[HN Gopher] Windows needs a change in priorities
___________________________________________________________________
Windows needs a change in priorities
Author : dend
Score : 1101 points
Date : 2022-03-20 22:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (den.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (den.dev)
| Const-me wrote:
| Good article, one remark, still.
|
| > breaking from the legacy is hard for the sake of backwards
| compatibility
|
| Generally yes, but in case of Windows the hard part of the
| problem is already solved. I think it was just the wrong
| priorities. Specifically, Windows SDK could do following things
| to enable new styles/controls/behavior:
|
| 1. Require new apps to call an API to switch to new stuff, like
| InitCommonControlsEx
|
| 2. Require new apps to include an XML manifest with some flag or
| version number, like they did with high DPI support
|
| 3. A nuclear option -- implement new userland, write new apps
| against that one; NT kernel supports multiple subsystems at the
| same time, Win32 is one of them.
| jcelerier wrote:
| isn't all of this what they tried with UWP and WinRT ? It
| utterly failed. People want their useful win32 apps. Those are
| the only reason I boot on that OS once in a while.
| Const-me wrote:
| UWP/WinRT was close to the nuclear option. I think the main
| reason it failed is their app store. They should have allowed
| to publish these new apps with SetupSomething.exe and I think
| developers would eventually switch.
|
| A good example of that option is the way they did Linux
| support in WSL1. Not exactly a new subsystem but technically
| pretty close. They could do something like that only with
| GUI, and not based on Linux.
|
| BTW, I still use WSL1 every day. Too bad it's deprecated,
| WSL2 is VM based, borderline useless for me.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Talking about wonderful backwards compatibility, and then talking
| inconsistent UI design is kinda ironic though. Because all these
| older themed windows are using the exact feature you told you
| love in the opening paragraphs of the piece: "Backwards
| compatibility".
|
| So, why Microsoft shouldn't use the exact feature they have built
| so painstakingly? Also, forcing these older UI toolkits to render
| the same as the latest iteration would break many many things.
|
| We're talking about an OS which includes almost complete copies
| of its older versions and some patched installations of
| InstallShield to begin with.
|
| I have no words for ads though. This is really very bad.
| croes wrote:
| It's one thing to keep old the old API for backwards
| compatibility it's another to lack a new API for the new UI.
|
| >The API to render a Windows 11 native context menu does not
| exist.
| bayindirh wrote:
| My comment was not about that. That lack of API situation is
| unacceptable from my point of view, but I'm not terribly
| surprised about that when we're talking about Microsoft.
|
| My comment was about the paragraph starting with:
|
| There's a meme about how there are at least ten different
| design conventions in Windows 11 and it's very much "in your
| face" once you start using Windows 11 on the daily.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| A lot of the examples of inconsistent UI in the article are
| things _built into Windows_. For example the "Windows
| security center" vs. "Eject disk" context menus. I think
| it's fine for third-party apps to have differences in UI
| based on their vintage, but why are Microsoft's own apps
| and utilities all over the map? Microsoft has also done a
| really bad job of evolving existing UI frameworks. Instead
| they seem to replace the whole thing every few years with
| something new and shiny which leads to even more
| inconsistency. The article lists all of these:
|
| > There is Windows Forms, WPF, MAUI, UWP, WTL, WinUI, MFC,
| and I am sure others that I am missing.
| keithnz wrote:
| I don't mind the UX so much, its pretty good for the most, I'd
| probably put any gripes I had at the bottom of the list.
|
| But 100% agree that they have got to kill treating windows as a
| marketing channel to advertise and arbitrarily making edge hard
| to customize to avoid being pushed the Microsoft narrative.
| Telemetry I'm not as concerned about, but it should be easy to
| turn off, and it should ask you before using windows if you want
| to turn it off. I'd leave it on. But obscuring this stuff just
| loses peoples trust. Trust is the battleground at the moment,
| google, facebook, apple, microsoft are really burning their
| bridges in this area. You don't get that back easily, people are
| still angry at Microsoft for stuff they did 3 decades ago.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I just want a barebones version of windows with none of the
| fluff. It would also be nice if they could hire someone that
| understood fonts and icons and worked on those too. At this point
| all I see is an old OS that keeps getting garbage bolted on to
| it.
| pjettter wrote:
| This focuses on some aesthetic "features" and it doesn't even
| touch a large portion of all other problems. I won't even attempt
| but I'll mention one thing.
|
| The part about Windows that bothers me most is that I have no
| control regarding how windows behave. I am typing and suddenly I
| am typing in another window! And there is no way to know what
| just happened. I could be pressing the ESC key while a window for
| another application just came in focus. Gone! The window and my
| text. WTF? Or it could be a window with a default button and I
| just pressed ENTER. Gone! What just happened? Impossible to know.
| DO NOT INTERFERE WITH MY FOCUS! If I am typing in a window, DO
| NOT EVER DISTURB ME. I am operating in a context. MY CONTEXT. Not
| Cortana. Not some app that wants to do something on a schedule
| because of some enterprise policy. I am working!
| rr808 wrote:
| I have always used Windows, but the reasons to are really going
| away. I mostly just use browsers and IntellJ, even Linux can do
| that.
| tlhighbaugh wrote:
| Why is anyone surprised, Microsoft can do whatever it wants and
| people still spend hundreds on its OS offering that has been
| awful for over a decade, so of course they are going to get more
| abusive to lower costs and raise revenues since people still buy
| the thing. This is at the heart of Meta (I hate that name) and
| Alphabet too, the most simplistic understanding of market
| dynamics should illuminate how this is working. What's weird is
| the government not trustbusting them and letting Germany cut them
| down here and there (not because they care about privacy but to
| make room for their domestic firms) while the once called
| conspiracy theory NSA are still amassing a monster to make Big
| Brother look like Little Whimpy Cousin, does no one else see the
| writing on the wall here?
|
| You really can't even blame any of them for being that way, the
| public could have a multitude of free alternatives with a bit of
| effort and yet they rather spend 200 on an upfront abusive and
| honestly highly flawed OS, pay google to store their photos (and
| scan them with emerging AI technology) and use Facebook for
| whatever reason people even use that for. Why shouldn't they find
| the edge of what the public will now accept, since its changed so
| much. Such is the nature of organizations interacting with a
| market or the public (in the case of government agencies which
| operate the same way just less efficiently). As my dearly
| departed great grandmother said about this sort of thing between
| drags from her Lucky Strike unfiltered cigarette while tending
| her rose garden, "Ya gotta get it while the gettin is good!"
| lamontcg wrote:
| > I can literally run a game written for Windows 95 on Windows 11
| without major issues
|
| That probably isn't a good thing. Not without firing up some kind
| of explicit emulator.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Yeah, I read that, and wondered if that is a real justification
| for, well, anything.
|
| I have and can run Linux binaries I had compiled (statically)
| from the late 90s. Doesn't mean that I should. If you are
| running ancient games, run them on the ancient OS.
|
| Using this as a reason to dismiss Mac and Linux? Not the best
| thought out argument. Kinda makes the opposite point than the
| author intended.
| Sugimot0 wrote:
| Also with package managers like Nix you can install older
| versions of a program along with that program's corresponding
| dependencies at the corresponding version and so on. It's not
| baked-in to unix but things like this are made easier on unix
| and I think that's where the sauce is.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| having both mac and PC (windows), it is honestly very frustrating
| to see how significant small bugs are there when it is launched.
| I found myself constantly trying to raise my voice in microsoft
| but don't know where to go. Simple things such as task manager
| and file explorer are super laggy. I'm not sure how does the PM /
| QA approve that when they launch?
|
| At least in apple, it just works, I don't think I've ever felt
| super frustrated that I feel like I want to find a way to report
| a bug. Sure they've got a feedback form / assistant that may or
| may not be answered as well, but I don't remember the last time I
| want to report something in apple. Community forum is good, apple
| support is 1 click away for hardware related. You just feel the
| definition of "it just works".
|
| Sure its hard to manage 2 of the biggest tech companies in the
| world. but when will MS ever learn?
| worewood wrote:
| If they shipped a version of Windows sporting the Windows-11
| kernel, so running all the recent software, but with Windows 2000
| UI for a thousand dollars I would buy it immediately.
| userbinator wrote:
| I haven't looked at the scene recently but in the past I've
| seen various projects on somewhat-underground (and often non-
| English) forums where they try to do similar things, mixing
| different versions of kernel and userland.
|
| There is this more recent attempt, Win10 explorer.exe with
| Win11 kernel:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/o6ytuw/so_i_replac...
| judge2020 wrote:
| It would take probably another $100M in engineering pay to do
| this, so unless there are 100k other people willing to pay
| $1,000 for this, you're short on how much you need to pay to
| actually get this done.
| 51Cards wrote:
| Windows 7 for me but yes, similar sentiment.
| Sakos wrote:
| That's the dream.
| wolpoli wrote:
| The operating system would look consistent, but we would still
| have to deal with all the applications that decided they need
| to draw their own UI, including everything from Microsoft
| Office to all the web browsers to all the electrons apps.
|
| It's too late for the Windows ecosystem.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Not Windows, but you might get a kick out of the Serenity OS
| project: http://serenityos.org/
| anarazel wrote:
| Server isn't too far off...
| dend wrote:
| That's true, but then you start running into weird
| compatibility issues, where a specific game won't work
| because an Xbox Live component is not installed or DirectX
| SDK is not at the right version (and you can't install the
| right version because it only works on the consumer OS).
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Server 2012 (or was it 2008?) was absolutely terrible in that
| was absolutely Windows 8-ified with a forced full-screen
| metro start menu "experience," but that was fortunately
| rectified in the next release (Server 2016, I'm pretty sure).
| MarkSweep wrote:
| It's not quite Windows 2000, but the LTSC edition has much of
| the bullshit stripped out. It does not support the store
| therefore Candy Crush is not installed by default. And I don't
| think it's quite $1000, if you can figure out how to buy it.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The latest LTSC actually doesn't have as much stripped out
| anymore. Telemetry choices are the same now and also MS
| accounts are there. I was really disappointed when I tried
| it.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Hold up. Windows 11 LTSC forces you to use Microsoft
| accounts, you can't go local at all? Not doubting, just
| need clarification.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| No it doesn't force you, just like regular Win 10 Pro.
| But it does have the option and also the telemetry choice
| is now 'basic' or 'everything'.
|
| LTSC is often hailed as the solution for privacy but when
| I last tried it it was just regular Win10 with a bit less
| bloatware (and the long term support of course). Didn't
| seem very different from Win10 on the privacy side at
| all.
|
| One thing I forgot to check is if you can choose to delay
| updates to whenever you want. Obviously this is a big
| miss in Win10 and as LTSC is meant for mission critical
| systems I assume this is possible.
|
| I don't recall which version it was exactly, but it was
| the latest I could get about a year ago when I tried. One
| of our colleagues in industrial automation got me a VM in
| their lab to try it out.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think it allows you to disable a lot of crap in gpedit.
| stuartd wrote:
| Been running Windows Server as my desktop dev environment
| since NT4. Back then it was so the dev environment was the
| same as the server environment, that's pretty much fixed now
| so it's just to avoid all this horrible store nonsense. Can't
| upgrade from 2019 as I don't have a TPM so no WSL2 or new
| terminal but happy to accept that trade off. And shout out to
| win2k server which was _awesome_!
| elorant wrote:
| It's available in volume licensing, with a 5 license as
| minimal order.
| gruez wrote:
| Apparently you can pad the 5 license minimum with cheap
| licenses, so it's not like you need to fork over $1000+ to
| get started.
|
| https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-
| inst...
| shp0ngle wrote:
| It's also _available_ on _certain sites_.
|
| Although I haven't figured out how to ...install the latest
| version, it seems more complex than the one before.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Can also get it free with a Visual Studio subscription,
| that's where I got mine.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Just checked VS subscription page and didn't find it,
| maybe it's kinda hidden? I'm chatting with a sales
| representative regarding this.
| kingcharles wrote:
| The Visual Studio web site is impossible to decode. I
| think this is the page:
|
| https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/subscriptions/#softwar
| e-a...
|
| Basically they give you every version of Windows so you
| can test your code. So 10 LTSC is in there. I run it in
| my VMs because it uses so little memory and CPU compared
| to the regular one.
|
| I don't know which flavor of subscription you need to get
| it. I got my sub free as an MVP.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| But IIRC you need an active directory domain, so a server
| license to run this all off of.
| gruez wrote:
| >But IIRC you need an active directory domain
|
| No? I installed it in a VM just fine without it. During
| initial setup there's a "domain join" option, but all
| that does is create a local account.
| poglet wrote:
| Windows 10 LTSE was under $20 on ebay, unsure of the legality
| of this.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > unsure of the legality of this.
|
| I always have a laugh when I see this logic.
|
| A product costing more than $200 and not available in the
| consumer market without some hoops to jump? Of course
| someone would resell it for $20 (including their profit)
| _totally legally_.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| > What's the point of these changes? My first impression is that
| someone used a macOS machine a bit too much and decided to rip
| off the macOS-style Dock without really porting over anything
| else from the Dock behavior and trying to shoehorn it into
| Windows without considering any of the past conventions that make
| Windows what it is.
|
| Why does this story sound so familiar as a Linux desktop user...
| nla wrote:
| What would people rather have? A new OS that doesn't vacuum up
| your privacy or social media that doesn't partisan censor? Which
| is more important?
| pie_flavor wrote:
| I am the most ardent Windows evangelist I know. I have spent so
| much time learning Windows's APIs and idiosyncrasies because
| they're just so cool. I love the APIs, I love the system, I love
| the software and I love the way everything Just Works.
|
| And I'm not installing this shit. It's a skin. It's Windows 10,
| but retvrned to rounded corners, and with a _tenth_ of the
| customizability. It 's an attempt to put Mac in Windows by people
| who don't understand either and, if previous HN threads are true,
| who don't dogfood the result. It has no serious improvements at
| any level, and every change they have made at first glance is a
| step backwards. WinUI 3 is already in Win10 and the Android
| emulator will be ported when it actually comes out. And most
| damning, I hear report after report after report of backcompat
| issues with games, which is supposed to be Windows's _flagship_
| feature. So what 's the point of upgrading? Why would I ever?
| It's like Windows 8 all over again, but this time they're not
| even replacing old stuff with new stuff, they're just fucking up
| the old stuff.
| tonguez wrote:
| "I love [Windows]... I love the way everything Just Works."
|
| Stopped reading here.
| baal80spam wrote:
| It IS true, though.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Very tangential, but the free and open source code ("Linux")
| counterpoint to software longevity is version control.
|
| You don't need to care about old binary compatibility because you
| don't have old binaries, only old source code. If your modern
| compiler doesn't like it, just build the old compiler instead.
|
| Good luck finding a matching libxyz though, for your git checkout
| --before 10.years.ago. Friendly reminder to vendor in your third
| party dependencies alongside your source code.
| lbriner wrote:
| It definitely suffers from a number of problems in MS, probably
| mostly due from having a very large organisation with different
| priorities:
|
| 1) UX teams who have to change things to jutify their existence.
| None of the problems in Windows 10 imho were related to major UX
| problems, just things that should have been fixed like the stupid
| search function which can't find "Explorer" when you type in
| "Explore" 2) UX people who think that the world cares as much as
| they do about the fact the UI looks a bit "dated" and needs to be
| refreshed otherwise people will leave! Apple haven't massively
| changed MacOS and people still use that. 3) Strategic people who
| are trying to pre-empt or force a different way of interacting
| with the OS so that things like AI, blockchain, or whatever will
| work more naturally. 4) Development teams who have decided that
| the programming model is wrong _again_ and therefore they will
| make a load more changes. If I was a Product Manager at MS I
| would be depressed and embarrassed by the number of
| inconsistencies in the platform. It would be understandable if
| "windows 10 apps will start to look different" but this is so
| random, it is annoying. 5) Finance people who can't accept that a
| paid-for product should have exactly zero adverts and the whole
| premise is obnoxious and stinks of greed when it's not like MS
| are struggling to make money. 6) Cloud everything even when those
| experiences e.g. Office365 are noticeably worse in the cloud.
| Also, they are charging you the same/more even though they can
| now manage everything centrally with no deployment costs. 7) The
| whole security accounts eco system is another disaster. "Log in
| with MS account", "Is it a work or personal account?". How should
| I know? It's your account. "Do you want to link all these
| devices?" "No", "Well we will anyway because we have assumed you
| want to and we were only asking to pretend it was your choice"
|
| Microsoft, Microsoft, we love you but we need to talk!
| zippergz wrote:
| As a Mac user, I can tell you that people on this side of the
| fence have been complaining about how Apple is changing the UI
| to make it "fresh" for the past few years too. Maybe the
| changes aren't as drastic as they are in windows, but the same
| thing happens, unfortunately.
| neilv wrote:
| Vote with your feet. Debian, Arch Linux, etc.
| arendtio wrote:
| > I mean, I can literally run a game written for Windows 95 on
| Windows 11 without major issues (no, I am not going to open the
| SafeDisc can of worms this time). I can't do that on macOS or
| Linux boxes reliably, and yet Windows is doing a-OK with this
| task.
|
| While I get the point, that is not as true as it sounds. E.g.
| AFAIK running Tomb Raider 2 is easier on Linux via Proton/Wine
| than it is on Windows.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Maybe the personal desktop idea has done its time and they can't
| find ways to motivate hard work for the reducing profits.
| riskable wrote:
| No. It's just reached the point where organic growth is all
| that's possible. This leaves Microsoft no choice other than the
| turn their users into the product in order to increase revenue.
|
| It's a GOOD thing! The more people that migrate off of Windows
| the better the world will be because then companies can
| (hopefully) focus their software development on non-closed,
| cross-platform ecosystems.
|
| Microsoft is long overdue for a market correction. Hopefully
| the OS market will diversify, bringing a cambrian explosion of
| life into the market.
| 0dayz wrote:
| This article resonates really well with my frustration with
| Windows and oh how I wish I could just switch to Linux, sadly the
| lack of hardware customization on Linux is still a deal breaker
| for me.
|
| It's strange to me tat the company during the xp-7 years had very
| solid and firm understanding of conservative UX design and seemed
| to take pride in it (essentially enterprise quality even for the
| end user), that ship seems to have sailed and instead acts like a
| hybrid of Facebook, Google and Apple worst practices.
| [deleted]
| yeetard wrote:
| This is why I don't think the world makes any sense anymore. How
| is this a product the worlds 2nd biggest tech conglomerate in the
| year 2022 thinks is acceptable to be released to the public?
| How...how are people just accepting this? It's comically bad.
| Remember when Vista came out and there was this massive hate
| storm going on because...reasons I guess (yeah, poorly optimized
| aero on shitty hardware might have sucked but come on...) and now
| 15 years later THIS is what Windows looks like and ... nobody
| bats an eye? Hello?! Is anybody still paying attention?
|
| People always talk about google dying. Yeah, how about Microsoft
| goes dying, how are they even still in business I just don't get
| it..
| fleddr wrote:
| As a lifelong Windows user (since 3.11), Microsoft has always
| sucked at Windows. It started as a single user, non-networked OS
| with an OK UI, followed by 25 years of duct tape.
|
| They've never had "taste". Even their attempts at modern flat
| design are a total disaster.
|
| Security for the longest of time was an afterthought, an entire
| industry was created to fill this fundamental gap. Even
| "internet" was an afterthought.
|
| Another issue is that Microsoft does not see things through. They
| start various seemingly random initiatives and then just give up
| halfway through. They suck at execution. It's been 10 years since
| Windows 8, and the UI is messier than ever. Same for their
| various attempts at a "light" or mobile version of Windows.
|
| I could go on, but the way I see it, Windows is the "people's
| OS". The use case for it is...all of them. It runs the combined
| use cases of billions of people, every niche you can think of.
| Most of these users do not see Windows as particularly enjoyable,
| nor do they enjoy Microsoft's mismanagement, they suffer in
| silence because it still somewhat works, and there's no realistic
| alternative.
|
| Windows is not cool and not high growth, which is why I think
| Microsoft is doing an "Adobe". It's a platform to sell cloud
| products and soon will be a cloud platform/subscription in
| itself. Windows as a service. The writing is on the wall.
| mszcz wrote:
| For me Windows is starting to resemble consumer routers. I mean,
| some serious resources and engineering talent had to have been
| spent on the internals, the kernel, networking, drivers. But the
| thing that the users, the people paying and using the OS end up
| interacting with ends up getting the least resources and even
| less focus.
|
| My theory as to why that is is kinda like The Color of the
| Bikeshed Theory. New management hires want to make a name for
| themselves and want to work on something that's visible, that
| they have an illusion they know something about and something
| that they can use to climb up the corp ladder. So with each
| iteration some new idiot comes along and wants to start over. Two
| years later, when the thing's half finished, they move on and a
| new person comes along...
| ki7 wrote:
| People should really look into using the LTSC version instead the
| pre-installed windows 10. lTSC has no crap apps and bare minimal
| footprint in terms of shit preloaded. Also there are tools like
| privatezilla on GitHub to tweak some privacy settings and wpd.app
| which can block telemetry on firewall level.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It seems Windows releases come in series of two, one good, one
| bad.
|
| Windows XP, Windows Vista. Windows 7, Windows 8. Windows 10,
| Windows 11.
|
| After each successful release Microsoft pull a bunch of crap.
| Users aren't happy and they rather use the older version than
| upgrade to the new one. Microsoft comes to its senses, release a
| better version and the cycle repeats.
|
| So we should kind of wait for Windows 12.
| m_mueller wrote:
| to me it seems more like the pile stuff on top of each other,
| trying to make bad stuff below the surface go away after it's
| sufficiently plastered over. but it never is 100% complete and
| you can still find components even from the Win3.x era. it's
| just that some releases they have plastered it a bit more
| completely (7) and others where it's most superficial (8, 11);
| Vista is a special one as it brought a major new kernel
| version, which afaik they are still using to this day.
| grishka wrote:
| Why do I get redirected to https://den.dev/ukraine? This isn't a
| good idea.
|
| edit: https://archive.ph/q8ayE
| gruez wrote:
| Because virtue signaling. I'm not saying this to de-legitimize
| the "russia is bad" message, but the fact is, in instances like
| this (eg. a personal blog) such actions are far more about
| benefiting the person performing the action (ie. setting up the
| ukraine message) than it is actually about getting russia to
| stop.
| art3m wrote:
| Agree. Those tricky Ukrainians become annoying
| grishka wrote:
| Yes, I'm Russian. No, I don't support what's happening right
| now and I stand with Ukraine. No, I can't do anything about
| it. Now get out of the way and let me read the article.
|
| These performative acts of shoving politics where it doesn't
| belong doesn't do anything to change the situation, they just
| make people like me angry.
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Kinda at a loss for OS/DE at the moment.
|
| Lived on Windows for over 2 decades (completed work via a Linux
| VM). Windows 8 was horrid and Windows 10/11 is hostile towards
| user experience (etc, etc privacy, but mostly user experience).
|
| Used MacOS for half a decade after that and loved the Unix
| terminal and tight desktop experience but underpowered and
| overpriced hardware had me running a hackintosh for over half of
| that time. The move to M1 (and general difficulty maintaining a
| Hackintosh) means that MacOS is off the table for me.
|
| I am currently daily driving Gnome 4 on Fedora and loving it. It
| has some user application UX issues (like Google Chrome mouse
| scrolls slowly) and some questionable desktop environment design
| decisions - but overall a nice place to land.
|
| Not quite as nice as MacOS but it gets the job done.
|
| It's sad that after 30 years on computers, my user experience has
| gotten worse - Gnome 4 came along at the perfect time to catch a
| bunch of MacOS and Windows refugees and I pray the developers
| push it in a direction where it becomes the most ergonomic
| desktop environment available on the Desktop - at least for
| engineers.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Similar story (tho a bit less than 2 decades)
|
| KDE on manjaro here.
| nikodunk wrote:
| Same story for me. Landed on Gnome 4x series Fedora after
| ditching macOS for engineering after a decade. iCloud,
| iMessage, appleTV etc etc hooks just got too intrusive and made
| things too unresponsive in my case.
| mulmen wrote:
| Messages is basically unusable after Big Sur. The new windows
| are a huge step backwards. Notifications are mind bogglingly
| broken. Reminder sync with iCloud... doesn't. Spotlight
| indexes Time Machine directories, which create more deltas
| for Time Machine to index, sending the Spotlight service into
| a feedback loop. Etc, etc, etc.
|
| I'm hopeful the next MacOS shakeup is similar to the recent
| return to sanity in hardware.
|
| Apple hardware is finally recovering from Ives' fever dream.
| The OS needs saving next.
| mulmen wrote:
| The current MacOS desktop environment is, generously, a
| dumpster fire. But it's also miles ahead of anything else on
| the market.
|
| The last decade of desktop environments feels like a march
| backwards, or perhaps even vertical, into some kind of
| alternate reality where the UI is designed to get in the way
| instead of enable.
|
| Modern desktop environments are a painful death by a thousand
| cuts.
|
| This is a rant but a desktop environment is my hammer. It is
| the tool I use more than anything else. The experience is
| sacred. And yet it is defiled annually.
|
| I never feel more helpless than the first moments after a MacOS
| upgrade. Like all my power has been stripped. It hurts.
| YPPH wrote:
| All I want is macOS with window snapping and a maximise
| button. Their absence makes shifting from Windows very
| difficult. I can't understand why these basic features have
| not been added, yet the OS receives changes that, as you
| rightly point out, tend to defile the user experience.
|
| I can't understand why people would want to make windows full
| screen in ordinary situations. It seems to be something I
| would only want to do on rare occasions, given that you lose
| quick access to the menu bar.
|
| Magnet/Rectangle are third-party fixes for the former. But
| it's a basic function that should be built into the OS.
| mulmen wrote:
| To be clear, I think the power in a windowing desktop
| environment is _not_ having to maximize windows. That's a
| compromise for small screens. When I upgraded my 2014 RMBP
| to Big Sur I lost the ability to compose multiple windows
| because of the grotesque enlargement of the window header.
|
| The ability to snap to fill the screen may be useful on
| tiny screens but with Mac hardware shouldn't be as
| important because the real estate (pixels!) should be there
| to use and arrange individual windows. Even multiple
| windows per app.
|
| Modern MacOS (post OSX) got away from the classic MacOS
| (<=9) workflow and now occupies an awkward position of
| having the worst characteristics of Windows, Gnome, and
| OSX.
| YPPH wrote:
| Sure, but if I want to use one app on my screen and still
| have access to the menu bar, it means awkwardly dragging
| the window around to fill gaps. In Windows, it's one
| click.
|
| Similarly, if I want two apps side by side, it's even
| more awkward. Ideally I would want to avoid wasting
| pixels by having unfilled areas, so it's a lot of
| finnicky dragging to make sure they align up. In Windows,
| it requires two clicks.
| mulmen wrote:
| Double click the window header. It will fill the space
| below the menu bar. Double click again and it will return
| to the previous size.
|
| Agreed snapping would be nice. Windows does this well out
| of the box. MacOS leaves way too much quality of life to
| third party apps.
| 1_player wrote:
| > It has some user application UX issues (like Google Chrome
| mouse scrolls slowly)
|
| Try the "Chromium Wheel Scroll Smoother" extension. It's a
| hack, but I've managed to make scrolling as fast as Firefox is,
| which I much prefer.
| stuffbyspencer wrote:
| Hot Take that no doubt will meet a lot of doubt: I would make a
| prediction that Window's next OS, is going to be semi-Linux
| based.
|
| Imagine Windows doing to their OS the way they did with their
| browser, forking opensource code and rebranding it as their own.
| I could see them deciding to take some flavor of Linux (or maybe
| even something esoteric like Google's Fuchsia), and just slapping
| on their bloat & spyware.
|
| I don't think this would damage Microsoft's marketshare as much
| as some people think. Sure, they no longer have "their own
| codebase", but I don't see the benefit in that. Hell, they could
| go lower & build off the actual Linux kernel and then build there
| own distro off of that. That way they can still enforce certain
| structures at a low level.
|
| I would deeply enjoy this, although I would not use it (sticking
| with Linux). But imagine Microsoft embracing & advocating for
| AppImages/Flatpaks/Snap packages, Vulken, WINE/Steam Proton, etc.
| Imagine building for only 2 platforms to get your app running on
| (nearly) all devices. Imagine having Linux on the desktop get the
| same treatment it got with Linux on mobile.
|
| Again, I understand this sounds like I'm predicting pigs will
| fly, or it'll rain cats & dogs, or the government will be
| efficient, but I'm serious, I can see this happening. Maybe not
| soon, but the next decade could be very interesting to see how
| this fabled "new" Microsoft moves & behaves.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| I stopped playing Minecraft recently again. I first quit a few
| years ago, but wanted to show it to my young son. Trying to go
| back and EVEN JUST INSTALL it now is filled with Microsoft-ian
| circles of login catastrophe and "upgrade your account"
| nightmares.
|
| The installation process was so difficult, I will never play
| again.
| martinmakesgame wrote:
| Use multimc.org. When the launcher changed to a microsoft app
| we moved to using the multimc launcher. It has far more
| predicatable and reliable behaviour than what microsoft is
| offering
| grumpyprole wrote:
| I tried to play Minecraft with my kids yesterday. It forced us
| to migrate accounts, but after clicking lots of buttons, the
| presumably final Microsoft account creation part just hung and
| wouldn't finish. My kids were like "By why can't we just play?
| We paid for it!". They couldn't understand why "Microsoft
| accounts" were even needed for local network play. Neither can
| I.
| pjettter wrote:
| I still don't understand what a "Microsoft Account" IS. Is it
| Hotmail? I know what an Apple Id is! And it just works!
| kleene_op wrote:
| Same experience with my youngest sister.
|
| I bought her a Minecraft account via my Microsoft one, getting
| her the necessary permission for multiplayer took an hour to do
| so, parsing through cryptic microsoft documentation which
| essentially consists of a maze of links that loop back to pages
| you already visited.
|
| The funny thing is that one of my brother told me before I
| started that I could just download the pirated client, that way
| I wouldn't have to pay for Minecraft for the 938th time and the
| pirated client just works out of the box contrary to the
| official version.
|
| It'd been years since I had to interact with anything
| Microsoft, I thought he was exagerating. What a shock when I
| realized pirates actually do a better job than MS at making
| their own products accessible.
| hoosieree wrote:
| I tried to use a different email address to sign in to Windows
| from the one associated with my Minecraft purchase, and what a
| nightmare that was.
|
| Spent hours flailing with the Xbox store, Microsoft store,
| Mojang and Minecraft accounts, resetting passwords, etc.
| Eventually got it to work but I have no idea what fixed it.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Minetest scratches that itch pretty well, open source and no MS
| nonsense.
| taneq wrote:
| Was going to mention Minetest, we've been running a family
| mineclone2 server for a couple of months now and it's been
| great.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| I've been playing the same Minetest SMP server for 5+ years
| now. Minetest is pretty good, the engine is C++ but the game
| world is defined via lua.
|
| There are some quirks that will drive hard-code Minecraft
| players nuts, but it's not that bad overall, especially if
| you like the building aspect of MC.
| MereInterest wrote:
| As somebody who started playing back in alpha, it's amazing how
| many user-hostile changes have been made. Needing to transfer
| accounts multiple times, finding the cross-platform Java
| version among all the various Windows-only or mobile only
| versions, finding out that the account had been archived years
| ago.
|
| And that's not even getting into the mess that is the licensing
| that was Minecraft Alpha. That was changed even before
| Microsoft took over, when lawyers took one look at the license
| and realized that players getting "all future versions" [0]
| would include any sequels, spin-offs, platform ports, etc.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101214061702/http://notch.tumb...
| wincy wrote:
| I lost my Minecraft alpha account apparently because I was
| allowed to "activate" Minecraft VR in the oculus store rather
| than the Microsoft Store. I sold my oculus and it's
| impossible to launch Minecraft in the Oculus store without a
| VR headset, despite it being the full game!
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Remember the Minecraft Alpha promise? It went something
| like "if you buy this game in Alpha you get all future
| minecraft softwares/ports/etc for free".
|
| Wonder where that went hmmmm
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I've really been dreading the Microsoft account switch for
| Minecraft, which I run only on linux. Is it going to demand my
| phone number? A credit card (even though I already own the
| game)? I have no idea and I don't want to give them any of
| those things.
| e40 wrote:
| A year or so ago my son tried to activate his Minecraft
| account. He gave up. Said it was days and days of hell and he
| was really upset.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Reminds me of what happened years earlier when we turned on our
| XBOX and had to update. Basically, it took an entire day of
| logic loops in the login/verification system, which required
| several hours of being on the phone with MS.
|
| It was a forced upgrade, so otherwise we would have ignored it.
|
| So, this Minecraft stuff is nothing new for MS.
| snambi wrote:
| The best way to make windows better, is, "stop using windows".
| That is the only way.
| isanengineer wrote:
| Does anyone have any insight into how much benefit MSFT actually
| gets from these decisions? I understand that the intent is to
| 'make line go up', but as a simpler user I can't really imagine
| how telemetry and shilling OneDrive actually leads to meaningful
| revenue growth. On the other hand, people have been loudly
| complaining about this since the Windows 7 days, and I imagine
| that there must be some reason they're doubling down on such an
| unpopular strategy.
| intern4tional wrote:
| Former MSFT here. People tend to think of Microsoft as one
| unified company with a unified strategy.
|
| That is not the case, its best thought of as a batch of little
| companies that band together to create a product. These
| companies may compete for resources and attention internally
| and so each one will optimize for their own benefit.
|
| Ads in Edge? That's probably a decision made by some Principal
| Program Manager with director support on the browser team. The
| metrics that get tracked for that event are likely how many
| people click through the ad, rather than the over all impact to
| the OS.
|
| The OS Core team doesn't have the influence to say no, or stop
| the browser from showing those ads. I recall internally when I
| (a paying customer for O365) got a toast (that is what a popup
| ad is called internally) for O365 and I decided to raise an
| issue.
|
| Some PM II (mid-level PM was running the campaign, and they
| were showing metrics that more people signed up for O365 as a
| result of the campaign, so per them it was good. I was not in
| that organization and since that director had OKRs that
| required signups, he told me to go away.
|
| The core OS stripped down has none of these things, but at
| integrated build, lots of stuff gets put in, and when one team
| says no to something, often another one will say yes. A good
| example is that Office has its own update infrastructure and
| tooling outside of Windows Update. Why? Office wanted to
| deliver updates on weekly basis and Windows Update said no as
| that would be too impacting for users, so Office simply said ok
| and built their own.
|
| These issues rarely if ever get surfaced to an executive, as by
| the time the metrics get up to a CVP generally they are showing
| broader trends, like adoption, or game breaking bugs, or as you
| note, the line going up. Executives do not get these problems
| (such as inconsistent UI) to them. Those things rarely rise
| above a Group PM or Engineering Manager level, and those people
| often do not care about the complaint as for that metric helps
| them or is part of their strategy.
|
| Windows, the product team cannot do anything about it due to
| political problems internally at MS and that is not the
| engineering team behind Window's fault. We (as that was a team
| I was on) hated when a product team would do something
| obnoxious and if we could catch it prior to release would often
| bluntly complain. More often than not we would get told that we
| were the platform and to stay out of the other teams business.
|
| Anyways, there isn't some mass company dark pattern strategy or
| other conspiracy, just a bunch of little factions that are all
| optimizing for their own interests. Office is probably the
| worst offender of the batch (Skype, Teams, OneDrive) and
| Windows can do little about it.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I'd argue that once a movement has been installed it's very
| difficult to rule it out unless someone on the board can PROVE
| that it hurts revenue. This kind of decision (UI designers
| overriding anyone else) probably comes from a middle manager
| who has top support, the exact reason why it is impossible to
| un-stuck such decisions. Think Apple, you have to get X out
| before you can unstuck his/her decisions. That's politics.
| after_care wrote:
| > I can't really imagine how telemetry and shilling OneDrive
| actually leads to meaningful revenue growth.
|
| Microsoft's ad revenue is $10B (1). Allowing advertisers to
| send ads based on user profiles is a major feature of digital
| advertising. Collecting telemetry data improves the user
| profiling.
|
| These types of changes have a direct positive impact on one of
| Microsoft's fastest growing revenue stream. This will lead to
| meaningful revenue growth.
|
| (1) https://digiday.com/media/microsofts-ad-revenue-
| hit-10b-and-...
