooner.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| As someone who used Firefox and has Windows 11, how is it going
| to affect me? My links open in Firefox only (and the only time I
| open links is either from WhatsApp or occasionally some link in a
| doc file or PDF I am reading). It works fine for me so far.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| I think it's only for 'microsoft-edge:' URLs, used by certain
| Windows features (e.g. Bing search from the start menu, or
| opening the online help via a link in the Settings). Most other
| links will just be normal http:/https: links and will use your
| actual default browser.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there will be some community programs that
| will fix this again. Just takes some time I guess. Currently
| I'm still waiting until I get the feeling that win11 is
| "finished".
| josephcsible wrote:
| But keep in mind the fact that any parts of Windows using
| microsoft-edge: URLs for any reason whatsoever is itself
| anticompetitive behavior.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Is it really?
|
| If I have an OS and I want to deeply integrate the browser
| into the OS for use-cases other than general browsing of
| the web, why can't there be browser specific URLs to
| accomplish that?
|
| Is there a complete list of microsoft-edge:// use cases? I
| know there is a News integration to the taskbar.
|
| I love standards but sometimes you have edge use cases that
| the entire world doesn't need or can adopt. Why can't a
| browser have proprietary features along with URLs that make
| sure that a browser supporting those URLs be used?
|
| How do you even QA or support a deep browser integration
| into your OS when the browser can be switched to a 3rd
| party one?
|
| If those deep integrations (News, etc) also prompt you to
| change your default browser for general web surfing then
| yes, that would be anticompetitive behavior. Does it do
| that?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The microsoft-edge links just open normal web pages. Most
| are just Bing searches. It isn't deep integration.
| howinteresting wrote:
| These are exactly the arguments Microsoft used in its
| antitrust defense.
| jptech wrote:
| Can you block Edge's internet access? Then if the said URL
| was something you needed, copy-paste to your default browser.
| xdennis wrote:
| I don't want to be mean, but saying "this doesn't affect me" is
| how freedoms get lost.
| mikestew wrote:
| Parent didn't "say" that at all. It was a question, not a
| statement, which explains why the question mark was used: _"
| how is it going to affect me?"_ At the end, the user gives us
| the courtesy of reporting what behavior they observed, which
| is all too often lacking.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I don't think that's what being said. They're asking how it
| affects them.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| Microsoft is showing that they are really the ones who are in
| control.
|
| "Either the user controls the software, or the software controls
| the users":
|
| https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
| drcongo wrote:
| Microsoft is the abusive spouse of tech.
| pferde wrote:
| And yet most people keep trusting them with their code on
| Github. If people were smart, there would be Freenode-level
| mass migration away from GH the day the Microsoft purchase was
| confirmed. But no, everybody will only scream once Microsoft
| does something shady, as they inevitably will.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > And yet most people keep trusting them with their code on
| Github.
|
| Honestly, from what I've seen many people don't see the issue
| with this. "The code is public anyway, so what difference
| does it make?"
|
| I'm starting to see the downsides of that viewpoint now,
| though[0]. If GitHub, and by extension Microsoft, technically
| 'own' the code (licensing, etc.) then they have free reign
| over it, leading to things like Copilot and Intellicode.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/intellicode/issues/201
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And Google, and Apple, and Meta...
| jagger27 wrote:
| United States v. Microsoft was 20 years ago. Is there nobody left
| at Microsoft who remembers that?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| They remember the actual outcome. They lost the case but the
| Bush Administration chose to not really enforce any significant
| penalties. End result was very little cost to Microsoft. They
| did change their practices for awhile but have slowly crept
| back to the same lockin.
|
| When Apple does similar things everyone praises them for it.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Microsoft probably knows that governments have turned their
| attention to apple, google and facebook these days.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| avg tech turnover is 1.5 years, it's likely...
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Microsoft has much lower turnover than that.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Apple's default web browser is Safari on iOS and no one ever
| sued Apple over it.
|
| At some point, you have to just recognize that the world is
| different today. The general market has accepted walled garden
| OSes with anti-competitive behavior towards common
| applications.
| vetinari wrote:
| > Apple's default web browser is Safari on iOS and no one
| ever sued Apple over it.
|
| Apple doesn't have that kind of market share to warrant it.
| Tangentially, Apple products are aspirational, so they never
| won't have it, that would lose the appeal. Microsoft, on the
| other hand, pushes their products every way imaginable, and
| many of their users use them because they have to.
| dorchadas wrote:
| They've changed it. I have Brave set as my default, for
| instance, and can change apps to tell them which one to open.
| dragontamer wrote:
| IIRC, all web browsers on iOS are using the Safari
| rendering engine though.
|
| So its still Safari underneath it all. Much like how
| Internet Explorer / Edge on Windows is really just a Chrome
| renderer / frontend these days.
|
| EDIT: And since Google is in charge of the Chrome renderer,
| Microsoft absolutely has less control over internet-APIs /
| Javascript APIs / CSS details than say... Apple or Google
| does. Which is the "monopoly" bit that we're really worried
| about.
|
| When you consider which company "controls the web", its
| Google or Apple. Microsoft really doesn't have much control
| of it.
| jptech wrote:
| With the new Edge they're giving themselves a boost. They
| probably won't catch up to Chrome so easily but will have
| more to say about the underlying engine in a few years
| time.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Brave is your browser UI. The rendering engine underneath
| is Safari, as it is with all browsers on iPhone/iPad. The
| version of Safari is slightly hobbled from the main one,
| though far less so than it used to be when Apple kept all
| browsers using a severely hobbled rendering engine making
| them much slower than Safari proper.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| They remember they still made banks after that and their
| accountant laughed it out.
| monocasa wrote:
| I've heard a rumour that the Microsoft anti trust actions in
| the states were more a proxy war to get Microsoft to play nice
| with the federal government wrt 'lawful intercept'.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| What I want is iMessage on my Linux desktop so that I can still
| text via my computer while I'm working and barely break
| concentration.
|
| Then I'd never use Mac or Windows again.
| modeless wrote:
| I'm using https://www.beeper.com/ for this and it is very much
| a beta but it works.
| happyllama wrote:
| Check out beeper.com. If you have an old Mac lying around you
| can self-host the iMessage bridge
| dorchadas wrote:
| I need a new computer, and I was going to switch to Windows so I
| could game with friends (while dual-booting into some linux
| distro for anything programming related), which would force me
| into 11. It's already a shame that I have to have a Microsoft
| account to even set up the damn thing, but now I can't even use
| whatever default browser I want? I'm seriously about the say
| screw it and pay for another Mac. I love mine, but wanted to game
| but at this point it might not be worth it.
| maybeOneDay wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, this is some absolute BS from MSoft, but no
| it's not accurate to say you can't use whatever default browser
| you want. It's that there are a very few select things that
| force you into opening a link in edge - as far as I'm aware
| this is functionality mostly limited to just websearch from the
| start menu. So if you prefer to Google/DuckDuckGo your shit by
| first opening a browser, this won't really affect you. It's
| important philosophically and as an indicator of Msoft's
| behaviour/strategy, but doesn't considerably affect users too
| much.
|
| Caveat - I haven't used Windows 11 so I'm unaware if they've
| enhanced the number of places that these edge specific links
| are used. In windows 10 I haven't even bothered to implement
| some workaround because I never want to search the web from my
| start menu
| kroltan wrote:
| Most "help"/"support" links on Windows 10 (and likely 11 too,
| but I'm not curious to find out) in things like the control
| panel or built-in applications also use this protocol and
| force open Edge.
| maybeOneDay wrote:
| Ah, right you are.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Just use linux. With proton and lutris, gaming is good.
| Microsoft can keep it's draconian OS.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Second this. There is no real point in dual booting any
| longer. Linux as a daily driver is fine. Pop_OS is plenty
| good.
| thunderbong wrote:
| From the TFA -
|
| This is not for http://, https://, file:// links. This is
| specifically for microsoft-edge:// links, which I've never seen.
|
| I think this applies only for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
|
| I'm wondering how many of the commentators here have actual read
| the article.
| eli wrote:
| No, microsoft-edge links are used through Windows itself when
| it wants to show a webpage, e.g. from Cortana or a desktop
| widget. They open in Edge even if you've told Windows you want
| a different default browser
| zuminator wrote:
| FWIW seems to me that if you rename msedge.exe to
| somethingelse.exe, that those microsoft-edge links don't work
| any longer. I don't know if you can actually get it to open
| another browser (I tried renaming firefox.exe to msedge.exe
| without achieving the desired result) but at least you can
| stop it from opening Edge, if that's what you want.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| Even still, these are links that you're rarely (if ever)
| using.
| Mandatum wrote:
| I didn't read the article. Glad I scrolled down this far,
| my care for this is now 0.
| [deleted]
| vernie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Lisa
| oceanghost wrote:
| >In DVD commentary, the writers explained that while Mr. Burns
| tried to change, he "couldn't help being himself"
|
| Great reference, thank you.
| cosmotic wrote:
| As far as I know, the workaround is no longer needed
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-re...
| Someone1234 wrote:
| You're conflating two different issues; Windows 11's
| broken/anti-competitive default browser changing UI has been
| improved (although annoying popups remain), but those defaults
| are only used by _non-Microsoft software_.
|
| Microsoft's other software uses "microsoft-edge://" links which
| simply ignore the user's default browser choice and open in
| Edge. When a workaround was found to fix this (i.e. to obey the
| user's choice), Microsoft blocked it.
|
| Plus Microsoft rushed out this Edge-link workaround patch to
| retail, while sitting on the default browser UI improvements
| until next year.
| neogodless wrote:
| It's two different things.
|
| 1. This article is about Windows and Microsoft applications
| forcing use of Edge, ignoring your default browser entirely.
|
| 2. Your article is about setting your default browser.
| majormunky wrote:
| The fix from that article has to do with how one would go about
| setting a different default browser. Earlier, they had to do
| this by associating the browser with filetypes, so, someone
| would have to make multiple changes to fully set their browser
| default. Now, you can just set the browser like you would
| think.
|
| The issue at hand though has to do with other links within
| windows that open web pages. Microsoft had used a different
| protocol (not https, but, something like microsoft-edge://). I
| think these links are like news items that show up in the start
| menu, etc. There was no way to set Firefox to open these links
| with what Windows provided, it only opened in Edge. A program
| was written that listens for these protocols, and would let the
| user customize what program opened with those links were
| clicked. Microsoft has now shut that option down.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Windows 11 was an absolute downgrade to my Windows 10 experience.
| To the point that I went back to windows 10 in less than a day of
| Windows 11.
|
| 1. I can't ungroup the taskbar windows. So now I have to hoover
| the taskbar to see multiple instances of the same software;
|
| 2. Who the hell thought it was a great idea to couple all the
| commands like WiFi, power energy, etc under the same menu? On
| Windows 11 I needed to click the WiFi icon, select WiFi menu,
| select a WiFi to connect to. Whereas on windows 10 I just click
| on the WiFi symbol and choose the WiFi. I don't like my computer
| auto connecting to the Internet so I manually connect whenever I
| want and use this menu multiple times a day.