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I don't see any mention of Cortana or how hard that is to rip out
| of the OS, but I think it's worth mentioning. The tool called
| "Everything" by https://www.voidtools.com/ is so insanely better
| than Cortana and blazingly fast that I'm not sure why they're
| still trying to push Cortana.
|
| https://www.getblackbird.net/ helps a lot and it's one of the
| first things I do to Windows installs when I need to use them,
| but it can break stuff if you're too aggressive with it (e.g.
| Windows store / Xbox stuff, which for some reason is how to
| record screenshot videos in Windows...
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/record-a-game-cl...
| ).
|
| The article also didn't mention the Microsoft Store and how awful
| everything around that experience is, especially compared to
| macOS, where the worst part is how signing apps works (
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Se...
| vs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/msix/package/signin... ).
| Quinner wrote:
| Search being broken for local files is infuriating. I've tried
| to do registry modifications to fix it and remove Cortana and
| it STILL won't find a file searched for by name in the root C:
| directory! But it'll give you random web results!
| mizaru wrote:
| Blackbird gets blocked by Defender immediately. Not sure why
| I'm surprised.
|
| edit: Then again, that tool does seem to make it quite easy to
| damage your Windows installation.
| skissane wrote:
| I don't trust it because it is a closed source binary and
| there is a lack of detailed documentation of exactly what
| settings it changes.
| krageon wrote:
| You could run it in a VM and see what changes are made.
| Given that Jotti by and large says it is benign (very few
| positive results), it's probably okay. Such trojan flagging
| as you see here is frequently a result of binary
| compression or packing.
| bitwize wrote:
| Windows at this point is a ball and chain around even Microsoft's
| leg. They pivoted to a "cloud and services" company under Nadella
| because they can't make money off Windows anymore -- except by
| strip-mining its reputation and ubiquity by turning it into
| adware/spyware. Truly we live in the worst timeline.
| jthrowsitaway wrote:
| If it pushes people towards better OSes (any *nix IMO) that's a
| good thing. I was tired of Windows back in the XP days.
| 8note wrote:
| Imo, the best OS has the software that I want to run.
|
| I think wine is doing a more important job than MS at
| allowing windows to die
| mindwok wrote:
| Agree. Wine, Proton and associated libraries are allowing
| Windows to slowly go the way of the dinosaur. If those
| projects keep delivering I genuinely believe the year of
| the Linux desktop will slowly approach.
| ta220320119 wrote:
| It's been my issue with some of the non-azure MSFT products
| generally speaking. You can play games and have fun backgrounds
| in Teams, but the app eats up all your memory and chatting sucks.
| Windows is the same as the article is pointing out. It somehow
| became harder to save documents in office. Feels like all the
| feature sets in the products are pushed with the wrong agenda.
| "better is the enemy of good"
| mavhc wrote:
| Windows is free as in adverts for beer
| neltnerb wrote:
| I've been using Linux for 21 years. I currently have to deal with
| maintaining specialty software for 50+ computers.
|
| From everything I've seen I dread upgrading to Windows 11 only
| slightly less than just figuring out how to convert it all to
| work on Linux somehow. I imagine like everyone I will put it off
| until the last possible second.
|
| No need to reply about how you can do everything on Linux now,
| until wine works perfectly with $100k equipment that only works
| with Windows software from 2004 100% of the time it's too risky
| ;-)
|
| The point is that I understand how much of a pain it would be to
| convert to using Linux and still think it could potentially be
| worth it compared to upgrading to Windows 11. I would never
| consider it at all if it was just an OS instead of an
| experience... what are the odds that the software works on
| Windows 11 perfectly anyway, my experience going from Windows 7
| to Windows 10 was pretty miserable and that was 3 years after
| Windows 10 was standard.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Windows 11 looks great in screenshots, but when I actually try to
| use it, it was terrible.
|
| I tried to move a file in Explorer using the context menu and I
| couldn't confidently tell Cut/Copy/Rename icons apart because
| they are just abstract lines that represents the file operation.
|
| I started looking at ways to get the original Context Menu back,
| and then I just decided to rollback to Windows 10.
| Traster wrote:
| The problem I have with windows is two-fold. Firstly, I came to
| windows before Vista. So I know how powerful the old windows
| settings/features were. I knew exactly where to access everything
| I wanted. I have a feeling this is probably the same for many
| people from all sorts of backgrounds (Personally, I experimented
| with Apple - Hello touchbar!). But the second issue is the new
| damn UIs aren't exhasutive! THey're a thin layer on top of the
| acutal data, which don't tell you what you actually need, and
| often revert you back to the old UI. If you're going to ship a
| product that refers me back to the old UI for half the stuff I'm
| interested in... just don't ship the new UI. It's not worth the
| time.
|
| It's been 15 years since Vista and this hasn't been fixed. It's
| difficult to find people to actually just deliver on basic stuff
| apparently. This is why the commandline works. Becuase if all
| else fails there is 1 interface. I don't think this is unfixable
| but it requires a _lot_ of gruntwork.
| charles_f wrote:
| > If you're going to ship a product that refers me back to the
| old UI for half the stuff I'm interested in... just don't ship
| the new UI.
|
| That's exactly the problem of each iteration on Windows. New
| overlay on top of the old one that _always_ misses the one
| thing you need, and you either get lucky and find the right
| menu right away to get to the old screen that gives you what
| you want, or you get into hell.
|
| The new network screens are notoriously bad, and it always
| takes me 5 minutes to find how the hell to get to the adapters
| screen again.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| I put a shortcut for specifically that screen on my desktop
| ... and ClassicShell makes it easy to open the original
| control panel.
| ho_schi wrote:
| > There is Windows Forms, WPF, MAUI, UWP, WTL, WinUI, MFC, and I
| am sure others that I am missing.
|
| The list is missing the old Win32 API? Microsoft never cared
| about continuation between UI libraries and HIG. Neither
| application programmers. They just add another UI when they feel
| the need. While Gtk is puting a lot effort in compatibility and
| consistency and they're blamed anyway. Usually for theming which
| Gtk actually doesn't appreciate. And for Qt compatibility is a
| business model.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Although most points are true, I don't think ms is the one to
| blame about limit of changing new tab page.
|
| The reason of limit of change default edge new tab is simple. It
| is just due to adwares. The adwares changed the dawn new tabs
| instead of the users changed it everytime. The popularity is so
| high that there is no benefit to allow users change it by
| default. Because users won't do it, adware will.
| IceHegel wrote:
| I can't stand the ads. I feel like a sucker whenever I use
| windows for games, like I'm just there so the computer can
| extract something from me.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Of course I agree with these confounding decisions, and I've
| written about it before. I must, however, point out that yes,
| _you do in fact need an Apple account_ to log into your Mac
| device on recent versions of macOS. Not only that, but you won 't
| be able to download any apps (free or not) without adding a
| credit card to your account.
|
| I found the mac setup experience to be even worse than Windows 10
| (both of these done in the last 6 months). I haven't even tried
| Windows 11 and have no intention of doing so. In both cases I
| made choices during the setup process that were not the default,
| and I believe that it broke some things, at least in the case of
| Mac, where most of the users _do_ have another Apple device to
| use for 2FA, or _do_ want to use iCloud for backups (or OneDrive
| - I 'm sure some people use these services but I have absolutely
| no desire!)
|
| Anyway, it's very frustrating to watch the user experience
| getting worse and worse from organizations that have an amount of
| resources to work with that we can't even fathom.
|
| Edit: to say I'm not hugely invested in either Windows or Mac's
| longterm success. There are no personal or professional computing
| needs that I have (or predict) that can't be satisfied in Linux,
| and my usage patterns reflect that.
| amarshall wrote:
| > I must, however, point out that yes, you do in fact need an
| Apple account to log into your Mac device on recent versions of
| macOS.
|
| This is false, at least as of macOS 12.3. However, the install
| process does encourage signing-in. Unlike Windows, though, it
| doesn't require non-obvious shenanigans--like disconnecting
| from the Internet--to bypass it during the installer.
| Reportedly, the latest Windows 11 Insider builds do not provide
| any means to create a local account in the installer.
|
| > Not only that, but you won't be able to download any apps
| (free or not) without adding a credit card to your account.
|
| This is also false, I presently have an Apple account with no
| CC and have downloaded (free) Mac App Store applications using
| it.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I guess I should be more specific about what I could and
| could not do. I could not download XCode without adding a
| credit card. I've already mentioned that it seemed broken,
| which it did. I spent time with support trying to figure it
| out. Ultimately, once I added a credit card I was able to
| download. Perhaps I was already acknowledging that I would
| have an AppleID, since the machine was expressly for iOS
| development.
| aftergibson wrote:
| If users were willing to put up with all the dark patterns, ads
| and tracking in Windows 10, they'll suffer through this too and
| the next iteration. People using computers as appliances won't
| care, and the rest technical enough to be annoyed are boiling
| frogs.
| amai wrote:
| Windows needs a good stackexchange forum where one can find all
| kinds of workarounds for its shortcomings. Otherwise it will stay
| unusable.
| matiasmolinari wrote:
| For anyone curious why these inconsistencies happen:
|
| https://youtu.be/5IUj1EZwpJY
| https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf
| nla wrote:
| The problem is that it is garbage and has always been garbage. I
| just bought my wife a new laptop that had 11 pre-installed. It
| REQUIRES a MS account to use the laptop. So I returned it today
| and got her a Mac. Problem solved.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I would be nice if ReactOS team would be funded to finish
| development of the OS. You would run any Windows software without
| the annoying bits that Windows has.
| bstar77 wrote:
| Windows doesn't need to change a single thing, it's just doing
| it's thing and it's been doing it for ages. There are actually
| viable alternatives these days if you don't like it.
|
| Windows has always been an inferior OS, but I don't worry or
| complain about it. It hasn't been on my radar for over 15 years.
| I've spent that time learning *nix patterns instead of dealing
| with Windows quirks. That choice has paid massive dividends.
| phkahler wrote:
| Windows _users_ need a change in priorities. FTFY.
|
| The OS has gone to shit, but people keep right on using it and
| complaining about how bad it's getting. What is your lame
| priority for sticking with it? Don't tell me gaming - get a
| console or VR headset, or steam on Linux. If you're that hung up
| on _one_ game that doesn 't run anywhere else then again you need
| to change your priorities. If it's using Excel or Word with a
| bunch of customizations that won't work in LibreOffice, again you
| need to change your priorities or approach to solving the
| problems you did that to solve.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >What is your lame priority for sticking with it?
|
| Adobe and Autodesk products.
|
| >If it's using Excel or Word with a bunch of customizations
| that won't work in LibreOffice, again you need to change your
| priorities or approach to solving the problems you did that to
| solve.
|
| Only because MS is hell-bent on destroying their ecosystem. As
| long as Windows 10 is still receiving security updates, I can
| keep getting actual work done instead of investing a ton of
| time into things I care nothing about. I have no interest in
| developing office/photo/cad software, only in using those
| things.
| efdee wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: I use Windows because it does what I want it
| to do. Not for lack of knowing alternatives - I've been using
| Linux on desktops and servers for well over two decades now.
|
| I don't really care about the telemetry. For some reason, I
| don't see the in-UI ads people are complaining about. Yes,
| sometimes I'm annoyed by it. I'm even more annoyed when I run
| Linux on desktops. So what?
|
| And don't get me started on just how condescending it is for
| you to be telling people their priorities are wrong because
| they are not yours. There's nothing wrong with sticking to
| Windows because that one game you're hung up on doesn't run on
| Windows. There's nothing wrong with using Excel or Word because
| that one extension you're using doesn't work or doesn't exist
| on LibreOffice. Telling people to "get a console or VR headset"
| for gaming instead of their Windows rig with the latest AAA-
| games that won't run on Linux (yet)? That's just obnoxiously
| ignorant.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > What is your lame priority for sticking with it? Don't tell
| me gaming - get a console or VR headset, or steam on Linux.
|
| Tell me you're not a gamer without telling me you're not a
| gamer.
|
| The desire to play with mouse + keyboard is reason enough to
| stick with a PC. Wanting to play in 1440p @ 144 fps is another.
| First-class support for Discord. Steam sales. I could go on and
| on about reasons to play on PC.
|
| Steam on Linux is getting better, and the success of the Steam
| Deck might convince developers to offer greater Linux support,
| but it's still not at the level it needs to be. Not to mention
| this argument completely ignores non-Steam games like League of
| Legends. It _kind_ of works on Linux...sometimes...and with a
| lot of configuration and work.
|
| Also, the suggestion to just get a VR headset is absurd.
| mattrick wrote:
| Installing League via Lutris is not _that_ difficult. It 's
| certainly not as idiot-proof as it needs to be, but the
| average Linux user should be capable of following the
| relatively simple instructions provided by communities like
| /r/leagueoflinux. It also runs pretty well, at least for me.
| canbus wrote:
| Maybe I use it for work? Or because WINE isn't perfect for
| everything that I need to use, and I don't want to spend hours
| trying to configure it?
|
| What about basic users? They don't care whether they should be
| using KDE Plasma or a Gnome-based window manager etc - maybe
| they want something that 'just works'
| phkahler wrote:
| >> What about basic users? They don't care whether they
| should be using KDE Plasma or a Gnome-based window manager
| etc - maybe they want something that 'just works'
|
| There are Linux distributions and MacOS that "just work" a
| LOT better than Windows these days.
| yuuta wrote:
| Windows 7 is the last version made by Microsoft as a software
| company. Starting from Windows 8, Microsoft became a cloud
| company, pushing users all these craps.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| What you're seeing there in Windows is a two-dimensional,
| stylized representation of the bloody turf battles between
| business units within Microsoft. Most recently adtech has entered
| the battle and seem to be really killing it.
| astrea wrote:
| This is the only comment that needs to be on this post.
| Microsoft has been designing-by-committee Windows much to the
| chagrin of their users for years. I don't know the last time I
| was truly excited for a release.
| Loughla wrote:
| >I don't know the last time I was truly excited for a
| release.
|
| Honestly, and I know it's a joke because of the very nerd-
| tastic dancing, but it was for this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM
| rbut wrote:
| Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed.
|
| In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything
| Microsoft, unless I have to. I make sure I use a local
| administrator account instead of a Microsoft account.
|
| Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would
| only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox
| Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me they are
| syncing all my browser history to their servers for my benefit..
|
| It's even worse when you activate Office 365. There is a small
| checkbox at the end which if you don't uncheck, converts your
| local administrator into your Microsoft account.. Going back to a
| local administrator account is not an easy task.
| [deleted]
| mikevin wrote:
| > It's even worse when you activate Office 365. There is a
| small checkbox at the end which if you don't uncheck, converts
| your local administrator into your Microsoft account.. Going
| back to a local administrator account is not an easy task.
|
| I'm not even sure it's possible, I've tried multiple approaches
| but gave up after almost having to do a clean install.
|
| Now I have to deal with an accountname that contains multiple
| characters that make WSL interactions with the windows paths a
| game of Russian roulette with shell quoting bullets.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Can't you just make a new local admin account and delete all
| traces of the other account, including in the registry?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| The word "just" is doing some heavy lifting there...
| hef19898 wrote:
| So heavy I abandoned and went for a clean install and new
| Win10 license. Turned it was faster and easier.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| nyjah wrote:
| I saw this comment and began to wonder if it was necessary
| to make a throwaway to make your comment. But then I
| clicked the name and realized this account is used more
| than some random throwaway.
|
| Almost had me asking hn if we were abusing throwaway
| accounts.
| leshenka wrote:
| Unlike Meta/Alphabet, Microsoft actually has something
| that's not shameful
| rapind wrote:
| Off the top of my head, Project Zero?
|
| I never forgave M$ for IE6 though, so I'm biased. A new
| generation is being lulled into thing they're the good
| guys.
| hoseja wrote:
| >embrace
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| You don't think any of those are "not shameful"?
|
| - Google search
|
| - Google maps
|
| - YouTube
|
| - FB Messenger/WhatsApp
|
| - Instagram
|
| - Oculus
|
| - FB Marketplace
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| To be honest, yeah, I can't decide which one is the
| biggest anti-user shitshow. My personal favorite is YT
| which likes to make at least one universally disliked
| decision per year. But I'm sure everyone has their own.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Where do you think they got the motivation to form
| monopolies in their respective areas?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Facebook marketplace is full of stolen goods boosted by
| meth heads that they won't do anything about.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| And Facebook groups are full of posts advertising
| impersonation services aimed to bypass background checks
| at jobs, notably delivery and ridesharing services, for
| people with criminal background and people that do not
| pass e-verify.
|
| I have reported them but Facebook won't do anything about
| them.
| martin_a wrote:
| All the sweet monthly active users and the ad revenue!
| raxxorrax wrote:
| That is a pretty low bar to have in tech. A few years ago
| spying on your users was seen as a grave sin. This was
| changed by large tech corporations that groomed their
| developers respectively so that they can justify it to
| themselves.
|
| So being the least bad tech company isn't too convincing.
| bcg361 wrote:
| Who thinks spying on users is fine nowadays?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Oh, I installed two OSes last year: Ubuntu on my then daily
| driver (it still is my private one) and a clean Windows ten
| on my son's laptop. That used to be my old back-up and had my
| old company account on it, in addition to his school teams
| account. I tried to convert it to a local admin and throw his
| educational MS Office license on it. It ended with buying a
| second market Win10 license (I bought two, only one worked)
| and a clean, new install. Everything else just failed. I'll
| never use a MS Account for _anything_ again.
|
| That expends to MS Office subscriptions as well. I once
| bought one through (stupid, I know) GoDaddy as an extension
| to my domain mail service. It never worked, not once. I still
| paid for it, so. The user account didn't even exist on MS's
| end. Only way to get rid of it was to cancel the credit card
| behind it. MS stopped bothering me after two months of unpaid
| subscriptions...
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > Now I have to deal with an accountname that contains
| multiple characters that make WSL interactions with the
| windows paths a game of Russian roulette with shell quoting
| bullets.
|
| Really? For me, when I install Windows with a Microsoft
| account, it makes my username just something like "nyusz"
| rather than "nyuszika7h".
| Geenirvana wrote:
| I do not mind logging into a Microsoft account however the most
| bizarre situation happened to me very recently.
|
| I will occasionally log into my personal Microsoft account when
| accessing a Microsoft website when I am on Lunch to work on
| some personal projects.
|
| At work last week, I was upgraded to Office 365 and as a result
| I started downloading the latest versions and trying it out in
| various ways. One of these was upgrading my old OneNote into
| the latest version (2013 -> 365)
|
| Saturday morning, I booted up my own different PC at home and
| notice in the "Recommended" section on the Windows 11 start
| menu "Work 365". This is the name of the OneNote I created at
| work when I upgraded the document. I do not even have Office on
| my own PC. Hovering over it would show that it was located in
| my Works One Drive folder.
|
| I must have been logged into my personal account on OneNote and
| it somehow meta-data? links it between the work and personal
| accounts.
|
| I am now in process of removing all traces of my personal
| account from Windows on my work laptop as the very last thing I
| want to happen is to see personal files appearing in the
| Recommended section of my works laptop!
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Wow that is CREEPY AF and very very scary. This is an instant
| reason to never use Windows because I'd be so scared that I'd
| leak personal/private data to other people's computers. The
| really fucking scary thing is that even we both as power
| users who understand computers, the internet and how things
| work are even extremely vulnerable to those hostile dark
| patterns in Windows that less tech savvy family members would
| be absolute prey to those Microsoft hyenas. There is NO WAY
| that anyone in my family will ever use a Windows or Microsoft
| device. It will be iPhones and Macs for them for the rest of
| their lives.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If you take info sec seriously that should be immediate
| reason to ban one note, IMHO. Because if you are not trying
| to, MS will just spill company data to your private
| accounts for you!
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| It's not just OneNote. They are absolutely confused, as
| an organisation, about accounts, data privacy and data
| security.
|
| I can't, in theory, access my work's OneDrive from my
| personal machines, due to a required SSO on top of
| Microsoft's, and a VPN requirement. But somehow there are
| some of my personal files in my work's OneDrive.
|
| I don't know how this happened. I can't log into our VPN
| as it's machine-locked (it checks before allowing you on)
| and therefore OneDrive is supposed to stop me accessing
| it.
|
| I keep getting emails from Microsoft about an Azure
| Enterprise agreement that they have decided I have power
| over, along with a group of people from a random company
| that I'm not related to in any way. Someone did a typo
| and included me by accident? Not likely as I have an
| email address that's difficult to accidentally use via
| typo.
|
| Microsoft are taking people's responses to the group as
| authorised instructions as to what to do with their
| enterprise agreement. I've responded several times and
| said I am not related but they keep emailing about it. I
| know a lot about that company's people, structure and
| agreements with Microsoft now!
| mring33621 wrote:
| "emails from Microsoft about an Azure Enterprise
| agreement" == phishing
| Geenirvana wrote:
| I obviously did not find it amusing.
|
| I had my young son with me at the time so I didn't
| investigate it further. What would have I seen if I clicked
| the More > button in the Start Menu - would there have been
| more leakage? Have I logged into my work account on my
| personal PC at some point? Why did it only show the OneNote
| file but not any others? What happened if I actually
| clicked it and tried to open it? Did I simply make a
| mistake when using multiple accounts in one OS?
|
| There are numerous questions I am asking myself that I
| don't have an answer for yet.
|
| As far as I can see, I have removed all traces of my
| personal account off my work laptop now but I am hoping
| (not sure this is the correct wording in this context) that
| I can see still the file in my Recommended Section when I
| get home.
|
| I really would like to know exactly how it can happen.
| [deleted]
| unhammer wrote:
| > In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything
| Microsoft
|
| and then you try to look at a picture of your kids but it's a
| HEIC file from an iPhone so Windows says you have to go to the
| Store and download Microsoft HEVC decoder which for some reason
| wasn't bundled with Windows but hey it's just a dollar oh
| that's _nearly_ free we just need your credit card details and
| e-mail and make a user account and would you like a free
| newsletter with that LOOK OVER THERE
| whileweswitchdefaultbrowsers and check out what else is on sale
| today
| tored wrote:
| The future of operating systems will be of microtransactions
| and loot boxes.
|
| - Oh, you want to format your hard drive? Purchase in store
| :-)
|
| - Checkout our file utilities bundle, 50% off today!
|
| - Congratulations on formatting your hard drive, here is a
| free loot box!
|
| - Share your hard drive formatting experience with our award
| winning app instaclip!
|
| - Subscribe to our feed and give us a thumbs up!
| jjoonathan wrote:
| - the part that does the actual work is still the same
| format dialog designed by David Plummer one morning all
| those years ago
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Used to be able to get around this charge by using this link
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/hevc-video-extensions-
| from...
|
| Not sure it's possible anymore though or what an alternative
| might be now.
| alexklark wrote:
| But who needs HEVC, when you have 3D objects.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Looks like switching to linux when win 7 support ended was the
| right move.
|
| All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason, but
| at least I don't have to deal with that BS.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| I can't wait for Proton to get better so I can ditch Windows
| for good. I know it's already really good and it will run for
| most of the game I play, but I do like to dabble in
| competitive online or AAA once in a while :(
| deadbunny wrote:
| Proton is great, anticheat work fine with it. It's up to
| the producers of AAA games to enable it now.
| etataetaet wrote:
| I've probably played ~15-20 games on wine now and
| literally all have worked with, at most, minimal tweaking
| (Changing the proton version). I mostly play single
| player or indie multiplayer so I haven't had to deal with
| the anti cheat.
|
| Only game that hasn't worked with Proton is Oneshot and
| its kina understandable considering the games context...
| It did have a linux version that mostly works out of the
| box though!
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Proton and VR are currently not happy bedfellows.
| simion314 wrote:
| >All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason,
|
| Could be a GPU thermal issue, happens to me with old games
| that have no FPS limit, then the GPU does so much work that
| it hangs for some reason(Nvidia GT970), I am not sure if is
| my GPU broken/dusty, the driver bugged or Xorg, Windows users
| only see a game crash not a full system crash.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I've had the freezes happen when my nvidia drivers weren't
| properly installed and when the kernel wasn't using the
| nvidia DKMS modules. glxgears should run super fast at a
| consistent framerate. Check out https://gist.github.com/wangg
| 12/c69b56272eaeed1aba9515d19f55...
| ipaddr wrote:
| A update is needed as most are on 20.04
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I made Kubuntu my main OS a long time ago, and I play a lot
| of (thanks to Valve, Steam, Wine and Proton...) games, and I
| never experienced a game freezing. My experience it's so
| good, that I only touch Windows to play Fornite.
|
| The only annoying bug/problem that I have actually, it's that
| Dolphin could have a erratic behavior if I had mounted a SMB
| folder via an VPN and I end the VPN before un-mounting the
| SMB folder.
| nwallin wrote:
| > All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason,
|
| _All_?
|
| My experience is that 90% work fine, 9% have weirdness, (for
| instance, voices in Skyrim are out of sync with mouth
| movements) and 1% of them have game breaking bugs.
| dimgl wrote:
| Yeah, I have the experience as OP. Every single game I play
| on Linux has random hitches for seconds at a time.
| fsflover wrote:
| Sounds like a typical problem with an Nvidia GPU.
| dagw wrote:
| I've found that AMD APUs are by far the worst supported
| GPUs on Linux. Nvidia gives me far less problems.
| freedomben wrote:
| Can you keep an htop running by chance? It would be very
| helpful to see if CPU is maxxing out when the hitches
| happen, or if the swap file is growing, etc.
|
| Any time it happens to me, it's usually low resources
| because of something. Most often some chrome tab (or 3)
| that are going crazy. I also discovered that one of the
| apps that I thought was using hardware acceleration
| actually wasn't. The CPU usage made it pretty clear that
| the CPU was doing a ton of work.
| mobilio wrote:
| I do this switch 13 years ago just before 7 was released to
| macOS.
|
| So mine last Windows was XP.
| McAtNite wrote:
| I'm desperately wishing for Valve to have success with the
| Deck so that Linux gets better attention from game devs. The
| last Windows machine in my environment is exclusively for PC
| games, and I honestly can't wait to install Linux over it.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Just start now. Think of unsupported games as you think of
| games for Nintendo and Sony machines. Your financial
| support of gaming on Linux will encourage developers to
| support it. Waiting just keeps the status quo.
| RussianCow wrote:
| I did this a few years ago with the same mindset,
| thinking I'd still regularly boot into Windows, but I
| haven't done so in probably over a year. I was surprised
| at how little I missed the games that don't run (well or
| at all) on Linux--probably because there are so many good
| options these days.
|
| At this point I'm thinking of deleting my Windows
| partition altogether.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Yeah, if you ever REALLY need one you can just run it in
| an emulator. In 20 years, I've never REALLY needed it.
| foerbert wrote:
| Really? I made the same move (or at least finished it 100%)
| at the same time, and that's not a problem I've ever seen.
|
| Some (surprisingly few, actually) don't perform well under
| Wine/Proton, or at all, but random freezing I've never seen.
| And certainly not _all_ of my games.
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| I also made the move to 100% Linux rather than move to
| Windows 8. Initially some games had issues but things
| gradually improved over time.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Seems like luck of the draw. I've had the same random
| freezing issues
| skoskie wrote:
| But it's linux, so one obscure setting in a config file or
| slightly different hardware can make all the difference. I
| say this as a linux user since WinXP.
|
| The whole OS market is pretty rough right now.
| tjr225 wrote:
| Unless you care about gaming MacOS has been rock solid
| for at least a decade. For what it is worth I am no mac
| fanboy, I am typing this to you on a windows 10 computer
| in my shop(that I use for gaming, among other things).
| DeathArrow wrote:
| In what way macOS being rock solid can help Windows users
| having issues such as those described in the article?
| konstmonst wrote:
| I've got a Mac at work and I hate it with passion. I now
| use my own linux Laptop instead. There is no del key, no
| home, ctrl and alt are swapped in some aplications and
| not the others. Login screeen does not remember the
| language and animations come back after every update even
| when I explicitly disable them. Muscle memory from other
| 99% computers I use doesn't work and most of the games
| don't. I feel like mac os is in contempt of me and I
| really hate it when I have to use it for mandatory tasks.
| Mac doesnt fit for me at all, I use Linux for Production
| and Windows for games
| prewett wrote:
| Delete forward is Fn + delete, Home is Fn + up. It's not
| a specific key, obviously, but all those keys don't fit
| on a laptop. However, if you plug in your own keyboard
| I'm sure they'll be recognized.
|
| My experience is that the only apps that use actual Ctrl
| on macOS are GTK apps, like Inkscape, and terminal apps
| (because Ctrl-C should be quite different from activating
| the menu item corresponding to the Cmd-C shortcut).
| Unfortunately, if you use non-native apps, you're going
| to get a non-native experience.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > no del key
|
| Ctrl+d, like in emacs
|
| > no home
|
| Ctrl+a. Also: Ctrl+e for end-of-line. Like in emacs. Also
| Ctrl+fbpn.
|
| Works best with CapsLock->Control, which is a native GUI
| option, not something you have to install/CLI for (linux)
| or something you have to registry hack (windows). I
| really miss these on Windows and Linux, though not enough
| to fight the native layout. It's a rougher fight than you
| might imagine, though.
|
| > Login screeen does not remember the language
|
| It does for me, but more importantly: it shows it.
| Windows likes to swap the keyboard layout out from under
| me and doesn't show it. Mix with a 3-strikes-you're-
| locked-out policy at work, and it turns into pain.
|
| > animations come back after every update
|
| Yeah, that's fair.
|
| > Muscle memory
|
| That's not.
|
| > I feel like mac os is in contempt of me
|
| I feel like windows is actively malicious towards me and
| linux desktop doesn't care enough about me to do even
| minimum viable bugfixing. It's definitely a "pick your
| poison" situation.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The last time I had to use MacOS regularly, the thing
| that killed it for me was the lack of a tiling window
| manager.
|
| I use xmonad in Ubuntu and I haven't dragged a window on
| my personal laptop in years. Not only was that option
| missing on MacOS, the underlying OS abstractions actually
| made it impractical to build the last time I checked;
| windows were owned by the application, there was no
| language to move another application's windows except
| asking the application to move its own, and doing _that_
| required the application to be frontmost. So tiling was a
| context-switch morass and a bad UX.
|
| However, it appears the Accessibility Manager may since
| have grown enough feature hooks to support what I want,
| and https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst may do the job.
| I'll have to test it the next time I have my hands on a
| MacBook of some flavor.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Yeah, this. Macos is my daily driver and it does a good
| job of staying out of my way.
|
| I recently got a windows pc just for gaming, and god DAMN
| it's annoying. Even worse than Vista. Nothing is
| consistent anymore and everything is always trying to
| grab my attention for irrelevant shit. What the hell
| happened :/
| derac wrote:
| As a long time Windows user, I highly recommend using
| this to turn off the useless crap.
|
| https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-
| Script
| jenscow wrote:
| I always used that too.
|
| However, it's ironic that the author has now given up on
| Windows, for the problems the script attempts to solve.
| suby wrote:
| In my experience, messing with Windows in this manner
| (especially with an unmaintained script as this one is)
| results in a broken installation after enough updates. I
| just let my Windows partition do whatever the hell it
| wants, and keep my use of it to absolutely minimal
| levels.
| dagw wrote:
| _Macos is my daily driver and it does a good job of
| staying out of my way._
|
| As a long time Windows and Linux user who recently got a
| MacBook Pro, I find the UI incredibly weird and confusing
| compared to what I'm used to.
|
| The hardware is however more than good enough that I'm
| willing to put up with MacOS until I get used to it.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Yeah, it does take some getting used to. It's nice having
| a real shell though, and not have to worry about Windows
| Subsystem for Linux to get work done.
|
| As someone who grew up with MS-DOS, Windows used to be
| really good until Microsoft started getting desperate and
| started shoving crapware down your throat... ads for
| Office, preinstalled Teams that starts up by itself,
| Skype, stupid Defender scans, nonstop UAC warnings, won't
| let you use a password instead of a PIN... all these
| dumb, user-hostile decisions. Zero respect for their
| users.
|
| Apple has a bit of that now (iCloud logins, OS level
| notifications, bundled apps) but not quite as bad.
|
| If Linux had Adobe Suite and MS Office I'd probably
| switch in a heartbeat. Need those to collaborate with
| other non-devs in the office.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Projects like Proton and Lutris are making it so that
| most of the configuration work is encapsulated in
| installation scripts that make most of that grinding go
| away.
| oblio wrote:
| > The whole OS market is pretty rough right now.
|
| It's like this since it became clear smartphones were
| going to become the bigger market, so around 2012 or so.
|
| Investment into desktop everything went down: OSes, apps,
| games, etc.
|
| Heck, you can see this even for Open Source desktop
| stuff. There was a flurry of releases of cross platform
| Open Source software around 2009 or so: KDE4, better
| support for GTK on Windows, etc. All of that has slowed
| down or frozen in time.
|
| Mobile has sucked all the money and hype from desktop
| development.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I use macOS + Windows + Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based) on a daily
| basis and they're all better or worse depending on the
| task at hand. They're all useable but imperfect. For me,
| Windows is for gaming and some music production stuff,
| macOS is my work laptop and dev environment, and Ubuntu
| is for most other things like personal use, but also my
| desktop dev environment.
|
| Testing Windows stuff on an M1 Mac with Parallels doesn't
| work very well today (I have hope that we'll get there
| soon). Windows VMs work a lot better on my Ubuntu
| desktop, but a lot of our dev tools have mostly macOS
| users, so getting them to work with Ubuntu takes a bit of
| massaging at times. macOS is hard / unsupported to
| virtualize, so I basically have to use macOS when
| developing macOS software.
|
| If we could run macOS as a VM, I'd choose Ubuntu /
| Pop!_OS for most things.
| [deleted]
| rbut wrote:
| You can run macOS under VMWare Workstation Player on
| Linux using an unlocker. If you combine it with a serial
| from an actual mac you own, but no longer use, you can
| get iMessage working also.
| hparadiz wrote:
| You can.
|
| https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM
| fragmede wrote:
| OS X virtualization is well supported by Parallels if
| you're on a Mac and are willing to pay for software (it's
| a just a few clicks via the GUI to set up and they offer
| a trial). I haven't tried it under windows, but it's
| still eminently possible.
|
| Eg https://kb.parallels.com/en/125105 and
| https://osxdaily.com/2021/07/15/how-install-macos-
| virtualbox...
| ziml77 wrote:
| > The whole OS market is pretty rough right now.
|
| This is my feeling over the past few years. No OS is in a
| great spot. But I have hopes for Linux being better
| supported with Valve using it on the Steam Deck. (Not the
| highest hopes, but more hope than I used to have)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't agree. KDE in particular feels more well rounded
| than ever before. I use it on FreeBSD but I use Linux on
| servers and I'm also very happy with that.
|
| Windows 10 is stable for me too though I was hit with the
| eTPM stutter bug (I use my Windows box exclusively for
| gaming, in particular VR which I didn't feel like
| figuring out in proton). But the windows dark patterns
| are surely there and I hate them. But as it's only my
| gaming machine I can deal with it.
|
| And Mac... Well I moved away from it because Apple is
| locking down too much and I've come to hate opinionated
| software. Still they seem to be doing nice things with
| M1..
| Shared404 wrote:
| KDE on FreeBSD and Linux on servers seems an interesting
| choice, what was it that brought you to FreeBSD on
| desktop if you were using Linux on server?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Mainly that I like the concept of FreeBSD. It's just one
| OS, has excellent documentation. Some good tech like
| jails, zfs on root etc.
|
| Apparently it's not great at WiFi but I don't use that on
| my main driver (NUC).
|
| On Linux I use docker a lot, and while FreeBSD has its
| excellent jails, it doesn't have the whole ecosystem
| around them. So that's why I use Linux on the server side
| more.
| hparadiz wrote:
| I recently got Apex Legends working and it's running
| perfectly at 144 fps in 2k on a 1080 ti.
|
| I've also played FFXIV and Path of Exile extensively in
| Linux.
|
| The only thing left is Adobe products which is honestly a
| matter of time. Just really takes hammering out some
| market share until Adobe relents.
|
| A lot of the best kernel, driver, and gui shell
| improvements have only really hit their stride in the
| past 24 months.
|
| Things are coming together rapidly.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > A lot of the best kernel, driver, and gui shell
| improvements have only really hit their stride in the
| past 24 months.
|
| Could you elaborate on that?
|
| I've been using desktop Linux almost exclusively for the
| past 24 years (ouch!), and recent years seem pretty
| average to me. Things work great, most of the time, like
| always.
|
| Unless you're talking about gaming. I'm not a gamer (or i
| wouldn't be such a long time Linux user) but I hear
| there's enormous progress on that front.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Gaming was what held me back from switching for decades.
| Steam is doing a great job on that front, most recent
| (like in max 5 years old) games in my library work like a
| charm under Ubuntu. And that includes all AAA games. Old
| games are harder as those are, understandably, not on top
| of the priority list to convert to Linux. For those, and
| some rarely used other stuff I haven't bothered to figure
| out Linux alternatives for, I still use Windows.
|
| If Linux based gaming continues on the current
| trajectory, I could imagine a world in which a great
| chunk of the consumer market switches from Windows to
| Linux.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| I don't even use a desktop environment. Gonna be using a
| window manager for ever. Most of everything is run on the
| command line anyway.
| knighthack wrote:
| How do you browse the Internet then?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > How do you browse the Internet then?
|
| I assume by
|
| > using a window manager for ever
|
| I've used WindowMaker as a Window manager for decades.
| Only recently did I decide to switch to Mate because I
| wanted a taskbar at the bottom with useful things like
| applets to show and switch Wifi/network, volume control
| and often-used icons/launchers.
|
| TBH, if I could get things like tint2 and yabar working
| with the mate applets, I'd probably switch back to
| WindowMaker in a heartbeat.
| anthk wrote:
| use Fluxbox, you could set some applets with standalone
| software.
|
| Pnmixer for Pulseaudio, NM-applet/connman...
| alxlaz wrote:
| FWIW: most systray applets work with any of WindowMaker's
| dockapp systrays, and there are a few dockapps (wmappl,
| wmbutton) that allow you a slightly more compact often-
| used icons/launcher thing. Mate _panel_ applets do need
| the Mate panel of course but you can generally find
| equivalents for just about anything.
|
| I don't run Linux anymore (not natively, for everyday
| use, in any case) -- like most people in this thread I
| also think the desktop is a shitshow these days but it's
| a particularly bad shitshow in Linux, and I was using
| Linux in 2003 so I know what a shitshow looks like. _But_
| when I do still need to touch a Linux machine,
| WindowMaker is still my WM of choice. It 's really good.
| xvector wrote:
| You can use normal applications in a window manager.
| Window manager [?] terminal
| aenis wrote:
| Lynx? Lynx still works for a lot of sites I frequent.
| reshie wrote:
| you can start programs with just X. i use simple WMs but
| have put kodi in its own dedicated session. its kind of
| like kiosk mode.
| hulitu wrote:
| Seamonkey, Firefox, etc. You do not need a desktop
| environment to run a webbrowser.
| darkwater wrote:
| I don't play videogames and I'm perfectly fine with my
| Ubuntu install, it does everything I need it to do. Only
| gamers put videogaming as a must for an operating system.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And that is getting constantly better with Linus as well,
| thanks to Steam.
| Agamus wrote:
| I dropped Windows for Linux with XP. I use Linux for all
| my computing needs, except a few video games that don't
| like Wine. For those, I do have a separate Windows
| machine that gets turned on to play those games (like a
| console), and turned off when I stop. Both machines are
| built desktops.
|
| I never use the Windows box for anything else. No files,
| no coding, no internet browsing, no music, etc. No
| cameras, microphones, bluetooth adapters, etc. are
| installed. I turn that thing on every few weeks or so.
|
| This has worked well, and is a compromise with which I
| can live. Try it, it's blissful!
| N3Xxus_6 wrote:
| Yep this is the correct answer. Some many variables in
| Linux could cause an issue, like freezing.
| hulitu wrote:
| The most notorious one is export FREEZE=1
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| It's all games, both proton and native, on a specific
| computer. The issue didn't occur for a long time when I
| first installed, so I'm pretty sure its a software/config
| problem which a reinstall would fix. I just haven't gotten
| around to it. Probably a nvidia driver problem tbh
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lhwb_OckQ)
| pjerem wrote:
| Really looks like damaged RAM. You should run a memtest.
| webmaven wrote:
| There's a chance that your problems are being caused by
| bad RAM.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Stayed on Win7 in hopes MS would get their sh*t figured out
| by now. Looks increasingly like my next PC will need to be
| Linux and some VM's.
| jart wrote:
| That whole thing with Edge has got to be the biggest
| information heist in the history of the software industry.
| Everyone on Windows basically woke up one morning and Microsoft
| was like, greetings, we've backed up your hard drive to our
| cloud. Always do your work in a terminal folks!
| dm319 wrote:
| Wow, I feel like that goes beyond a dark pattern and strays
| into unconsensual abuse (excuse the truism). I feel like a dark
| pattern persuades and tricks you into doing something, but
| won't outright do something without your consent. Reminds me of
| when Linked In did that thing where it sent unsolicited emails
| after getting access to your address book.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Maybe I am being silly about it but Minecraft just migrated
| from mojang accounts to MS accounts. I am worried they are
| going to pull these sort of hijinks with that.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that
| would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken
| my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me
| they are syncing all my browser history to their servers for my
| benefit.._
|
| I'm not sure how that sort of behaviour isn't a clear violation
| of all kinds of privacy laws in 2022.
| thow-58d4e8b wrote:
| Just because a criminal hasn't been caught and sentenced
| doesn't mean they didn't commit the crime
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm sure it was specified somewhere in the EULA that you were
| forced to agree to long ago while installing the OS. It's
| been a while since I've looked at it too, but I believe
| there's a clause in there that also permits them to change it
| at any time without telling you.
| Silhouette wrote:
| One of the few really good things about some modern privacy
| laws is that this kind of defence carries almost zero
| weight. You don't get to do scummy things and then claim
| that the user "consented" because of some small print on
| page 50 of some document no-one ever reads before clicking
| the button they have to click in order to use the software
| they just paid for.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But the problem is that in practice I still don't see
| those laws being enforced in any meaningful manner. Case
| in point, Microsoft is doing this - they're not stupid,
| they've reviewed the legal implications that and
| rightfully decided that they'll benefit more than the
| penalty from enforcement if it ever happens. Same with
| Google, Facebook, etc.
| Silhouette wrote:
| They're starting to be enforced but obviously the
| regulators particularly in Europe are underfunded and
| there are a lot of bad actors to chase. I imagine
| Facebook and Google both rate higher than Microsoft for
| now. That doesn't mean there won't be significant
| penalties later, particularly as governments come to
| realise how lucrative penalising these big tech firms can
| be under the rules they've created for themselves.
| hulitu wrote:
| And there is also cortuption.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| It's funny how quickly they forget the lessons of
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21684329 and
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2564087/european-
| commi... .
|
| I guess we need higher fines to get the message across.
| hulitu wrote:
| They (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) do not
| care about one payment of a couple of milions dollars.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Do you understand that the potential fines for violations
| under some of the recent laws (notably the GDPR) have a
| few extra zeroes on that? The limiting factor at the
| moment seems to be a lack of resources for the regulators
| that are responsible for enforcing privacy rules.
| Obviously a big tech firm facing a fine that could run to
| hundreds of millions is like to exhaust their legal
| avenues for challenging it before handing over the cash.
| It's going to take time and money from the regulator's
| side to deal with those challenges before any big
| penalties get applied effectively.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Do you understand that the potential fines for
| violations under some of the recent laws (notably the
| GDPR) have a few extra zeroes on that?
|
| That's been the case for 4 years now, none of these fines
| have occurred. The _total_ amount of fines across all
| companies over those 4 years is barely above 1Bn.
|
| > The limiting factor at the moment seems to be a lack of
| resources for the regulators that are responsible for
| enforcing privacy rules
|
| Not just resources but also willingness. I have the
| feeling that nobody actually wants to enforce this and
| campaigning for doing so is a politically-risky move, as
| not only does your campaign rely on the same companies
| that would be fined, but those companies now control the
| majority of humanity's social fabric and can trivially
| restrict even _organic_ sharing of information /links
| about your campaign.
|
| Worse: in the UK, there's been news about actually
| _weakening_ the GDPR, based on the Culture Secretary
| being stupid (or having financial incentives for doing
| so) and actually believing the tech industry 's
| vilification of the GDPR. Hint: if an industry making a
| huge chunk of its profit based on non-consensual data
| collection complains about data protection laws, it means
| the laws are actually working as designed. Most likely,
| this insanity will also go ahead, if it didn't already.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _That 's been the case for 4 years now, none of these
| fines have occurred._
|
| The largest fines so far have been approaching 9 figures,
| far more than the "couple of million" in the comment I
| replied to above.
|
| That's not pocket change even for a multinational and of
| course there has to be reasonable due process before
| handing out that kind of penalty. If anything I'd say the
| fact that several eight-figure penalties have already
| been handed down is reassuring.
|
| _I have the feeling that nobody actually wants to
| enforce this_
|
| I'm genuinely curious about how you formed that
| impression. Here in the UK our data protection regulators
| have been fairly consistent in their public views on
| these issues under multiple Information Commissioners now
| and have handed down some significant penalties, so I
| don't really buy the conspiracy theories about corruption
| and so on.
|
| _Worse: in the UK, there 's been news about actually
| weakening the GDPR, based on the Culture Secretary being
| stupid (or having financial incentives for doing so) and
| actually believing the tech industry's vilification of
| the GDPR._
|
| As someone who is both a strong proponent of privacy
| safeguards and involved in running businesses that
| actually have to comply with the GDPR, I have very mixed
| feelings about this.
|
| On one hand I don't like the idea of weakening important
| privacy protections and I have no faith whatsoever in the
| competence of the current government here to understand
| the technical or social implications of these policies.
|
| On the other hand I also don't think much of the GDPR as
| written. It's full of ambiguity and it is unnecessarily
| difficult for a good actor to comply with it,
| particularly smaller organisations that don't have
| dedicated staff to deal with this kind of admin and also
| don't have any interest in doing things with personal
| data that most of us here probably wouldn't like. People
| like to focus on a tiny number of points that we'd
| probably agree are positive steps or at least well-
| intentioned, but the GDPR is roughly a hundred pages long
| and that's before you include supporting materials like
| official guidance on interpretation from all the
| different regulators. There are a lot of small and a few
| big problems in the rest of those pages once you look
| past the headlines. Not coincidentally those areas also
| tend to leave loopholes that some bad actors are relying
| on to escape the trap.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't have first-hand experience with other DPAs so I
| can't comment on those, though the fact that Facebook and
| Google are still around and still have business presences
| in most EU countries suggest they aren't much better.
|
| I have multiple experiences dealing with the UK one,
| spending unreasonable amounts of time raising complaints
| for obvious breaches of the GDPR with no outcome. I've
| summarized my experience here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30662905
|
| Not to mention, this high-profile incident which they are
| themselves proud enough to announce on their own website:
| https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-
| and-bl... - so you've got a company whose entire business
| is to manage people's personal data and is large enough
| to have the resources to understand & comply with the
| regulation, and you caught them red-handed misusing data
| that people outright had no choice in giving up (I don't
| know any bank that allows opting out of CRA reporting
| even if you never actually intend to take out credit) for
| a purpose that's definitely not in the data subjects'
| best interests, and the outcome is a _letter_?
|
| What message do you think the above sends? To me it sends
| that breaching the GDPR absolutely does pay and you
| should absolutely do it at least once because even
| getting caught brazenly breaching it (considering the
| size & resources of said companies, number of people
| impacted and the fact people had literally no choice)
| will lead to just politely being asked to stop with no
| monetary penalty nor having to compensate the affected
| users.
| krageon wrote:
| > You don't get to do [...]
|
| The response to every legal argument is "yes, you do" as
| long as you have enough money. Lo and behold, Microsoft
| is swimming in it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Not only do they have enough money to begin with, but
| they're earning way more from this than any fine they can
| realistically expect (if a fine ever comes, that is).
| zerkten wrote:
| It gets more complicated than that. Imagine having to sign into
| the machine with a work (AAD) account. Potentially, your
| machine can be taken over and bound to AAD policies operated by
| IT at the same time it's connected to a personal account. Very
| messy.
| keithalewis wrote:
| Y U h8 capitalism? A bit dated, but
| http://www.proudlyserving.com/ is still a worthwhile read to
| understand the Microsoft mindset.
| gxt wrote:
| I don't understand the surprise expressed by many in this thread.
| There's 47k engineers all working very hard to justify their job
| at MS, there's no incentive on making a good product, it just has
| to sell, keep your boss happy and that's it. Why would you expect
| that many people working fulltime to output anything consistent?
| There's only so many real requirements to get a product that
| works, and as soon as someone gets his hands on them it
| inevitably threatens an other team. So new requirements are
| created and you end up with this.
| causality0 wrote:
| I switched over to castrated versions of Windows a while ago,
| like AME and Ninjutsu OS. The polite word is "custom" versions,
| but I call them castrated versions because they can't fuck me
| anymore.
| [deleted]
| Galanwe wrote:
| I did not develop a graphical Windows application since around 15
| years now. At the time it was mainly Win32, and WPF just
| starting.
|
| I remember that Qt was a big thing though. They had this CSS like
| capability that would allow you to style your application after
| the fact. You could also just change the rendering backend at
| build time.
|
| Is Qt not an option anymore to have all the various GUI details
| right?
| withinrafael wrote:
| The problem is, to really nail the look and feel, you're going
| to have to create your own controls with the same exact
| behaviors, looks, etc. and none of that is documented.
| vstollen wrote:
| It's mind boggling how user-hostile one can make a piece of
| "premium" software.
|
| You pay 145EUR for the Home or 259EUR for the Pro Edition and
| they treat it like it's freeware.
|
| I want my computer to support me in achieving what I want to do,
| but Windows just keeps grabbing attention with intrusive ads and
| never-ending notifications.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I think the issue is that for most people it _is_
| freeware. Very few consumers are actually paying EUR145 for
| Windows. They might have got Windows 7 with their PC (I believe
| the actual cost is around $10) a literal decade ago and paid
| nothing since.
|
| I can see why Microsoft are trying to explore other revenue
| sources. If they give Windows away they make a huge loss but if
| they charge for upgrades nobody will upgrade and it will become
| a support nightmare.
| userbinator wrote:
| For many, it was a "free upgrade".
| TowerTall wrote:
| I bought 1 pro license for Windows 8. I have used that key
| ever since. Countless virtual machines and reinstall /
| hardware upgrade has accepted that key the past 10 years.
| lostgame wrote:
| We used to call seeing ads in Windows 'adware'. Now we just
| call it 'Windows'.
|
| I'm dead serious - unless you have a specific business reason
| like most do to use this POS, I can't imagine anyone actually
| _choosing_ to use Windows over the alternatives. What a
| seriously awful piece of software.
| Quiark wrote:
| When I was buying a new computer last month, I spent a some time
| considering if it should be Mac or Linux. The Windows option was
| rejected rather quickly. And I was a Windows developer around the
| time .NET was starting.
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| From the author's own words, sounds like he should stop
| supporting Windows.
|
| I only support Windows and macOS as a masochistic exercise in
| extreme cross-platform support, and even then it's only CLI
| applications and programmatic API's, never GUI bother.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I fully understand the need to express support or condemnation
| for any popular worldwide topic, but why did they have to make it
| persistent? The bottom bar is so annoying on this site.
| dend wrote:
| Thank you for the note. Because the worldwide topic touches
| directly on me and my family, I've decided that this was the
| right approach for my own blog.
| [deleted]
| slategruen wrote:
| It's funny how much it's been becoming more difficult it is to
| tweak Windows with janky workarounds compared to just installing
| a Linux distro altogether
| ncmncm wrote:
| Windows does what Microsoft wants. Period. Public discussion is
| just noise. Even more so, Apple.
|
| If you want a computing environment that is responsive to your
| needs, you need to step away from products of those autocratic
| organizations.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| What Apple wants and what I want seems to intersect about 95%
| of the time, at least in terms of phones and laptops.
|
| Mainly what I want is to not think about my tools at all, and
| just pick them up or put them down whenever the need arises,
| without worrying about whether I'm making a secret catastrophic
| error or that my tools are pretending to be my tools, while
| actually their master is somebody else.
|
| I gladly sacrifice control to Apple the same way I sacrifice
| control to my doctor or to my sanitation engineer, or, if I had
| a car, to my car manufacturer.
|
| I'm not a teenager exploring the universe of options anymore.
| Now I just want to get from point A to point B.
| ncmncm wrote:
| In my experience, Apple customers mostly just convince
| themselves that they must want whatever it is Apple chooses
| to offer at the moment. This is most easily seen whenever the
| new version of an Apple product arrives, lacking a feature
| they had relied on. They immediately set to work persuading
| themselves they can make do without that.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| How can I reply to this?
|
| If I agree with you that Apple sucks, then you were right
| that Apple sucks.
|
| If I say most of Apple's design and philosophy decisions
| are the best option for someone like me, then you were
| right Apple sucks because I'm trying to convince myself
| otherwise.
|
| The only version of my experience you'd believe is the one
| you believed already: that Apple sucks.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Well, you're right, as far as that goes. But there's the
| old T-shirt slogan, "If you can't change your mind, are
| you sure you still have one?" The processes by which
| Apple arrives at its feature set and design necessarily
| differ radically from the process that determines what
| features any individual needs. So, any overlap (insofar
| as that differs from what everybody else does) must be
| largely fortuitous, unless in fact your process is to
| look at what they offer and choose to want just that. Or,
| you are just one of the tiny minority where they happen
| to match by accident.
|
| Clearly almost all Apple fans have to be in the former
| group. It is just possible you are in the latter,
| instead.
|
| It is the same, BTW, for political parties.
| kadenwolff wrote:
| This seems dismissive, especially when you're talking to
| other devs who have a lot of experience with different
| OS's. I'm sure some people just accept whatever Apple
| pushes because they want to have an iPhone for the status
| signal, but there are a decent number of tech-informed
| people who prefer MacOS for reasonable reasons.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The easiest person to fool has always been yourself.
| Apple didn't bring that about, but they absolutely rely
| on it.
| userbinator wrote:
| _This menu is familiar to me because that's what the Windows API
| allows you to create (as long as you are not creating it through
| Windows Forms.) There is no dark theme for this, but at least
| there are rounded corners._
|
| That is just a huge WTF. Since the very earliest versions of
| Windows there has always been the option of a dark (or white, or
| rainbow, or ...) theme, where you could adjust the colours and
| sizes and fonts, and everything using Win32 would follow it.
| Here's Win95 example:
|
| https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d3e8c64cd9a38e70d24c0b1b2c73cb5...
|
| Yet if I'm understanding correctly, in Win11 that stopped working
| completely? It really sounds like the Windows team has no one
| left who knows what used to be possible but isn't anymore, being
| replaced with probably younger developers making constant excuses
| to "modernise" by rewriting and breaking stuff. To use an
| analogy, they're not just reinventing the wheel but making it
| square.
| dend wrote:
| Ah, but you see - there is a difference in how theming works in
| Windows 11, in that it's different from the high-contrast mode.
| So, you can get a control that swaps the theme to high-contrast
| (you need to use the native Windows API for that), but you
| can't get one that works with the Windows 11 style of dark
| theme out-of-the-box without re-writing it from zero.
| userbinator wrote:
| In other words, they decided to rewrite the theme stuff while
| neglecting to realise that there's existing code (which they
| mostly broke around the time of Win8 by removing the
| Appearance control panel...) that would do what they wanted.
|
| I'm in agreement with the others here that Windows 2000 was
| probably the peak of consistent UI in Windows. XP didn't
| really regress but added bitmap-style skinning to the
| elements, and up until 7 the Windows Classic theme was fully
| customisable. In Win8 they removed that, and it's been a
| clear downhill from there.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > To use an analogy, they're not just reinventing the wheel but
| making it square.
|
| And then rounding the corners of the said "wheel" :)
| flukus wrote:
| In practice it stopped working well long before windows 11
| because so few apps were win32 based and/or because developers
| would explicitly override the theme. I gave it a go on Windows
| 7 and even apps like outlook and office wouldn't look right.
|
| Gnome/KDE still offer proper themeing that works with proper
| native apps but even there you've got web browsers and electron
| apps that ignore it.
| 8note wrote:
| Mind you, at the same time, there's fewer and fewer users for
| those old features, so why should they be priority vs the
| people who are just starting to pick up a computer?
| wildrhythms wrote:
| The author is pointing out that the context menu style
| applied through Microsoft's own software GUI framework is
| inconsistent with the style applied by the rest of the OS.
| What 'old feature' are you referring to?
| sph wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Windows got their priorities straight: telemetry,
| advertisement are the priority and they're executing their
| strategy very well.
|
| Your priority as a user are different, but, sorry to say, your
| voice doesn't count. The year-end revenue and KPI is what counts,
| because you and 99% of other companies will still be buying and
| using PCs with Windows preinstalled and paying Microsoft for
| licences. You say so yourself, you're disappointed with the
| direction Windows is taking, but you still use it [for very
| legitimate reasons].
|
| Why should Microsoft sell Windows for $199, when they can earn
| $199 + $x/month/user from ads and create more value for its
| shareholders?
| [deleted]
| dend wrote:
| I would pay extra to buy a "Signature Edition" (kind of like
| they had with PCs) of Windows that has none of the ads and
| whatever other "value-add" pieces are integrated in it. One
| would say - I want LTSC accessible for customers like myself,
| without the kneecapped ability to run latest Windows software.
| 1_player wrote:
| They make more off you if you have a regular licence and they
| can sell your data. You wanting to pay extra not to be spied
| upon is irrelevant, you have no choice in the matter.
|
| Very simply, the money lost because some people have left
| Windows for greener pastures is being offset by the increased
| revenue.
| dend wrote:
| I don't disagree with this. It's the unfortunate reality
| that I hope changes, but that change needs to come from _a
| lot_ of dissatisfied customers.
| lukas099 wrote:
| There must be some amount of money that someone could pay
| to make it worth it to Microsoft to not show ads or sell
| data. The problem is, I doubt many people would actually
| pay that amount.
| juanani wrote:
| sylens wrote:
| There was an interesting interview on the Windows Weekly
| podcast with Chris Capossela (CMO of consumer at
| Microsoft) a little ways back I believe where the hosts
| asked Chris why there is no ability to do just this - I
| believe the answer was that Microsoft views these
| features as valuable to the user, so why would they think
| that a user would want to turn them off?
| marssaxman wrote:
| I wonder, do marketing types actually _believe_ that kind
| of nonsense? Could it actually be true for them,
| personally, that they feel they get some benefit from
| intrusive communication? That would be such a different
| experience of the world that it 's difficult to wrap my
| head around.
|
| And yet... I was once griping about one or another of the
| many tricky ways excessively-clever web designers abuse
| javascript to impose their concept of a "user experience"
| on me when I would _deeply_ prefer they simply left well
| enough alone, and my listener replied - "but what if I
| _want_ the experience they 're offering"? - Well, that
| thought had never occurred to me.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| No, they do not. The ones who are making choices about it
| anyway. They just realise they can manipulate the masses.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It's very difficult to get meaningful action out of
| people whose paycheck might depend on not acting.
| crazysim wrote:
| I think there was a Pro for Workstations SKU that installed
| with a lot less candy crush in the start menu when I tried
| it.
| dend wrote:
| There's that, and there's also the limited access
| Enterprise SKU. Last I checked, the Pro versions will now
| also require[1] a Microsoft account.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940517/windows-11
| -pro-r...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. because the minute your monopoly power crumbles, you will be
| met with resentment and abandonment, including by the
| "investors" who were with you minutes ago.. the ecosystem has
| dealt with hostile insider moves, high profile technology
| theft, and constant attack vectors already.. more in store here
| patientplatypus wrote:
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Bought a high-end laptop recently and really wanted to give
| Windows 11 a try [after being a Linux user for about 7 years].
| While the WSL and WSLg aspects of it along with development-
| related features have improved considerably, the base of the
| system as a whole was still the same mess.
|
| So much telemetry stuff running in the background, so many
| unnecessary updates kicking in, heavy CPU and memory usage and
| the general perceived slowness of the OS have all immediately
| pushed me back to Linux. There's no bloat, the difference in
| performance is night and day, and I have to never worry about any
| privacy-related stuff.
|
| Long live Linux Desktop.
| azangru wrote:
| > a high-end laptop recently
|
| Oh, cool, a recent high-end laptop that works well with linux.
| Could you share the model?
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Dell G15 Ryzen Edition. From my experience all Dells and
| Lenovos are great with Linux compatibility.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Windows can only deprecate things at the rate people retire, so
| it ends up looking like a house that four generations of a family
| live in. Junior's flashing the lights in the hall in time with
| Bassnectar using a programmable lightbulb he wired to an arduino
| while grandma is playing pinochle on the back porch with a couple
| of birds from church. Mom's in the kitchen counting her
| blessings, enjoying her circa 1997 gas stove while Dad's trying
| to figure out if he has to pony up for a new laptop for daughter
| to finish her homework, or is her problem that the latest Word
| won't run Java applets? Did Word ever run applets? Meanwhile,
| Junior barely knows pinochle is a thing, but Grandma is convinced
| he has summoned demons. Kids these days.
| grogenaut wrote:
| The only thing keeping me on windows at this point is getting all
| 5 of my monitors to work under Linux with my 3090 and 2080ti. The
| only other issue was fusion 360 but someone fixed that.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| If not have left xp if it wasn't for automatic driver
| installations
| ryandrake wrote:
| There's been a big shift in the whole software industry from
| "enable what the user wants to do" over to "we want the user to
| do this". Back in the '90s, we would go out, talk to customers,
| find out their needs, gather requirements, and write software
| that enables them to do what they want to do. Now, in a lot of
| software companies, it's the opposite. Product leadership starts
| with "What do we want users to do?" and then every software
| decision is in service of encouraging / forcing / channeling
| users' behavior into these paths. I've sat in product meetings
| where people would just say "No, the user should not be allowed
| to do ABC, we (Company) need them to do XYZ!" It's arrogance,
| it's hubris and it's everywhere.
|
| The slogan "Where do you want to go today?" is dead. It's now all
| "This is where we will let you go today!"
| numpad0 wrote:
| I guess the ultimate goal is profit, and strategy was
| implementing what users wanted. "Strategy is how not what" etc
| etc.
|
| The goal is now growth, not even profit, and control over users
| is strat.
|
| What comes next? Jerk(2nd derivative of speed, rate of
| acceleration changes)? -- the speed at which users conform a
| platform?
|
| Capitalism is so ripe for disruption, or innovation, it seems!