|
| 3. Speaking of great ideas, now all the right click useful stuff
| is behind a second menu... Pure genius move.
|
| I know I can hack my way around these issues but I don't see the
| point of installing sketchy software or messing registry hacks to
| fix this mess. I will use Windows 10 until its end of life.
| dsego wrote:
| > Who the hell thought it was a great idea to couple all the
| commands like WiFi, power energy, etc under the same menu?
|
| ahem, gnome, ahem
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Look up Windows LTSC, it's like Win10 that acts like Win7
| throaway46546 wrote:
| LTSC now
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I went from Win7 to LTSB, then upgraded to LTSC (for gpu
| passthrough) but still hated it for some reason, mainly
| needing to undo windows changes and various issues that
| should have been defaults. I went to KDE and use windows
| only for some Win software that didn't work on VM or wine.
|
| I miss Windows 2000 Pro, it wasn't bloated, pretty fast,
| didn't crash and had the fewest problems.
| medlazik wrote:
| It's still Windows, we can tweak everything _exactly_ how we
| want it.
|
| https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
|
| https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker-on-windows-11-wi...
|
| I've been using 7taskbar for years, it's rock solid.
| ExplorerPatcher is a new requirement, works great and adds tons
| of features.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but tweaking Windows extensively always
| feels like you're fighting against the OS.
|
| I don't have these issues with my Linux installs.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You don't uninstall snap if you use Ubuntu?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Don't forget classicshell!
| danjc wrote:
| Ok I'll take the contrarian view. Why is it a big deal that a
| specialized url scheme is specifically intended to launch a
| Microsoft browser? Only apps built by Microsoft will use that
| scheme.
| kroltan wrote:
| You go to your system settings, and set your "default Web
| browser".
|
| You use any feature of the OS that would open a Web page, like
| Start menu searches, "help" links (that nowadays are just links
| to Bing searches, another shitshow I won't get into), or
| dynamic wallpaper info bites.
|
| The system says "fuck you" and opens the browser that is more
| convenient to their economic goals rather than your explicit
| choice.
|
| Is it illegal? Thank god no. Is it subversive and a complete
| dick move? Definitely.
| Thiez wrote:
| Why shouldn't it be illegal?
| [deleted]
| 34679 wrote:
| As far as privacy is concerned, there's not much difference
| between using someone's browser and inviting them into you
| home. Imagine two people show up at your door. One is your
| trusted friend. The other is your landlord's friend, and you
| don't trust them.
|
| Would it be a big deal for your landlord to push his friend in
| the door when you try to let your friend in? After all, he owns
| the home (you just pay for a license to use it), and he trusts
| his friend, so why should you care?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Because Microsoft makes Windows, and therefore can force
| anything Windows tries to open to use that scheme. This means
| you can never view search results, weather, news, etc. that
| Windows provides to you integrated into its experience in any
| browser other than edge.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| Windows 10 and 11 retail "user experience" seems to be written
| with telemetry in mind. You as a home user don't even need to pay
| for windows anymore if you are ok with the watermark. However you
| shouldn't mess with their telemetry-exporter-disguised-as-a-
| chrome-reskin golden egg.
| jhoelzel wrote:
| I have a feeling that MS is playing with fire again....
|
| That every request made through the edge browser for a non local
| user is associated to his/her live ID is pure coincidence ;)
|
| Sometimes when I look into my dns logs, I cry a little bit inside
| too.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| That's the moment you fire up Firefox without prefetch nor
| studies and enjoy the peaceful DNS logs without the constant
| telemetry calls to LinkedIn and to all interested 3rd parties,
| five eyes etc
| jhoelzel wrote:
| i thought that too!
|
| but firefox has different dns requests going to their servers
| as well.
| no_time wrote:
| On linux you can use IceCat. On windows, download
| simplewall and block pingsender.exe there. Should get rid
| of the queries if you combine it with userjs tweaking.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Just setup pihole - you can run it on any server and use
| it as a local dns server. Probably somebody else has done
| the work to list these spammy domains.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What about DNS over HTTPS?
| jhoelzel wrote:
| thank you for the tip! I use an OpenWrt acces point that
| is on my desk and uses dnsblocking through blacklists.
| This way I have a wired and wifi network that block the
| most annoying stuff by default. It also integrates nicely
| with wireguard too.
| modeless wrote:
| Firefox should go all the way on this. Exploit bugs, modify
| binaries, whatever it takes. With user consent of course. If the
| user says they want Firefox to be their default browser, Firefox
| is justified in modifying the operating system to achieve that.
| Ultimately Microsoft is powerless to stop this except by using
| their antivirus to block installation of Firefox in the first
| place, and I'd like to see them try that because the blowback
| would be epic.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Microsoft already warns you that Firefox might be malware and
| that edge is more secure sometimes. It's only one step away
| from a full ban. Decades ago, they got the monopoly treatment
| for this stuff
| outside1234 wrote:
| But then Apple
| prox wrote:
| Isn't Microsoft gonna get slapped hard by the EU as anti
| competitive practice? They are already got a fine for that
| when IE6 was around.
| lazulicurio wrote:
| > Ultimately Microsoft is powerless to stop this except by
| using their antivirus to block installation of Firefox in the
| first place
|
| They've already started down that road with s mode, which is
| default for new installs and not a separate SKU (anymore) that
| you can avoid.
| drdaeman wrote:
| This. Just like in the ol' good days, install an API hook (e.g.
| with Microsoft Detours[1]) that would patch relevant functions
| in-memory. Microsoft cannot block this because they'll be
| breaking lots of existing things (automation tools, gaming
| overlays, AV software even).
|
| And if MS would want to play it rough and start blocking hook
| DLLs with permission barriers, make this API patcher a kernel
| module.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/detours
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I mean, people already install what are basically kernel level
| rootkits so they are able to play competitive multiplayer
| games. It is no stretch from what is accepted for Firefox to
| dig into the OS and stand its ground
| cronix wrote:
| So far in the last year or so, I've heard 0 reasons why I'd even
| need, want or benefit from Win11 over Win10. Tons of reasons in
| the negative column though. There isn't even anything to salivate
| over that might make you think it might be worth it to deal with
| the other tradeoffs. Hard pass.
| rbreaves wrote:
| I have 1 reason. ConPTY - it simply works better on Windows 11.
| VSCode actually respects mouse support under 11 w/ POSIX
| compliant terminals - but not under 10. That is it, and for RDP
| but 10 did equally well with RDP, except for the ConPTY support
| being broken.
|
| So all in all the main reason I use 11 is for better mouse
| support in terminals that finally puts Windows on the same
| playing level as macOS or Linux for me. I still hate the OS,
| but at least it is usable after countless hours of doing other
| fixes.
| zionic wrote:
| If you're a gamer autoHDR and direct storage support are both
| wins. Also, if you have alder lake you want the new scheduler.
| mehlmao wrote:
| My understanding is that Windows 11 doesn't have Direct
| Storage yet, and they've announced that it will come to
| Windows 10 as well.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yeah, I'm sure over the next few years there will be things
| that come out worth having, but especially while both are
| supported it is mostly a new coat of paint with a higher
| minimum system requirement.
|
| Eventually we'll be there, but there's no incentive to get
| there right now.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Windows has become a disgraceful pile of defects, in both
| design and function.
|
| Combine that fact with the lack of fundamental applications
| (Windows doesn't even ship with a functional E-mail program),
| and you get a shitty, useless computing experience.
|
| Mac or Linux. Windows is dead.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Indeed, I'm going to try holding out on Windows 10 until the
| next version. Win11 seems like another Vista or Windows 8 to me
| so far. I can't even run Win11 with my current hardware anyways
| for silly arbitrary reasons. I have an Intel Skylake CPU + need
| to boot over legacy BIOS due to a on-board RAID. Both work
| completely fine and my PC is still performant enough, but don't
| meet the requirements.
| sydney6 wrote:
| The most common reason i've heard has been: "Yeah, but it's so
| much more biutiful than Windows 10." But then again, this
| appears to work quite well for Microsoft.
| tyingq wrote:
| The "wslg" version of WSL, which comes with a Wayland display
| server built-in, is perhaps a driver.
|
| The github page still says it requires Windows 11:
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg
|
| Though I suppose it's possible they've also pushed it to the
| insider builds for Windows 10.
| cma wrote:
| Apparently they are only going to allow gpu compute on wsl2
| on windows 10 and not allow the full graphics integration.
| tyingq wrote:
| Ah that's dumb. One of the best things about wslg is pretty
| pedestrian, but very helpful. You can make Windows
| shortcuts to launch applications in a very easy way now.
|
| Within the "Target:" setting, for a shortcut, just
| "wslg.exe /some/program -args". No wrappers, no setting
| DISPLAY, no calling /bin/sh -c "whatever", etc.
| krautsourced wrote:
| Whether these are reasons for you I can't say, for me it's: -
| proper support of dual monitor setups (particularly via
| Displayport) and remembering window positions - WSL2
| integration (it really does work great) - eventual drop of Win
| 10 support
|
| Not great: - new taskbar is meh - preferences are still all
| over the place
| josephcsible wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows
| 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After
| October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay
| secure.
| cronix wrote:
| Considering the state of security in modern computing devices
| and the various OS's that power them, security updates mean
| less and less to me over time. Nothing is secure and likely
| won't ever be. I'd argue we're collectively less secure in
| 2021 than in 1995 despite massive advances in all other areas
| of the field.
| willis936 wrote:
| The flashlight is just on. 1995 computers were trivial to
| compromise and still are.
|
| If perfection is unattainable does that mean we should snap
| to the other extreme and set all of our passwords to
| "password"?
| BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote:
| We would only be coming full circle.
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-
| policy-f73b...
| tentacleuno wrote:
| There's a saying for this: "don't let perfect be the
| enemy of good"[0].
|
| [0]: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/don%27t+let+per
| fect+be+...
| tomsmeding wrote:
| Adding features probably increases the number of bugs, but
| security updates generally reduce the number of
| (exploitable) bugs. So I think that not taking security
| updates is throwing the baby away with the bathwater; stay
| on Win10 as long as you like, but apply the security
| updates.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| You can actually block feature updates and still allow
| security updates on Windows 10 through GPO (Win + R,
| gpedit.msc). Pretty cool and somewhat little-known
| feature.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I got XP, skipped Vista, got 7, skipped 8, got 10...I think I
| will skip 11
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| What makes you think that, say, the Edge link issue will be
| solved in Windows 12? It looks like Microsoft has run out
| of ideas and does not have enough innovation to genuinely
| offer anything interesting in an operating system. Besides,
| an OS has become a commodity, something you expect to just
| work, not to be excited about like in the old days of
| Windows 95 when people literally queued to buy their copy.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I mean, they _could_ get rid of legacy designs (e.g.,
| control panel and screen saver windows), but instead,
| they 've focused on offering yet another design layer on
| top of the previous ones, which has much overlap in
| functionality with the previous design (e.g., you could
| control your bluetooth both in Control Panel and in the
| new settings app). You'd think MS would be able to unify
| all this mess and consolidate Windows settings, but no.
| tjalfi wrote:
| > You'd think MS would be able to unify all this mess and
| consolidate Windows settings, but no.
|
| Removing or redesigning the Control Panel would break
| third-party apps that rely on the existing structure;
| Raymond Chen's blog[0] has mentioned apps doing this.
|
| [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Do you think that the OS is dead, or almost dead? That
| would lead to decades of stagnation, followed by a race
| to the bottom. If that's true Windows should become a
| dumpster fire. And the linux desktop will solve
| everything, just decades too late.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I'm far from saying the OS is dead: it is a necessary
| component of all modern devices. The point is, it's a
| commodity now. Apple doesn't charge for it. Linux
| distributors don't charge for it. Google doesn't charge
| users for it. And Microsoft not only charges for it, but
| introduces a ton of adware, telemetry and so forth. For
| technically-conscious users, it's suboptimal.
|
| I don't believe in a sudden revolutionary change. Linux
| and macOS do increase their presence on the desktop, but
| the curve is almost flat, so it will take decades to even
| break even. Nevertheless, the trend exists, and Microsoft
| would have to do something very unusual to reverse it.
|
| For me personally this is very important because the PC
| is one of the last open computing platforms.
| causality0 wrote:
| Good news, in four years I run out of reasons not to go back
| to Windows 7, an OS that doesn't treat me with naked
| contempt.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| they pushed updates for windowns 7 to nag windows 10
| upgrade
| cheschire wrote:
| If you setup a VM with WSUS, you can use that to setup an
| ideal install that is missing the annoying updates. If
| you capture an image right after doing that, you'll never
| need to install again.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| You need to know which updates are bad and which are
| OKish. I assume there's a list somewhere, right?
| StillBored wrote:
| Just block that update, something i'm not sure you can
| even do with 10..
| soco wrote:
| That's 4 good years to wait and see.
| xgbi wrote:
| > That's 4 good years to see if the grass is greener on the
| Unix side
|
| There, I fixed it
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| 2025: The year of the linux desktop! For sure this time!
| lostmsu wrote:
| If only Linux implemented GPU scheduling in that time...
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yeah, that gives me 4 more years to investigate Linux.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| I left Windows desktop for Linux two years ago, and what I
| realize now that took a while to happen was a shift in
| mentality:
|
| - When you use Windows, you consume the OS. Everything
| about it is given, all you do is take.
|
| - When you use Linux, you take part in a give-and-take
| relationship with the OS, because the OS is attached to a
| community that works on it, around it.
|
| Using Linux means that you're not going to have everything
| given to you on a silver plate. But you also get to make
| your own silver plate and pass it around.
| soco wrote:
| Probably we have very different use cases. I use my
| laptop to browse, edit documents, develop programs and
| transfer/view media files. In all these I'd very much
| like to not even know I have an operating system. So the
| major difference is I'm not using the laptop to have
| relationships, with it or with some community, and the
| less I need to fiddle outside the above use cases, the
| more I appreciate the experience.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That gives me four years for the tools that lock me to
| Windows to decide to port to literally any other OS.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| After 30 years on Windows I switched this month to Linux,
| for pretty much the same reason. It's great. And it feels
| so _fast_. All my software exists natively on Linux
| (minecraft and game emulators for the kids, KNIME,
| Intellij, and Blender is a lot faster on Linux). No Word or
| PowerPoint, but there 's Libre Office and it's good enough.
|
| Who'd have thought that 2021 would be the year of Linux on
| the desktop. Not because it has gradually improved (it
| has), but because the alternative has declined so much.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I've been saying something to that effect for years,
| actually. Here's an example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18150284
|
| > As a vocal critic of the Linux Desktop, even I feel
| that soon Microsoft will have succeeded in making Windows
| so horrifically awful and user-hostile that the Linux
| Desktop will start to look good by comparison.
| zibzab wrote:
| I use multiple platforms at work and that's really the
| biggest difference to me.
|
| Linux is much faster, like a lot! Specially on older
| hardware. And not only the filesystem and that stuff.
| With recent gnome versions the interface is much more
| fluid too.
| franczesko wrote:
| With Google Docs, Microsoft Office (maybe besides Excel)
| is pretty much redundant.
| zibzab wrote:
| Only if you never work with other people, who use office
| for whatever reason.
|
| Also, not everyone wants their files in the cloud.
| Although that's getting harder and harder with Office
| too.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| I will stick with MS Office. I can use it when
| disconnected from everything, and (note hyperbole, but
| the cynicism is real) I avoid the creepy feeling that
| Google is logging every mouse movement and keystoke I
| make for teh ads.
|
| In fact I welcome my evil Microsoft overlord any day
| before I use something from Google. I see MS as the
| lesser of two evils.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| > I avoid the creepy feeling that Google is logging every
| mouse movement and keystoke I make for teh ads.
|
| Microsoft is doing it too:
|
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/423165/how-to-turn-off-
| windo...
|
| There's still Linux.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| At this point I think if you desperately need MS Office,
| MacOS is the way to go. I will never buy a Windows
| machine again, and being forced to use it in a work
| setting would be a deal-breaker. Fortunately at this
| point even MS isn't stupid enough to make that a
| requirement as far as I'm aware.
| api wrote:
| ... unless you want to own your own data and not be data
| mined.
| PretzelSweat wrote:
| What distro did you choose to run?
| canadaduane wrote:
| That has been my thinking as well. I officially migrated
| from my Windows PC and my MacBook Pro to Linux (Pop!_OS on
| a Framework laptop) this year. Both companies have been
| slowly showing signs that their values are drifting away
| from things I care about (ownership, control, privacy). I'm
| willing to budge a little to accommodate alternate
| viewpoints, but it's been clear that they've picked a
| direction and their tanks will just keep crushing each of
| the lines in the sand.
| scblock wrote:
| I have Pop!_OS on a Framework laptop as well and if it
| wasn't a project laptop meant entirely for the purpose of
| being a project laptop and test bed for a few things I
| would chuck it out the window. In the reality of actually
| using the computer every single thing about my 5 year old
| MacBook Pro (the one everyone loves to hate) is better
| except maybe the keyboard, and that's not as cut and dry
| as the internet would pretend.
|
| Everything works except everything that doesn't work
| well. Fractional scaling is a mess, integer scaling is
| not much better. YouTube on Firefox can barely play 1080p
| videos. Scrolling is anything but smooth, and the system
| doesn't appear to be doing much drawing on the GPU at
| all. When connected to an external 4k monitor running at
| 1.5x scale (how I use it with Windows and macOS) the
| system gets really slow.
|
| Wayland is better performance wise, but at 1.5x scale
| (the best overall balance for the screen size and
| resolution) all electron based apps, which rely on
| xwayland, are blurry, and these days that's a lot of apps
| (including Slack, VS Code, and Zettlr which I run on all
| my systems). Kernel and driver support is mostly there
| except for the frequent regressions, so some features
| will in one version will break on the next kernel
| version, but it's fixed in the next next version, and
| that is not good enough. Power consumption on use is
| decent, but battery drain on sleep is atrocious even if
| you enable "deep sleep" which makes the machine take 5+
| seconds to wake up.
|
| Meanwhile Gnome insists on hiding as many settings from
| you as possible, so to set up CalDav contact syncing,
| which is managed by Gnome, I had to install an additional
| email app I won't use because the Gnome account manager
| doesn't bother to expose a UI to manage the account
| directly. And if I screw up the settings in the mail
| client Geary, which otherwise works well and is what I
| use, I have to delete the account and start over because
| there's no UI I can find to view and edit the server
| settings. It's completely ridiculous.
|
| So the Pop!_OS team has built a really nice looking UI
| and a pretty good overall user experience (best I've had
| on Linux over the years), but it's all on top of a big
| pile of half working garbage. So it's simultaneously a
| really nice UI compared to my Windows 10 machine while
| being entirely frustrating to use.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I beg you to give OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE, in the
| form of Gecko Linux Rolling, a try for a much more
| polished experience.
|
| Tumbleweed, like Arch, is a rolling release so unlike the
| Debian based distros you'll always have the latest
| drivers and updates (development progress on Linux moves
| fast so why be stuck on outdated packages? I really can't
| in good conscience recommend PC users Debian/Ubuntu
| distros for a great experience), but unlike Arch, it's
| without sacrificing stability since its packages are
| tested so it's much less likely that an update will break
| something.
|
| The developer of Gecko Linux Rolling, takes Tumbleweed
| and makes it desktop friendly by including non-OSS repos,
| non-OSS fonts, and non-OSS codecs plus other tweaks and
| creature comforts that turn make it easier to have a
| pleasant experience after the installation.
|
| Trackpad is still not as polished as Windows or Mac but
| that's universal on Linux except Elementary OS.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Saw people say the same with XP into Vista. The
| relationship people seem to have with windows is like
| someone trapped in an abusive relationship.
|
| On the other hand from what I read,
|
| XP - good
|
| Vista - Bad
|
| 7 - good
|
| 8 - bad
|
| 10 - good
|
| 11 - bad
|
| I don't have any experience in any of those so I'm not how
| true it is, but if it is, I guess hope that 12 will be out
| by EOL of 10?
| Levitz wrote:
| Calling 10 "good" is a stretch. I'd still be using 7 if
| it wasn't for security updates. The snip tool and
| multiple desktops are the only things I use, and in
| exchange I have a truckload of stuff I have to disable to
| even make my OS usable, a useless search function and
| obscured menus, absolutely not worth it.
|
| I have no hope of win12 being anywhere near good and will
| probably switch to about anything else.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, it's clearly better than Windows 8.
| cedricd wrote:
| I've run all of them over the years (progressively
| upgrading like a good computer user). It's not even
| subtle. The good / bad dynamic is drastic.
|
| And each 'bad' always brings to it a horrible UI change.
| Vista brought the window manager and those weird
| transparent windows and was generally ugly and buggy. Win
| 7 cleaned up the UI and made it flatter and simpler.
|
| 8 brought a full-screen start menu (!!). 10 went back to
| a 7-esque vibe (mostly).
|
| 11 is where we are.
| StillBored wrote:
| Can you name what made the "good" releases good? Because
| when I look at the list, I can name bad things for every
| single "good" release that I disliked. Much of what makes
| a "good" release though, isn't that MS fixes anything
| from the "bad" release they just reskin a later service
| pack from the "bad" release and try not to break to many
| things. If you skip the "bad" releases it makes the
| "good" ones bad.
|
| 2000->XP, forced online activation, if you moved from
| ME->XP they finally broke a lot of dos era apps. That
| isn't to say that XP is that far from 2000 which IMHO
| remains the best windows MS ever released (particularly
| after SP3). The only significant thing of value MS has
| added since XP, is 64-bit support, and that is
| questionable if you consider there was a 64-bit XP.
|
| vista->7, this one is harder, maybe the biggest ding is,
| that this is where they started to remove all the classic
| mode UI paradigms that were in place for 15+ years. So,
| while vista was such a mess that going from XP->7 was a
| shock, even on a PC 2x+ faster the UI still lags because
| much of the win32 graphics stack and sound system is now
| emulated on the processor rather than handed off to the
| graphics card driver.
|
| Win8->win 10, even more ad's, forced updates, can't
| permanently disable the virus scanner that eats 50%+ of
| the disk IOP rate, the list here is endless.
|
| In the case of 10-11, I don't think anyone would really
| have cared if they hadn't decided to screw with the start
| menu/task bar again. That is the one thing that raises
| the ire of windows users, yet they seem to always screw
| with it. I think secure boot/etc is less of an issue for
| people than it was 15 years ago (and IIRC someone already
| has a workaround).
| handrous wrote:
| 10 is also quite bad. It adds _very_ little useful over
| Win7, while making several built-in programs worse and
| infecting the whole thing with spying and ads.
|
| They're on a bad streak.