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Indeed. One need only look at something as simple as UI styling
| to see the drastic difference. It used to be that the user
| could set every aspect of the UI widgets to pretty much
| whatever they wanted in terms of color, don't, and size. It
| wasn't even really noteworthy to come across someone who used
| italic comic sans in their title bars on a purple and green
| widget scheme.
|
| Nowadays getting a bespoke dark mode for applications is an
| advertisement worthy feature.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The skype thing kinda makes sense. People want software which
| just works without configuration. When you sign in to an iphone
| or macbook, it immediately sets up facetime which is always
| active waiting for a call in the background. No one complains
| because this is expected and it has always happened.
|
| But then Microsoft wants to give their users the same
| conveniance as Apple users get with their "just works" setup
| and people call it user hostile and malware. It makes perfect
| sense that users would like a way to call other windows users
| in a way that doesn't involve installing things and fiddling
| around with more accounts/configuration.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > When you sign in to an iphone or macbook, it immediately
| sets up facetime which is always active waiting for a call in
| the background. No one complains because this is expected and
| it has always happened.
|
| People actually complain. We're past the point where everyone
| only has one set of devices, a single apple ID, and
| everything is simple.
|
| You might not want your iPad to receive the "family" account
| Facetime. You might not want your second phone to register
| for iMessage. You might want these services from an ID
| different from the device's main account.
|
| There's optout ways out for all these services, but following
| the 80/20 rule, I think there is a "20" part with
| circumstances that make the blanket "turn it all on" grating
| and tedious to get rid of.
| kyriakos wrote:
| I see your point but maybe the reactions are because most of
| these efforts feel half baked? For example they are forcing
| teams on users, which I use as a daily driver at my work and
| I feel that it's the worst piece of software I have to use.
|
| On top of that the way things are integrated always looks and
| feels forced. Like going into lengths to hide control panel
| in windows 10 even if it's still there and while the settings
| app which replaces it only has a fraction of the
| functionality.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I agree it's an implementation issue. Windows always feels
| like annoying nagware while macOS and iOS largely get out
| of your way. Teams would pop up with a window on every boot
| to annoy you while FaceTime just sits in the background.
|
| But the power users on this site would rather we have some
| kind of advanced configuration page where every single
| feature of windows should be opt in. While simultaneously
| praising the Apple "just works" system.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > While simultaneously praising the Apple "just works"
| system.
|
| Because included into that "just works" system is _just
| leaves you alone_.
|
| Maybe if the "helpful" Windows feature wouldn't nag all
| the time, as you put it, the power users wouldn't
| complain about it and look for ways to turn it off.
|
| I've been using a Mac for more than 10 years now without
| an iCloud account. It asked me once whether I wanted one,
| when I bought the computer new, I said no, and _it 's
| left me alone ever since_. And I went through I don't
| know how many "major" upgrades. Windows bugs me _all the
| time_.
|
| So there's really no reason for me to complain about
| FaceTime, or whatever. I don't even know it's there if I
| don't go looking for it specifically. Whereas Windows,
| it's in my face, all the time. So there's a direct
| benefit for me to look for ways to shut that crap down.
| Maybe, just maybe, if Teams isn't installed it will shut
| up and leave me be. At least until the next update brings
| it back...
| ljm wrote:
| Edge is arguably the worst one here. Change your default
| from Safari on MacOS and it'll never bother you again,
| and anything that would have previously opened in Safari
| will open in the new browser.
|
| There's practically no easy way to get rid of Edge or
| silence it; not only is it forced down your throat,
| there's active investment in trying to prevent you from
| switching to something else.
|
| It doesn't excuse the constant nagging from OneDrive and
| Teams but, at least for now, they're not detecting that
| you're on Slack/Discord/Dropbox and trying to force you
| to switch.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Absolutely. And everything is extremely confusing, even for
| "tech workers", which I am.
|
| The other day, I installed Win 11 on a work computer to
| give it a try. I figured since it's gonna be domain joined
| and whatnot anyway, might as well go all in. So when it
| asked for an account, I plug in my Office 365 account, and
| got all kinds of weird errors, such as wrong password, etc.
| In the end I gave up and created a regular account. Now it
| asks whether I'm sure I don't want an MS account, 'cause
| it's so much greater. Right. Except it doesn't work... Then
| I try adding the account manually in "accounts". Same
| issue...
|
| In the end, I managed to add the account via OneDrive,
| which installed a separate OneDrive. But at least it did it
| on its own, no intervention needed. But I do have two "one
| drive" folders in the explorer for some reason, and I can't
| remove any of them [0]. I don't remember iCloud showing up
| multiple times in Finder.
|
| Later, I find there's Teams preload. Good, let me just log
| in. Strange, I added the account, said it was OK for other
| apps to use, but it still wants me log in. I type in my
| credentials, and the odd account errors are back. Turns
| out, that's the wrong Teams! It's teams for the plebs,
| apparently I needed Teams "pro" or something. At least,
| Skype had a somewhat different name, as in "Skype for
| business" vs "just skype".
|
| ---
|
| [0] Yes, I know it's possible to change the "shortcuts" or
| whatever they're called from the registry, but the point is
| that it's half-baked, it tries to be "helpful" but it's
| actually a hassle. If I don't want iCloud in the Finder, I
| can just pull it out of the sidebar. _And it stays that
| way_ , as opposed to the Explorer shortcuts which have a
| tendency to come back after updates.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| The separation of Onedrive and Teams into plebs and
| business versions is asinine. Why cant both types of
| accounts use the same application?
| dustinmoris wrote:
| It's not the same though.
|
| If I buy an iPhone then it is so that people can call me on
| it. The Mac makes it easy that I can also receive a call on
| my Mac if I am working on it. It's an additional convenience
| feature. It's not like the Mac is forcing me to do this. The
| call would still happen on my phone, I'd just have a much
| harder time to respond to it if I didn't get the smooth
| integration on my Mac whilst working on it. If I didn't have
| an iPhone then I also wouldn't get random calls on my Mac.
| Besides, if I don't want this feature to work then it is very
| easy to disable it form a very self explaining settings app
| and that setting will persist during updates.
|
| It literally couldn't be more different to how Windows
| operates.
|
| Also, perhaps Apple makes things enjoyable in how they work,
| which is maybe why less users have a desire to disable these
| handy features. It certainly feels more straight forward,
| down to the point, no dark patterns and very obvious as a
| macOS user. I can't say the same about Windows.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| It's probably driven by all the unicorns and massive tech
| companies that got where they are by building what they think
| the customers will want.
|
| Not defending, but I do recall the ford quote of "If I'd asked
| customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster
| horse'"
| [deleted]
| srvmshr wrote:
| That misguided notion of product features and integration,
| where the user has minimum role, started out at Apple. The
| standard pattern used to be talking to OEMs and discussing what
| users wanted from them. That review phase generated update
| ideas for next release and so on. Apple turned that question on
| its head and made it "the one last thing" show business.
|
| We have employed a generation of PMs now who idolize Steve
| Jobs' mantra: "Users dont know what they want until you show it
| to them".
|
| EDIT: We does not mean I am employed by Apple. It signifies the
| general trend for companies to enable product development by
| PMs
| astrange wrote:
| Note that Apple doesn't have PMs.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > We have employed a generation of PMs now who idolize Steve
| Jobs' mantra: "Users dont know what they want until you show
| it to them".
|
| just because a bunch of dumb PMs are pushing hot garbage to
| the user doesn't mean that statement is false. There almost
| always _IS_ a way to improve and innovate a user experience--
| a new experience that the user hasn 't thought of before. Its
| just that the PM incentives aren't aligned with the users
| these days.
| srvmshr wrote:
| That is a good observation. The whole GTalk-Hangout-Chat
| saga at Google is testament to that misguided ideology.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Agreed. I think it was Henry Ford who said that if he had
| asked customers what they wanted, they would have told him
| a better horse.
|
| Innovation is the act of giving the users something they
| didn't know what they want.
|
| But that's not what these anti-user dark patterns are. They
| are the end result PMs trying to hit their KPIs by any
| means necessary. And those happen to not track things like
| users satisfaction and trust.
| freedomben wrote:
| Absolutely, although something that really grinds my gears is
| that there's sometimes this weird Orwellian lie that they
| really start to believe, that they actually _are_ doing it
| "for the user." There's something deeply disturbing about mass
| group delusion.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Going to disagree. I will agree once Apple allows you to ungroup
| windows of the same application in the dock. Until then, I will
| use Windows + WSL2 as my core development system.
|
| Sure, Apple has a different workflow. Pro-Apple peeps insist I
| should 'learn it'. Why? I know the Apple workflow. In my eyes, it
| is inferior to the one offered by Windows, and KDE on Linux.
| Everyone has their opinions of course. I respect people who can
| get stuff done on a Mac, but I'm not one of those people. I grew
| up on MS-DOS, Linux, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, etc. I'm
| left-handed and use alternative inputs.
|
| I also don't care about the UX design. It's a step above Windows
| 10, that is all that matters.
|
| Both Apple AND Microsoft could learn a ton of stuff from each
| other. For Apple: Don't dictate user workflows. For Microsoft,
| consistency is key.
|
| That is all.
| thekyle wrote:
| > allows you to ungroup windows of the same application in the
| dock
|
| I believe that feature was also recently removed in Windows 11
| pthread_t wrote:
| > KDE on Linux
|
| Have you tried other desktop environments on linux?
| hpcjoe wrote:
| > I will use Windows + WSL2 as my core development system.
|
| Glutton for punishment I see. Seriously, I used WSL2 under
| Win10 for a year as a (very) poor man's linux for $dayjob.
| Recently switched to a Mac. I do keep pressing on getting Linux
| laptops, having run them for work for the last 22+ years ...
|
| WSL2 is garbage. Pure and simple. Even on an 8 core 16 thread
| 64 GB monster with Nvidia graphics. My view on it is that it is
| an attempt by MSFT to staunch the flow of developers off their
| platform. To say "hey, see, we do linux within windows". But
| then you use it. And get bitten in the behind, repeatably, by
| the memory compaction bit, even after tuning the overall memory
| usage of WSL2.
|
| I was able to get a rough linux desktop by using MobaXterm,
| single root display, and then running Xfce4 (which I had to
| build myself, as our corporate approved WSL2 distro was/is
| broken in so ... so many ways). This setup regularly crashed
| WSL2, and often windows.
|
| When I mentioned this in various fora, windows fans claim that
| the OS isn't buggy, it must be the hardware. Many BSOD, many
| hangs, crashes, etc. Couldn't be the OS. Had to be hardware. Or
| drivers.
|
| Yeah. About that.
| bigbluedots wrote:
| There is no reason for ms to care about any of these issues while
| users keep paying for Windows, either through new PC builds or
| directly. It doesn't help that in many cases there is no viable
| alternative for users.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| It put me off Windows years ago. Though it was the constant
| battle with alert boxes, popups and other windows that stole
| focus that put me over the edge. If my computer doesn't let me
| type text undisturbed, why do even use that tool?
| flembat wrote:
| Anyone else expect this to be about the Windows scheduler?
|
| It is a godawful shame, as Windows has the potential to be quite
| a good operating system for PCs, with just a bit more engineering
| effort and a bit less filthy gunk it could be great.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| > I can literally run a game written for Windows 95 on Windows 11
| without major issues
|
| I'm not really sure about this. Games like Vampire the Masquerade
| comes to mind.
| Royi wrote:
| The only direction Windows should go is being more modular and
| less features. Speed is probably the only feature all users want.
|
| So make all features modular with advanced user being able to
| remove and get a lean and mean OS.
|
| We want less, we want speed.
|
| P. S. It is about time to upgrade the File System. It is too
| slow...
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749512
| panick21_ wrote:
| I have not used Windows software in decades, are they still
| using NTFS?
| stuartd wrote:
| Oh yes. Very much so. Hey, it's better than FAT-32!
| dend wrote:
| Wholeheartedly support this. I want my OS to be as boring as
| possible so that I can do all the interesting things I want.
| flatiron wrote:
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/refs...
| duskwuff wrote:
| ReFS has the stink of death all over it. It's been the "next
| generation" filesystem for Windows since 2012, with no signs
| of ever graduating to being the current filesystem -- in
| fact, a 2017 update to Windows 10 _removed_ the ability for
| most desktop systems to create ReFS volumes.
| chungy wrote:
| ReFS is a poor man's version of btrfs much in the same way
| btrfs is a poor man's version of ZFS. It's also apparent
| that ReFS is basically abandoned.
| yyyk wrote:
| It's not abandoned, but the intended use case is not
| consumer use:
|
| https://gist.github.com/0xbadfca11/da0598e47dd643d933dc
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| The problem with this is fragmentation, if I understand you
| correctly.
|
| It's one of the two reasons why Linux isn't ubiquitous on the
| desktop. (The other being open source doesn't provide enough
| incentive to do the boring unsexy work)
|
| Fragmentation kills support. Imagine non technical users
| searching for help on an issue. First finding articles on
| Windows, then version X, then getting 'only applies with piece
| X, Y, Z installed'. That's already a problem and the suggestion
| of making Windows less 'batteries included' would make it
| harder for the mainstream users, who are the bulk of users.
|
| Fragmentation also kills products, it increases development
| costs, reduces velocity etc.
|
| Microsoft knew/knows how to make a better product, they just
| don't choose to because they evaluate they can make more money
| by screwing consumers over.
|
| In my opinion we need regulation regarding anti-features. It's
| not perfect but it's the approach that is the answer in the
| non-digital world.
| homerhomer wrote:
| Windows IS shareware. You just haven't realized it yet.
| hsnewman wrote:
| RIP windows.
| lxe wrote:
| Windows 11 adds another layer of chrome on top of 10, 8, 7, XP,
| and 98/95. All the code is there. I also see Firefox having the
| same issue albeit at a much smaller extent -- lots of legacy
| screens and maybe even some XUL.
| Pooge wrote:
| > I can literally run a game written for Windows 95 on Windows 11
| without major issues
|
| This is not my experience with Star Wars: Knights of the Old
| Republic. Worked flawlessly with Proton but it didn't even launch
| correctly on Windows 10. It's a hit-or-miss and not a silver
| bullet.
| user_7832 wrote:
| You know, for an operating system that's meant for an average
| user and not a tech-savy person (that most of us likely are),
| Windows 11 is _fine_ if you strictly use the basic features. But
| if the average person of my dad 's generation had a start tile,
| and clicked on windows on the left... they'd have no idea what's
| going on.
|
| A lot of this appears to be changed just for the sake of it. What
| I don't understand is - it takes _effort_ to change something.
| Why not keep the basics the way they are? Start tiles got a
| reskin I think 2 years ago, and while it changed the visual look
| (positively) it kept it functionally identical. The current
| changes... are not. Despite windows being the OS I 'm most
| familiar with, I'm quite certain I'm going to go Linux with
| wine/proton after Win10 EOL (2025 iirc) - almost every Win11
| article gives more reason to hate it, despite me wanting to love
| it. I'm setting up a server and I think I'll start dabbling with
| Linux from now itself so the transition is smooth.
| hughrr wrote:
| Windows 11 is the first windows release I haven't used. It's also
| the first windows release I will never use going back to windows
| 3. I am completely done with it now. The last release which
| wasn't a complete punch in the balls was nearly 20 years ago.
| [deleted]
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >The last release which wasn't a complete punch in the balls
| was nearly 20 years ago.
|
| Windows 7 was actually pretty bloody good.
| city41 wrote:
| Windows 8 came out just about a decade ago. Nearly a decade
| of Windows pain is still quite unfortunate.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| I still have a not-connected-to-the-net w7. Runs my software
| great.
| makecheck wrote:
| I feel like the industry is really struggling with shipping
| "boring utilitarian things". Rather than let software remain
| boring and just-plain-useful, it is forced to slowly transform
| into a nightmare of ads, pop-ups and other crap that is clearly
| NOT required for core functionality and ultimately the whole
| thing becomes awful to use.
|
| Even when the intrusion is small, it is ridiculous because it is
| not required for the software to work (e.g. in the iPhone
| SETTINGS app, nothing about tweaking _settings_ ever requires the
| user to view a stupid ad, and yet there they are, crappifying the
| UI).
|
| And as I get older I am telling myself "this isn't what I signed
| up for": I want useful software that is free of garbage,
| _especially_ when money is exchanged, and most _certainly_ when a
| LOT of money is exchanged.
|
| So tell these bean-counters to get the hell out, and let us make
| computers "only" useful instead of ad-spewing machines.
| xtracto wrote:
| I blame "Product Managers" or "Product Owners". In my 20 years
| of being at different technology companies, I've realized that
| people in this position must come up with new "features", bells
| and whistles to keep justifying their job.
|
| Think about say, Microsoft Word (only word, not office). Word
| has been feature complete since maybe the 2000 version. But,
| where would all the "product development" arm of the Word
| application go if they declared it as such? The only required
| people would be "project managers" to manage bug fixes
| projects, and the development chain (programmers, QAs, etc)...
|
| But these people have to eat, so they keep adding crap to an
| otherwise good product, they keep shuffling things around and
| "experimenting" to maintain their job.
| avsteele wrote:
| Article is 90% spot-on. Win11 is the _first_ time I do not want
| to upgrade, because it turns the actual bad parts of Win 10 up
| to...11!
|
| MS is annihilating the good will they get from me via VSCode,
| Terminal, VStudio etc...
|
| 1) The ads, my god, the ads! Even normal, non-tech, people see
| this stuff and make a sour face.
|
| 2) "Lets finish setting up your PC" : Excuse me sir, its been set
| up for 4 years. Stop trying to get me to link my phone! I don't
| want O365 at home! I don't want to switch to Edge (it is not
| terrible but have made another choice.) I better be careful ant
| not mis-click or god knows what settings will be changed.
|
| The UI stuff i really don't care a wit about.
|
| Suggestion: Whatever, fine leave this garbage in 'Home' edition
| but let 'Pro' mean PRO and stop fighting me.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| All of these gripes are valid. And none of them aside from the
| new actively-evil stuff in 10 and 11 like telemetry can _ever_ be
| fixed, because all of this poorly-matched stuff is exactly why
| almost all old Windows software (apart from games, that 's just a
| lie thanks to DRM and GPU vendors) still run.
| Havoc wrote:
| That's ok - my computer still thinks it isn't TPM capable.
|
| So it seems that craziness will save me from the other MS
| craziness
| Shadonototra wrote:
| It needs a complete rewrite, just like google is doing with
| Fuschia, betting on the future involve making new choices that
| are not backward compatible due to security and performance
| concerns
|
| Backward compatible is not what people want, they want ways to
| move forward just like how Apple did with Roseta2
|
| We are moving in a world where energy consumption needs to be
| optimized due to climate change
| httpsterio wrote:
| One of the most annoying things I've had to experience is
| Onedrive moving your documents folder inside onedrive. I've done
| some tech support in a music production forum and you wouldn't
| believe how many problems it'll cause.
| segphault wrote:
| Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating
| experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have
| taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype
| silently run in the background logged in with the user's
| Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and
| removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so
| that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely uninstall it,
| which didn't really help, because they still kept bringing it
| back after every update. I assume that they're going to do this
| with Teams now.
|
| For every egregious user-hostile behavior, you can search and
| find a ton of forum threads where people discuss at length how to
| reverse or mitigate them. The fact that Microsoft is aware of
| this and continues to prioritize this kind of abusive growth
| hacking over user trust, knowing fully how that impacts the
| company's reputation among enthusiasts, is perhaps more damning
| than the actual practices.
|
| Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually
| cares. Contempt for the users is so deep in the DNA that this
| will never get better. It's disappointing, because it ultimately
| undermines all of the great effort that people elsewhere in the
| company have put into features like WSL that might otherwise make
| the platform attractive to modern developers.
|
| It creates a really adversarial posture between the user and the
| platform. When they introduce new features, I'm reluctant to even
| try them because I don't trust their intentions. It's like being
| in an abusive relationship.
| spc476 wrote:
| You are not the target audience for Microsoft, the corporation
| is. Who uses a home computer anymore? (it's all smart phones
| now) You start work, you get a pre-installed Windows laptop to
| use by the corporate IT department, configured to be used as
| they see fit. You no longer own a computer. Nobody is expected
| to, these days.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Who uses a home computer anymore?
|
| Me (but not Windows), my three grown children, my sister, at
| least one brother in law. At least half of the people I know
| personally. Half of them using laptops, the rest desktop
| machines. All of them have smartphones, and sometimes
| tablets, as well.
| theclansman wrote:
| I think combining Macbooks and gaming PCs then home computers
| are being used more than ever, but I'm not sure, it's true
| that you don't need one to browse facebook anymore. But at
| the same time I don't know anyone without a laptop.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| As far as the Skype thing is concerned, isn't that the exact
| thing they got sued for with Explorer for in the 90's?... or
| somewhat similar?
| rektide wrote:
| It's such an interesting contrast, for both ends of Microsoft
| to have reversed so heavily. The core consumer product once
| fought for betterment and improvement. "Where do you want to go
| today" was the slogan, suggesting users the helm, piloting
| their Personal Computer wherever they may. Oh, and it was a
| complete vision, totalizing. Microsoft did not care at all
| about open source, webdev, Linux, or broader ecosystem outside
| their castle.
|
| The extent to which Microsoft has become the inverse in a mere
| decade of time is mind-boggling. Core products seem to lack the
| internal political strength to resist becoming naggy, crappy
| ad-ware, pushing other people's not your own desires. Teams and
| Office are the new core focus, asking, Where does your company
| want to go today? Teams has boss-ware pro-harassment features
| like letting people re-raise notifications at you every 5
| minutes. This is expressly hostile anti-personal computing, is
| deeply mechanized corporate processes applied to people. But in
| terms of open source, Linux, webdev, the broader world of
| development & making things happen, Microsoft has completely
| reversed course, embracing Linux in the data center, releasing
| vast amounts of their systems as open source, providing &
| sponsoring copious onramps & cross-platform integrations, doing
| everything they can to make themselves appealing as a broad
| partner to the rest of the world, rather than Castle Microsoft,
| Windowsland.
| skoskie wrote:
| > But in terms of open source, Linux, webdev, the broader
| world of development & making things happen, Microsoft has
| completely reversed course, embracing
|
| Embracing is the first step in dominating. Don't fall for it.
| rektide wrote:
| I think there is a danger, but hubris has gotten them way
| up shits creek & their relevance was rapidly moving to 0.
| Desktop platform is dying, mobile barely matters and they
| have no presence there... Microsoft started playing with
| others because pretending they were the unilateral giant
| that could dictate terms to the world landed them on a
| small shrinking pathetic island. So help them gods if they
| try that shit again.
|
| That said, I 100% absolutely endorse caution. The past
| couple years of behaviors are no indicator Microsoft will
| stay a societally-positive technological force. The
| corruption & darkness & manipulation could play back in at
| any moment. Already, Microsoft creating very special terms
| of service for things like VSCode Remote Development
| Plugin, having extremely fantastically proprietary
| implementations for the incredibly useful/popular/fantastic
| LiveShare are harbingers of the old ways, indicators that
| Microsoft just wants to force the door open, not really
| engage & participate.
|
| For now though, I still overall think they are doing good
| work, pariticpating/not domineering (with some caveats).
| They learned very very very personally what happens when
| you violate the core rule of software, the most important
| maxim, not couched as such but absolutely of key vitality
| to computing: "Create more value than you capture." -Tim
| O'Reilly. Of course, all organizations forget the/their
| past. And I quake thinking of how many people pretend they
| are using/learning Linux while never seeing systemd,
| freedesktop, the greater Linux project: WSL is amazing but
| a dark & tragic small death for the real open source, &
| it's cheered on & fanboyed endlessly for enabling the
| blessed ignorant. You are right. Adopter beware.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Another thing that really bothers me about Microsoft is all
| the logging they do. They don't care about privacy at all.
|
| They send me emails about how I haven't done an @mention to
| enough colleagues on teams this week or that I should spend
| less time in meetings. Besides this being total nonsense due
| to not taking into account the type of job I have (of course
| different jobs have different balances of meetings etc), I
| also don't want them looking over my shoulder.
|
| I can turn off the emails but not the logging itself. They
| proclaim that admins can't see what I do but as I was an
| admin I was actually able to see a lot more than they let on
| :( Sure some of it was anonimised (not all) but it's easy to
| filter by criteria narrow enough that that doesn't matter.
|
| They seem convinced that they are helping us manage by data
| etc but they totally ignore the fact that many people frown
| on this practice. In fact some of it is illegal in the EU
| especially countries like Germany. Microsoft is clearly in
| the church of "Data driven everything" but they should not
| impose this on customers IMO.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually
| cares._
|
| Acknowledging this is the first step. The second is figuring
| out what would make them care or how to remove them so someone
| who does care can take over. That's a much harder thing to do.
|
| Realistically Microsoft is in a similar position to the likes
| of Google and Facebook. They have such an entrenched monopoly,
| bought through years of ignored warnings and developing
| monoculture, that they can continue to be successful in a
| financial sense in spite of their actions rather than because
| of them.
|
| Until there is a credible challenger for the desktop OS market,
| a market that is itself evolving as other types of device now
| appeal to users who might have primarily used a desktop/laptop
| a few years ago, it is difficult to see how that changes. And
| the market is probably shrinking for desktop users who aren't
| in large organisations running "enterprise" software, with
| casual home users often preferring mobile devices and games
| consoles to a full PC now (though perhaps less so in light of
| recent world events and wanting to do more from home). So where
| is the serious competitor going to come from? I can think of a
| few at least slightly plausible scenarios but whether most of
| them would lead to anything less user-hostile than modern
| Windows is a different question.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| As a developer I want to implement everything possible on the
| web platform.
|
| It's now a viable competitor for enterprise applications,
| both because web is getting more feature rich and these days
| has pretty much anything you need, and because desktop is
| getting worse with anti-features and jank. It's a sad state
| of affairs but that's where we are.
|
| As a user I want to use cross platform applications as much
| as possible. I use e.g. libreoffice instead of ms office now
| by choice. This means that the eventual switch away from it
| will be easier.
| skoskie wrote:
| I agree with all of your points yet come to the opposite
| conclusion. Choosing the web means everything I make goes
| through Google's hands in one way or another, which irks
| me. Plus it evolves so quickly that you can't just make a
| good product and let it be.
|
| I'm learning rust as time allows.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Microsoft don't help themselves by making desktop app
| production very confusing. A huge range of possible GUI
| frameworks, every one looks like a trap/dead end like
| Silverlight.
|
| Microsofts successful cross platform apps like VSCode and
| Teams ignore all of them so following suit seems pretty
| sensible to me.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Teams is only successful because it's free and integrates
| with the M365 ecosystem. All its competitors are so much
| better.
|
| It wasn't actually so bad at the start, it was just a
| poor slack knock-off. (Poor because the visual density is
| much lower with these oversized chat bubbles)
|
| But now they are spending all their dev time cramming so
| much stuff into it without considering performance that
| it's become tooslow and cluttered. Now it's a wiki, a
| file storage thing, a video chat app, an interface to
| Yammer, not to mention the tons of plugins. Cool idea to
| have one app that does everything but performance and
| usability have gone down the drain. It feels very beta to
| me.
|
| Oh and the choices they make are so stupid sometimes.
| When I decline a meeting it still adds me to its
| associated chat and pings me for everything that's said
| in it. Constant distraction and no way to turn off this
| stupid default.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I would agree Teams itself is a mess. I was just pointing
| out that Microsoft have successful apps across 3
| different operating systems, and neither of them use
| Microsoft GUI frameworks.
|
| I don't see why I should use a Microsoft GUI any more
| either. Once you stop using their libraries, you no
| longer need their OS at all. Pretty strange behaviour
| from MS if you ask me, encouraging your users to get off
| their systems.
| bmacho wrote:
| > It's now a viable competitor for enterprise applications,
| both because web is getting more feature rich and these
| days has pretty much anything you need, and because desktop
| is getting worse with anti-features and jank. It's a sad
| state of affairs but that's where we are.
|
| Actually web is getting worse with anti-features and jank
| as well.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| What is wrong with Linux nowadays? I've used it as my main
| driver for long enough that I can't see the big problems that
| are preventing everyone from switching. Like, it seems easier
| than even WSL to me. Beginner friendly distos seem to have
| solved the package management problem, and there are adequate
| desktop environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and
| everything else. If a person has good hardware compatibility,
| in the face of the bloated pushyess of Windows 11, why not
| use Linux? What am I missing?
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| MS Office. That's it. That's the reason I went with a Mac
| instead.
|
| Nobody is kicking MS off of that pedestal, and unless we
| get some significant anti-trust legislation, we aren't
| getting that on Linux.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >What is wrong with Linux nowadays?
|
| Linux is great for doing things on your own. Where it fails
| is when you have to sync up with other people's proprietary
| norms.
|
| For example, I'm a researcher who gets funding from the US
| government. I can do my day-to-day technical work in Linux.
| But I'm forced to still use Windows to present PowerPoint
| slides over Teams to my funding overlords, because that's
| what _they_ use, and I have to conform to that. Linux ports
| /knock-offs of those products just don't interoperate with
| proprietary MS systems well enough for me to rely on them.
| Unless the US government (or at least the relevant parts I
| deal with) ditches Microsoft products, I have to keep a
| foot in MS-land to carry out the accountability parts of my
| job.
| zo1 wrote:
| Installation is utterly broken and hopeless on Linux. Let's
| not pretend like it's in any way ready for the general
| consumer. Including Ubuntu, the "flagship" poster boy for
| widescale adoption of Linux.
|
| We're more likely to see people going back to dumb-
| terminals with GUIs being streamed to their ChromeOS from a
| server running linux than we are to see people using Linux.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| What part of installation is broken? It's literally a GUI
| that you can click "continue" on until you get to the
| pretty looking progress bar.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Application installation is broken. If software isn't
| hand-curated in the distro's repository and kept up to
| date by someone, then get ready to set up a dev
| environment and compile from source. Hopefully you will
| not break your entire system trying to cater to whims of
| whatever insane build environment it uses. This includes
| new versions that no one has got around to packaging yet.
|
| AppImage and Flatpak are making inroads to eliminating
| this foolishness, but I still routinely run into software
| that isn't yet on board with that.
| digisign wrote:
| This reads like a comment from Slashdot, circa '97. If
| you have a "toxic" relationship with inept/malicious
| application software, break ties with it now just as you
| should from Microsoft.
|
| Even under your rare worst-case scenario, recovery has
| never been easier with "live" flash drives. No need to
| live in fear of breaking something.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > This reads like a comment from Slashdot, circa '97
|
| Sadly, while some parts of the Linux Desktop have come a
| long way since the 90s, many others have not.
|
| > If you have a "toxic" relationship with inept/malicious
| application software, break ties with it now just as you
| should from Microsoft.
|
| Presumably people use software to _do something_ , and
| many times there simply isn't alternative software that
| does what you want to do and you're stuck with it even
| though it is toxic.
|
| > Even under your rare worst-case scenario, recovery has
| never been easier with "live" flash drives. No need to
| live in fear of breaking something.
|
| Here's something else you might have read on Slashdot in
| 97 that's still applicable today: "Linux is free only if
| your time isn't worth anything". My fear isn't losing
| data or being unable to get back to the working state,
| it's the time I lose having to go through the effort of
| doing that when the simple case of just installing a
| goddamned application shouldn't be such a pain in the
| first place.
| digisign wrote:
| This describes Windows as well though, just read all the
| complaints from the original article and thread. Sadly
| there is no decent OS any longer, they all had/have their
| flaws and now they are being dumbed down and control
| taken away.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Beginner friendly distos seem to have solved the package
| management problem, and there are adequate desktop
| environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and
| everything else._
|
| But for professional use "adequate" doesn't cut it.
| Professionals need "good" and judge that by the standards
| of what is available on other platforms. 95% compatibility
| with the industry standard doesn't cut it. 80% of the
| features working at least 90% of the time doesn't cut it.
| Free instead of paying a few hundred bucks for the extra
| percentage points _isn 't even a question worth asking_
| from a business perspective.
|
| Linux has great software, sometimes the best available on
| any platform, in certain areas. Developer tools is an
| obvious one. Servers is another. Some of the multimedia
| stuff is good. The picture for running games is getting
| better all the time even if most of them are still ports of
| some kind rather than truly native applications.
|
| But as much as I hate to say it, the reality is that in
| most areas that most users are going to care about the
| Linux ecosystem is still lacking in both quality and
| quantity. I'd bet on the evolution of web technology
| disrupting Windows long before the Linux desktop does. But
| that is hardly a solution to the phone-home and forced-
| update problems that a lot of us don't like about modern
| Windows.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| > But for professional use "adequate" doesn't cut it.
|
| However bad Linux is at package management, Windows is
| even worse. So I'm not sure how your argument convinces
| people that Windows package managers are superior?
| Silhouette wrote:
| I didn't say anything about package managers. What counts
| is the software that is available. The best package
| manager in the world isn't worth anything if it doesn't
| have the packages that you need.
| SteveMoody73 wrote:
| Most business software can be installed by the network
| admins, software that can't doesn't matter for a lot of
| these companies and just won't be used. Even in my
| smaller but rapidly growing company they are doing more
| to restrict what software can be installed. Easy install
| of packages isn't what a large company wants
| criddell wrote:
| There's a lot of software not on Linux or that doesn't run
| well on Linux.
|
| People pick their OS based on what software they want to
| run, not the other way around. And they pick from what they
| can buy. Go into a BestBuy and you can choose between
| Windows machines, Apple machines, and a few Chromebooks.
|
| If you did manage to buy a Linux machine somewhere, you are
| going to be disappointed when you go back into that BestBuy
| to get a printer or webcam or some other accessory and the
| box says "compatible with macOS and Windows".
| tcmart14 wrote:
| But the issue here is not inherently with Linux. It is
| more so with vendors of printers making drivers. If
| Brother feels that there are enough people running Linux
| and want to own a Brother printer, they will make the
| driver. Maybe that is the issue we need solve, or at
| least the part we need to be vocal about. If brother gets
| a significant number of emails asking for linux support,
| perhaps they will finally make linux a first class
| citizen?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I think it's interesting you chose Brother here, because
| Linux support _is_ a first class citizen -- they not only
| offer CUPS drivers, they offer Deb and RPM packages that
| also set up dependencies.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I just picked the first vendor off the top of my head and
| Brother came to mind. Feel free to replace it with any
| other vendor/manufacturer. In no way is it meant to
| single out brother as being poor on Linux.
| ihateolives wrote:
| > But the issue here is not inherently with Linux. It is
| more so with vendors of printers making drivers.
|
| Users don't care. For them things either work or not.
| Users are not going to e-mail Brother or Nvidia or
| Microsoft to fix their issues with printers, video cards
| or Onedrive. How is that so hard to understand?
| tcmart14 wrote:
| If the vendors got metrics that showed that desktop linux
| user share was enough and viable enough, they would. The
| issue is, Linux users are a small share of the desktop
| market. But, if that number grew, it changes. Hardware
| vendors would port their drivers over once the potential
| revenue of customers on a different platform outweighs
| the cost in doing so. Otherwise, I don't think Brother or
| Nvidia really give a damn if an end user is running
| Windows or Linux, they just care that enough of those
| user exists in their respective ecosystem to justify the
| engineering costs.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is true, but still - people want to print documents.
| They don't want to run Linux (or Windows). If they can't
| print documents, that's a problem.
|
| The solution was Google Cloud Print, IMO. That was a
| great idea. Who cares what you run, as long as it can
| connect to the internet you can print. I don't know how
| in-depth it got with the various crazy menu systems
| tcmart14 wrote:
| That brings up an excellent point. Services like these
| start to eventually render driver support useless. I
| haven't heard of Google cloud print, but I just looked it
| up. Even though it looks to be EOLed, there are
| alternatives still going, just not from google. My HP
| printer has an app. I can push documents to the app that
| goes up to HP then comes back down on to my printer, if I
| have my printer configured with that. I think my last
| printer, which was a bother had something similar where I
| could set it up on my home network in such a way that I
| can just email a document to a special bother email
| address which then prints it out on the brother printer.
| fartcannon wrote:
| People pick everything based on marketing.
| hulitu wrote:
| Maybe until they get burned.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Ironically, printers are now easier to get working on
| Linux than they are on Windows. The whole no-driver setup
| in the unix world murders the "must install this driver
| and possibly restart" shenanigans on Windows.
|
| I was quite surprised when I switched my main dev machine
| to Linux and the printer not only appeared by itself, but
| worked out of the box.
| stuartd wrote:
| Loss of familiarity - "where's my cheese gone?!" - seems
| likely
| smm11 wrote:
| I was a Linux network admin FOR the US Government, in a
| datacenter, and had to use Windows.
| tssva wrote:
| With Linux while sitting idle my laptop burns battery about
| twice as fast as it does on Windows while I go about my
| normal workflow. This is a laptop which is certified for
| both Fedora and Ubuntu.
| ihateolives wrote:
| I've been wondering about that as well, never found a
| comprehensive answer to why is the difference so stark.
| I'd be willing to use Linux on my laptop when the
| difference would be 10-12%, but as of now I just can't. I
| have laptop because I need to use it on the go and linux
| makes it harder for me.
| catfishx wrote:
| Using auto-cpufreq or other cpu frequency scaling
| services can make my laptop run way longer than with
| windows.
| tssva wrote:
| I have tried tlp which includes cpu frequency scaling on
| numerous distributions over the last couple of years with
| little if any noticeable difference.
| lproven wrote:
| Depends on the model and the up-to-dateness of its
| firmware.
|
| My main travel laptop is still an old Thinkpad X220,
| because of the great keyboard.
|
| It lasts considerably longer on Ubuntu 20.04 than in
| Windows 10 $LATEST. In Windows, it runs too hot to have
| on my lap, and the fans run constantly.
|
| In Ubuntu, it runs cool and I rarely hear the fan at all.
|
| Check your firmware is current: that's step 1.
| yathaid wrote:
| This article has a laundry list of things that annoyed the
| heck out of me. So I decided to try and dual boot to Ubuntu
| on my Surface Pro 7.
|
| This may come across as a rant, but I do not mean it that
| way. I know the tears and sweat people have pored it into
| this. Anyway, here is the list of things that I found are
| broken:
|
| - HDPI monitor support is BAD. Unity cannot do fractional
| scaling, resulting in perfect fonts on the menu, but such
| poor fonts in firefox that my eyes started to hurt.
|
| - The SurfaceLinux sub-reddit seemed to suggest KDE/Plasma
| is better at this, which it is. I am trying this as my
| daily driver. The LTS version is still on X11, which means
| a common app like Obisdian.md actually caused the system to
| go to swap; I am still trying to figure out if this is the
| culprit.
|
| - Trying Plasma on Wayland caused the system to hang. Fair
| enough, this is still under development.
|
| - KDE minimal install, in its infinite wisdom, does not
| include the network manager applet. It is 2022, do you
| think users will not want to connect to wifi?
|
| - Each time I switch from clamshell mode to multi-monitor,
| I need to reset the layout of the widgets on my desktop.
|
| - Another easter egg in fractional scaling; the size of the
| cursor changes when you hover over certain windows or the
| task manager panel. I am not as familiar with the Linux
| ecosystem as I used to be, so I am not sure why this
| happens.
|
| - Abandoning all hope of legible, anti-aliased fonts, I
| have tried to increase the font size across the system and
| in certain apps like Firefox and VS Code. You should see
| some of the hilariously bad KDE setting screens that cannot
| work with a font size of 16px (the default is 12px).
|
| - SDDM seems to think I want an onscreen virtual keyboard
| even though I have a keyboard attached. It literally does
| not show me the login screen. I have to blindly tap in my
| password making sure focus is not lost on that box lest I
| never be able to login.
|
| - Every time firefox starts the application renders like
| there is a rift in reality in the left bottom corner of
| screen. A forced maximize fixes this, but still.
|
| I love my Wobbly Windows. I so want it to succeed. But
| architecturally, something just feels broken. The split
| between a display manager, a window manager and a
| compositor just means that instead of having to worry about
| one thing to make sure I have a working display, I need to
| worry about three things.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Ubuntu Unity the desktop environment Ubuntu abandoned
| back in 18.04? On X11 with Gnome 3 with Ubuntu 20.04 it
| does actually support fractional scaling and if IIRC does
| it in a somewhat similar way to MacOS where it scales up
| the res*2 then downscales it. For whatever reason either
| GNOME didn't accept Ubuntu's changes or they didn't
| submit them upstream so it doesn't work in any other
| distro for GNOME 3. It actually works pretty well IME. It
| possible to mimic it with the right call to xrandr in
| other DEs.
| lproven wrote:
| I still run Unity on a bunch of machines here, but it's
| old now and starting to bitrot. I haven't even tried on
| the 1 or 2 boxes that have hi-DPI displays: it's not
| worth it.
|
| On non-*buntu distros, I use Xfce. It can't do fractional
| scaling.
|
| Only a handful of desktops support it. From my research,
| I found 3:
|
| * GNOME Shell. No thank you.
|
| * KDE 5. Better, but still a no thank you from me.
|
| * Cinnamon.
|
| I looked at Cinnamon on Ubuntu and Debian, but the
| versions are quite out of date (Cinnamon 4.8.x). I wanted
| the latest 5.x series, and that means Linux Mint, the
| parent distro of Cinnamon.
|
| So I now have a box with Mint 20.3 and a Liquorix kernel.
| It works well, it natively can mount my NTFS partition
| with the in-kernel driver and understand a Core i5 11th-
| gen GPU.
|
| Cinnamon is a little clunky and a little hard to
| customise, but it does actually work in the way I broadly
| expect and can put up with, unlike either GNOME 3 or KDE
| 5.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority
| actually cares.
|
| > Acknowledging this is the first step. The second is
| figuring out what would make them care or how to remove them
| so someone who does care can take over. That's a much harder
| thing to do.
|
| There's the challenge.
|
| Who cared about "hardware"? Jony Ive and Jobs perhaps?
|
| Who cares about OS performance? Linus Torvalds. I'm sure
| there are MS insiders who we don't know.
|
| Who cares about the desktop? .....
|
| The funny thing is the desktop was a solved problem with the
| mother-of-all-demos, and everything else is sugar on top, and
| yet there has to be this continual awful rebranding. Ok we
| went from VGA, to HD, to 4k HDR, but the underlying design
| and UI doesn't have to change so poorly each time.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Even stuff like WSL is loosing it's shine now for me. I've
| personally hit a bug on multiple computers that I can reliably
| repo a blue screen if I attempt to update a specific package.
|
| The github bug for this issue last had activity from MS 4
| months ago.
|
| Kinda makes it hard to take it seriously if such a major
| blocker is treated with such low priority.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| wsl2 has been very very stable for me. in fact, i have spent
| a lot of time in the last 6 months on wsl2 (FYI - fedora is
| my main)
|
| i really recommend trying out wsl2. you now can install it
| from the window store.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Yep, I know people love it. It sent my machine into a boot
| loop till I could uninstall it in safe mode.
|
| I'll live with a dedicated VM for now.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yeah I've never had issues. I've used Linux as a daily
| driver since Vista came out so wsl has been nice for me. I
| can finally have a gaming PC that can also serve as a
| docker server and just generally test my backend on. With
| that said my two coworkers, who are very much Windows daily
| driver users, have had nothing but issues. Some times I
| think my Linux knowledge is what's helped me here,
| ironically.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| My system bluescreens when I so much as install WSL2 on my
| second work laptop with Windows 11. Tried to track it down
| and it seems to be some stupid Lenovo driver but it's almost
| impossible to fix :(
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Is that WSL 1 or 2?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| WSL 1, my attempt to install WSL 2 after this BSOD failed
| miserably, put a machine in a boot loop, I haven't dug into
| what was going on there.
| gruez wrote:
| AFAIK WSL 1 isn't actively being worked on anymore, now
| that there's WSL 2. As for your issue with WSL 2, it runs
| off hyper-v, so my guess is that there's something with
| your BIOS/UEFI/firmware settings that's breaking it (eg.
| secureboot/CSM, TPM, virtualization).