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm not old and I have lived to see this sentiment come and
| go at least twice before. We're still on Windows.
| Lorkki wrote:
| On the other hand, some of it sticks. For one thing,
| gaming on Linux has improved by leaps and bounds
| approximately since the announcement of Windows 10.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Gaming on Linux gave up on trying to build native ports
| and Valve put some real effort into making their Windows
| compatibility layer that sits on Linux good.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I'm not old and I have lived to see this sentiment come
| and go at least twice before. We're still on Windows.
|
| In that time we've seen Microsoft concede the mobile
| market to iOS and Android and the server market to Linux
| and Google Docs manage to take a major chunk out of MS
| Office.
|
| Microsoft is still extremely profitable, but it's not
| because of Windows anymore. Which is why they're now
| comfortable risking defection by screwing over the
| Windows customer more than ever. But that's what happens
| at the end, not the middle.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Then why wait? Programs like Photoshop and Ableton Live
| work just fine through WINE. I have a hard time imagining
| what kind of software you can't replace on modern
| Linux...
| neltnerb wrote:
| Even LabView runs natively on Linux now, so my reason for
| the last fifteen years may draw to a close soon.
| Microsoft decided to put Office in the cloud, so don't
| need Windows for that anymore... VMware is also quite
| good if WINE isn't good enough for some reason.
|
| There's some rare expensive equipment that doesn't have
| Linux support (I'm talking $100k mechanical testing
| equipment and CNC machines) but those only need one
| computer each. Of course those probably won't support
| Windows 11 either, they barely supported Windows 10.
| serf wrote:
| while these can be made to work ..
| Fusion360/SolidWorks/CATIA/Siemens NX are notoriously
| hard to make work, and when they do the fixes usually
| only last a single patch; and these softwares (aside from
| SolidWorks) are all always-connected and auto-updating.
|
| and unfortunately a lot of that software is simply
| career-making.
|
| It's simply an arms-race that can't be won from the
| consumer perspective without applying adequate pressure
| to the companies to try and facilitate a legitimate
| release.
|
| it's hard to run any kind of business software to run any
| kind of business when it's in the back of your mind
| whether or not Autodesk has pushed an update to break
| everything by the time you need to use the software and
| have actual clients and money waiting for the work.
|
| I'd drop all my windows machines in a heart beat if those
| companies would consider the GNU/Linux market, but i'm
| not really holding my breath -- they make a ton of money
| on their captive audience.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Fusion 360 has a webassembly version, runs remarkably
| well!
| hobos_delight wrote:
| I remember there being a browser beta version, but I
| thought this was pulled.
|
| Has it come back? Because that would be wonderful!
| chabad360 wrote:
| At least for fusion360, check out this project:
| https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-
| Linux
|
| It makes using fusion on wine really easy, and it runs
| surprisingly well too.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You're not necessarily wrong, but the vast majority of
| recent WINE developments have been going into making it a
| much more stable experience. The past decade of WINE
| development has pretty much been about throwing the
| kitchen sink at your program and praying that it works,
| but companies like Valve have made some pretty wild
| overhauls to the system that allow for both leaner _and_
| more predictable prefixes. It 's still not perfect (and
| as you've suggested, will likely never be), but the gap
| is definitely closing. We've gotten to the point where
| people are confident shipping Linux consoles because the
| Windows compatibility layer is just _that good_. Game
| studios are able to support Linux-based platforms without
| targeting a build for the OS in the first place. As the
| technology continues to be refined, I can definitely see
| some CAD and studio software developers experimenting
| with the tech.
|
| Much like you, I'm pretty pessimistic about the whole
| thing. It's safe to assume that nobody cares about it,
| but it's also still too early to say for sure. In 5
| years, WINE could well be a stable development platform
| for third-party developers who want to focus on a Windows
| build but also offer compatibility with other operating
| systems. Stranger things have happened.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It would take a lot of progress for me to bet my
| livelihood on WINE functionality for niche software
| (whose customer support I pay for, and whose support
| agents would hang up on me the moment it became clear I
| was having trouble while not running on Windows).
| InitialLastName wrote:
| These are my problem. Situations where "maybe the export
| is a little wrong because an update mucked with the
| optimal Wine configuration" don't fly when I'm about to
| bet the business (or a less extreme version, drop
| multiple yearly salaries) on a production run of some
| hardware.
| ahnick wrote:
| Fortnite
| [deleted]
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Programs like Photoshop and Ableton Live work just fine
| through WINE.
|
| Could you expand on this, please? What was your
| experience working with Photoshop in WINE? What version /
| CC of Photoshop did you use? Did you use PlayOnLinux,
| which supports this IIRC?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Photoshop CS6 works pretty reliably on the majority of
| setups, I remember having an... ahem, perfectly legal
| copy installed without needing to use any install helpers
| whatsoever. WINE just downloaded all of the dependencies
| before launching the installer and it worked like a
| charm. According to WineHQ[0], the only features it seems
| to be missing is the updater that came with it. Creative
| Cloud seems to be a bit more hit-or-miss, but I genuinely
| don't know many people running CC these days. It might be
| worth doing your own research there.
|
| Ableton Live 10 works fine though, I played around with
| it for a while before switching to Bitwig (which has a
| native Linux build), and I really didn't have any
| complaints besides the CPU usage being marginally higher
| than native Windows. I haven't tried it recently either,
| so the situation may well have improved.
|
| EDIT: just reinstalled my copy of Live 11, it works out-
| of-the-box with WINE installed and no configuration.
|
| I can't go around making claims that it's perfect, but
| it's pretty damn close. You may as well see for yourself,
| all the software (WINE, Linux, etc) is free.
|
| [0] https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=ver
| sion&iI...
| xxpor wrote:
| Does low latency audio work through WINE? I don't care
| about the specific tech used, as long as midi->hearing
| audio works well enough to actually play a piano.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Depends on what you consider low, Live reported that it
| was around 45ms of latency using the default settings on
| the DirectAudio driver, I didn't bother to install
| ASIO4ALL and try it that way though. You could also bring
| it down by reducing the buffer size, but I didn't really
| mess with that either. Native DAWs can hit 5-10ms of
| latency though, I'd bet with a minimal amount of
| tinkering you could get it to hover around 15ms through
| WINE.
| DashAnimal wrote:
| What about VSTs using iLok? Ive only shallowly looked at
| it in the past but haven't heard good things
| smoldesu wrote:
| VSTs using iLok barely work on Windows/MacOS, I'd imagine
| their chances of working on Linux to be fairly slim,
| courtesy of the fact that the DRM is often larger than
| the plugin itself. Some manufacturers like U-HE have
| taken it upon themselves to start releasing Linux builds
| of their VSTs (albeit without support) and they seem to
| work really well from what I've tried.
|
| So yeah, DRM is still an issue but the tides may be
| turning, especially now that the audio subsystem on Linux
| just got a massive rework.
| scruple wrote:
| Thankfully we have options. I'm planning on moving my
| main desktop to Arch over my Christmas break from work.
| It's been a while since I ran Linux as my main desktop,
| my only complaints have been around gaming performance. I
| have a friend who plays the same games as I do and he's
| got everything working on his Arch install. That's really
| the only thing that holds me on Windows and if it's as
| smooth of a transition as I believe it currently is then
| I just have no reason to not give it another fair shake.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I try to move to Linux desktop one or twice a year for
| the last, what, 20 years.
|
| I have Linux on all my servers, was an early (very minor)
| dev on pre-1 kernel and generally love it.
|
| The desktop is a walking nightmare. Something
| continuously does not work: multiple screens, waking up
| from sleep etc.
|
| I really would like to move (we use Outlook but I am even
| ready to go for OWA) but Windows is considerably better
| on laptops.
|
| Again, I love Linux and have managed literally thousands
| of them since 1994.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Something continuously does not work: multiple screens,
| waking up from sleep etc.
|
| That's my experience with Windows as well though. On Dell
| xps on windows my external monitor goes blank sometimes
| and sleep randomly causes overheating and fast battery
| drain. On the other hand Linux handles it just fine. Win
| is not consistently better anymore.
| rapind wrote:
| I'll add that m1 macs have been a shit show for external
| monitor support (ymmv but google it and you'll find
| thousand page long support issues).
|
| It's either rocket science to get monitors to work
| flawlessly or it's the B team working on it. Probably the
| former given that it's also a problem on Linux and
| windoze.
| aquir wrote:
| The same, I always try but go back to Windows because on
| desktop it's unusable due to silly issues like what
| you've mentioned
| tombert wrote:
| Haven't you heard? It's the year of the Linux desktop :)
|
| In all seriousness, until about a year ago when I got a
| discount on a Macbook and changed to that, I had been
| running Linux for about a decade across different
| laptops, and feel that since ~2017 the desktop experience
| has improved _substantially_. I bought a new laptop in
| 2017, installed Ubuntu on it...and that was it. I spent
| exactly zero minutes installing drivers or mucking with
| configurations, multiple monitors with HDMI audio worked
| out of the box, and "going to sleep upon the lid
| closing" just worked. Granted, I'm a bit of a Linux
| veteran at this so maybe there were a lot of things I was
| tweaking that I just don't remember since I do them so
| often, but I do not think that was the case, since I got
| my wife (who is not a software engineer) using Ubuntu as
| well for awhile.
|
| I think part of what made it better was using AMD
| hardware for everything. The drivers are just included
| with the kernel, and they work great out of the box, at
| least for me.
|
| I realize that telling everyone to shop for a computer
| based on the drivers that will be available isn't exactly
| a great sales pitch for Linux for the average consumer,
| but I suspect if you frequent HN you probably have a
| reasonable ability to differentiate video cards and
| whatnot.