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| You might be right about WSL 1 being dead, which is just
| annoying since it's useful for me.
|
| Ironically with your comment about Hyper-V: I moved to
| using Linux in a Hyper-V VM for now for this workflow.
| It's in that category of category of "ugh, not worth the
| time to figure out" for now, which probably means I won't
| bother for quite a while. Honestly, when things slow down
| again, I'll probably just flatten this machine and
| install Linux. MS is kinda killing whatever inertia I had
| for dealing with their quirks.
| jerf wrote:
| "Honestly, when things slow down again, I'll probably
| just flatten this machine and install Linux. MS is kinda
| killing whatever inertia I had for dealing with their
| quirks."
|
| In 2028, we'll be reading news articles about how the
| Year of Linux on the Desktop never really came, but the
| Year of Anything But Monetized Microsoft Windows sure
| did.
|
| If I were making a list of companies and software
| packages that should be focusing on long term value
| rather than trading short term value for everyone hating
| your product, Windows would be a strong contender for top
| of the list. Microsoft may not want to _depend_ on
| Windows, but throwing away so much user value for so
| little money is a stupid decision.
|
| I just can't hammer on this point enough. There _isn 't
| that much money in advertising_. The best advertisers in
| the world are looking at ~$10-20 per user per _year_ at
| scale [1]. Advertising makes a lot of money because there
| 's a lot of those users, not because they make that much
| per user. (That's why all the plans to "share the
| revenue" with the ad consumer are just hopeless. The
| money can't support it.) Windows ads can not necessarily
| jump to that level of performance right away, either. I
| really don't see how they could _possibly_ be making
| enough money in their OS ads to make up for the goodwill
| they 're pissing away. They're trading a money stream
| that still has at least a good decade in it, quite
| possibly more, for short term gain that isn't even all
| that impressive. Who is pressing for all these ads? What
| kind of analysis is being done internally that shows this
| is worth it? I find it hard to believe. Even a Windows in
| decline picking up licensing fees on new computer sales
| should be bringing in vastly more revenue than
| advertising possibly could. Ruining your 2025 sales for
| not really all that much money _right now_ seems a very
| bad decision for a product coming up on 30 years old and
| still making lots of money.
|
| [1]: You can do better for very targeted things like
| mesothelioma ads, but at scale, that's what Facebook is
| looking at.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Agreed. The concept of WSL1 was much more interesting.
| Interfacing with Windows through a Linux userland.
| Actually do stuff on the windows system with a familiar
| interface.
|
| WSL2 is just Linux in a VM which has been around like
| forever.
|
| By the way it also put my system in a boot loop (blue
| screen on boot). I tracked it down to a buggy Lenovo
| driver but when I removed that it crashed on something
| else and I got sick of it and gave up.
| apatheticonion wrote:
| omg thank you for this. The amount of people trying to
| tell me WSL2 is groundbreaking - meanwhile I have been
| rocking Fedora in virtualbox for years.
|
| WSL1 was really interesting, but ultimately Microsoft
| needed a flagship product to demonstrate the capabilities
| of Hyper-V and WSL was the perfect project.
| derac wrote:
| To be clear, wsl 2 lets you interact with the Windows
| filesystem. I believe you can launch exes in wsl1, but
| not 2. However, I've never needed to do that. It's
| definitely not groundbreaking, but it is convenient.
|
| Using it with the new terminal app is nice. It will load
| and unload the ram for the instance immediately whenever
| you pop open a linux shell. IMO opening and closing
| virtualbox/hyper-v takes longer and is clunkier. Overall
| it reduces friction.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| WSL2 filesystem access is just ordinary 9p mount.
| balakk wrote:
| Windows exes open fine in WSL2. You can also run linux
| apps from a Windows prompt - which is weird, but it
| works.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/filesystems
| bostonsre wrote:
| It's not just running a vm on windows. The integration
| between the two makes it a lot more streamlined than just
| running something on virtual box. You can do stuff like
| browse the windows file system from Linux easily and vice
| versa. You can also run windows executables from inside
| Linux to do things like write stdout to your windows
| clipboard by piping it to powershell.
| augustl wrote:
| You're definitely an early adopter if you're on WSL now. I'd
| say it's probably not prime time until 2024 or so.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Try doing anything I/O intensive in WSL and it all falls
| apart. I have a 32 core machine with 128GB using nvme disks
| and it's getting murdered performance wise by an 8 core AWS
| instance with 16GB of ram on gp2 disks.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 1 or 2, and doing the I/O inside the virtual disk or not?
|
| WSL2 inside the virtual disk should be very fast.
| syshum wrote:
| I dont think it is contempt for the users, It is more that
| consumers (i.e non-enterprise editions of windows) is the Beta
| Test group for windows
|
| Microsoft has always been, and will always be an enterprise
| company, they do not care about Consumers, and they do not care
| about SMB business. they care about Large Enterprise.
|
| I have seen it countless times in my career, SMB space and can
| be complaining up a storm about a problem for years but until
| some 20,000+ employee CTO has the problem MS will not give it
| the time of day.
|
| It is all numbers, and if you are not a government or Large
| corporation Microsoft does not give you the time of day
| digisign wrote:
| You've just described the passive side of "contempt."
| rbanffy wrote:
| The one thing I find the most terrible is the "10 different UI
| conventions" thing. Dig enough and I bet you'll find a control
| panel or some other thing the has Windows NT 3.1 look and feel.
|
| It says a lot how low the abstraction levels must have been
| that it's impossible, even to Microsoft, to update the UI
| widgets of a long-dead Windows release without breaking
| something else.
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| Open "ODBC Data Sources" from the start menu
|
| Click "Add..."
|
| Click "Finish" with "Microsoft Access Driver" selected (no,
| you're not finished)
|
| Click "Select..."
| UberFly wrote:
| Ding ding ding. You win the prize. Every click is a step
| back in time.
| superleo2020 wrote:
| Disappointingly this wasn't in the ARM version (the access
| driver). Just SQL Server.
|
| Wonder if it can be found anywhere else. I did try the old
| progman.exe (via x86 compatability), and while it worked,
| it uses the modern API for the file dialog.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| If you are curious but don't have Windows:
| https://imgur.com/a/40vuBTK
| Ruphin wrote:
| Thanks for the trip down memory lane
| segmondy wrote:
| As the techie helping my folks with their Windows issue, it was
| far easier and better for my mental health to spend my own
| money buying everyone chromebooks and ipads.
| Neil44 wrote:
| They are doing this with Teams and it gets better, it's a
| different Teams than normal that looks the same but only
| accepts personal MS accounts not business / 365 ones. WTF?
| coryrc wrote:
| > Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority
| actually cares
|
| "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste" --
| Steve Jobs
| petilon wrote:
| You could say that about the post-Steve-Jobs Apple as well.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Is that really true though?
|
| Yes, the UIs Apple make are no longer anywhere near as
| intuitive as they were in Steve Jobs' days, but Apple
| definitely still have their soul. You don't even have to
| look further than the latest iMacs.
| dogleash wrote:
| >Apple definitely still have their soul
|
| Really? It's all so painful sterile. Even their attempts
| at deviating from that coldness feel like someone with a
| spreadsheet calculated they should increase the brand-
| safe fun quotient in sector 7G by 4%.
| pseudostem wrote:
| I believe this [1] is the interview from which the quote is
| taken.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/rDqQcmVqAm4
| jiggawatts wrote:
| There's also that they "decided" that none of their core
| customer bases actually matter. They no longer cater to the
| needs of _anyone_.
|
| Some random examples:
|
| Enterprise -- It's cloud or the highway. You're either
| migrating to Azure and Microsoft 365, or stuck in dead-ends
| with virtually no maintenance/attention. Core products have
| just been left twisting in the wind. Active Directory for
| example has had no major feature updates since 2016. Microsoft
| themselves use Linux for many of their Azure PaaS/SaaS
| services, which is very telling. There's no on-prem equivalents
| of CosmosDB, Log Analytics, and a range of other "core"
| services developed for Azure.
|
| Gamers -- Windows gaming is a shit-show and all development
| effort is focused on XBox. Occasionally, _reluctantly_ ,
| features will be backported from XBox to PC, but usually broken
| or limited in some critical way. For example, DirectStorage for
| PC was under NDA until very recently, and there were few
| (zero?) games shipping with that capability. HDR gaming on
| Windows is a total mess as well, with one lone blog article
| talking about bringing the HDR tuning app to PC form XBox "some
| unspecified time in the future". Without this, HDR is totally
| and utterly broken, unless the PC is plugged into an external
| TV... like an XBox.
|
| Content Creation -- Windows used to be _better_ and more
| commonly used than Apple for a while, especially in some areas.
| Not any more. The endless series of penny-pinching decisions
| and broken features have driven artists away in droves. Some
| random examples: Windows 11 shipped with totally broken colour
| management. As in, absolutely non-functional. Windows 11 also
| broke HDR even further, and it was broken in Windows 10 to
| begin with. You literally cannot display or view HDR correctly
| on the primary ( "built in") monitor of any Windows PC. It was
| broken on purpose, and then... left like that. It's possible
| the next semi-annual build will "fix" it, but I wouldn't hold
| my breath. Dolby Vision is not enabled by default. Camera RAW
| decoders are not installed by default. H.264 is not installed
| by default. The built-in photo viewers and editors are not
| color-managed. Wide Color Gamut (WCG) support was _removed_ at
| every level. It 's just gone. Microsoft wants to enshrine SDR
| sRGB forever in an era where every new phone and every Apple
| device is wide-gamut and HDR.
|
| Software Developers -- See Casey Muratori's rants about the
| ludicrous degradation of basic quality controls in Visual
| Studio, Windows Terminal, etc... For example, VS 2022 can't
| keep up with debug single-stepping on that fastest machine
| money can buy, but ancient PCs running older versions had no
| trouble. But that's just a small annoyance. The real problem is
| that Windows GUI development is dead. It may as well not exist
| any more. There is no supported GUI framework that isn't a
| dead-end, formally unsupported, or restricted to "mobile phone
| app" levels. Even Microsoft recognises this, and most of their
| new GUI products (e.g.: Teams) are Electron apps. What little
| new stuff they're putting out (e.g.: Visual Studio Code) is a
| tyre fire of low quality tools trying to appeal to the
| Linux/Mac crowd at the expense of majority used to Windows.
|
| To summarise: if in 2022 I want to develop a GUI app, or
| display anything with the correct colour, or HDR, or any
| similarly advanced features, my best approach is to use
| Google's Chromium. If I want to write a game, use Vulkan, not
| DirectX. If I want to create a web app, use Linux. If I want to
| use a database, Postgres. If I want authentication, then
| anything but Active Directory. If I want to use dev tools, use
| IntelliJ.
|
| There is nothing left where the #1 best approach is Microsoft
| Windows or some other Microsoft product.
| ripley12 wrote:
| > What little new stuff they're putting out (e.g.: Visual
| Studio Code) is a tyre fire of low quality tools
|
| I have no idea why you would say this. VS Code is an
| incredibly popular and well-liked product.
| imron wrote:
| That consumes a full core for intellisense the entire time
| it's running if you have a large c++ codebase.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It is popular because it filled a niche where next to
| nothing existed, so for people in those fields _anything_
| is a step up.
|
| For people like me forced to come over from Visual Studio
| and other editors, it's a huge step down.
|
| For example, instead of making improvements to the
| PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE),
| Microsoft marked it as deprecated and "forced" everyone
| over to Visual Studio Code, whether they like it or not.
| E.g.: it's the only Microsoft IDE with PowerShell Core
| (pwsh) support.
|
| Despite being the only supported Microsoft PowerShell IDE,
| VS Code does not play nice with PowerShell. For example, if
| I open Code, it opens three(3!) PowerShell terminals for
| _unfathomable_ reasons. One of those starts with errors,
| the other works, but the third one is the default and
| crashes if you look at it sideways. Tab-complete just...
| stops. Even when tab-complete "works", it'll often start
| mid way through the list, hiding all of the relevant items
| and showing your random garbage like "quick start snippets"
| that make zero sense in the given tab-complete context.
|
| I could rant for hours on how poor the Visual Studio Code
| quality is, but nobody will listen, because for people
| upgrading from Notepad, it's the second coming of Jesus.
|
| Then there's always the smart-ass that explains patiently
| that this is all my fault for not "customising" my VS Code
| experience with JSON configuration settings that are seven
| levels deep and documented only in some blog article from
| three years ago. Meanwhile, I've never had to customise
| anything in Visual Studio. It "just works" the way you'd
| expect a Windows application to work. Not some Linux-
| Windows hybrid intended to be the "embrace" part of the
| unholy "embrace-extend-extinguish" trio.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For people like me forced to come over from Visual
| Studio and other editors, it's a huge step down.
|
| Sure, if your entire usage is the stuff that VS does well
| (which is a very narrow range compared to Code), and you
| are used to VS, it's probably an annoyance.
|
| > I could rant for hours on how poor the Visual Studio
| Code quality is, but nobody will listen, because for
| people upgrading from Notepad, it's the second coming of
| Jesus.
|
| Almost none of the things I do with Code I would have
| done with Notepad before. There are lots of non-IDE
| programmers editors that existed before Code. It may not
| be as good as VS or some IntelliJ variants for the use
| cases those IDEs are best for, but it's better for almost
| everything else than almost anything, and even for the
| things those major commercial IDEs specialize in, it's
| good enough for lots of specific use cases that when you
| need to do that plus other things, the context switch of
| using the commercial IDE for some tasks isn't worth it.
| daemin wrote:
| There are a ton of editors both free and paid for that
| niche you mentioned. Visual Studio code wasn't even the
| first one made with Electron, there was one called Atom
| before it. I have used and continue to use Sublime Text,
| and at work they install Notepad++ on all computers by
| default.
|
| I guess though if you're coming from raw notepad then
| that is a step up.
|
| And with anything "browser based" like VS Code you're
| going to always spawn a ton of processes to do even the
| simplest things.
| ripley12 wrote:
| I don't think the (not very good) PowerShell extension is
| a great basis for judging VS Code as a whole.
|
| I've spent most of my career in Visual Studio, I have a
| great deal of respect for how it _just works_ , nobody's
| forcing me to leave it and yet... I'm mostly done with
| it. I'd rather use VS Code for C# development these days;
| it nails a lot of speed+UX things that Visual Studio
| doesn't.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, from his point of view he's right to judge it,
| since he's being forced to use it and it's crap for his
| use case, extensions or not.
| drpixie wrote:
| Popular is not the same as quality. That's something that
| MS seem genuinely unable to understand - examples of a
| better product are countered with "our product is X times
| bigger, it is better". Well, no - X times bigger is
| probably momentum, or network effect, or sneaky
| placement/contracts - it has nothing to so with the quality
| of the product.
|
| Similar "well liked" very often really means "the only
| product I've used" or "the only product I know well" :(
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The cash cow will always be Microsoft Office. That's what
| governments use and because of that companies use it, and
| because of that everyone uses it.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The cash cow is changing to be M365 and Azure now. I don't
| think it'll be too long till the web versions catch up and
| replace desktop office.
| ksec wrote:
| That is why I think Microsoft should someday consider Open
| Source Windows, or at least the kernel. Leave the UI and
| Library on top closed source as a moat on user for
| compatibility.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Bingo. All these posts that say "oh just use Linux, it's
| compatible!" must be from naive junior devs who never have
| had to to deal with external organizations (especially
| governments) that require you to use their Word templates
| and share PowerPoint slides on their Teams calls.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Teams works on Linux now.
|
| It's a pig of an app especially on Mac (haven't tried
| Linux enough to verify) but it runs.
|
| On my Mac it takes a minute to start (fast M1 system),
| randomly crashes or hangs and often uses more than half
| my memory. But it is supported :)
| wussboy wrote:
| That's not terribly different to my Teams experience on
| Windows 10.
| the_snooze wrote:
| It "works," but not well enough for my purposes. I need
| to be able to share PowerPoint on Teams with my full
| slides visible to participants, and speaker notes visible
| only to me. There's no native PowerPoint for Linux, so
| that's a no-go.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| It does actually work very in-browser office 365
| powerpoint on linux.
| goosedragons wrote:
| PDFs? Unless participants need to edit the actual slides
| themselves what's wrong with PDFs? Most half decent PDF
| readers these days have a presentation mode where it goes
| full screen and arrow keys page through. Yes, you lose
| swoopy animations, sound effects and video but that's
| arguably a plus. And participants can read the slides on
| a wider range of devices with little hassle. Your speaker
| notes can stay with whatever slide program was used to
| make them.
| the_snooze wrote:
| My government funding overlords require me to send them
| PPTXs and DOCXs. And MS Teams on Linux only supports
| full-screen sharing, not window-specific sharing, so I
| can't do presenter view on my screen and slides-only on
| the call.
|
| I feel a lot of responses here are missing the point.
| Linux doesn't do what I need it to do with respect to the
| established MS Office norms I have to conform to. Linux
| is a bad tool for my required workflow (a workflow that
| isn't all that uncommon), so I keep Windows around
| because it's a more suitable tool for that.
|
| I'll repeat what I said: Linux is a great tool when
| you're a junior individual contributor, but it sucks when
| you're responsible for external communications with MS
| Office organizations.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It kind of works on Linux now. The only way I was able to
| join a call as a guest (not to my tenant!) was to launch
| it in Edge -- the native client crashed on launch if
| invoked to join an external meeting.
| holyyikes wrote:
| userbinator wrote:
| _There is no supported GUI framework that isn 't a dead-end,
| formally unsupported, or restricted to "mobile phone app"
| levels._
|
| Win32?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Dead end.
| userbinator wrote:
| I wouldn't say that, it's basically what keeps Windows
| alive.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Win32 is on life support. Many new features added since
| Vista don't work with it at all, or require complex code
| to enable in Win32 apps.
| holyyikes wrote:
| pjmlp wrote:
| They surely do, because COM is part of Win32.
|
| Now I admit it is a bit more complex than calling C
| functions, but only if one insists in calling COM from C.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| From my POV it has come to a time where the tradeoffs you make
| switching to Linux (xubuntu in my case) are worth it.
|
| A few days ago I had to do some helpdesk for a friend with
| windows 10. We suspected that one of his three drives failed,
| and windows just refused to start up, so I wanted to jump into
| recovery/safe mode and take a look.
|
| But for doing so you need to go through a ridiculous lenght
| rebooting the PC multiple times and go through a bunch of sub
| menus. I tried but it didn't work, so we unplugged the hd we
| suspected it was failing and used my linux laptop with an
| external hd case to diagnose it.
|
| I have a w10 corporate version in a pc, and it works kid of
| fine. I had to install windows 10 home to a laptop recebtly and
| everything feels like an abuse.
|
| If I have to fight with a system more than I fight with linux,
| with it's drivers issues and the problems that I can't fix
| without googling as I'm not intimate with the SO, what's the
| point?
|
| Its just too much effort.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Try Manjaro with KDE.
|
| Manjaro is way better than Ubuntu; KDE is way better than
| Xfce.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Try debian with i3.
|
| Debian is way better than Manjaro; i3 is way better than
| KDE.
| sharno wrote:
| Try Pop!_OS with Gnome.
|
| Pop!_OS is way better than Debian; Gnome is way better
| than i3.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "If I have to fight with a system more than I fight with
| linux, with it's drivers issues and the problems that I can't
| fix without googling as I'm not intimate with the SO, what's
| the point?"
|
| Linux with universal good drivers, is probably what most of
| us would want and need.
|
| (except for the lucky few, who never had an issue)
| QuantumSeed wrote:
| To your point, the Programs and Features section of the Windows
| 11 Control Panel no longer lists Microsoft Teams as a product
| that can be uninstalled.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| To be fair, that legacy control panel doesn't list any apps
| that use the AppX/MSIX packaging model introduced with
| Windows 8. I'm still not on Windows 11, so I don't know if
| Teams is listed in the newer list of apps available in modern
| Settings, but it's worth looking there.
| lproven wrote:
| There are loads of "modern" apps that can't be uninstalled
| from Win10. Some are in the list but you're not allowed;
| some aren't in the list.
|
| But it's easy to copy-and-paste a bit of Powershell and
| just uninstall them anyway:
|
| https://www.techsupportall.com/uninstall-built-apps-
| windows-...
|
| There are 3rd party tools too:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-
| windows-10...
| ripley12 wrote:
| "Microsoft Teams" is present for in Settings -> Apps ->
| Apps & Features on Win11 for me. But given how they're
| integrating Teams into the OS, I wouldn't be surprised if I
| lose the ability to uninstall it soon.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| The fact that they are making that huge hunk of trash a
| core part of Windows tells me everything I need to know
| about the direction they are headed into. How does
| anybody put up with Windows in 2022?
| iotku wrote:
| They deliberately gray out and disable the button that
| works for every other application if I recall correctly.
| yibg wrote:
| Is it nobody cares or they care about different things? If you
| want to be cynical, they care about making money. But could it
| also be that they're more focused on the general population
| (who don't care as much about this stuff)?
|
| It's hard to tell for me to be honest, but are we (e.g. HN
| crowd) just a minority of power users that are in our own echo
| chamber complaining and making us happy doesn't really move the
| needle for MSFT?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Would be interestng to know how many non-enterprise Windows
| users have ever made a direct payment to Microsoft. For that
| segment, the company suffers from the same problem as "tech"
| companies. The non-enterprise Windows user is not the customer.
|
| Identitities and personal information are a Microsoft product.
| Some of that personal data is acquired through Windows or other
| software and some is acquired through acquisitions of "tech"
| companies such as LinkedIn.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| I think any developer that could long moved from their
| ecosystems by now. You can see that if you try to get technical
| knowledge.
|
| I can imagine that there are many departments that have to
| continually justify their existence and management tries to
| find the one-hit wonder that gets users engaged. All these
| departments try to have their dejure product integrated into
| Windows to have a chance to pump up their KPI.
|
| You should be able to tell an operating system that it is not
| allowed to phone home. That is not possible in Windows, on the
| contrary, they have increased their spying dramatically. It has
| been a adversarial relationship for a long time by now and I
| don't see any attempts to change course or anyone that really
| cares for the platform. Their corporate integration and PC
| gaming keeps Windows relevant for now, but people will look
| elsewhere.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority
| actually cares.
|
| I don't know if it started with Ballmer, but they do care, but
| it is just about sales, and making money. It's not as if
| selling and making money is antithetical to making good
| software either.
|
| It's always the same in the IT industry. The "non technical"
| managers are invariably higher in the org chart than developers
| and they have no concept of what people actually want, and make
| disastrously poor decisions. Falling sales... improve product,
| increase the price, or introduce ads?
|
| I haven't booted Windows at home for close to 3 years. KDE on
| Ubuntu is rock solid for me, all the peripherals work, powers
| both my screens, has all the software I need.
|
| And best of all, it's still 100% offline and I don't have to
| sign into anyone's "cloud".
| cyxxon wrote:
| Or they do have an idea what the users want, but it is still
| bad... at my job, the non-technical managers bought the SAP
| marketing koolaid, promised our internal users the cool new
| stuff they were going to get with the new software, and we in
| the IT just want to scream and say, no, you can't get that,
| that's not supported, or will take a year to build because we
| would have to revamp almost everything ourselves... and, yes,
| all because at SAP no one knows what users need. We have had
| several rounds with SAP PMs already were they basically said
| "huh, that's interesting, that's how you work with the
| software? We need to discuss this internally." Well... good
| thing you didn't ask before launching the new version then.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Acceptance tests:
|
| "As a user I want to XYZ"
|
| vs.
|
| "As a product manager listening to what I think a user
| said, they want to ABC"
|
| That's what happens when developers in large companies are
| not allowed or do not want to talk to users.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Hah, you cannot adopt SAP to your needs, it's the other way
| around, you have to adopt to them. If that matches your use
| case, allright, but otherwise forget about it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Making money and caring about users are related, but there's
| definitely a difference between making a good product that
| people would like to use, and trying to make money. The
| latter may well make you rich, but it may make your product
| much worse, which you shore up with lots of salespeople and
| complex pricing schemes and dealmaking to keep people locked
| in.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Totally unrelated: The Microsoft PowerApps licencing PDF is
| 6 pages long.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _It 's like being in an abusive relationship._
|
| Indeed, another way it's like an abusive relationship is
| people's reluctance to leave despite all they've experienced.
|
| I hear all the horror stories and then say "I've been using for
| ten years and it works well" and I get "oh, but I don't want to
| have to fiddle with things" (after discussions of how hard
| Windows is to get to do things).
|
| Linux has glitches but Microsoft manipulates people. Maybe
| people stay because they think that because Windows hurts them,
| it cares.
| hulitu wrote:
| A lot of people stay because it is required by the school or
| the employer.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| While I don't necessarily disagree with the initial
| statement, I will say that Linux Desktop has its own kind of
| abusive relationship, especially if you have to deal with
| certain parts of the community. GNOME in particular is pretty
| user-hostile in both design and in its community
| interactions, and while you can use a different DE GNOME is
| the default for the most popular and recommended
| distributions.
|
| Personally I've stuck with Windows because I rather hate the
| package manager/repo model that Linux distros use, where you
| get your choice between "up to date but frequently broken"
| rolling-release[0] or "several years out of date but probably
| stable". To me, the idea it is considered reasonable to
| expect a user to set up a dev environment and compile
| software from source is ludicrous, but until relatively
| recently that's been the norm[1]. Thankfully, AppImage and
| Flatpak have been gaining popularity and making that much
| less of a problem.
|
| Now the two biggest things keeping me from switching
| immediately are that I have an Nvidia 1080ti and buying an
| equivalent AMD card in this market is insane[2], and my
| Oculus isn't supported at all[3]. Still, I'll go to Linux
| before I go to Win 11.
|
| [0] which still often has out of date and missing packages
|
| [1] for anything not packaged by the distro or if you need a
| newer version
|
| [2] thanks Bitcoin Idiots, LLC
|
| [3] and from everything I gather no VR solution really works
| that well on Linux, even Valve's.
| digisign wrote:
| Agreed on your first paragraph. I use Mate which allows me
| to sidestep ~80% of gnome's abuse, however some still leaks
| in through GTK, I think.
|
| Re the second, I haven't built an app from source since
| about 2005? or so.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > Personally I've stuck with Windows because I rather hate
| the package manager/repo model that Linux distros use
|
| I have the opposite feeling: installation by search engine
| and speculative .exe downloads feels so dirty. There's the
| Windows store but it doesn't seem to actually work very
| often.
|
| Then again, following StackExchange or blog posts to add
| keys and deb repos for Ubuntu is no better. The AUR is also
| similar, but I trust that a bit more than a random blog
| post since at least there's a flagging mechanism.
|
| FWIW, I rarely have issues with rolling releases on Arch,
| certainly fewer issues than I have with Ubuntu repo package
| versions.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Hey you again. c:
|
| >I have an Nvidia 1080ti
|
| Fwiw, I used Linux with an 1080 Ti for years; it was the
| first card I tried Linux on. The only hitch is having to
| install Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Distros with GUI
| tools for drivers (e.g., Manjaro) make this easy.
|
| The only problem was actually my G-SYNC monitor. It was one
| of those super expensive ones with G-SYNC hardware in it.
| It turns out those just go black if you're not using an
| Nvidia card && aren't running proprietary drivers.
|
| At some point, I gave it and my 1080 Ti away and got an AMD
| card with FreeSync monitors. Funnily, the FreeSync doesn't
| actually work. (Luckily, I don't care that much about
| tearing, and it's less noticeable at >=144 Hz.) AND, with
| AMD, you don't have a nice GPU settings panel like Nvidia
| provides (as basic as it is compared to its Windows
| equivalent). I've noticed no other differences.
| Nevertheless, having the open source driver in-kernel and
| not worrying about installing it out of band is nice.
|
| >no VR solution really works that well on Linux, even
| Valve's.
|
| Yep, probably; tech is too new. I don't even try stuff like
| that until it's 30 years old and mainlined. ;D
|
| >GNOME
|
| Yeah, I don't know how anyone sane likes GNOME, and it's
| insane to me that KDE isn't the default DE instead. I
| reckon it's a combo of inertia, the fact that the GNOME
| faction were the GPL purists compared to TrollTech back in
| the day, and (enduring?) convergence/low-tech user adoption
| hopes.
| _dain_ wrote:
| I've seen so many people say things like: "Windows is fine,
| all you have to do is [gigantic list of obscure settings
| changes, registry edits, external freeware programs] to turn
| off the telemetry!"
|
| It will eventually get to the point where it will take more
| settings-twiddling to make Windows do what you actually want
| than Linux does.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I used an Ubuntu 21.10 installer recently, it was
| completely uneventful to set up with the default side-by-
| side configuration and actually easier than the Windows one
| (which must create a Windows account, you can then
| disconnect this from your local account later with a magic
| settings dance).
| 8note wrote:
| Nobody has figured out how to get the old windows ink back,
| unfortunately.
|
| I basically lost the reason for having a windows touch+pen
| input screen:/ and nobody has found out how to get the killer
| app back.
|
| I suspect that only pre-windows 8 good features will be
| retained over time
| LegitShady wrote:
| since the announcement that windows 11 will require a microsoft
| account to install, I've decided that windows 10 is the last
| version of windows I will use for my personal computers. Your
| description of microsoft's opinion of their customers ('nobody
| at microsoft...actually cares') is apt.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I wonder if that will be true of the Enterprise LTSC/LTSB
| version.
| MrPatan wrote:
| I don't even know what is my microsoft account anymore. I have
| created so many for so many services and devices over the years
| that I don't have a "main" one anymore.
|
| So every new install is a crapshot, I try to go local account
| only, but something gets in the way and I end up creating yet
| another one for that specific device.
|
| It's madness.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Windows and macOS users have different expectations. On a Mac,
| I expect my login account to also know my Apple ID and connect
| seamlessly with my iCloud, Apple TV, Apple Music, Messages, and
| all other Apple cloud services. I like being able to answer
| phone calls on the computer when the phone is nearby. When
| Microsoft tries to make Windows more Mac-like, it faces a
| couple problems - not everyone wants to be on Skype or Teams -
| some people use Zoom or Slack. To make things worse, even
| Microsoft products are not well integrated into the platform.
| Depending on how I open a SharePoint document, I can either
| have another Edge window, with an online version of an Office
| app or the standalone app opening (with different UI
| conventions on how shared edits work).
|
| The article mentions the backwards compatibility. Honestly, it
| never occurred to me to run a binary compiled for Windows 95 on
| Windows 11 (or 10, which is where I am now). It also mentions
| dual booting, which is something completely alien to me - this
| is what VMs are for. When I needed to run Windows on either my
| Mac or my Linux box, I'd just spin up a small VM with enough
| brains to run what I needed.
|
| And, since we are talking VMs, WSL 2 is a horrible user
| experienced compared to a real Linux environment - file sharing
| with the Windows side is clunkier than it was with WSL 1 (as
| things don't exist on a single filesystem, and that silly CRLF
| convention is what Windows expects) or even the venerable
| Cygwin (which saved me many times when I needed to use a
| Windows machine). With Macs and Linux you have full Unix
| environments without any border separating you from the rest of
| the machine.
| q-big wrote:
| > When Microsoft tries to make Windows more Mac-like
|
| Just a consideration: Aren't nearly all users who love the
| Apple/Mac experience already in the Apple ecosystem? In other
| words: Should Microsoft not rather assume that making Windows
| more Mac-like might be a bad idea considering their core
| customers?