| Decade wrote:
| I'm using an AMD system as an OBS Studio streaming
| system, and Linux was not great.
|
| I first set it up with a Ryzen 5 3600 and Radeon HD 6750,
| running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, because I thought I didn't
| really need that much processing power. After un-
| blacklisting the driver for such an old GPU, I discovered
| I was using upwards of 80% CPU and dropping frames while
| streaming at 1440p, so I decided to upgrade.
|
| Then, I tried a Ryzen 7 5700g with integrated Vega 8.
| First, I needed to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 for such a new
| GPU, and then OBS Studio was randomly crashing while
| switching between scenes. Also, hardware video encoding
| wasn't working well, so it was still taking upwards of
| 80% CPU while streaming at 1440p. And the video outputs
| were finicky, sending windows to the wrong screen on
| power up. Random crashing is unusable, so I switched to
| Windows.
|
| With Windows 11 on the Ryzen 7 5700g, the hardware video
| encoding works well, so the same scenes are taking less
| than 50% CPU while streaming at 4K (2160p) and not
| dropping any frames. Now I can do other things on the
| stream.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm sorry you went through all that. I'm not going to ask
| you to switch back to Linux, but it might be worth filing
| a bug report with Ubuntu about this, since I doubt you
| are the only person who wants to use a Linux computer to
| stream video.
|
| I used OBS when I was on Linux and it worked exactly as I
| wanted it to, but I'll concede that I 1) wasn't gaming
| and b) was using software encoding.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'll typically do a minimal starting distro and lots of
| tuning, which works decently I think in the desktop
| world. But whenever I tried to apply this to a Laptop it
| would fail miserably, I think because my various static
| configurations don't work great for typical laptop use
| cases.
|
| Boring old Ubuntu with some DE customization works
| totally fine on a laptop, though. I don't know why I
| tried to do this hard-mode for years.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I used to run a vanilla Arch install on my laptop,
| and I did manage to get it working _almost_ as well as
| Windows or macOS after about a week of tinkering, but
| after a certain point I realized that I want to work on
| cooler problems than mucking with systemd or dkms, so I
| just installed Ubuntu and never looked back until I
| bought a Macbook last year.
|
| I think the newest versions of Ubuntu are great. They've
| started to give me everything I like about macOS [1]
| while being FOSS(ish) and portable to any computer I
| want.
|
| [1] Not comparing Ubuntu to macOS directly, but more of a
| macOS "feel" in the sense of how I use it.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| >Haven't you heard? It's the year of the Linux desktop :)
|
| Nah, Steam deck got delayed to next year. I plan on going
| Linux then. :)
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > and "going to sleep upon the lid closing" just worked.
|
| And "not going to sleep upon the lid closing" just works,
| too! I tried this when I hooked my laptop up to the TV.
| Closing the lid did nothing. It only went to sleep when
| you closed it _and_ unplugged the HDMI. I really really
| liked that, despite it being a tiny detail.
| tombert wrote:
| Oh yeah! I had forgotten to mention that.
|
| I can't really blame people for thinking that the Linux
| desktop experience sucks, to be fair. As someone who used
| it in 2012 and went through the pain of getting an
| Optimus graphics card working correctly, and dealt with
| the weird rendering issues of Gnome 3, and had to write a
| bootup script to disable "tap to click" on my mousepad,
| it's a reasonable complaint to say that the Linux desktop
| is unfriendly.
|
| I think a lot of people would genuinely like the 2021
| Linux desktop experience if they tried it, but I fear
| that it will be quite difficult to shake the (well
| earned) stigma.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > I can't really blame people for thinking that the Linux
| desktop experience sucks, to be fair.
|
| Nor me. A lot of it has been small things in my
| experience though, like this trackpad being terrible, or
| GNOME crashing once in a blue moon. I've definitely not
| experienced the level of pain you had with Optimus, or
| the rendering issues, which seems like a good thing.
| Although... on the subject of rendering issues, Firefox
| doesn't like it when the system is woken from sleep and
| has a really weird glitching effect until you maximise
| and restore the window.
|
| On this laptop Linux hasn't been _that_ bad, honestly the
| worst thing for me is this genuinely bad trackpad driver
| that has massive jutter and is hilariously broken. I
| might learn C so I can look into making my own.
|
| I do agree on your last point(s). It's got substantially
| better, but as always there are little things that
| majorly hold it back (trackpad!) when the rest of the
| system isn't actually that bad. I'd much prefer it to
| Windows, despite its flaws.
| tombert wrote:
| Actually, outside of having trouble disabling tap to
| click, I haven't had a ton of issues with the trackpad.
|
| I also haven't had the Firefox rendering problems, but I
| think that might be because for the last Linux laptop I
| had, I specifically sought out a graphics card that was
| likely to not have any issues.
|
| > I might learn C so I can look into making my own.
|
| I've thought about that too. If I weren't on Apple now I
| probably would have already started on that, but the
| closest thing I've done to any kind of "driver" has been
| to make custom FUSE mount.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > but Windows is considerably better on laptops.
|
| I'll concede that if you're talking about the trackpad,
| Linux is disappointingly bad compared to Windows. It's
| really really shaky, scrolls up and down with a
| _shockingly_ massive jitter. You start to wonder if the
| trackpad itself is malfunctioning. Sadly, the same
| trackpad works so much better on Windows.
|
| This is mainly about the pointer / trackpad drivers to be
| fair, but it's still a freestanding issue that has the
| potential to really bug someone using Linux on a laptop.
| It gets so bad I have to carry around a mouse.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah some drivers are still garbage. My asus laptop works
| great with trackpad but my dell not so much (it's an
| older laptop)
| tentacleuno wrote:
| No shit! My laptop is a nearly 9 year old Dell Latitude.
| Haven't tried the ASUS trackpads, but IIRC it was quite
| smooth on an old Windows 8 netbook I had. Really miss
| that thing.
| scruple wrote:
| I've been running Arch on my 8th (or maybe 7th?)
| Generation ThinkPad X1C since I bought it in 2018. I've
| had no issues with multiple monitors, hibernate, etc. I
| never got the fingerprint reader working but I don't care
| to use it regardless, so... Otherwise, though, it's been
| completely solid the entire time I've had it and it's my
| daily driver for personal project work.
| anthk wrote:
| Odd, I run Slackware-current, with Fluxbox.
|
| To suspend, I just run "xlock & loginctl suspend" from a
| script being called from a Fluxbox submenu. Dumb easy.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Good satire!
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Well, it is not like Windows is free from annoyances.
|
| That at least for me were worse than inability to
| hibernate.
| westpfelia wrote:
| Check out https://www.protondb.com
|
| The only games that I really ever struggle with are ones
| that have anticheat. And EasyAntiCheat is going linux
| friendly so something like 95 of the top 100 games on
| steam will either work natively or via proton.
|
| And with Valve pushing the SteamDeck is see that number
| going to 100 soon.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Steam on linux will automatically pull in protondb
| profiles for your games, so you probably don't even need
| to explicitly "check out" protondb at this point. Most
| games will "just work", with the exception of big AAA
| games with picky anti-cheat engines.
| r00fus wrote:
| Yeah you may need to use Glorious Eggroll [1] for some
| games.
|
| [1] https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-
| custom/releases
| Bluecobra wrote:
| This is great! Games are what is holding me back the
| most... I am hoping that the Steam Deck really takes off
| and more and more games are supported.
| scruple wrote:
| Thanks for that!
| johnny22 wrote:
| the proton side supports various anticheats, but the game
| dev folks still have to enable support on their side.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Dozens of people switched :)
|
| At least I upgraded Windows 7 to Lubuntu
| cdumler wrote:
| Realize the people who complain how hard it is are the
| people who are stuck. The people who don't made it out
| aren't complaining. Get out takes effort, but also it
| depends on how you approach it. If you look at trying to
| leave as in "how to run what I have now without Windows
| OS," you're going to have a bad time. Instead, I would
| suggest a few approaches that make a transition a lot
| easier:
|
| _Look at it as opportunity_ Other platforms have other
| ideas about how things should work. Instead of trying to
| replace Windows, take the time to realize that it's not
| the only way to solve problems. The Unix world has a
| pretty different idea about what's the way to work, which
| is often foreign until you realize there is a method to
| the madness. If you want opinionated and guided, MacOS is
| designed to have very strong "you won't have to worry
| about that" goal. Linux is the opposite and very
| flexible. So, you'll want to look at a lot of different
| distributions, as they all have particular goals in mind.
|
| _Reconsider your current software_ Look at your current
| software and see if you can find replacements that are
| cross platform. This can mean software that runs on
| multiple platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS,
| etc). This can also mean switching to cloud/self-hosted
| software. The software I use I choose through the lens of
| "if I have to give up my current platform of choice, does
| this go with me?"
|
| _Sync your environment_ It can be daunting to jump ship
| to another OS if all your stuff is stuck on a different
| machine. I highly suggest SyncThing. It is a multi-
| platform, self-hosted synchronizer. Get a new machine
| (Linux, Mac) and sync your important files from your
| other machine. Now, you try out working on the new
| machine without loosing your work. Install some tools.
| Try getting stuff done. When you feel you've been held up
| for too long and need to get some stuff done again in
| Windows, all your stuff is magically sync'ed. Eventually,
| you'll find you're doing most of your work on the new
| machine, and you'll decide what to decommission from the
| old one.
|
| _VM/Wine/Proton_ Windows support under Mac and Linux has
| come a long way. Maybe you still need a very specific
| piece of software. That's fine, just plan on taking time
| to figure out if you can still get it to work on your new
| platform.
|
| About 12 years go I jumped from Windows to Mac and about
| 4 years ago I started working with Linux, as well. And,
| so can you. Today is your first day to start making
| changes.
| roody15 wrote:
| I'm not. Linux been main driver for years ... even for
| gaming now (although wine and proton have a big part
| here).
| peakaboo wrote:
| Or you can use another operating system you actually like.
| That way you are contributing to the solution and not the
| problem.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It sounds to me like GP wants to stay on Windows 10. I
| agree Linux is better, but if you want that, you can move
| to it whenever you want completely independent of Windows
| 11.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Pelle wants all kinds of stuff that is bad for them.
| Sometimes the right thing to do is to push them to change
| for the better.
|
| Microsoft treats their users with contempt. And I
| understand it because no matter the privacy or software
| abuse, they keep using it.
|
| Same reason people continue to use Facebook - they just
| don't have the spine to change their behavior and become
| better people who don't use shitty products.
| sva_ wrote:
| I wonder if people could sue Microsoft into offering security
| updates past that date, on the basis that MS did some big
| marketing about calling Win10 the "last" windows version.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Alder Lake needed a new scheduler.
|
| So any 12th generation Intel build will greatly benefit from
| Win11 scheduler over Win10.