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Aren't nearly all users who love the Apple/Mac experience
| already in the Apple ecosystem?
|
| Not sure. Macs are not that available and, in some places,
| are prohibitively expensive. Others would love the
| everything-integrated experience while using software that
| runs only on Windows.
|
| I'm not sure Microsoft even has that "core customer" as
| neatly defined as Apple (or Linux). Getting a Mac or a
| Linux box is a deliberate action, whilst, for the end user,
| getting a Windows box is the default when you get a
| "generic" computer.
|
| One group I can think of is the corporate administrators,
| who want to deliver a locked down set of functions to
| corporate workstations - VPN settings, firewalls, blocked
| websites, custom update schedules, and so on. That same
| crowd also orders Macs and Chromebooks with the same goals.
|
| What Microsoft can do is to offer tailored experiences for
| specific groups - people who want everything to just work
| (who'll be happy with Skype logging them on on boot, with
| OneDrive backing stuff up...), gamers who'll definitely not
| want Skype to interrupt them and who have nothing to back
| up to OneDrive, but, sometimes, want to record and stream
| their games, Windows developers who'll spend most of their
| time within Visual Studio and the MSDN KB (am I dating
| myself here?), and so on. I'm very sure they have a list of
| personas already built for that.
| q-big wrote:
| > I'm very sure they have a list of personas already
| built for that.
|
| At least considering the product policy that Microsoft
| currently applies to Windows, I tend to doubt that. ;-)
| edgyquant wrote:
| It depends on the direction Windows itself wants to go in
| really. This isn't the early 2000s where Windows was the
| used OS everywhere and was some hyperpower among software.
| Most apps are cross platform and there is a healthy
| ecosystem of OSs. Microsoft can let itself be the gaming
| and office PC, it can attempt to remain being the jack of
| all trades and master of none, or it could plot its own new
| course. I think either way they'll have plenty of
| costumers.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yeah I expect that my MacBook, Mac Mini, IPad and IPhone are
| all connected. I can open up browser tabs from one device to
| the other, take phone calls or send texts, not have to worry
| about sharing passwords etc.
|
| I expect, want in fact, none of these things on my Windows
| PC. I do not trust Microsoft with my data, and this was
| before the last year of them being owned. It may not be right
| or even logical, but I imagine a ton of other users fit this
| same archetype. To me windows is the spyware ridden OS I use
| to pay a handful of games, and it basically always will be.
| mulmen wrote:
| WSL is a threat to open software. At best a gateway. Anyone who
| believes Microsoft has changed is at best naive and at worst a
| fool. We have decades of evidence to show that Microsoft
| doesn't change. The sooner you move to a new platform the
| better. And don't bring Microsoft with you.
| lproven wrote:
| Strongly agreed.
|
| WSL - both versions - are MS attempting its age-old "embrace
| & extend" move.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis.
| ..
|
| I called it a distant relative of the NT POSIX environment
| and some senior MS bod disagreed and - when I said [[citation
| needed]] - eventually linked to a bunch of videos and stuff
| that say that WSL1 is a whole new translation layer and not a
| kernel personality at all.
|
| Which makes me wonder: why? Do MS not have enough top-flight
| kernel engineers any more to do an in-kernel version of
| gvisor? https://github.com/google/gvisor
|
| Others have done it.
|
| Joyent enhanced the old Solaris `lxrun` environment to bring
| it to 64-bit and kernel 3.x or even 4.x:
| https://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx
|
| The FreeBSD Linuxulator does much the same:
| https://wiki.freebsd.org/Linuxulator
| chithanh wrote:
| > I called it a distant relative of the NT POSIX
| environment and some senior MS bod disagreed and - when I
| said [[citation needed]] - eventually linked to a bunch of
| videos and stuff that say that WSL1 is a whole new
| translation layer and not a kernel personality at all.
|
| As far as I understand it, WSL1 was a complete
| reimplementation and did not use any code from the old
| POSIX subsystem/SUA/Interix. In particular, SUA had a
| number of long-standing limitations (like when replacing
| open files) which were probably unfixable without rewriting
| everything anyway. It allegedly is a continuation of
| Project Astoria which implemented only the minimum
| necessary part to make Android apps run, but was refocused
| to run all Linux applications.
| Borgz wrote:
| It was a bit odd to have a section criticizing UI inconsistencies
| followed by a section criticizing Microsoft for fixing those UI
| inconsistencies in Notepad and Task Manager.
| dend wrote:
| As I mentioned in the blog post - both Notepad and Task Manager
| aren't that inconsistent with the rest of the OS. Notepad is
| just a giant text box. Task Manager is a compact, tabbed view
| (tabs didn't go anywhere in the latest version of Windows) that
| now became Fluent-ified and in the process now looks very
| wasteful of vertical space.
|
| Above all, I think the problem is in priorities - Notepad and
| Task Manager _should_ be consistent with the OS. But when so
| much focus is assigned to those instead of the core pieces of
| the OS, it's fair to start raising some questions.
| ripley12 wrote:
| > when so much focus is assigned to those instead of the core
| pieces of the OS
|
| Do you have any evidence that Notepad and Task Manager
| required "so much focus"?
|
| The new Notepad's about as bare-bones as the old Notepad, it
| just happens to use XAML Islands for the UI. It would be
| surprising if it significantly detracted from other efforts.
| dend wrote:
| It's all about contrast to everything else. If my house
| roof is leaking and instead of fixing that I put a limited
| amount of resources I have into repainting my office and
| installing a fancy new European faucet, and then go and
| tell everyone about it - that says a lot about my
| priorities.
|
| Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that different teams do
| different things at a big company, but funnily enough when
| asked about high-priority issues the answer is almost
| universally "We don't have enough time and/or developers to
| tackle this right now." But there is magically time for MSN
| toolbars and Notepad tweaks.
| ripley12 wrote:
| OK, no evidence. Got it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You've got to admire Microsoft's support of open source software.
| They're doing their best to push users to Linux! By making their
| UI as ugly and difficult to use as possible so that users don't
| feel too much of a bump in usability when they try Linux.
|
| I'm sure MS can get the job done and kill off their OS with just
| a few more years of obnoxious bullshit forcefully shoved into
| their operating system!
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| I've had similar thoughts. If GUI programs running in WSL will
| look just like "regular" Windows apps (as MS said they intend
| to do) then Windows becomes a kind of front end to Linux. That
| would solve the "desktop" problems Linux has had.
|
| But between the overwrought UI and the bugs MS never seems to
| fix, Windows is becoming a less and less attractive platform
| with each revision.
| [deleted]
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| But you have to make sure NOT to fall into the WSL trap. If you
| use WSL you are essentially using Windows.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| Agreed. Windows 11 and macOS 12 finally gave me the kick
| necessary to switch to Linux full-time (Lenovo Carbon X1).
|
| macOS 12 cannot maintain a USB 2.0 connection. Not by dongle.
| Not by dock. Not by monitor. Not with 3rd party. Not with
| Apple-approved hardware. No way, no how. This is known,
| reported and _totally_ Apple 's fault (some of the earlier
| macOS 11 builds work _fine_ ). And this is the standard problem
| with Apple, "It just works--until it doesn't. If it doesn't,
| sucks to be you." I'm done with that.
|
| Windows 10 was _already_ bad enough with "Please, sir, can I
| have some compute?" with "I say thee _NAY_! I will now upgrade
| for the next 40 minutes. Hah! " Add in even more telemetry and
| inconsistency and I just gave up.
|
| The whole point of Windows and macOS was to _NOT_ have to dork
| with my OS and just get my work done. If I _have_ to dork with
| my OS to make it not suck, I should be on Linux! At least then,
| when I figure out how to make my OS not suck, I 'm helping
| instead of contributing to Microsoft or Apple profits.
|
| So, yeah, I'll maintain a Windows desktop for the few times I
| need it (Fusion 360 and some videoconferencing stuff), but
| otherwise it's been Linux full-time for me. And Apple can just
| go pound sand.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| My conclusion is that all mainstream operating systems are
| now iterative and constantly in a state of semi-breakage,
| just like all modern apps, in an attempt to be more "modern"
| and to cut down on costs. I'm especially disappointed in
| Microsoft for their obsessive data collection. I've never
| experienced the "good old days" Apple fans seem to be
| referring to, so I can't comment on macOS (other than that
| it's clearly not for me).
|
| It's quite absurd, really, because while the Linux desktop
| environment is certainly good for novices and advanced Linux
| users, anyone that falls between those categories (and that's
| a lot of people!) will definitely struggle when they try to
| switch to Linux. You're either content with the default
| setup, or need to dive into the terminal at some point, and
| the fact commercial operating systems are making their UX
| worse than Linux would be impressive if it wasn't so
| disappointing.
|
| For what it's worth, I've managed to get Fusion360 running on
| Manjaro with a script a friend linked me online. I can't
| remember where I got it from exactly, but it involved auto
| downloading a bunch of Wine requirements and then just
| running the setup.
|
| If you're not interested in tweaking your system, feel free
| to skip over the rest of the comment. If you're willing to
| give it a go, I've got some experience with Windows stuff on
| Linux that you may be interested in.
|
| I barely use Fusion360, but the few times I used it, it
| worked pretty well in Wine. Even had decent 3D acceleration,
| though you can probably get a lot better performance with
| more trickery (DXVK etc. to enhance the 3D acceleration for
| example). Lutris (https://lutris.net/) has an install script
| (https://lutris.net/games/autodesk-fusion-360/), I recommend
| you give it a try. Lutris can help enable performance tuning
| tricks for productivity software quite easily, even if it's
| originally developed for playing video games. Might work for
| you, or it might not; if it does, it might just cut down on
| more unnecessary reboots. If it doesn't, you'll at most lose
| the time it takes to download the installer and remove the
| failed installation.
|
| As for the video conferencing, you might be interested in
| Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary), a tool
| to run Windows executables in a Windows VM through RDP, with
| suspend/resume of the VM on demand to cut down on resources
| used when you're not using Windows. It requires a bit of
| setup, but the guide is quite comprehensive in my opinion.
| You can forward your webcam to the Windows VM through USB
| forwarding to get it to work with video, and modern RDP
| should just be an RDP stream so there shouldn't be too much
| quality loss. Even if the Cassowary setup doesn't work, you
| can probably use the VM anyway.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Not only that, but shipping Microsoft Office onto the Mac makes
| it so much easier to leave if you're not playing video games.
| flatiron wrote:
| Office on the Mac is awful.
|
| When I worked at apple I wasnt the only person who ran office
| in a windows vm. It was a supported config.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| This was years ago now, but I got thru college with a
| Macbook Air using the "Office Online" apps because the
| native apps were so unbelievably sluggish and resource
| hungry. Somehow the web apps were more performant.
| hattar wrote:
| It is awful, but so is office on windows. I get so many
| weird lockups, crashes, and file desynchronizations. Office
| is one of the worst pieces of software I have to run in
| windows.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Sadly I found out that Macs are filled with telemetry as
| well: https://mspoweruser.com/macos-big-sur-has-its-own-
| telemetry-... (2020)
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't care that much
| about UI visual consistency so long as it doesn't make the
| application confusing (i.e. not underlining hyperlinks or
| something). However, stuff like tasks on startup should be
| managed in one location that is easy to find.
| ripley12 wrote:
| > stuff like tasks on startup should be managed in one location
| that is easy to find
|
| Task Manager's Startup tab?
| sebow wrote:
| > "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
|
| To this end, I find it somewhat funny how people still believe
| Microsoft has a redemption arc.
| khaledh wrote:
| This article nails a lot of the issues with Windows 11.
|
| I bit the bullet and upgraded to Windows 11 late last year
| thinking it must be an improvement over Windows 10. It turned out
| to be a big step backwards.
|
| - Changing the default browser is a lot of work instead of a
| single click.
|
| - I can't move the task bar to the side, even though almost every
| monitor nowadays has much more horizontal space than vertical.
|
| - All apps are not readily accessible from the start menu; I have
| to click another button to get to them.
|
| - I have a 2-in-1 laptop, and turning it into tablet mode is
| wonky.
|
| - I can't choose to not have grouped buttons on the taskbar.
|
| - The context menus UX is horrible. Some context menu items are
| now two clicks away instead of one. Also what's with the
| excessive rounded corners and slim selection padding?
|
| - The stacked notifications is confusing, and always shows the
| calendar when I open the notifications panel.
|
| - Lots of crap pushed on me, like chat (aka Teams), widgets
| (which require a Microsoft account), 3rd party apps that look
| like they're installed but actually get downloaded/installed on
| first use.
|
| I was able to fix a lot of those issues with ExplorerPatcher [0].
| However, one day after a Windows update, Explorer didn't start at
| all after login (black screen, I thought Windows was hosed). This
| has since been fixed. But I decided enough is enough, and finally
| "upgraded" back to Windows 10.
|
| The only good thing about Windows 11 is wslg, which provides out
| of the box support for Linux GUI apps (not available on Windows
| 10). But I can get the same result with an X server and some
| work.
|
| [0] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/wiki/All-features
| interstice wrote:
| I have a theory that the people who used the bar on the side
| and the people who turned the user metrics off are the same
| people (myself included). But I'm not sure how I feel about the
| results. In any case I hope shells like litestep make a
| comeback as a result of ever more hostile ui decisions, either
| that or everyone jumps ship entirely to put energy into making
| something else great.
| khaledh wrote:
| The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is still
| far ahead of the competition in that department (desktop
| GUI). Whether that's due to monopoly or being actually
| better, it doesn't matter. The fact is competition is almost
| non-existent.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| In what ways is Windows desktop GUI better than macOS?
|
| The only thing Windows has going for itself is backwards
| compatability.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I can't speak for Windows 11 as I didn't use it, but
| Windows 10 feels better. macOS feels very dumbed down and
| Apple takes decisions instead of letting the user do it.
| bruce511 wrote:
| That's a pretty big thing.
|
| I'm still using programs daily that I acquired in the
| 90's,some of which was last updated in the 90s.
|
| Updating the OS is one thing, there will be change, and
| none of us likes change, but it doesn't cascade down to
| having to change every detail of my work flow.
|
| So maybe it's the only thing Windows has, but for me
| anyway it's a pretty big "only".
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > That's a pretty big thing.
|
| It's also the bane of its existence, because it means
| that they can NEVER retire anything, because by doing so
| they would break backwards compatability.
|
| And that's actually how we ended up here. They can never
| get rid of even Win16 GUI (let alone Win32) because it
| would break shit written for Windows 3.1 (yes, there are
| still some dialogs in Windows 11 that use Windows 3.1
| file select dialog, namely the ODBC Data Source
| Administrator (32-bit)[0].
|
| So they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Win32
| isn't being used for anything they are making now, but
| it's used by other people, and more importantly it's used
| by all the old apps.
|
| So now they have to justify ETERNAL support for an
| essentially deprecated API. Which they obviously aren't
| doing, which is why we're here.
|
| > I'm still using programs daily that I acquired in the
| 90's,some of which was last updated in the 90s.
|
| Unless they are extremely domain specific, surely there
| are modern alternatives?
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/MrvLCSr.png
| bruce511 wrote:
| Actually windows 64 bit won't run 16 bit programs, that
| part has been gone for a decade or so.
|
| Yes there are probably alternatives, but that's the
| point, I like the way it's working now - I don't want to
| find new equivalents and then discover what's missing
| from them.
|
| But I'm not sure what the existance of win32 has to do
| with anything - it's not like it stops win64 from
| working.
| garethrowlands wrote:
| In my opinion, Window management on Mac is bad compared
| with everything that isn't Mac. On the other hand,
| there's lots to like about Macs, so I keep using them.
| lproven wrote:
| Spectacle used to fix that, until it went EOL.
| https://www.spectacleapp.com/
|
| So I switched to Rectangle, which has optional Spectacle-
| compatible keybindings.
| https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
|
| I also add RightZoom:
| https://www.blazingtools.com/right_zoom_mac.html
|
| With them, window management becomes basically as good as
| any other desktop I use, and delivers most of what I like
| from tiling WMs.
| notRobot wrote:
| You also can't run macOS on most hardware, so...
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| > The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is
| still far ahead of the competition in that department
| (desktop GUI)
|
| Same with Windows Explorer. Finder in macOS is still
| terribly crippled compared to it:
|
| -It can't even perform folder merges in many cases, only
| allowing you to "Replace" the entire folder.
|
| -You can't pause/resume file transfers.
|
| -Cancelling large transfers is like canceling a print job
| in the 00's - it might cancel, but if it does it will be
| when 95% of the job is done anyway and you're screwed.
|
| -You aren't shown metadata of any files you are prompted
| about.
|
| -Batch management of file conflicts/actions not possible.
|
| Most of these features were added to Explorer all the way
| back in Vista 15 years ago.
| emkoemko wrote:
| GNOME is way better the Windows UI, checked out what
| options there where when win11 came out and i have been on
| fedora ever since, really modern UI and none of the
| Microsoft bs
| boondaburrah wrote:
| I say KDE is the best desktop if they could just get their
| shit together and debug it on all hardware configurations.
| It's absolutely miles ahead of Windows in features,
| however, as a power user I can fix it if it gets wonky, but
| a regular user shouldn't be expected to.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Windows 7 was a GUI horror show compared to pretty much
| anything else at the time. Ugly font rendering, e.g.
| Especially if you have a ton of open windows, Windows has
| always been amazingly bad at helping the user manage them.
| Multiple / desktops can finally be enabled since Windows 10
| (without hackery), but are still a pain. The font rendering
| has improved but is nowhere near MacOS. I could go on for a
| while. In my experience, the only people who think Windows
| has superior GUI have never truly worked with other
| desktops.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I don't think that's true anymore. Gnome with two tweaks
| (put the min/max buttons back on the window header and move
| the main menu to the bottom of the screen so it works like
| the old win 10 task bar) and it's streets ahead of Windows
| 11. It's a great blessing in disguise when Microsoft decide
| your old laptop won't support Windows 11.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Wait, is streets ahead a real saying? I thought Pierce on
| Community invented it.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Very common in British English.
| groovy2shoes wrote:
| If you have to ask, you're streets behind.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Dunno - I never watched community but I can't remember
| where I picked it up. Might be a commonwealth thing.
|
| edit: google says "british". In fairly common use in
| Australia.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The article mentioned all the UI generations you can find
| in Windows. Linux is even worse. Once you leave the menus
| your desktop environment provides, it becomes a design
| free for all. Sometimes you'll see UI styles from another
| environment (run Kompare in Gnome), sometimes you get
| ancient X UIs.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Gnome has very excessive window borders though. They're
| so big they seem to be sized for touch, very wasteful
| when you don't have a touchscreen.
|
| And it has even less configurability than Windows.. Add-
| ons don't count because they often break.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I don't mind the big borders, although most of the time
| I'm using dual 2k screens.
|
| The borders don't seem that much bigger than the ones in
| Windows 10. As for the extensions, I've been enabling
| those via extensions.gnome.org and have no problems so
| far on Buster or Bullseye.
|
| This is the one that makes Gnome useable for me:
|
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-
| panel/
| [deleted]
| lproven wrote:
| Dash-to-panel helps, but it doesn't go far enough for me.
| It doesn't work well in vertical orientations: for
| instance, status icons should be arranged in horizontal
| rows. In a single column they take up far too much space.
|
| Cinnamon suffers from the same problem, FWIW.
| [deleted]
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Totally disagree with that
|
| Plasma Gnome MacOS Windows
|
| That would be my pick top to bottom of best UIs
|
| Windows is a shambles and it mentally destroys a piece of
| me everytime I use it
| moltke wrote:
| Reason driven decision making is better than data driven
| decision making.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| > I have a theory that the people who used the bar on the
| side and the people who turned the user metrics off are the
| same people (myself included)
|
| I keep telemetry enabled in Firefox in the hope that they see
| that I use all of the features that they later remove anyway.
| It seems like nobody is using metrics to prove that it's
| _not_ safe to remove a feature. Or they say "oh, it's only
| 1% of users using that feature", not realizing how much 1%
| really is.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I don't use telemetry in the hopes that they'll see that
| only X% of users use telemetry and that they thus remove
| telemetry as a feature.
|
| Not working well so far.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| To be fair, it's hard to see how many users are not using
| telemetry when they're not using telemetry.
| wanda wrote:
| > no side taskbar
|
| This is literally the first thing I do on a fresh install. What
| the hell were they thinking
|
| > start menu further ruined
|
| but _whyyyyyyyyyyyy_
|
| I honestly never had a problem with Microsoft Windows over its
| UI decisions until Windows 8.
|
| Windows up to and including Windows 7 were actually ok, because
| you could put the start menu on the side, switch to classic UI,
| turn off the graphical embellishments that your shit laptop
| didn't like, and so on.
|
| Windows 8 became very tabletified, but with options to switch
| to classic UI, and Windows 10 is the same but arguably a bit
| more bizarre.
|
| Neither UI was really consistent or knew what it wanted to be,
| and worst of all, the user can't decide what it _should_ be.
|
| But _whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy_
| wanda wrote:
| Errata: Windows 8 became very
| tabletified, but with options...
|
| should read: Windows 8 became very
| tabletified, but without options...
| esalman wrote:
| I hate the Windows 11 taskbar and using ExplorerPatcher to
| revert to Windows 10 style. Thankfully ExplorerPatcher is yet
| to let me down. If it does happen I will probably switch to
| Chrome OS Flex.
| neltnerb wrote:
| It seems to frequently be true that Microsoft releases a
| horrifying nightmare OS, polishes is up and removes hated
| features, and then releases a new version. It's been a bit of a
| pattern.
|
| Windows 8 -> Windows 10
|
| Windows Vista -> Windows 7
|
| and even before that:
|
| Windows Me -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP was a pretty solid
| chain that shows it over three releases (personally I think XP
| was buggier, I don't know what the idea was there other than to
| make some more money?).
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| > Windows Me -> Windows 2000
|
| This isn't a transition which existed.
|
| Windows ME didn't get replaced by 2000, they were both
| released around the same time.
|
| In terms of OS evolution, there were two separate branches,
| Windows NT and Windows 95.
|
| On the 95 branch: 95 > 98 > ME > Discontinued
|
| On the NT branch: NT 3.5 > NT 4 > 2000 > XP > Vista > 7 > 8 >
| 10 > 11
|
| Non-business users were originally only ever on the 95
| branch, then when it was discontinued they were transitioned
| to Windows XP, but the neutered home edition, which has been
| the model since.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Fair, I switched from 98 to 2000 to XP because Me had such
| an incredibly bad experience.
|
| From a technology stack side I realize you are right, but I
| did not experience the UI of Windows ME as a successor to
| 98 and instead experienced it as a proto-win2k. I'm talking
| about the UI evolution more than the kernel, which I
| realize is more subjective.
|
| I do think there is a "paid forced beta -> better after
| overton window shift" pattern from for instance Vista to 7
| and 8 to 10. Those were extremely obviously intended to be
| the same UI, the first with an extremely questionable UI
| and the second with a stabilized UI.
|
| From a UI perspective, in the context of a useful work
| computer, Windows 8 was an absolute failure. Windows 10 I
| only tolerate because it's gotten most of the bugs worked
| out and Windows 7 is no longer getting security updates...
| I fully intend to skip Windows 11 and wait for the next one
| if I can possibly do so.
|
| It will I'm sure still have a UI mess that makes it even
| less pleasant than Windows 10, as (in my opinion) Windows 7
| was better than Windows 10 and I would have preferred they
| just keep fine tuning that UI.
|
| I just want my OS to be an OS instead of an experience, and
| for things to just iterate better rather than see massive
| overhauls for what they must know is mostly a business OS.
| It's such a strange approach, I guess they're just worried
| about going the way of Sun or IBM by not adopting the
| latest trends. Or maybe they have a business team and a
| home computer team and the latter is trying to keep up with
| Apple while the prior is begging them to stop...
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I really need to dig very deep into my memory; wasn't Windows
| ME kind of dead on arrival? And MS themselves half
| acknowledged it by releasing XP within a few months.
| [deleted]
| jaclaz wrote:
| No, there was a shift.
|
| The Win9x/ME (please read as DOS based) series of OS was
| intended for home users.
|
| The NT/2K was intended for business users.
|
| Only as an example most games at the time would not have
| run on NT/2K, and Win9x/Me was essentially single-user
| only.
|
| For _some_ reasons with XP the good MS guys decided to
| force down the throat of pro /business users (that were
| very, very, very happy about Windows 2000) the bells and
| whistles and graphics they didn't ask for and force down
| the throat of home users (that were very, very happy about
| Windows 98, not so much about ME [0]) the complexities of
| the NT, user access, permissions, NTFS, and other things
| that at the time made no sense whatever.
|
| Basically they (the MS guys) unified the two branches into
| one and the result was (of course) a compromise.
|
| [0] I know it is hard to say this, but ME, beside some
| quirks that there was no time to fix, was not as bad as it
| has been depicted, as a matter of fact the "best" bastard
| retro system you can make today is a Windows 98 with
| selected components of ME integrated/backported or a ME
| with some features of 98SE brought back, the failure of ME
| (not entirely unlike the later Vista one) was greatly
| induced (IMHO) by two factors, underpowered hardware and
| issues with drivers, both - if you want - essentially the
| responsibility of OEM's.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > that were very, very happy about Windows 98, not so
| much about ME [0]
|
| I disagree somewhat. The 9x family didn't handle
| multitasking well and had driver issues, frequently
| leading to lock-ups and BSODs. The architecture didn't
| handle isolation well, but NT did. Windows NT mostly
| stayed out of people's way in XP unless they looked for
| those menus. It was a huge problem for Vista, though.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Well, you have to put it in context, home users at the
| time could have:
|
| 1) free (in the sense of included in the price or their
| new PC) a somewhat unstable OS with lower requisites
| (particularly about RAM) where most software _somehow_
| ran (including games)
|
| or:
|
| 2) a more stable, paid (costing if I recall correctly
| more than the equivalent of 2-300 US$ of today) OS
| needing double the RAM (think of 128 vs. 64 MB),
| definitely slower, where they could not run many games
|
| for _some reasons_ many chose #1, and BSOD 's (on the
| 9x/Me) were so common that it was perceived by many (that
| had not any occasion to experience the stability of NT
| and of 2000) as a "normal state of things".
| vishnugupta wrote:
| That was a good bit of context, thank you!
|
| I wasn't aware that XP was meant to be an upgrade for
| 98/ME (home users) as well as for 2000 (business users).
| Talk about posing off both set of customers at the same
| time.
|
| I personally didn't mind ME and liked XP, but then it was
| as a student who didn't do anything serious with
| computers so it doesn't count much.
| Joeri wrote:
| Microsoft has a tick tock approach to consumer OS releases,
| where every other OS is "the good one".
|
| Windows me - bad
|
| Windows xp - good
|
| Windows vista - bad
|
| Windows 7 - good
|
| Windows 8 - bad
|
| Windows 10 - good
|
| Windows 11 - bad
|
| For a bad release windows 11 is pretty good. This gives me
| hope that windows 12 will be their best ever.
|
| This is why it would have been smart of them to stick to
| windows 10 like they planned, but like picking at a scab they
| just couldn't let go of the idea of rearranging the deck
| chairs and rechristening the ship as windows 11.
| kasabali wrote:
| > For a bad release windows 11 is pretty good.
|
| ...and for a good release Windows 10 is pretty bad.
|
| Despite all the flak it got at the time, Windows 8.1 (plus
| StartIsBack to hide metro crap) is still the best Windows
| released in the last decade.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Microsoft has a tick tock approach to consumer OS releases
|
| Nice idea but it just doesn't fit.
|
| Windows 95/98/Me were all poor.
|
| XP was widely panned when it came out because existing
| hardware wasn't quite good enough and it was riddled with
| security issues. Rememebr SP2?
|
| Where did 8.1 go?
|
| Windows 10 is full of the stuff people are complaining
| about in this thread.
| lproven wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| 95 good. 98 bad.
|
| 2000 good, XP bad (for me), Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 8.1
| better but not great, 10 OK, 11 bad.
|
| As always: https://www.badscience.net/wp-
| content/uploads/complicatedcov...
|
| ("I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than
| that." -- Ben Goldacre)
| sph wrote:
| The "good" releases are good relatively to the crap ones
| they've succeeded, not on their own. As if they wanted to
| pay for QA only every other release.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Also what 's with the excessive rounded corners and slim
| selection padding?_
|
| The people who worked on the design use Macs. Seriously.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307
| vxNsr wrote:
| This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever read. That
| thread goes on to extoll the virtues of dogfooding, and its
| absolutely true.
|
| I personally believe the reason that chrome/edge/firefox and
| apps in general have become so resource hungry is because all
| the devs have been given beefy machines to allow them to
| compile on-device and this has lead to the devs basically
| ignoring the app's resource budget. The ultimate "it works on
| my machine" shrug. imo windows OS and browser devs should be
| given i3s w/4gb of ram, let them optimize their code for that
| experience.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > windows OS and browser devs should be given i3s w/4gb of
| ram
|
| And slow HDDs. The gains of going from an HDD to an SSD
| have been squandered. The time it takes my computer to boot
| to a usable desktop feels the same as the bad old days with
| spinning HDDs.
|
| I remember when SSDs where new and YouTubers were making
| videos of booting into Win7 with Office, etc. open in
| seconds. WTF happened?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I still boot in seconds with Windows 10 and NVMe disks.
| kasabali wrote:
| Wait a few years until it's undoed.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Windows with i5 or less plus HDD with about a year of use
| (which leads to bloat) is painfully slow.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Yup, I got a relatively new AIO from work for free, set
| it up as an all purpose media machine in the kitchen, but
| no one ever used it bec it was so slow, after about a yr
| of aggravation I decided to check the specs, had an HDD,
| I replaced it with a cheap sata SSD, now it purrs.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| You know the saying "work expands to fill the time
| available for its completion"? There's a similar thing at
| play here with regards to resource usage.
| Sakos wrote:
| When I first heard about this, everything that's ever
| bothered me about the Windows 8-10-11 evolution makes so much
| more sense. They're turning it into MacOS.
| Shared404 wrote:
| But only the bad parts of MacOS - they make something that
| looks pretty in an image, but is utterly unusable.
|
| The way I usually describe Win11's UI is as the worst of
| GNOME 3, MacOS, and Windows bundled up in a wrap of
| spyware.
| wvenable wrote:
| The Macification of Windows has been in progress for years
| -- and it makes no sense! When Microsoft designed the UI
| for Windows 95 they did extensive user studies and
| everything from how the start menu worked and the task bar
| was carefully figured out.
|
| They've spend the last few decades undoing all that work
| piece by piece until nobody actually knows how to use it
| anymore.
| wolpoli wrote:
| If anyone is wondering about the user studies that
| Microsoft did for Windows 95, you can read about it here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060615110538/http://www.acm
| .or...
| bombcar wrote:
| Windows 95 is under-appreciated in the GUI histories I
| feel - it had _many_ things that became 'standard'
| pretty much immediately afterwards (I even have a
| shortcut to Applications in my Dock which mimics a Start
| Menu).
|
| But it's hard for a company to justify "paying to leave
| shit alone" so even if a maximum was reached, it will
| recede.
| wvenable wrote:
| I agree. There's a lot of people paid to re-design
| Windows every year, they all use Macs, and none of them
| are doing any user studies at all.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect user studies are being done - and
| coincidentally confirming whatever it is management wants
| to do.
|
| Or they focus on new users and not on the amount of
| things people have already learned.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| The difference is that Mac OS actually looks somewhat
| consistent and has kept much of its familiar paradigms
| (Spotlight, System Preferences, the menubar, context
| menus...) the same over the past decade. Microsoft seems to
| have lifted the aesthetics of Mac OS without any of the UX.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| And more importantly, when Apple changes some design
| guidelines, provided you're using the Cocoa API (which
| you likely are, if you're developing for macOS natively),
| your application will look consistent with the rest of
| the OS.
|
| Yes, Apple doesn't care about backwards compatability, so
| you might have to update your application so that it runs
| on the latest macOS version, but there's no way around
| it.
|
| You either have a gazillion competing frontend APIs to
| maintain compatability with shit that was written for
| Windows 3.1, or you don't care about any of that and end
| up with almost entirely consistent visual styles across
| the entire OS.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sadly we've lost that, as more and more apps _everywhere_
| are now developed in Electron or other "cross OS"
| systems. Even Java apps would try a bit harder to match
| the OS than these "let's create a new UI paradigm for
| everything" apps that won't even let you open a second
| window.
| civilized wrote:
| OS X has been great for the past decade. I won't say the
| same for MacBooks, where there have been some pretty
| horrible decisions (butterfly keyboard, touch bar), but
| OS X has kept humming along, very usable, very
| productive. A few issues with Spotlight and some easily
| removed nags to use crap like iCloud is the worst I can
| say.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > butterfly keyboard, touch bar And they admitted their
| mistake and removed both of these abominations.
|
| They killed the butterfly keyboard in 2019 (almost 4
| years after it was introduced), and they killed the touch
| bar last year.
|
| Yes, it took them some time, but they sorted these things
| out.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They also spent years telling people how the butterfly
| keyboard were amazing, despite the feedback they got. It
| came off like they ignored their customers and said "we
| know what's best." You can do that in development, but
| once your customers actually get their hands on the
| product, it's time to listen to them.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Except the constant ui changes with no reason other than
| change, with no option to switch them back.
|
| Or the ever more locked down environment, or the iOS
| style dumbed down apps they prefer now..
|
| I think it was pretty much downhill after leopard :(
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Last year I went through every version of macOS from 10.1
| to the current release and used each for a couple of
| weeks. The thing that surprised me the most is just how
| consistent the user interface has been. Anybody familiar
| with 10.1 would have no problem using Monterey.
| rmellow wrote:
| You should write a blog post about this. I'd definitely
| read it.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| There isn't much competition in the desktop space. It's either
| macOS with its downsides or Windows with its downsides.
|
| Basically neither Microsoft nor Apple have any pressure to make
| life better for users.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The incentives do seem slightly different although I do worry
| about Apple's forays into services.
| notyourNMI wrote:
| It's almost cute that people still think Windows as a product
| team cares what individual users want/need/buy. Individual
| opinions/license purchases don't seem to move Microsoft a
| millimeter in any direction. As others pointed out, examples
| abound with the horrible UI intrusions/dumb things that users
| have to work around just to get work done. My personal pet peeve
| is this persistent Windows 10 screen dimming/darkening that
| happens whenever I pull up a terminal no matter the settings
| changed via UI or registry. Also, having _volunteers_ doing the
| (not always helpful or even right) troubleshooting for frustrated
| users isolates the devs from the stupid decisions they or their
| managers make. (speaking as a software developer myself: devs
| should be required to work support briefly in the section they
| 'll be developing on so they understand user frustrations).
|
| I believe the reason users still pay is so the price can
| justifiably be multiplied in bulk corporate purchases, otherwise
| they'd give it away for free to get more of that sweet, sweet
| data. So they can copy Google, poorly.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Well, what are you going to do. _Not_ use Windows?
|
| Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become
| really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did
| once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS
| works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in
| too, just less obnoxious).
|
| You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech.
|
| Pick your poison.
| holyyikes wrote:
| I find it hilarious that people even entertain the idea that
| the only roadblock for MacOS is that it only works on Apple
| hardware. Gamers would NOT want an OS run by those psychopaths.
| MacOS is junk.
|
| And Valve/Steamdeck is really just creating even more Windows
| dependence. Because of Proton everyone just assumes you don't
| need to make cross platform games anymore, so game devs are
| just happy making Windows only games.
| donkarma wrote:
| steam could instantly reduce the weight by insisting that all
| games must run on linux by policy
| nmx- wrote:
| They would kill their platform by this, and we would end up
| with even more launchers than we have today
| ficiek wrote:
| >Linux still barely works in 2022
|
| I have had zero problem running linux as my daily driver for
| the last 10 years, care to explain your comment? The only
| problem that I have is that video games don't always work
| because the developers don't care.
| pndy wrote:
| Not the parent comment but I'm getting random freezes on two
| different machines with different guts; sometimes system
| resumes and sometimes it requires a hard reset. Doesn't
| matter if its Manjaro or Linux Mint or Fedora, or which
| kernel I'm using.
|
| My GPU is no longer supported and I couldn't revert to last
| working Nvidia drivers in Manjaro because _things were
| changed_. Not sure how the open source version is capable of
| rendering 3D or compatible with Lutris /Wine.
|
| It's not the "barely works" in my case but there are issues
| around that are giving me a feeling I'm using Windows 98 and
| ME again.
| sleepycatgirl wrote:
| I can see 3 possible things there 1) Nvidia being Nvidia If
| both PCs have Nvidia... Back when I had Nvidia, I had
| exactly same problem. Random freezes, no matter which
| distro/kernel, sometimes needed reset. 2) RAM issue As much
| as its unlikely on both machines, testing RAM doesn't hurt
| 3) Hard drive degradation Similar results as in 1), but
| buying new disk solved the issue.
| pndy wrote:
| One machines has mentioned Nvidia GPU, the second is ATI,
| RAM is also different on both machines and tested
| already. The issue occurs on both SSDs and HDDs.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Last time I tried Ubuntu it exclaimed I'm not "the owner" of
| my external hard drive and wouldn't let me access my files.
| Very fundamental basics completely broken somehow.
| dimgl wrote:
| I see this argument in every thread about Linux. There's
| always this one magical user where everything "just works",
| has had 0 issues and everything's just dandy.
| holyyikes wrote:
| pjerem wrote:
| > "I don't have a variable refresh monitor, I don't have
| an HDMI surround sound setup, I don't own any game pads,
| the only game I play is Doom 1 from 1993."
|
| It really depends on what your GPU manufacturer is. You
| can't blame Linux for the shit show that nvidia releases
| as drivers nowadays. Game pads works fine. You are being
| disingenuous.
|
| Issues on Linux exists. But, ironically, in 2022, simple
| things like sound, bluetooth, or even memory management
| works better on Linux than on my Windows laptop where I'm
| never sure my headset will be detected when I plug in on
| a daily basis.
| holyyikes wrote:
| I genuinely don't think game pads work fine even on
| Windows. The XInput thing really screwed it all up.
| 1_player wrote:
| I play the latest games on my high-end GPU I sold a
| kidney for, watch 4K movies, use a Sony DS4 gamepad via
| Bluetooth, with two 4K monitors at 200% scaling and an
| external USB audio interface with standalone microphone
| and automated compression, equalization and noise
| cancellation setup.
|
| You were saying?
| holyyikes wrote:
| Somehow 7.1 HDMI audio from a home theater receiver is
| more exotic than external USB audio.
|
| Didn't hear anything about a variable refresh monitor.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Gsync works really well on Linux. I was playing Elden
| Ring the other day with it, overall a smoother experience
| than Windows because of Proton optimizations:
| https://www.ign.com/articles/valve-explains-how-it-fixed-
| eld...
| fgonzag wrote:
| I guess I'm the second magical user.
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| Hi I'm another magical user
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| The funny thing is, it's not the year of the Linux desktop,
| but it's increasingly not the year of the Windows desktop
| anymore either. "Linux is shit, and Windows just works" is
| becoming less true as we go; so Linux being bad stops being
| as convincing an argument when Windows is frustrating in
| different ways.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I'm not going to lie and say Linux is problem free, but
| "barely works" is a massive exaggeration. Linux works just
| fine. Windows isn't problem free. I use windows for work
| and it's often a roll of the dice whether my monitors will
| got to sleep properly, or if windows will deign to
| recognize my keyboard on boot.
| fsflover wrote:
| Just try preinstalled Linux with support. Works for me.
| howinteresting wrote:
| I wouldn't say I've had zero issues or that everything just
| works, but things tend to fail less often or in less
| inscrutable ways than Windows or MacOS.
| choward wrote:
| What are some specific issues? Most of the stuff I hear is
| either hardware related or some software someone used on
| Windows doesn't exist on Linux. For hardware issues it
| depends on the hardware you're using. Since most drivers
| aren't open source, full Linux support often comes a while
| after it's released. I don't use the most recent hardware
| and haven't had a problem where something doesn't "just
| work" in years. I don't even remember the last time. Not
| being able to use cutting edge hardware is a price I'm
| willing to pay because it actually saves you money. This is
| also why there is a big push for open hardware.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Last time I tried updating Ubuntu on my parents' PC, it
| completely fell over because it tried to throw up a
| dialog on a console in the middle of the update, even
| though I was doing a GUI update. When I killed that
| (uninteractible, permanently froze the update) process,
| the system autorebooted in a desktopless state. Now, I
| knew to use `dpkg --reconfigure` from a root shell to fix
| this, but a layman would have been stumped and had to
| reinstall. 2021 at least was not the year of the Linux
| desktop in our household.
|
| (Let alone the dozen of small KDE issues we've had over
| the years. It's really easy to get that desktop in an
| uninteractible state if you click the wrong things.)
| torginus wrote:
| There's 3 categories in my experience:
|
| - Hardware support - if you don't have any special needs,
| it tends to work well, but as soon as you go into exotic
| stuff like digitizers or DP daisy chaining, GPU
| switching, or you are just plain unlucky, expect a world
| of hurt
|
| - UI Papercuts: There's a ton of these - like extracting
| files in GUI is by far the least intuitive under GNOME
| compared to other OS's, no thumbnails, pdf reader can't
| be set to exactly how I like it, and made to remember it,
| etc. - every DE has its own niggles. The fact that every
| DE has its own set of apps - if using GNOME it comes with
| its own pdf reader, god forbid you use a third-party one,
| creates a strange culty feeling among app devs. Also,
| closed source, monetized apps are reviled, even if they
| solve a problem better than anything open source.
|
| - Development experience: Ironically terrible. Binary
| compatibility is nonexistent, compiling stuff generally
| involves apt-geting (or equivalent) packages and hoping
| you have the right versions in the repos. Some of the
| stuff in the repos doesn't even work (insta-crashes), due
| to being built wrong.
| NhanH wrote:
| 4k + 1080 monitor on nvidia gpu is very difficult to use
| (wayland doesn't support nvidia until very recently, I'm
| not even sure if it is merged yet). X doesn't support per
| monitor dpi, and fractional scaling per monitor is buggy
| on most distros.
|
| Ubuntu keeps forgetting the sound devices output I set,
| and I have to config it every single time the machine
| comes back from sleep (I'm using sound via hdmi on my
| monitor, I'm guessing it has something to do with the
| monitor sleeping in different way).
|
| And the usual, sleep/ suspend doesn't work. There are 50%
| chance of my 4k monitor doesn't come back up after
| sleeping, and I have to unplug and replug it in for it to
| work.
| dimgl wrote:
| In Gnome I cannot add certain binaries to the dock unless
| I edit a file and point to it. Basic feature that both
| MacOS and Windows support.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >What are some specific issues?
|
| Hardware support.
|
| Broken UI experience.
|
| Poorly designed subsystems. See PulseAudio.
|
| Cognitive overload. Thousands of distros with tens of
| desktop environments using different toolkits. Each
| desktop environment has its own suite of software. So
| instead of having a solid set of great working apps there
| are tons of poorly made apps.
|
| If you need to use Visual Studio, Photoshop, Lightroom,
| 3d max, Autocad, Premiere Pro, Ableton Live, Mathcad
| etc., you are out of luck.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >What are some specific issues?
|
| the gnome filepicker has no thumbnails
| blangk wrote:
| Linux is not a 0 issue OS, but I use roughly the same
| methods and reasoning to get it to workable state as I
| might on Windows 10 and I wouldn't say it even takes much
| longer. Linux is surely cheaper. The difference is, Linux
| can keep growing in the direction you want and choose.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| I have concluded that these are the same kind of people who
| say that they completely disable javascript in the web
| browser and are better off for it. A decade and a half ago,
| they'd tell you that they browsed with Lynx and were able
| to do everything without issue. It's self-delusional
| autistic commitment to a bad take.
|
| I'm sure if you pressed on them on the specifics of various
| things, they'd explain their convoluted process of setting
| up various bits of hardware, that they only buy peripherals
| known to be compatible, their herculean efforts in making
| essential proprietary software work (Zoom, Teams, etc.),
| how they really don't need Microsoft Office (hope you never
| have to exchange documents with them), that they don't care
| for the fingerprint reader anyway, that they disabled sleep
| mode, etc.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Most newer fingerprint reader models work well on Linux.
| I have a Mac and a Windows laptop for the few times
| something doesn't work on Linux. which is vanishingly
| rare these days.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >they don't care for the fingerprint reader anyway
|
| does anyone actually use those? i've always thought they
| were a stupid gimmick
| fgonzag wrote:
| I've been running Linux ever since Windows 11 was announced,
| even though I was relatively happy with W10 + WSL. I had tried
| it quite a few times over the years but had never stuck with it
| until now, because it all just works... All my games have
| worked mostly flawlessly. I'm a developer, so all my tools were
| already available. I'm in love with KDE's design and
| customizability and relatively happy with its performance. The
| AUR is a godsend.
|
| I actually have to use office quite a bit and settled on
| freeoffice (which is freeware and not open source). It works
| perfectly for my needs. The Teams client is crap but I've
| always dodged it.
|
| Evolution suits my needs (O365 connectivity + a host of other
| personal email accounts). We still need a better Linux email
| client, I'm seriously considering it making it my lifetime
| hobby project (I'm imagining a server + client implementation
| to make it easier to decouple the UI as I'd really like both a
| TUI and GUI).
|
| The only thing for which I spin up a VM every now and then is
| for graphics editing (I use the affinity suite which is amazing
| for its price but just doesn't work with Wine).
|
| Really the only people who can't use reliably use Linux are
| those who use proprietary apps that don't work on Wine (which
| there aren't that many) and designers. If you're a power user
| I'd definitely recommend you give a spin. You might like what
| you find.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > I'm a developer, so all my tools were already available.
|
| I use Visual Studio, so that is not my case. And besides
| working I use Photoshop and Lightroom a lot. And some gaming,
| which I can't do on Linux.
|
| Apart from that, even not doing anything else in Linux but
| browsing the web is a poor experience for me.
| Loughla wrote:
| I run Linux mint as my daily machine. It just works? I have yet
| to find a substantive issue with it (other than video gaming,
| but that doesn't really count for most people's use).
| barbs wrote:
| > "Linux still barely works in 2022"
|
| What do you mean by this?
| neop1x wrote:
| I have been ArchLinux desktop and laptop daily user for 10+
| years. I used Gentoo for a year before and still use Gentoo on
| the server until today.
|
| Yes, occassionally there is a problem. HW incompatinility (new
| laptops), missing drivers (rarely as I am explicitly trying to
| buy well-supported HW), won't boot after a bad update (messed
| up ramdisk or config file) but easily fixable. You have to get
| used to couple of annoyances. But KDE DE is awesome, KDE
| Connect for Android too and lots of software works perfectly
| and let me do jobs I daily do. I have zero need to switch to
| Mac or Windows (used both before as well) and I enjoy having
| more control over my computing, updates, configuration. I can
| pick almost any HW I want on the desktop. I am not limited by a
| single range of badly-built, heavy and easy to dent macbooks,
| etc.
|
| But people are different with different needs. It is not for
| everyone. Though I am really a happy linux user and do not plan
| to change that and I don't care about any M1 marketing
| bullshit, truetone or windows defender, cortana or whatever.
| Those may be nice-to-have, provide couple of fancy slight
| conviniences but in the end the actual hard work is done by all
| your skills, not the machine or OS.
| drpixie wrote:
| Well, around 2% of PC users use Linux. It might be a small
| percentage but in absolute terms it's still a big number of
| users. And about 25% of developers use Linux.
|
| And about 90% of phone users use Android, which is (distantly)
| based on Linux. That's a lot of users!
| ramijames wrote:
| Honestly, I picked my poison in 2010 or so: MacOS. You're right
| that it does have Apple services baked in, and that it is
| limited to Apple's hardware.
|
| To the former: I never use them and they literally never push
| themselves on me.
|
| To the latter: Apple's hardware is far and away the most
| pleasant to use. Every windows machine I've used in the last
| decade (bought an XPS 13 in 2019 out of necessity) is just
| wonky. Feels less polished on the hardware side, and fighting
| with drivers and bloatware is not what I want to deal with.
| Like, does a laptop really need some stupid, custom audio
| interface to be able to control whether I'm using a headphone
| jack or built-in speakers? On the XPS, you do. It's absurd.
| ranger207 wrote:
| > Linux still barely works in 2022
|
| You're getting a lot of comments about "what do you mean linux
| barely works" but I switched to Linux full time in the middle
| of Windows 10 and know exactly what you mean. There's a lot of
| stuff in Linux that's simply _different_ than Windows, and
| general infamiliarity means that some things that you know how
| to do on Windows seems to be impossible on Linux, until you
| learn how Linux and your particular distro chooses to organize
| things
|
| But then Windows has the same problems as compared to Linux. I
| switched to Linux for programming purposes, and there's a lot
| of things that Linux does that I don't know the easy way to do
| in Windows[0]. Ultimately both OSes are simply different, and
| once you get used to one the other starts to seem really weird
|
| That being said, a lot of things in Linux do take a lot more
| effort than in Windows. Part of it's because Linux is made by
| programmers for programmers. In MacOS, it either works or it's
| not possible. In Windows, it might work out of the box, it
| might take tweaking some registry keys, or it might simply not
| be a thing you can do (the latter category is fairly rare). In
| Linux, it might work out of the box, or it might takes you a
| couple of weeks of chasing down weird issues and compiling
| random patches from GitHub gists to fix something that really
| shouldn't be a problem in the first place
|
| [0] For example, "search all files in this directory and its
| subdirectories for this particular phrase" is `grep -nR phrase`
| in a Linux terminal. In Windows I think I'd probably open the
| folder in VS Code and use its search tool. In the Windows case
| I can then click around to look at the results, or in the Linux
| case I can pipe it into a file and open it in vim and be able
| to grep my grep. They might eventually accomplish the same
| thing, but there's just different ways to do it, and I think
| which one is better depends heavily on what you prefer and what
| kind of work you're doing
| aorth wrote:
| I'm on mobile. How do I close that "Support Ukraine" banner
| taking up 1/3 of the screen?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Complaining about Windows UX inconsistency sort of misses the
| point that the OS and the windowing system should be separate.
| The function of an OS is not to manage windows, it is to provide
| an abstraction layer between the applications and the hardware.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I think your argument is valid for something Linux where you
| can actually decouple those things. Technically, it is still
| true for windows, but practically it isn't. What you get from
| Microsoft is a complete OS without any officially sanctioned
| way to decouple the OS part (kernel and perhaps a few critical
| user land utils) and windowing system.
| Stevvo wrote:
| It is called _Windows_ , the name does suggest that the product
| is more than a kernel.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| That's, just your opinion, man.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I have been a relatively happy windows 10 user since its release.
| Lots of small issues but overall very solid and no serious
| concerns.
|
| Windows 11 doesn't seem to justify its existence in any way, and
| since the decision to require a microsoft account, I've decided I
| won't be upgrading to Windows 11 for any reason.
|
| When windows 10 reaches EOL I will find an alternative. If its
| osx, ok. If its linux, ok. But Microsoft seems to continue to
| make their product worse and worse and pretend they're upgrades.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Am I the only one on HN who doesn't care about these? I mean
| they're just the standard Windows 11 complaints (UI style
| inconsistency, requiring a Microsoft account, not being able to
| easily change the default from Edge). But they come up again and
| again, and everyone acts that they're doing the world a favor by
| listing them. Just look at the top comment, which starts (rather
| boldly) with: "Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of
| frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark
| patterns that have taken over the platform". But, I don't care,
| and probably many others don't care. Maybe Windows will get worse
| for people with my set of priorities if you get your way?
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Often in these conversations the response is around gaming as the
| last bastion that needs Windows. Im here to claim that its
| Office, specifically reliable desktop implementations of 365 and
| SharePoint/onedrive, not the (admittedly rather cool, but not
| nearly powerful enough) web versions. I am simultaneously
| encouraged and disturbed by the idea that, say, 365 desktop
| native Outlook might be rewritten as a cross platform Electron
| app. Encouraged because if I could have 365 on Linux I would
| transition overnight, and disturbed because of the thought of
| grindingly slow Office on Windows (Teams already showed this
| tendency).
| TheBlight wrote:
| Windows has always been (mostly) pretty rad to code for. Best
| library documentation you'll ever find and, as the author points
| out, exceptional backwards compatibility. That said, I don't like
| to use it. Much prefer macOS. But I "get" and appreciate Windows.
| It's pretty good.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| I couldn't agree with many of the things stated in this article
| more. I really disliked Windows 8. Windows 10 was what made me
| move to a Mac for my next personal computer acquisition (I'm
| still stuck with Windows at work), but at least it grew on me
| after a while. I mean, I'm still not a huge fan of it but many of
| the rough edges got ironed out and I've gotten used to many of
| its quirks. Windows 11 on the other hand -- it's just so
| aggressively terrible that I actively dread using it. Just simple
| things like changing the volume, or changing the power settings
| on a laptop have become excruciatingly slow or require much more
| effort than before. In so many places text has been removed for
| the sake of "cleanliness" -- like in File Explorer, the Ribbon is
| now just a set of largely indistinguishable buttons with no
| labels that I'll never use. The Explorer context menu has been
| reduced to mostly things I don't care about and a more
| indistinguishable buttons I'll never use while burying the
| context menu things I really want behind another mouse click.
| (Thankfully there's a magic registry key that restores the old-
| style context menus.)
|
| It's easy to point out the consistency issues -- and yeah, they
| are really bad, and everywhere making Windows 11 feel like an
| early beta, not a full fledged release. More than anything even
| basic stuff that's worked well for years or decades has regressed
| to a point where so many things are barely functional or even
| recognizable anymore. It's like some designer had MacOS described
| to them verbally and decided to redesign Windows to look similar.
| Unfortunately, the latest versions of MacOS aren't all that
| awesome either when it comes to consistency or usability. In so
| many ways the design decisions in Windows 11 feel like solutions
| in search of problems -- they certainly don't make my experience
| using it any better -- all they do is make me appreciate Windows
| 10 more than ever (never thought I'd have that sentiment). I keep
| hoping Windows 11 will get better but even on the latest Insider
| builds I see very little in the way of improvements to things I
| really care about so it gives me little confidence.
|
| The article brings up a some great points about how there's no
| "one" UI framework and the difficulties for developers to make
| their applications look consistent -- and this is totally true.
| There's so many different UI frameworks from Microsoft with
| different levels of maturity, abandonment, usefulness, usability,
| and use. I'm a big fan of WPF and I think it's one of the best
| desktop UI frameworks out there -- and sadly it's largely been
| left to rot which is a real shame and it doesn't support many of
| the newer aspects of Windows without a lot of hacks. UWP is
| simply awful -- I swore it off after using it for one project.
| WinUI and MAUI have huge problems of their own and still feel
| beta. It makes you wonder what are you supposed to use for new
| projects when you're stuck with either a great framework that
| seems dead , or a bunch of new ones that don't feel production
| ready. This nearly 20 year old blog post from Joel Spolsky is
| just as relevant and prescient as ever:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
| mberning wrote:
| I ponied up for a win11 pro license so I could run the ARM
| version in Parallels on my M1 mini. All this just to run an old
| piece of CAD software. If it weren't the M1 I'd still be running
| that CAD software in a Win7 VM. Microsoft is living well of of
| similar scenarios all across the world. It's terrible within the
| enterprise. It starts off with the premise that people need
| windows desktops and laptops. Then it turns into you need AD. Now
| you need an AD team with half a dozen engineers and even more
| severs in your "forest" Now you need exchange. Hire a team for
| that. Might as well get teams too. And so on and so forth. Then
| accommodating all of these shitty Microsoft products has you
| paying millions of dollars in engineer salaries and even more in
| licensing costs. And every year MS just keeps bending you over
| with worse software and higher costs. Some day enterprise
| customers will get tired of supporting all this crap and start
| making long term decisions to reduce their reliance on windows on
| the desktop and therefore this leviathan of bullshit that infests
| their organization.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I read through the nearly 400 comments and no one brought up
| using the LTSC edition of Windows, which actually gets out of
| your way or that you don't own the OS when you use a proprietary
| operating system.
|
| I'm not really sure what to make of this as it seems people
| prefer to complain as if they were hostages to the whims of
| others.
|
| I buy my computers with Linux pre-installed on supported
| machines. All those complaints of Linux "still not working" in
| 2022 effortlessly glide over the obvious: you're already making
| it an unfair fight when you adopt an OS to a non-native machine.
|
| If you don't own the OS what's the point of complaining? MacOS
| and Windows will _never_ have the best interests of the user at
| heart because that 's not where the capital incentives are. It's
| really as simple as that. Are you going to develop a patch for
| Windows that makes Windows do as you want? If you do, who at
| Microsoft is going to take your PR? No one?
|
| This behavior should be blindingly obvious to anyone who thinks
| for a second where the incentives are. If the incentives are not
| aligned with yours, it's time to a. consider paying for a volume
| license for LTSC so you can get the experience you want that you
| pay for and vote with your dollars or b. use an OS that isn't
| abusive.
|
| C. moan and complain isn't actually a productive strategy because
| the money bundled into your OS cost is neglible to the value of
| your metrics and pushing a subscription to Office that actually
| makes Microsoft money. People keep smashing this button in the
| vain hope something will change. Stop and think. Follow the
| money. Do something about your situation that doesn't enrage you
| so often.
| pjmlp wrote:
| > I buy my computers with Linux pre-installed on supported
| machines. All those complaints of Linux "still not working" in
| 2022 effortlessly glide over the obvious: you're already making
| it an unfair fight when you adopt an OS to a non-native machine
|
| I did as well, an Asus 1215B netbook, remember those?
|
| The wlan still has issues to work properly to this day, the
| graphics card should be able to do OpenGL 4.1/DirectX 11, yet
| the AMD driver only does OpenGL 3.3.
|
| Good that it was shipped with official Linux support.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I think that's a cherry-picked example of a very old machine.
| I've had a bug-free experience with the XPS 13 Developer
| Edition and Purism's line of laptops (I won't comment on the
| hardware quality of Purism's laptops here because that's a
| separate issue).
|
| I'm expecting a Framework soon, which touts official support
| for Fedora so looking forward to yet another bug-free
| experience there.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Why cherry-picked? It is what I got the fortune of owning,
| same thing can happen to anyone else.
|
| XPS 13 Developer Edition you say?
|
| https://medium.com/@AlexMichelOrg/like-linux-then-dont-
| buy-d...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Yes but it's an extremely old example and not at all
| indicative of the environment around owning a Linux-
| shipped laptop today.
|
| Have you owned and used an XPS 13 Developer Edition?
| Because now it just looks like you're driving around the
| internet for examples of things that prop up your
| argument.
|
| I have one I use every day and have for the three years
| I've owned it. It works great on Ubuntu and Arch Linux.
| No complaints.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not at all, showing that it isn't the walk in the part
| that gets sold even when buying hardware that is shipping
| with Linux in the box, and far from what most people get
| at best buy and friends with other desktop OSes.
|
| It is always the other people's fault that Linux doesn't
| quite work, but "my system works just perfectly", when in
| reality keeps being the same hit and miss as always.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| No, it's not your fault and that's not what I'm saying. I
| also think people often fall victim to selective amnesia
| for what doesn't work well on their Windows or macOS
| machines. Off-hand I can recount an Xbox app that will
| fully freeze my system often enough to be annoying and a
| macOS work machine that would completely freeze when
| waking up from deep sleep while docked to my monitor.
|
| What I am saying is that most people looking to make
| comparisons should start by comparing Linux-shipped
| machines for a baseline standard. I've just told you that
| everything on my XPS 13 Developer Edition shipped fully
| working, without any user intervention. Am I the lier and
| your Medium article the true arbiter? That's up to you to
| decide. But maybe go out there and give one a shot
| yourself that isn't ancient, like a Framework (Framework
| is Linux- _supported_ but not shipped; other alternatives
| include the Star Labs ' line, System76, and Tuxedo) and
| tell me your experience. You can always install Windows
| after.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Both are right and both are wrong, that is the whole
| point with Linux Desktop since forever.
|
| My anecdotes are also based on hardware bought with Linux
| pre-installed on them.
|
| While System76 and Tuxedo are good options for technical
| users, the best buy audience will never get to them, at
| very best they will buy an Android or ChromeOS based
| device.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Windows knows full well LTSC is pain free but also less
| profitable. Sales will act really difficult, to sell it to a
| business unless they complain they are doing something mission
| critical. Also as far as I know it's difficult to buy LTSC as a
| private costumer.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Anyone can buy a volume license. You'll need to pay 200ish
| dollars or so but for an OS you use every day and provided
| the 400 comments here are indicative of a real desire to use
| a non-abusive edition of Windows, it's a bargain!
|
| To buy one you'll need to go through a Microsoft Partner as
| detailed here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/how-
| to-buy/how-to-...
|
| Searching the web for "buy ltsc license" is also fruitful.
| tomerv wrote:
| > consider paying for a volume license for LTSC
|
| And if I just want a single Windows machine and not 5?
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is the price you pay to let Microsoft
| know the OS you want respects you as a user.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I don't think even the LTSC edition avoids the UX problems
| discussed here. All the LTSC does is freeze the features
| Windows had at release and give you security updates. You're
| still stuck with whatever was there at launch.
|
| Suggesting switching to an entirely different OS to someone
| who's complaining that their habitual OS no longer behaves as
| it used to isn't very useful.
|
| >I'm not really sure what to make of this as it seems people
| prefer to complain as if they were hostages to the whims of
| others. I buy my computers with Linux pre-installed on
| supported machines.
|
| You don't understand because you're failing to empathize with
| what people are saying, because it's not a problem you
| personally experience. Let's see if this works: suppose you
| find a shoe manufacturer that makes these really neat shoes
| that you love. You love them so much that every time they wear
| out, you buy the next model from that manufacturer. Each model
| is slightly different from the last, but you like all of them
| better than the competition. As you've gotten used to them,
| you've started to develop certain habits with these shoes, such
| as a technique to tie the laces that makes you do it very fast.
| But over time, the manufacturer has started to change the way
| it makes the shoes, such that they're not as comfortable as
| they used to be, or some of your habits no longer work with
| them. Now, you don't want to buy from a different manufacturer.
| At this point your feet are accustomed to the way these shoes
| fit, and other shoes feel completely different, even if in some
| ways they're objectively better. You don't want shoes from a
| different brand, you want the shoes this one used to make,
| which used to be so much better than this.
|
| TL;DR: Something can be worse than it used to be, and still be
| better than the alternatives.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > You don't understand because you're failing to empathize
| with what people are saying, because it's not a problem you
| personally experience.
|
| To be clear I support my wife's LTSC install and use Windows
| 11 with WSL and WSLg for work.
|
| > I don't think even the LTSC edition avoids the UX problems
| discussed here.
|
| I think it does but please highlight which problems it doesnt
| avoid.
|
| > suppose you find a shoe manufacturer that makes these
| really neat shoes that you love.
|
| Do they respect me as a user? What are their capital
| incentives? If not aligned with mine why do I love them? Can
| I change my purchasing habits so their capital incentives
| align? If not, I should probably do something less rage-
| inducing for my own health.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| >I think it does but please highlight which problems it
| doesnt avoid.
|
| I've never used it, I was guessing based on my
| understanding of what LTSC is.
|
| >Do they respect me as a user? What are their capital
| incentives? If not aligned with mine why do I love them?
|
| The thing you love is the shoes, not the shoes'
| manufacturer.
|
| >Can I change my purchasing habits so their capital
| incentives align?
|
| _Can_ you, as in, is it possible for you at a reasonable
| cost? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the user. "Would
| you?" is the real question. If we're assuming that your
| shoes fit you best, why would you switch to a different
| brand that would fit you worse? Are you implying that the
| natural tendency of a product is to get worse until it's no
| better than its competitors?
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > Are you implying that the natural tendency of a product
| is to get worse until it's no better than its
| competitors?
|
| Yes! And I'll get a little philosophical here but if we
| really take an eagle's eye view on the source of this
| problem it's that capitalism insists on growth to keep
| the machine of prosperity running. On a microcosmic scale
| you can see this at work inside companies, which must
| pursue new growth streams as existing markets become
| saturated. With single digit growth in OS licenses,
| Microsoft pursues cloud/Office/SaaS to continue offering
| investors big returns. This leads to the inevitable
| downward spiral of the quality of former core products
| and desperate moves to monetize essentially a delivery
| vehicle to sell SaaS products.
|
| Stepping outside Microsoft for a moment and looking at
| Apple we can already see this emergent behavior in
| Apple's pivot to services and the marketing of those
| services inside _its_ SaaS /subscription delivery
| vehicles, such as iCloud+, Apple TV, Arcade etc.
|
| Returning to Microsoft, this is why we see Windows
| licenses now being sold basically for free and Microsoft
| removing virtually all burdens to a user running an
| unlicensed OS. It _no longer matters_ to their new core
| business.
|
| Given this duopoly of OSes with a new service fetish it
| behooves a user of these OSes to either pay so much money
| to Microsoft for respectful OS editions they can't help
| but notice (volume licensing LTSC) or explore
| alternatives that aren't beholden to these vicious
| imperatives.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Fair enough. I don't think capitalism is the source of
| the problem, though, but public trading of company
| shares. And more specifically, the concept of fiduciary
| responsibility. I honestly think that's poison in how it
| misaligns incentives and that it's socially a net
| negative, if we assume that the societal purpose of a
| company is primarily to provide services to its
| customers.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I think your take on the root cause is more nuanced and
| better than my own. That said, I don't know how we change
| an industry entrenched in this poison field.
| kasabali wrote:
| > please highlight which problems it doesnt avoid
|
| >> UX Consistency
|
| Check
|
| >> Widgets & MSN
|
| Check
|
| >> Unnecessary Cosmetic Changes
|
| If we're strictly talking about OP's grievances, current
| LTSC doesn't have them but next LTSC based on Windows 11
| will.
|
| >> Customization Lock-In
|
| Same as above
|
| >> Telemetry & Microsoft Account
|
| LTSC provides one extra level of telemetry setting but even
| set to that level it's still chock full of telemetry.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| For about ten years now I've only used Windows for rare tasks I
| can't do on Linux.
|
| Slowly I've just stopped doing those things until eventually,
| now, we're talking like, a dual boot I use a couple of times a
| year for things like running exam software or whatever.
|
| Why would they change a winning recipe? Millions (billions) are
| perfectly happy with their shit sandwiches.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > After all, what else are you going to do if you need to run
| Photoshop or Premiere for your work - switch to Linux? Good luck
| with that.
|
| I now believe that you can't like Windows because of exactly
| this. Linux gives you choice, and if someone wants to create a
| competitor OS from the Linux kernel (or even from another OS)
| they can. That is incredibly healthy and sustainable.
| anon1900 wrote:
| As an engineer working at Microsoft in Windows, I 100%
| agree...it's just as frustrating seeing these from inside as well
|
| (edit: from throwaway as a protective measure)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm wondering who in the org has a bigger voice and from where
| he or she gets the political support?
| emmelaich wrote:
| Is Windows Professional relatively free from these shenanigans?
|
| Or do we need to get Enterprise?
| thombles wrote:
| As far as I can see everything in the article applies in W11
| Professional. It will be interesting, though, to see what
| happens when more big enterprises start piloting their
| upgrades to W11. The taskbar changes alone could cause
| mutinies in thousands of back office departments.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Is it getting raised at meetings?
| anon1900 wrote:
| Personally, I've advocated for many user-friendly scenarios
| only to get shutdown by "business decisions" higher up by
| folks who have been in Windows for 20+ years. The engineering
| culture inside of Windows, from my experience, is poor and
| not improving
| creakingstairs wrote:
| Not working in MS but I would guess everyone knows about how
| bad it is. The problem is so colossal (technically and
| organisationally) thus no one person has the political
| capital to push for change.
|
| It's a kind of thing where the usual growth metrics "looks
| fine", so it's hard to justify big initiatives to fix it, yet
| everyone knows it's broken. One day, those metrics will start
| looking bad and then they will try to fix it, but by then it
| would be too late.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I imagine the bigger problem is that you have to have hard
| user research to back colossal changes like this one up,
| especially if the change would do something like invalidate
| a possibly three-digit large engineering team's years of
| work. The only thing that saves this is Microsoft's
| continued commitment to win32 apps, which will probably
| continue for eternity at least until MS recreates the
| _entire_ os from the ground up.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| just wondering 1 thing.. is there anyone in microsoft that
| looks at the feedback hub or forum at least? They never seem to
| listen to ANY feedback..
| userbinator wrote:
| They do look at it. Just not to do what you'd expect with
| what they see...