| cronix wrote:
| This is my first PC build, out of about 15-20 or so in the
| last 30 years going back to the 386sx16, that does not have
| an intel processor. I'm very happy with the price/performance
| of the 5950x.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Eventually, AMD's architecture is going to change and the
| OS will need a shift with it.
|
| Intel just had a major change between gen11 and gen12, so
| its the most obvious technical reason that warrants an
| update. But AMD Zen4 (or whatever happens for Zen5) could
| also need a similar scheduler update... or if not, maybe
| some other I/O change.
|
| -----------
|
| If your hardware never changes, you can keep using the OS
| from years and years ago.
|
| But as hardware details change, it only makes sense to
| update the OS with the hardware. Just as Linux 5.x has all
| sorts of updates over Linux 4 or Linux 3, so too does
| Windows need to change to keep up with the pace of hardware
| changes.
| grishka wrote:
| Can you use the kernel from win11 with win10 (or even 7)
| userspace, or are NT kernels not interchangeable like this?
| pradn wrote:
| I'm surprised you're asking this because it's quite
| optimistic. No, it's not possible. The best you can do is
| probably patching Win11 to somehow use Win10-ish UI
| features.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Microsoft could have given us the new scheduler without all
| the antifeatures, but they didn't.
| jaywalk wrote:
| You can say that about the vast majority of upgrades that
| come with a new OS version if you isolate them. But at the
| end of the day, they are going to end up bundling a bunch
| of upgrades together to form a new OS version for a variety
| of reasons that usually aren't strictly technical.
| viraptor wrote:
| That was the original plan with win10 being the rolling
| "last version". It's a shame they reverted.
| jjcm wrote:
| I've been using Win11 now for about a week (so take this with a
| grain of salt) and one positive I've noticed has been a far
| better UX. OSX has made a ton of leaps and bounds for
| optimizing controls for how you use your computer, and it felt
| like windows 10 was lagging behind quite a bit in the last
| year. Windows 11 addressed a lot of these grievances.
|
| Browser overrides like this are definitely in the negative UX
| column, but better bluetooth controls, a new consolidated
| settings panel, and smoother window management are all
| positives for me. FWIW I haven't hit a situation where I've
| been forced into edge (yet).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Would you mind outlining specifics? All I see are the current
| tends of tabletization continuing.
| zamadatix wrote:
| UX Things I've liked about this upgrade cycle on my desktop
| setup:
|
| - More snap zones and ways to trigger snap
|
| - Snap zones can be pulled up or switched to as a group
|
| - More things moved in the Settings app
|
| - Settings app is now uses a more traditional left pane
| navigation instead of a list of large boxes for touch
|
| - Window layouts better remember and adapt to monitor
| changes (such as unplugging from an TV)
|
| - AutoHDR
|
| - Separate wallpapers to different virtual desktops (makes
| remembering where you are easier)
|
| - Defaults to the new Windows Terminal
|
| Some of the other changes (mica, new start menu, new
| context menu, rounded window look, new themes, taskbar tray
| area changes, variable Segoe UI, new Store, widgets) I'd
| call a wash. They are there and changed but overall I can't
| say any have been particularly noticeable or helpful like
| the above items.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Does the win11 settings app still have ads for 'bing
| points'?
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's not plastered in the default view anymore but I
| still see the "rewards" button if I navigate to the
| account section: https://i.imgur.com/IWBkaEJ.png
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Settings app is now uses a more traditional left pane
| navigation instead of a list of large boxes for touch
|
| Serious question: why didn't they just do this in the
| first place? It can't be hard to check if the user has a
| touch input and dynamically resize buttons / list items,
| then size them back down when the user is done. They do
| exactly this for "Tablet mode"[0] in Windows 10.
|
| This, and the pitch black dark mode that honestly looks
| dreadful on non-OLED, makes me think they don't really
| take customisation into much consideration.
|
| [0]: https://www.howtogeek.com/221973/what-is-tablet-
| mode-in-wind...
| zamadatix wrote:
| I can see minimizing changes to the interface across
| devices as being good but as to why they didn't do this
| compromise of larger navigation entries instead of full
| touch first I'm not sure but it would have saved so much
| grief. It might have had to do with Windows Phone still
| being a thing at the time.
|
| Regarding dark theme the dark app background is 12.5%
| gray and the lighter offset backgrounds are 17.5% gray.
| If it appears pitch black it's not because the theme is
| made for OLEDs rather your displays are miscalibrated and
| completely crushing blacks. If you enable transparency
| effects the color of your background will blend with
| these and raise/lower them accordingly.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The new context menu should improve things over time
| since it forces IExplorerCommand usage, which only allows
| in-process command logic so there should be no more UI
| hangs when someone has 20+ context menu entries (even if
| the command options end up lazy-loading in).
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/07/19/ext
| end...
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/win32/shell/shortcu...
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/127365#issueco
| mme...
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| The new taskbar UX is a huge downgrade compared to my "always
| ungrouped" taskbar in Windows 10, hope the add it back before
| I'm forced to upgrade.
| soco wrote:
| StartIsBack gives you back the left-side placement,
| drag&drop and grouping.
| tyingq wrote:
| You can do the left-side placement with just Windows 11.
| There's a "taskbar alignment" setting that can be "left"
| or "center".
| soco wrote:
| It's not "a setting" but an obscure registry entry. And
| have you actually tried it? I did and it's a joke - you
| get the taskbar there but no icons on it lol. And how
| about drag and drop? Or grouping?
| josefresco wrote:
| I've ignored the prompt to update to Windows 11 for a couple
| weeks now. This morning it gave me just two options "no" or
| "now". There was no clear option to "remind me later". Maybe
| they just continue to nag you, but it wasn't clear to me as a
| user.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Free update. Better Linux subsystem support, an android
| emulator better than anything on Linux, good performance, easy
| to bypass TPM, lots of software support (since it's emulating
| Linux lol).
|
| I say this as a Linux user who doesn't use windows except for
| some Win only programs that VM and wine can't run.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Mainly wslg, which has vgpu support for consumer gpus.
|
| That's about it.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It will be the same reason you updated windows years ago: some
| driver or piece of software will only work in windows 11, and
| you will be forced to switch.
|
| I have two machines: windows for gaming and work, Linux for
| everything else. My Linux machine is wonderful, sometimes even
| for gaming, but my windows machine won't stop doing web
| searches via bing when I try to use the search bar, and won't
| stop trying to swap my browser, and keeps reverting my privacy
| settings
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I updated to 11 on my laptop but kept 10 on my main machine. I
| see zero reason to update my main computer to 11. I was willing
| to give centered start button a try but the fact that you can't
| turn off grouping of applications in the taskbar is a deal
| breaker. If I have two firefox windows open I want to know it
| and to be able to pick which one I want without having to hover
| my mouse over the icon for a second while the picture of the
| windows pops up.
|
| So I installed Explorer patcher to get the old taskbar back
| https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
|
| Other than that the only feature of 11 that I have used is the
| snap zones. And I guess if I want that I can install the power
| toy it is based on.
| delecti wrote:
| If you use the Windows+# shortcuts it's pretty easy to
| navigate multiple instances of an application. I don't know
| how the ordering works with the centered start button, but
| traditionally, the left-most application can be switched to
| by pushing Win+1. The second instance of the first can be
| switched to by holding Win and then pushing 1 twice. That's
| been available since Vista.
|
| I don't want to excuse taking options away from users, but
| there are workarounds.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It still works this way, but I find having to figure out
| which number to press is too slow. There's a utility that
| adds numbers to the taskbar buttons when the start key is
| held down, called 7+ Taskbar Numberer, but it doesn't work
| on Windows 11.
|
| https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-numberer
| delecti wrote:
| If you lock programs to the taskbar in a consistent order
| you can build some muscle memory. For me, 1 is always my
| browser, 2 is file explorer, 3 is notepad++, and 4+
| depends on whether I'm on a work or personal machine
| (discord at home, outlook at work, etc). The result is
| that no matter what machine I'm using, I can always
| alternate between my browsers with Win+1.
| [deleted]
| aufhebung wrote:
| The centered start menu is terrible UX. In 10 you just move
| your mouse to the bottom corner, where in 11 the position
| changes. Of course, everyone except your grandma knows you
| can just press the windows key on your keyboard to open the
| menu. But grandma is also the person least likely to have the
| dexterity to hit the tiny button in the middle left of the
| screen.
| greggman3 wrote:
| It could be worse. You could be on MacOS where Cmd-Tab
| switches between apps not windows. I currently have 13
| browser windows open (each with 3 to 15 tabs) and another 9
| windows of other things (terminal, vscode, etc....) and IMO
| The Cmd-Tab vs Ctrl-Tab vs Ctrl-Up vs Ctrl-Down suck compared
| to Windows. I really want to easily switch to the previous
| window, not the previous app. Command + backtick doesn't work
| either. It doesn't switch to the previous window. It switches
| to the previous window "in the same app" which is not
| actually the previous window as that could be from another
| app.
| ggfgg wrote:
| Honestly that sounds like you aren't garbage collecting
| enough. I have perhaps 3-5 tabs open in one browser and 3-5
| apps open at any time. Also working in VSCode, terminals
| and browser mostly.
|
| I coworker runs his windows box with about 100 tabs iOS.
| Sometimes. Just close some shit.
| mitemte wrote:
| Maybe you'd like this: https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-
| macos
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Hmm, I find it pretty practical, cmd-tab from one app to
| another, cmd-backtick to toggle between windows, I mean,
| it's a different paradigm, sure, but you can still move
| around from the keyboard? I do find it a little annoying
| that there aren't consistent shortcuts for moving between
| tabs in everything that uses them, could be cntrl-tab,
| could be alt-arrows...
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| I have alt-backtick mapped to my favorite terminal app in
| Linux, and control-backtick mapped to a new browser
| window. I'd be buggered if I ever switched to Mac!
| jltsiren wrote:
| This was the feature that convinced me to buy a Mac ~15
| years ago. When I'm working, I keep jumping between a few
| apps (e.g. browser, emails, terminal, IDE, text editor, PDF
| viewer, reference manager), and the additional level of
| hierarchy makes switching to a specific application easy.
| Before macOS, I was using both Windows and Linux. Alt-tab
| was often useless in both, because it was flooded with
| redundant windows.
| GordonS wrote:
| > the fact that you can't turn off grouping of applications
| in the taskbar is a deal breaker
|
| Ach, that's a deal breaker for me too - it's one of the first
| things I disable on a new Win10 install.
|
| I didn't know about this, so thanks for giving me another
| reason to stick with 10!
| milkytron wrote:
| I wonder if something like Cairo is compatible or will be
| with 11. It has good support for grouping in the taskbar.
|
| On my 10 machine I use it and find it so much more pleasing
| than the default desktop.
|
| https://cairoshell.com/
| efraim wrote:
| On windows 10, holding down the ctrl-button while clicking on
| the icon will switch to the recently used instance and if you
| keep clicking it will cycle through the open instances. If
| you want this behaviour as standard, you can enable it by
| editing the register. https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-
| last-active-click-wind...
| zibzab wrote:
| Thanks man, TIL!
|
| Too bad ctrl-click means new instance on gnome, I'm bound
| to confuse the two now...
| cptskippy wrote:
| Windows 11 is just another Microsoft operating system setting
| the groundwork for a generational leap just like Windows ME,
| Windows Vista, and Windows 8. IMO it is designed to not be
| widely adopted.
|
| When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a reskin
| of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16 bit
| capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in favor of
| 32 bit and PCI. It couldn't be installed on most existing
| machines and was highly unstable on those that it would run on.
|
| Windows Vista wasn't much different. It was a crappy skin and a
| new desktop composition paradigm requiring better underlying
| graphics hardware than Intel was providing at the time. Many
| systems couldn't upgrade to it and those that did had stability
| issues due to immature graphics drivers.
|
| Windows 8 was similar, it introduced a newer kernel design that
| fully extracted Win32 out to userland. It also introduced Metro
| and other modern elements that weren't bound to IA32/IA64. It
| was primarily targeted at modern single screen touch enabled
| devices and didn't work well as an upgrade or on desktop PCs.
| They eventually shipped Windows 8.1 which was largely a
| refinement of 8 that was arguably the test bed for extending
| Windows 8 concepts to the desktop.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I still don't understand how the hell they shipped the Metro
| Start screen on Windows Server 2012 and 2016. I hope somebody
| got fired for okaying that decision.
| einr wrote:
| _When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a
| reskin of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16
| bit capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in
| favor of 32 bit and PCI. It couldn 't be installed on most
| existing machines and was highly unstable on those that it
| would run on._
|
| Very little of this is true. Windows ME runs all the 16-bit
| code you can throw at it and supports all ISA devices
| identically to 95 and 98. Windows 9x were just as 32-bit as
| ME and supported PCI just fine.
|
| The _only_ thing they removed support for was booting into
| real-mode DOS, and started ignoring your autoexec.bat and
| config.sys files for the most part. You can hack that back
| into the OS pretty trivially, it 's purely cosmetic and has
| nothing to do with the underlying architecture. They probably
| did this in an attempt to hide its creaky MS-DOS roots, and
| to get customers more used to not being able to run pure DOS
| before the inevitable shift to NT.
|
| Windows ME was a product even Microsoft seemingly didn't
| really want to make -- nothing but a last-minute stopgap
| measure until they got XP ready. No one liked it at the time
| as it was basically Windows 98 but worse. There are some good
| parts, though -- improved USB support, for instance -- and
| therefore there are now projects that "backport" features
| from Windows ME to Windows 98 so you can get the best of both
| worlds.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Bruh, they have new UI on top of the other 12 UI kits and
| gaming performance is worse. What more could you want?
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| If you happen to have a PC with OEM-installed Windows, you can
| switch to Linux and use the Windows license (stored in firmware)
| to legally install Windows in a Virtual Machine (so the license
| is not wasted):
|
| https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/howto-legally-use-windo...
| beebmam wrote:
| We need antitrust action, now
| g8oz wrote:
| Sounds like its about time for an antitrust investigation.
| roschdal wrote:
| Windows 11 made me install Linux again. OpenSUSE this time.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| That's the spirit! It's amazing how much crap people are able
| to tolerate.
| FpUser wrote:
| I put Win 11 on one of my laptops so I can test. But for the rest
| of my windows machines - I usually wait till the dust settles and
| it proves not to be yet another Vista or Win 8.
| quasarj wrote:
| What in the love of God is a "microsoft-edge://" link, and why
| would someone willingly click it? This sounds like non-news.
| josephcsible wrote:
| You wouldn't. Windows uses it on your behalf for a lot of
| things.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| it's a link buried inside a lot of the bundled utilities in
| Windows. It forces URLs to use Edge as the browser instead of
| your chosen default one.
|
| Windows 11 has a news & weather popup widget that sits down by
| the clock, in which you can click on the live tiles shown to
| take you to more info on the web. This widget uses microsoft-
| edge:// URI scheme so Edge is ALWAYS invoked.
|
| Mozilla tried to hack their way around it, and it's been a few
| weeks of cat and mouse on it. At the moment, MS are winning.
|
| It's like they've totally forgotten the events of the IE anti-
| trust stuff.
| barranger wrote:
| Or have watched Apple's behaviour with browsers on iOS (yes I
| know about the Chrome, that's just a facade on top of
| safari's render and js engine).
| [deleted]
| otikik wrote:
| Windows 7 still the best Windows.
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| I was in this boat but then I've discovered Windows 10
| Enterprise LTSC. It's got all the crap stripped out, 10 years
| of security patches.
| otikik wrote:
| Hm. Interesting. Thanks for commenting, it might prove worth
| trying at least.
| no_circuit wrote:
| Forcing the use of edge for features that should be browser-
| neutral like Bing web search from the start menu seems very wrong
| in terms of user choice. However, if this is Microsoft's version
| of "Electron" in order to implement parts of the OS, then
| blocking other browsers seems pretty reasonable. It makes
| technical sense because they can also directly provide a Windows
| Login cookie for linking to their apps on the web to make them
| PWAs for which the user would then already be authenticated.
|
| Maybe all that needs to be done is change things like Bing Search
| to normal https URL, and maybe remove browser controls like the
| address bar or bookmarks so they can't be used as a "browser"?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| why do you need to ALWAYS stay signed in? for the past decade i
| have a habit of doing CTRL+SHIFT+P on my firefox and using
| that. i did a "privatebrowsing.autostart=true" in the past but
| for a few years, a simple private window is enough.
|
| it takes me 2 seconds to click on sign in to anything and when
| i close the window, everything is washed away. no more youtube
| building my profile.
|
| i'm not saying this is for everyone, i have gotten used to no
| history so i have to "remember" the url or bookmark it.
|
| still, this is too creepy. wittill they remove private browsing
| mode from chrome/chromium to protect users. smh
| [deleted]
| amatecha wrote:
| Was there not a huge lawsuit around this kind of crap in the
| 90's?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
|
| How did this anticompetitive BS ever get the greenlight from
| legal?
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| A good thing about monopolies is that it gives the government
| the power to step in and stop anti-consumer abuses. In
| duopolies, such as Windows/MacOS or iPhone/Android, the
| government doesnt have as much power.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am an amateur developper and honestly pity the MS browser team.
| It must not be that obvious to think they you develop a browser
| which usual usage is to download another browser.
| 3ace wrote:
| If next year someone make a browser usage chart and Edge usage
| percentage is increasing compared to previously, I would assume
| this is the reason :)
| recursive wrote:
| Firefox, if it makes you feel any better, you can just make your
| own firefox: (or mozilla:?) protocol handler, and probably no one
| will mess with it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There's no problem with microsoft-edge: existing. The problem
| is that it's extensively used by things built in to Windows,
| which isn't fixed whatsoever by creating a firefox: protocol
| too.
| amoshi wrote:
| You're completely missing the point, it's about Windows
| ignoring users browser choice and opening stuff in Edge anyway.
| 0xC0ncord wrote:
| The problem is that the microsoft-edge:// protocol is used
| throughout the Windows UI and menus and will always open in
| Edge regardless of the user's preferences. If you click on a
| link in say, the Settings UI, it will ignore your default
| browser preference and open in Edge with no way to change it.
| criddell wrote:
| I wonder if they plan on using that protocol to do non-
| standard stuff that third party browsers won't support?
| That's the only technical reason I can think of for Microsoft
| to create a new protocol.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| That would go well with their embedded buy-now-pay-later
| collaboration.
| Strilanc wrote:
| _Even if you uninstall edge_ , you can't make windows stop
| trying to open `microsoft-edge://` links with edge. The
| default-program-settings page lists it but it's a cruel joke
| because it doesn't let you actually pick anything except
| edge; you can't pick a custom program like you can for every
| other protocol. There are corresponding entries in the
| registry, and those you _can_ edit to point at firefox... but
| they are simply ignored. It 's quite frustrating.
| tester756 wrote:
| on the other hand it's shitty
|
| on the other im curious how web would look like if Google lost
| its browser market share
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| They never learn do they?
| kunagi7 wrote:
| Brave also used this workaround. When workarounds are used by a
| few (EdgeDeflector), this methods usually pass under the radar...
| When a lot of users start using them they're quickly patched.
| Sadly, this fix shows that you can't bully the bullies in their
| own turf. But Microsoft should never forget the Antitrust lawsuit
| back in 2001.
| dontblink wrote:
| Perhaps its time to consider a serious look at another one?
| LaGrange wrote:
| Because this time around, MS can point at the entire FAANG
| and say "why aren't you doing anything about _them_?" Which
| would be deflection, of course ("whatever, we aren't talking
| about FAANG right now") but politically strong enough, IMO,
| to make it scary to sue any of the big tech unless you're
| willing to go against all of them.
| zamalek wrote:
| This behavior is tolerated, and even defended, so far as
| the others go ( _" it's their platform"_).
|
| There needs to be a serious reality check before any form
| of litigation could work.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Didn't they lose a pretty big antitrust lawsuit over this a
| couple decades ago? Has the regulatory landscape changed to the
| point that they think they can just start this right up again? Or
| is it more, there's no way anyone could believe a Microsoft
| browser could dominate anymore?
| tssva wrote:
| They did not. Even when they were under the settlement
| agreement and had to prompt for installation of another default
| browser at first boot IE was still included in the OS and
| certain items opened in IE no matter what your default browser
| was set to. This is the same situation. They are not blocking
| setting of the browser for general urls but for edge links.
| Edge links are used by particular software in Windows. For
| instance the help system always opens pages in Edge.
|
| Whether this is the correct thing for them to do is debatable,
| but it is not the behavior which got them in trouble during the
| early browser wars.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Microsoft is no longer a monopolist. The world has changed
| dramatically since 1995-1997.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They have 75% of desktop/laptop OS market share. That's
| plenty.
| bachmeier wrote:
| The first step in antitrust is to define the market. It
| seems unlikely that desktop/laptop would be considered a
| separate market - mobile is just too capable (how do you
| even draw the line between an iPad Pro and a laptop?) But
| even within desktop/laptop you have Apple plus Chromebooks
| and to some extent Linux as substitutes. There were no
| serious substitutes in the 1995-1997 time period that led
| to the antitrust proceedings.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Phones are not capable in the same way. And I think this
| number already counts chromebooks. Let me know what your
| revised number is for ipad pros.
|
| > There were no serious substitutes in the 1995-1997 time
| period that led to the antitrust proceedings.
|
| Macs were just fine then, and they're just fine now. They
| couldn't run all important business software then, and
| they can't run all important business software now.
|
| The situation has not changed much.
| DrTung wrote:
| My escape plan is to use Wine for the apps that exist on Windows
| only. Wine can be a bit lacking though :-(
|
| But there's hope on the horizon: Valve's SteamDeck is aiming to
| make available all Valve's games, even the Windows-only ones, on
| their custom Arch Linux. using Proton (which is a fork of Wine).
| As far as I know, this might be the first commercial product
| that's based on (a fork of) Wine.
|
| If they can make all tripleA Windows games with DRM work on their
| SteamDeck, this will make a serious dent in Windows' monopoly on
| gaming. And in the process hopefully Wine will get a boost as
| well...
| justin66 wrote:
| The microsoft-edge:// application handler is hard-wired to open
| Microsoft Edge? My God, the pure, unexpected evil of it.
| pjfin123 wrote:
| Linux Desktop feeling extra good today, my sound often doesn't
| work but I don't have to deal with Microsoft nonsense.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Linux desktop is amazing these days. Heck, even my mom runs
| Ubuntu as of 4 months ago and is loving it. Now is time to
| recommend it. Zoom, teams, webex, Firefox, chrome, Thunderbird,
| darktable, Gimp, inkscape, blender, kdenlive, openvpn, signal,
| OBS, stellarium, vim, Python, libreoffice, etc all work
| perfectly on it. My USB logitec wireless headset was plug and
| play. Cameras all work fine. Audio is good. Plus lots of power
| feature capabilities to boot. Whats not to like?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Frankly, sound has not been a problem for a long time now I
| think. Hell, the number of time windows killed the sound driver
| under usage for whatever reason it deemed useful, I actually
| would say nowadays Windows has the worst audio stack out of the
| 3 main OSs.
| aroundtown wrote:
| I always seem to have hardware that hits an edge case for
| Linux support.
|
| Take my gpu's sound support. If I run sound through
| DisplayPort it runs 40% slower and an octave an a half lower
| pitch. Over HDMI it runs fine. Oddly, if I have an HDMI
| device attached sound over DisplayPort runs fine, until the
| HDMI connection or computer goes to sleep.
|
| My solution ended up being to get a cheap usb sound adapter
| and skip the gpu audio. As the HDMI would only do 4k at 30hz
| and DP does 4k at 60hz.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yep. Bluetooth audio is probably best on Linux of the main 3
| now that PipeWire exists (literally rock solid, I've never
| had a connection drop _ever_ ), but it's a toss-up when
| directly comparing CoreAudio to PipeWire. Once PW irons out
| it's latency issues, Linux may once again become the AV king!
| (well, maybe not the video portion with the state of Wayland
| these days...)
| jrwr wrote:
| Tell that to my poor Legion 7i - Has on going onboard audio
| issues and very wonky iGPU/dGPU support.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| ^ The only sound issues I've been having these days is
| Windows 10 randomly deciding to not recognize my USB audio
| interface after waking from standby and acting as-if I don't
| have audio output, requiring me to physically plug it out and
| back in again :)
| aroundtown wrote:
| My solution for audio on Linux was to buy a cheap USB sound
| adapter. They can often be found for under $10 and they just
| work.
| freeqaz wrote:
| Pipewire has made all of my audio issues on Linux go away, at
| this point. Maybe it's my hardware (a high-end Dell Latitude
| that is Ubuntu certified) but it just f*cking works!
|
| I'm on Arch, so I find I tend to have fewer issues than with
| Ubuntu (due to the latter always being on some ancient
| version). Seriously though when I switched from Pulse to
| Pipewire... I rebooted and I've never had any issues since!
|
| Now, my biggest complaints are around i3 and X11. I get some
| flickering, and display management is a little painful. But
| those are largely self-imposed because of i3. I haven't tried
| switching to Wayland yet because it's good enough for me.
|
| At this point, it's been years since I've used a Windows PC for
| work and... I'm so damn happy about it!
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| If you're tired of waiting for next Ubuntu release and like
| living on the edge, you can switch to "Ubuntu+1", or always
| using the next release while it's being polished. Just
| replace "groovy" with the codename of your current Ubuntu
| release: sudo sed -i 's/groovy/devel/g'
| /etc/apt/sources.list
|
| Then as usual: sudo apt update && sudo apt
| dist-upgrade
| smallerfish wrote:
| Switched to wayland today because nvidia drivers were killing
| performance when I plugged my 4k monitor into my laptop.
| Barely usable under X, fixed under wayland. Also wayland was
| able to independently scale the 4k monitor and the laptop
| monitor, which was nice. Found a couple niggles but so far
| what I need is working. (Using KDE.)
|
| Worth a try.
| demetrius wrote:
| > Now, my biggest complaints are around i3 and X11. I get
| some flickering
|
| I've started experiencing flickering in non-compositing
| window managers on Arch a few months ago (I mainly use
| Openbox, although I've tried dwm too) after some update. My
| solution was just to run `xcompmgr &` at the session startup.
| pojntfx wrote:
| If you like i3 but want to try Wayland pain-free - Sway uses
| i3's config file syntax, so you shouldn't have to change
| anything to try it out :)
| dijit wrote:
| Caveat emptor: your normal apps might struggle still.
|
| Some common things have wayland native replacements but it
| might be jarring.
|
| Redshift (automatic Color temperature change) -> gammastep
|
| Dunst (notifications) -> mako
|
| Rofi (launcher) -> idk I just used kitty+fzf with some
| special options.
| helmholtz wrote:
| wlsunset was a lot simpler for me to get to work compared
| to gammastep, which I thought had too steep a learning
| curve. I only need it for the yellow light, thought.
| extr wrote:
| there is a wayland replacement for rofi called wofi. i
| didn't use rofi for anything particularly intensive so it
| was a drop in replacement for me
| btdmaster wrote:
| Dunst is native wayland since early 2021[1]. Instead of
| rofi, bemenu[2] is nice too.
|
| [1] https://github.com/dunst-project/dunst/issues/264
|
| [2] https://github.com/Cloudef/bemenu
| nicce wrote:
| I can't do else but praise sway. Long lost perfect WM.
| teddyh wrote:
| Tell me again how Microsoft has changed and it isn't the same
| company anymore, and how EEE is ancient history.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I feel like Microsoft really has changed. Not the EEE portion
| though, it's just that quality and support of their products is
| no longer a serious consideration. We had to engage software
| assurance support recently and it is horrifically useless
| compared to the last time we did.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Microsoft, like many other big modern tech companies, just
| treat goodwill like a currency. Now the time has come to spend
| it again.
|
| I don't believe for a second that EEE is gone from Microsofts
| culture and strategy.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Literally true of Edge's relationship with Chrome. I believe
| we're now on the "extinguish" phase.
| beebeepka wrote:
| It's a good thing because surely some of those who are still
| putting up with MS may decide enough is enough.
|
| Whoever you are, that the wonderful, fully gaming capable world
| of Linux is there. We have some cookies but Valve is bringing a
| massive cake early next year.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Why do people still run Windows? Linux is almost universally
| easier to use now (except for a few things like scanner and
| printer setup), and gaming has almost caught up as well (with
| things like Steam, and that's if you're not already using a
| dedicated console, SteamDeck, or mobile device.)
|
| At work, I can understand it a bit more, but I can't understand
| why anyone would still choose Windows as a desktop at home.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Is this something that could have been forced on the desktop team
| by the management of the Edge team? I'm sure the people actually
| making the OS care about their users, or at least the product
| itself. Meanwhile, the Edge team don't care. Anyway everybody
| uses Chrome, (and if they don't they are still using Chrome).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is this really an issue? I clicked the help files in windows and
| it always opened in IE6. It wasn't more than an annoyance. Can
| you uninstall edge? I think it's a sensationalist topic, it's
| closing a potential security hole if FF or other browsers aren't
| updated.
|
| Do I agree with it? No, I use Linux but it's really not an issue
| that hasn't been around and isn't easily ignored, and many people
| may never encounter it.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I always thought the antitrust ruling against Microsoft was a bit
| heavy-handed (and I say this as a former Mozilla employee). Like,
| it was the 90s... most people wouldn't know how to download and
| install a browser in the first place, so bundling (much like how
| iOS comes with Safari) seems fair.
|
| But then they do shitty stuff like this, and it's a reminder of
| how overly anti-competitive Microsoft really can be. It's one
| thing to bundle, and it's another to make it so hard to switch
| that people finally just give in.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Microsoft is making me seriously reconsider using Windows for my
| Alienware gaming PC.
|
| Does anyone know if there's a version of the Alienware,
| Steelseries, and Razer control software for Linux?
| zamalek wrote:
| Be prepared to have a VM and pass through devices to it in
| order to configure them. "Gamer device" manufacturers easily
| the worst of the worst when it comes to Linux support.
|
| OpenRGB may provide some relief.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| > "Gamer device" manufacturers easily the worst of the worst
| when it comes to Linux support.
|
| And Windows too. Logitech software is an example of that,
| their capture software refused to recognize an older
| functional generation of webcam like C910. It is capable of
| recording 1080p60 5 years ago. Their older version software
| (Logitech Webcam Software) no longer works in Windows 10.
| Tried to use OBS to get it to 60 FPS, nope! Somehow LWS have
| a secret sauce to get my C910 to record in 1080p60 setting.
|
| And their Logitech G Hub suck balls for my G600.
| Unfortunately, I couldn't get Logitech Gaming Software
| (predecessor for G Hub) working in my main computer. Kept
| throwing up error when I tried to install it. LGS works
| better for my G600 than G Hub.
| kroltan wrote:
| And Windows support, too! "Gamer device" configuration
| software is 98% a shitshow, the other 2% is just about
| tolerable.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Razer devices work well on Linux, I understand. Can't speak to
| the other two.
| lambic wrote:
| Yep, I have a Razer mouse and it works fine on Ubuntu/i3,
| just had to adjust the sensitivity down so it wasn't flinging
| the pointer around the screen at the slightest touch.
| gjs278 wrote:
| https://github.com/dneto/senseictl
|
| google from there for your specific product. this one worked
| for mine but I only needed basic things like turning off the
| LED
| commoner wrote:
| You may be interested in these FOSS alternatives for Alienware,
| Steelseries, and Razer control software on Linux:
|
| - AlienFX (https://github.com/trackmastersteve/alienfx):
| Control Alienware lighting effects on Linux
|
| - rivalcfg (https://github.com/flozz/rivalcfg): CLI tool and
| Python library to configure Steelseries mice on Linux
|
| - RazerGenie (https://github.com/z3ntu/RazerGenie): Configure
| Razer devices on Linux, uses OpenRazer
|
| - OpenRazer (https://openrazer.github.io): FOSS driver and
| userspace daemon for Razer devices on Linux
| sleibrock wrote:
| I can't say I've used it personally but I know of OpenRGB[1],
| which should help with lighting on those types of computer
| devices. Maybe that might do the trick?
|
| [1] - https://openrgb.org/
| xtracto wrote:
| I've tried to used and it failed to recognize my mouse no
| matter all the console copy/paste crap I tried.
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