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29954266
| icelancer wrote:
| Ha, that's incredible. The MSFT employee (ralvis) cited in
| the article who complained about the "never combine" change
| in W11 is someone I know quite well, and he's not a
| developer. Normal users hate it just as much as us
| developers/nerds.
| thombles wrote:
| I posted an update to that article just the other day -
| it's a (new?) policy that feedback will be retained for at
| most 15 months. FBH can be safely disregarded as a waste of
| time.
| stg22 wrote:
| Microsoft's OS business is a classic "cash cow". It's very
| big and very profitable, but has limited growth prospects and
| its revenue is currently growing at only single digit
| percentage points per year. Every MBA course teaches that the
| way to handle a cash cow is to milk as much profits from the
| users and spend as little money maintaining it as you can get
| away with. You do this to maximise the amount you have to
| invest in other, faster growing businesses that will be the
| future of the company, even if it causes long-term damage to
| the cash cow. MS have been milking their OS and Office
| businesses to fund their cloud and XBox businesses and, so
| far, it's a textbook example of the strategy succeeding; the
| cloud already brings in more revenue for MS than Windows and
| is still growing much faster than it.
|
| The OS features that are getting attention, such as VS Code
| and WSL are ones that have synergy with the more important
| businesses and help them sell. Things like fixing the safari
| park of UI conventions don't have that synergy, so the
| resources that could improve them go to the other businesses.
| The ads and forced sign-ins are also part of this; in the
| long-term, they'll drive some users away from Windows, but
| right now, they funnel money and users to places that should
| matter more to the company in the long-term.
|
| MS aren't listening to Windows feedback - and the internal
| feedback from people working on the product is usually part
| of it in these situations -, because what's good for Windows
| isn't what's good for MS.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| (Not a Microsoft employee) Even if you do have the feedback,
| is it worth fixing issues if your boss doesn't prioritize
| them, and you won't get promoted for it?
| zcombynator wrote:
| Happy that Microsoft lost the mobile wars. So just wait 10 years
| and Windows will be gone anyway.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| These problems tend to work themselves out naturally - when you
| purposefully damage your user experience, you lose the early tech
| adopters that originally drove your product growth. They instead
| flock to a competitor that leaves you holding your bag of a
| shitty product.
|
| There are a few companies flirting with this dangerous line right
| now and it opens them up completely for disruption, which is the
| opposite of what they want.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I wish this was true, but there are a heck of a lot of office
| workers who have grown up with Windows and can never be trained
| to use anything else.
|
| You'll get a lot of resistance and rationalisation about why
| they don't think Linux or BSD or whatever isn't as good, and
| that the training time is better used to just work.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| You're not wrong, but office users should be locked to a
| browser in 2022 anyway. What do they need Windows for? They
| can all use a web browser.
|
| Microsoft has done an amazing job convincing the office world
| they need Windows, when they don't need a single feature that
| it provides in 99% of cases.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| As an officer worker, there are many many things I do that
| cannot be done in a web browser. File comparison tools,
| macros and complex excel queries, hard applications for
| both new and legacy critical programs...
|
| Can this be done on Linux? Frequently. Can it be done in a
| web browser? Rarely effectively and often not at all.
| zo1 wrote:
| Just wait till they start running those "native" programs
| in a VM on a server and streaming the UI to you in a
| browser for interaction.
| hulitu wrote:
| Last i heard they experimented with windows running in
| the cloud and the user having just a kind of thin client.
| It is hilarious that 20 years after SUN's "The network is
| the computer" and some years after freedesktop's
| initiatives "wayland", "X is obsolete" "X on network
| sucks", Microsoft is coming doing just this.
| 3np wrote:
| Isn't Excel feature-complete in the browser now, macros
| and all?
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365
| sjy wrote:
| VBA macros aren't supported. Last time I checked even
| conditional formatting wasn't supported, although I see
| now it was added in January 2022 [1]. Even so, as with
| many other features, the web UI is different and more
| limited. Links to documents stored locally or on an SMB
| share don't work. Scrolling through thousands of rows is
| laggy. Generally, Excel Online is useless for the complex
| spreadsheets used in large enterprises, which themselves
| are often workarounds for the limitations of the web apps
| the enterprise is supposed to run on.
|
| [1]: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-
| blog/new-condit...
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| In theory, yes.
|
| However Excel Online breaks down quickly with large file
| sizes, loses formatting and struggles mightily with
| complex macros.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| That's fair - I would still be curious to know what
| percentage of office workers run Windows that don't
| actually need to.
| syntheweave wrote:
| I can vouch for personal experience with macros and
| Linux, since I made my return to it this month. It's not
| ideal yet, but it's workable, and there's a generational
| transition taking place while moving from x11 to Wayland,
| since the two have different notions of input, so you
| have to wander through some compatibility stuff to find
| your way.
|
| This is annoying, but already much better than the
| Windows story, because you can customize things right
| down to the kernel level and generally get the result
| you're looking for in a pretty direct fashion. I now have
| it set up so that it detects the model of keyboard I
| plugged in and redirects specific models to specific
| macro layers - a seemingly obvious two-keyboards use case
| that can be a serious hassle on Windows without resorting
| to a hardware solution.
| oblio wrote:
| They were talking about Excel macros, not sure if you're
| talking about the same kind of macros.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I'd have to say that, today, all of those can be done in
| the browser except Excel.
|
| File comparison, hard applications, legacy code, can be
| compiled to WASM and run quite well in the browser. The
| pieces are in place to do it, they just need polishing
| and tuning to make it ubiquitous. Even Excel could be
| compiled like this but again MS wants to own you and pin
| you over a barrel while extracting everything they can
| from you, so Excel won't be available. But many/most
| Spreadsheets can be done in Libreoffice, or code or
| no/low code alternatives.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| OneNote is still a pig in the browser. Every day it has
| to reload and loses track of all the folders in the
| notebook so I have to reload them all again.
|
| Oh and it's soooo slow :(
| the_snooze wrote:
| >File comparison, hard applications, legacy code, can be
| compiled to WASM and run quite well in the browser.
|
| Not when you're working on
| proprietary/confidential/classified information.
|
| >But many/most Spreadsheets can be done in Libreoffice,
| or code or no/low code alternatives.
|
| Not when you're working on spreadsheets that you need to
| send to organizations that heavily rely on MS Office.
| apetresc wrote:
| > Not when you're working on
| proprietary/confidential/classified information.
|
| Why not? The WASM approach the OP is suggesting works
| entirely locally, the web is simply pushing client code
| to your browser.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Why not? The WASM approach the OP is suggesting works
| entirely locally, the web is simply pushing client code
| to your browser
|
| Because "the web is simply pushing client code to your
| browser". Untrusted code. Which may violate the
| confidentiality of you document. I still don't get it why
| companies which deal with "confidential information" are
| very happy to put those documents in the cloud. But ...
| it is their data and they decide what to do with it.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| You lose most of the advantages of running a software in
| your browser though.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Can you explain what you're thinking?
| [deleted]
| mamcx wrote:
| Beware what you ask for: Browsers are becoming an OS, and
| ARE far more abusive with users.
|
| And that browser more likely is owned by oogle...
| hulitu wrote:
| MS Office in browser is like Teams: terrible. Aparently MS
| decided to rewrite the UI for the browser app and even they
| acknoledge that is not working (do you want to open in
| desktop app ?)
| aksss wrote:
| I think you're projecting, and severely unfamiliar with the
| software.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Not sure if with "should" you are talking about some kind
| of ideal world. But in 2022 in the real world, this cannot
| be done. Online Word is a joke. I would like to use it
| (because I hate MS Office, so if I could go without having
| it installed and taking room in my HD and start menu, it
| would be great) but it's unusable even for my quite basic
| needs. A sister comment talks about advanced stuff like
| Excel macros, etc.; but even very basic functionality is
| not available.
|
| For example: right now, it's impossible to edit a document
| online with Track Changes without showing all the changes
| (which makes documents practically unreadable). And you
| don't even have pages online, documents are shown with a
| continuous layout where it's difficult to know where pages
| start and end.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| That's true but the new generation have grown up with (for
| better or worse) web/apps. Once they are the main workforce,
| they will be much less reluctant to switch to whatever OS.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| My kid just graduated high school last year.
|
| She would tell me stories about how impressed her peers were
| with seeing her do something as basic as copy and paste, and
| navigating files + folders.
|
| There is a generation of kids that have only ever grown up on
| tablets + the web, so; the desktop + office app market +
| ecosystem is _ripe_ for disruption.
|
| Maybe it's done right this time, and not married to a single
| browser version(ha) or platform runtime.
| brimble wrote:
| > She would tell me stories about how impressed her peers
| were with seeing her do something as basic as copy and
| paste, and navigating files + folders.
|
| > There is a generation of kids that have only ever grown
| up on tablets + the web, so; the desktop + office app
| market + ecosystem is ripe for disruption.
|
| I'm not aware of any generation for which being comfortable
| with those things hasn't put one in, at least (I'm being
| very conservative), the top 20% of computer literacy. Most
| people are bad at just _using_ a computer--given how long
| it 's been a problem, there's either a lot of essential
| complexity there that _cannot_ be mitigated or avoided to
| improve usability, or we as an industry have just done a
| terrible job designing desktop operating systems for
| regular people. I don 't think tablets et c. have much to
| do with it.
| userbinator wrote:
| _who have grown up with Windows and can never be trained to
| use anything else._
|
| When Windows itself is changing so much that it hardly
| resembles what it used to be, there's going to be a lot of
| relearning anyway.
|
| On the other hand, you can make Linux look like any version
| of Windows if you really wanted to.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| If you want Linux to compete, you need spreadsheet software
| as good as Excel and a word processor that's 100%
| compatible with Word. I tried to use LibreOffice for a
| while but Calc ins't there yet and I had tons of formatting
| problems when I sent documents to Words users. After
| dealing with this for a while you just give up and start
| using Office again.
| wolpoli wrote:
| There's WPS Office that runs on Windows, MacOS, and
| Linux. The user interface has a level of polish that
| rivals Microsoft Office. Sadly, I didn't have a chance to
| explore if it is seamless to move a file between MS
| Office and WPS Office.
| jart wrote:
| I don't want to pull back the curtain too much or tramp
| on everyone's hopes, but Linux can't compete with
| Microsoft because of UEFI. The PCs being sold today only
| allow Microsoft's software to run. In order to distribute
| a Linux distro, you have to ask Microsoft to give you a
| shim where they've signed your private key, so that you
| can share your own signed kernel builds with others.
| Therefore you can't publish a Linux desktop for consumers
| without being in league with the adversary.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Is there a source for this?
|
| And also, can't you just disable Secure Boot?
| Shared404 wrote:
| I believe many UEFI implementations allow you to replace
| the secure boot keys with your own.
|
| I've not done it personally as most of my machines I just
| disable Secure Boot, but it's an option if you know about
| it and buy carefully.
| jart wrote:
| That's why I was used the word consumers. Rolling your
| own crypto will let you work around the requirement of
| asking Microsoft for permission to install our own
| operating system. But it limits the audience for your
| work to the technical class.
| Shared404 wrote:
| /me removes foot from mouth
|
| I see what you mean now, I screwed up reading your first
| comment.
| jart wrote:
| I think this is the first time someone has ever reacted
| non-negatively towards me online after I brought up the
| subject. UEFI has good PR and I think people refuse to
| believe the implications of what happened. It would be
| like having Google officially be the only CA for HTTPS
| certificates and then removing HTTP from Chrome. That's
| basically what the security community did with PCs.
| Shared404 wrote:
| That surprises me. Much better in my opinion to listen
| then to assume I know better - especially because I'm
| familiar with your work.
|
| Even though Secure Boot can be disabled on most hardware
| afaict [0] that's still a step consumers won't take so
| the point still stands easily. Especially with the amount
| of "you will break everything and kick a a puppy" that
| manufacturers throw in there to disuade anyone who
| manages to get to the menu.
|
| [0] worked at a repair ahop until 1.5ish weeks ago, have
| disabled SB on a lot of hardware.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Source? I've installed Ubuntu on half a dozen newish UEFI
| computers, some of which came with OEM Windows, over the
| past few years with no trouble
| https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| The source is in your own link. Also note, the person you
| replied to went on to emphasize 'consumer' in a followup
| comment, which I think makes the point much more salient.
|
| [1]: "On Ubuntu, all pre-built binaries intended to be
| loaded as part of the boot process, with the exception of
| the initrd image, are signed by Canonical's UEFI
| certificate, which itself is implicitly trusted by being
| embedded in the shim loader, itself signed by Microsoft.
|
| On architectures or systems where pre-loaded signing
| certificates from Microsoft are not available or loaded
| in firmware, users may replace the existing signatures on
| shim or grub and load them as they wish, verifying
| against their own certificates imported in the system's
| firmware."
|
| [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot#How_UEFI_Secu
| re_Boot...
| Lev1a wrote:
| > you need spreadsheet software as good as Excel and a
| word processor that's 100% compatible with Word
|
| IIRC I read an anecdote a few years back that if MS ever
| lost the code to their office products they couldn't re-
| implement it 100% compatible again since they don't
| completely abide by any standards like the Open Document
| Format.
|
| I will always continue to harbor hatred for MSs Office
| products since when I had to write a big piece of
| homework for 9th grade in school (a "Facharbeit", kinda
| like a mini Bachelor's thesis as an intro to scientific
| writing) I then had to transfer the file from my computer
| via USB drive to my fathers' PC to print it out. Naive as
| i was, I didn't think to double-check the formatting
| after the transfer since it was the same software on the
| same version on the same OS etc. Ended getting a "1 (very
| good)" for content but the formatting grade was so bad it
| dragged the combined mark down to a "3 (satisfactory)".
| Since then I'll only print documents after converting to
| pdf and double-checking everything is ok and will never
| voluntarily use an MS Office product ever again.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's a shame Office went to the continually updated
| subscription model. Older versions of office ran
| excellently under wine.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's not about cosmetic similarities.
|
| Linux would kill it if it made it trivially easy to run
| Windows inside a sanitised and privatised container or VM
| that prevented telemetry and all the other nonsense.
|
| I suspect a lot of people would accept a modest performance
| hit if that were possible.
| skoskie wrote:
| Add MacOS to the list. The continued crippling of the OS for
| power users keeps pushing us toward the iOS experience, and
| it's killing me. I can't see details of my own log files for
| privacy reasons. The new Finder design is just awful and
| accomplished nothing for all the change. Now I learn I can't
| make hardlinks for directories on APFS. The list goes on.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes, I moved away too. So much dumbing down, so many things
| changed just for the sake of it. And of course no settings to
| revert it. Eventually it was just too annoying to upgrade.
|
| A lot of it is security hardening but the problem is I have
| to give all control to Apple. There is no way for me to
| change anything in the read only OS part without the whole
| rigmarole of booting into recovery mode and blessing my
| changes with every update. There should be a way I can sign
| my own changes. It's the Apple way or the highway. And I'm
| running into more and more issues when the Apple way is just
| not good enough for me.
|
| I'm really so happy with having options again with KDE. No
| more opinionated software for me.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| They have long understood that security is always an
| argument to throw into the pot to justify their changes.
| Boot malware isn't really a widely spread problem in 22 and
| MS still pushes TPM 2.0. It is probably less about user
| security than control about users and machines.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is what can happen when you turn off SIP on the Mac.
| You can't trust developers to not be careless and/or
| malignant.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2019/09/no-it...
| digisign wrote:
| Poor security design. App installers should definitely be
| sandboxed, "sip" or not. Preventing the local admin from
| making any changes due to lack of that, is fixing the
| wrong problem. Or perhaps not in a granular enough way.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So it's "poor security design" when a user with root
| access specifically disables the security and bad things
| happen?
| digisign wrote:
| Yes, useful and destructive/fatal configuration should be
| separated.
|
| If you have to remove a load-bearing pillar to install a
| light-switch, the design is poor, to say the least.
| scarface74 wrote:
| There are two separate levels
|
| - root access - doesn't disable SIP
|
| - Disabling SIP requires you to go through many
| contortions.
|
| People didn't need to disable SIP to install Chrome. They
| were doing it for other reasons.
| astrange wrote:
| You can't make hardlinks to directories on any other file
| system either.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I don't think pleasing tech adopters is what help windows at
| this point. Maybe 20 year ago, sure. Today, most consumers of
| Windows that are not business/enterprise, are probably doing it
| more so because that was the defacto OS for them when they were
| in grade school, and it has been the defacto OS on most
| computers sub $1K. We are seeing some market shift to chrome OS
| and there is probably a good future where Chrome OS displaces
| Windows massively. If it does, it won't be because of tech
| adopters and such. It will be because Chrome OS is what is
| gaining popularity for kids in school and they will grow up
| being used to.
|
| Edit: Defacto above meaning, when I go into best buy, that is
| what is pre-loaded. Or I go to walmart, that is what comes on
| the computer.
|
| Edit: 'there is probably a good future where Chrome OS' typo or
| poor wording. Meant to say something along the lines of, 'there
| is probably a good chance that a Chrome OS future happens'
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| If you think Chrome OS is going to save you, you haven't been
| paying attention to Google for the past 10 years.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I didn't say it was going to save me. I do think I had a
| type that said 'good future.' I meant to put something
| along the lines of 'good probability of a future.' Chrome
| OS is going to be another user hostile environment for
| sure. But the point is, Chrome OS has a good shot at
| displacing windows not because it is better or less user
| hostile, but because it is putting cheap machines in the
| hands of kids who will one day, grow up, and enter the
| workforce and lead the workforce later on.
| hulitu wrote:
| Purchasing decision are made by business executives. I
| use windows because i am forced by my employer.
| gryn wrote:
| you can do like I do, use window for nothing beside
| virtual box in which there's your real everyday OS.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| > kids who will one day, grow up, and enter the workforce
| and lead the workforce later on
|
| I noticed chromebook getting big in the education space
| and really getting into the hands of kids 7 years so.
| Your business executives I assume are old enough to pre-
| date chromebook's big debut in eductaion? They likewise
| are probably most familiar with Windows and that is why
| they hand it down as the required bit of software? or
| probably a sweet business contract, that also plays a
| factor.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Chrome OS has a good shot at displacing windows not
| because it is better or less user hostile, but because it
| is putting cheap machines in the hands of kids who will
| one day, grow up, and enter the workforce and lead the
| workforce later on._
|
| That's even worse, because as the saying goes, those who
| never had freedom (or ownership, for that matter) won't
| miss it.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| What is worst or better is not what matters in this
| instance. This is a matter of the reality of what will
| probably lead to the adoption of an OS. Would I be happy
| with Chrome OS displacing Windows? No. Am I happy with
| Windows having the market share it does? No. But what I
| want doesn't matter in adoption. What matters is, Chrome
| OS has a strategy that will probably work. And that
| strategy doesn't involve tech influences getting excited
| over the product, it is simply getting it in kid's hand
| so they think Chrome OS is how a computer should be.
| Regardless if that is true. That is why Linux adoption
| for the common user sucks, their first experience was
| probably Windows, so in their mind, Windows is how a
| computer should be.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Fear not; they'll deprecate Chrome OS and Stadia in the
| next few years and add it to https://killedbygoogle.com/
| , which I see has just added AngularJS recently. Google
| Cloud Print stuck out there too, since we had a big thing
| about rolling that out at work just a few years ago as
| the future solution for all our printing needs.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Google does kill off a lot of products, but I wouldn't
| hold my breath on Chrome OS. It is paying off for them in
| the education space. They have an OS that ships on cheap
| computers that work well enough for students. Gets them
| in the google ecosystem and the mind set of Chrome OS is
| what a computer should be. Not to mention contracts in
| place with school systems that probably nets them easy
| money.
|
| https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/chrome-
| os/chromebook/228534/....
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Gaming was the only thing keeping me on windows. Windows 11 ads
| have given me a reason to finally move to Linux.
| sylens wrote:
| This post resonates with me a lot, as I share many of the same
| complaints. The UI inconsistencies are one thing (that you would
| hope get ironed out over time), but the level of ads creeping
| ever higher is alarming. The "accidental" inclusion of an ad in
| Windows Explorer this week may have tipped their hand - if that's
| the direction they are going, I'm moving off the platform
| entirely.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >The UI inconsistencies are one thing (that you would hope get
| ironed out over time)
|
| Windows 8 was released _ten years ago._ All the old-style
| control panel dialogs are still with us. Regedit will never get
| ported to the new UI toolkit.
| drsnow wrote:
| WHY, though? It's genuinely infuriating
| ripley12 wrote:
| It's complicated, but the short answer is that the Windows
| team messed up and there isn't really a good new native UI
| framework to migrate Regedit to.
|
| UWP was burdened with sandboxing+packaging requirements
| that made it very difficult to use, even for first-party
| software. They eventually figured that out and have made
| some attempts to lift UI stuff out of UWP (XAML Islands and
| WinUI 3), but they're both train wrecks (and not staffed
| with nearly enough people to put up a fight against
| Chromium).
| userbinator wrote:
| One hopes it never will, because everything post-Win32 seems
| to be much worse. UWP (what is used for the new Control
| Panel/"Settings") is particularly frustrating.
|
| ...which is very strange that MS seems to be continuing to
| rewrite stuff in it, when it's already started saying things
| like this a few years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19873198
| kitkat_new wrote:
| whats so bad about UWP? it's way better than win32
| (security, API, Windows integration)
| ripley12 wrote:
| > ...which is very strange that MS seems to be continuing
| to rewrite stuff in it
|
| From what I understand, the thinking is something like:
|
| - There currently aren't any great alternatives for an
| attractive, touch-friendly, modern-looking UI framework.
| UWP applications generally feel pretty good to use despite
| UWP's problems.
|
| - MS already has to support UWP apps forever (once
| something ships with Windows it's immortal), so they might
| as well take advantage of that support guarantee.
|
| The Windows team is currently investing heavily in
| Chromium/Edge/WebView2, but it's still fairly early days.
| I'd bet good money that within the next 5 years, web UI in
| some form will fully replace UWP for new first-party
| development.
| oooooooooooow wrote:
| You're saying that within 5 years the illness will become
| terminal.
| stuartd wrote:
| Should it be? I imagine the number of people who use Regedit
| is less than one per cent, and those people really don't care
| what it looks like? (yes, RegEdit is a terrible UX but for me
| familiarity makes me less likely to make mistakes in a tool
| you really don't want to make mistakes in!)
| duskwuff wrote:
| > The UI inconsistencies are one thing (that you would hop get
| ironed out over time)
|
| I wouldn't get my hopes up. Microsoft seems to be introducing
| new UI frameworks -- each with their own slightly different
| appearance -- at an ever-increasing rate. If current trends
| continue, by 2030 there will be more Windows UI frameworks than
| developers using them. :)
| xattt wrote:
| Are you saying that by 2030, there will be a custom UI
| framework for every developer out there? Beat that, Apple!
| grishka wrote:
| Isn't Apple's SwiftUI just a unified layer on top of
| AppKit/UIKit/WatchKit depending on the platform though?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Yes, although there's also Cocoa.
| lwkl wrote:
| Thank you. This is so true and annoying. Microsoft should treat
| their UI like their APIs and not break it with every major
| release. Changing a submenu is alright, changing how flat it is,
| is fine. But don't release a new settings app with every update.
| Microsoft settings is like Google chat apps as soon as you get
| used to it they throw it in the trash and release a new one to
| works completely differently.
|
| I bought a MacBook recently after switching from Mac OS X to
| Windows and Linux 13 years ago. After booting for the first time
| I opened the settings app do do some changes and was expecting to
| google a lot and I didn't have to. The settings still have the
| same layout and it generally worked the same as on macOS 10.4.
| The same was true for the preinstalled system apps. They were in
| the same place, had the same names and generally functioned the
| same expect some UI changes. There are additions to the UI that
| replaced some old features like multiple desktops, the control
| center and the widgets but they didn't any of my usage patterns
| and it was pretty easy to integrate them into my regular
| workflow.
|
| If you look at it from a normal users POV Apple has much better
| backwards compatibility than Microsoft, if my software is being
| maintained by a dev and I'm willing to update to the newer
| versions. If I want to keep using a program that was released 20
| years ago not so much, but Microsoft has been breaking a lot of
| these programs in the last 5 years as well.
| wenmoon wrote:
| windows is great (/s) for having multiple areas with the same
| settings like regular "Control Panel Mouse" and "Mouse and
| Keyboard" and "Gaming"
|
| as a user it makes getting help when something is not working
| (which is often) very difficult and borderline impossible
|
| not to mention completely infuriating
|
| if i could boot directly into a launcher for my games i would do
| it in a heartbeat. get the OS out of my way please
| a-dub wrote:
| confused software encourages confused habits of mind.
|
| ditched windows (and its apparent organizational brain damage) 18
| years ago and have only ever looked back when forced to in
| employment situations.
|
| strongly believe that if you normalize broken computing by
| forcing developers to use broken platforms, then they'll produce
| broken software.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm not a Windows user and I know this is not a popular opinion,
| but... I really wish Windows 8 had been better received. Sure it
| was a huge break from Win<8. But it was a bold, thoughtful and
| thorough one, with a lot of potential. Refining Metro but
| ultimately sticking to its core ideas would almost certainly have
| produced a better Windows experience overall than the basically
| incoherent changes which followed.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I'm convinced Windows 8 is a better tablet OS than 10. I don't
| know if it's a better desktop OS.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| It wasn't a better desktop OS, but it was a just as good
| desktop OS with potential to become a better one.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| What I don't understand is why they decided to shoehorn
| Windows onto their tablets instead of the Windows Phone OS.
| Windows phone was well received, it would have made far more
| sense. Apple could see that wasn't going to work, why
| couldn't Microsoft.
| jenscow wrote:
| Well, you're right about one thing,
|
| > _I know this is not a popular opinion_
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I also wish the Zune and Windows Phone had succeeded. I'm not
| very good at gambling either. It's good to recognize one's
| strengths or lack thereof :)
| TedShiller wrote:
| Or, just don't use it.
| isoblvck wrote:
| there's also built in keyloggers, eye tracking, and an absolutely
| insane amount of telemetry. revoke permissions for the camera and
| mic and see how many times "your settings blocked access"
| notifications show up.
| graycat wrote:
| Except for some _details_ , I really REALLY like Windows. Really
| what I'm liking is computing, and Windows is a big part of that
| because I selected Windows instead of Linux.
|
| Over the years there have been some changes: So, we have new
| hardware, some HUGELY important new communications standards, a
| huge effort on computer security, etc., and it is crucial that
| Windows has kept up with the changes. I like that. And I like
| that I can still run my favorite old programs: Since I do all I
| can with _plain text_ , my most heavily used program is my
| favorite text editor KEDIT. And I really like hierarchical file
| systems so really REALLY like Microsoft's NTFS (new technology
| file system) and do a lot of tree walking, searching, copying,
| deleting, etc.
|
| But Microsoft went for an unstated _philosophy_ of a _graphical
| user interface_ (GUI) where (a) there is a _metaphor_ of _direct
| manipulation_ of _desktop objects_ and (b) commands and
| operations are to be learned by experimentation without
| documentation. I can see some utility there, otherwise I still
| like command lines because the documentation tends to be better,
| it is more clear just what is going on, and I can _script,
| automate_ some of the operations.
|
| And I get to write software, e.g., in .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET for
| my Web site startup and whatever else seems worthwhile. So far, I
| like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just explained in
| simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By now I've come
| to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and I should f'get
| about it -- would have been nice to have had some EXPLANATION.
|
| For the future of GUIs, that seems to be just Web pages, i.e.,
| HTML.
|
| For me, the above is the view of Windows I find most important.
| For the future, I hope that Microsoft does not mess up that view.
| To have me a happier customer, Microsoft should concentrate on
| one word, DOCUMENTATION.
|
| I can understand that Microsoft has some middle managers who want
| to add things to Windows or change Windows to _improve_ it. Now,
| for changes such as I mentioned above, SURE. Otherwise, please
| sit down: Each new version of Windows I find to be, in one word,
| a _pain_. The changes are not _improvements_ but PAINS. E.g.,
| with the old version of Windows, after hundreds of hours of work
| I finally learned and documented for myself how to get routine
| things done. Then with the changes, I have to invest many more
| hours just to be able to continue to get routine things done and
| for no gains at all. Sorry Microsoft middle manager: To me you
| are like TV producers, what they try for, I don 't like; what I
| like, they don't try for.
|
| E.g., as far as I can tell from a command line window
|
| Examples:
|
| > runas /noprofile /user:mymachine\administrator cmd
|
| is wrong. Just wrong. It doesn't work. First, set aside that from
| this "example" can't tell what is a constant and what is a
| variable. So, try all possible combinations. Second, still,
| nothing works. Nothing. Go for 1, 2, 3 hours trying everything.
| Did I mention, nothing works? This is grotesquely bad computing.
| Just awful. Want to make things better, fix things like that.
|
| But it's worse: Go out on the Internet and can find lots of
| documentation of that command. Some of the documentation has lots
| of double quote marks. Nothing worked. Hours; nothing worked.
| We're talking mud wrestling here. Eventually I got the software
| to request my administrator password, but that was as far as it
| went.
|
| This isn't my work. Yet my time, effort, energy are soaked up,
| repeatedly, over and over, by such system management mud
| wrestling documentation problems.
|
| Eventually I guessed some of what was going on and found another
| path that did work. It's not fully clear just why that worked,
| but it did.
|
| Documentation? I took some good notes, and apparently they are
| better than anything from Microsoft or readily available on the
| Internet.
|
| The main bottleneck in my startup is the bad documentation that
| leads to wasted effort in this mud wrestling. What fraction of my
| effort goes to such stuff? Essentially 100% -- I can't get back
| to my real work due to a continuing list of such disasters. They
| are taking up ALL my time, just mud wrestling from bad
| documentation.
|
| For Windows, Firefox, Acrobat, etc., sure, important security
| updates and otherwise I'll consider updates in functionality
| maybe twice a year, maybe once a year, or once each 2nd year.
| Except for security, bluntly and quite broadly I don't want your
| updates but will consider some, say, occasionally. As you force
| updates on me, I get TORQUED, become a VERY unhappy customer.
|
| E.g., Adobe went too far, essentially taking over my PC, at
| startup, with updates I don't want, with popups, with "Do you
| want to ...", and yesterday I deleted everything from Adobe now
| "Dead to me.". Firefox will read a PDF (portable document format)
| file, at least the ones I want read, a little better than
| Acrobat. Adobe, with me, you went too far and BLEW IT.
|
| I have big hopes for the future of computing for myself,
| Microsoft, the computer industry, the economy, and civilization,
| but I want do to my part, get on with it, and there is no room in
| that work for me to click "NO" tens of thousands of times to
| popup windows stopping my work until I answer some "Do you want
| to ...", and there is no excuse for the system management mud
| wrestling from bad documentation.
|
| At one time Microsoft was very interested in "developers,
| developers, developers!!!". Well, I'm trying to be one. Then I
| hope to be a good customer for Windows Server and SQL Server. And
| on Windows XP and Windows 7 I got 100,000 lines of .NET code
| running apparently as intended. But now I've lost YEARS of time
| in system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.
|
| I can't be a good customer of Windows Server if you have me stuck
| in a mud hole wasting time.
| sylens wrote:
| > So far, I like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just
| explained in simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By
| now I've come to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and
| I should f'get about it -- would have been nice to have had
| some EXPLANATION.
|
| I would say that .NET Core is certainly relevant to you and
| shouldn't be ignored.
|
| As for a simple explanation, another user on this site wrote
| this which I found extremely helpful.
| https://dusted.codes/dotnet-basics
| graycat wrote:
| MANY THANKS for the link
| https://dusted.codes/dotnet-basics
|
| with .NET Basics
|
| Just read it all. EXCELLENT information. Kept a copy. Indexed
| it in the appropriate place in my .NET documentation. That
| information will be a big help in my software writing for my
| startup.
|
| Microsoft, this document is HELPING you a LOT with me. Did I
| mention, my view is that the biggest problem in my software
| writing, startup, Microsoft, the US economy, the future of
| computing, and progress in civilization now is in just one
| word, DOCUMENTATION that is missing for Microsoft's software.
| This is not funny or a joke but very serious.
|
| Okay, .NET Foundation, through version 4.x, was for writing
| software only on Windows, and CORE was for writing software
| on nearly any operating system. Now at .NET version 5,
| Foundation and CORE have become the same thing.
|
| Okay. I suspect that with CORE/.NET version 5, my old code
| written using .NET 2.x and 4.x and ASP.NET and ADO.NET will
| still run as before, mostly or entirely except maybe a lot
| faster. Okay.
|
| I would make some suggestions about .NET
| Basics
|
| (1) It's possible to use .NET to write a program that
| compiles to a file with extension EXE and not just DLL. I did
| that many times. E.g., part of the software I wrote was a
| key-value store that runs as a _server_ , _console
| application_ , is an EXE, and provides its _service_ via TCP
| /IP.
|
| (2) Say that _jargon_ is a word used with a meaning not in a
| standard dictionary and used with a narrow meaning in a
| narrow field. Well, the document would be better defining
| more of its jargon. Same for acronyms.
|
| (3) Apparently software can run "on" a _platform_ or "under"
| the CLI or CLR. Using both _on_ and _under_ makes no sense --
| stick with one or the other. Since software _stack_ is so
| common, maybe stick with _on_ and drop _under_.
|
| (4) The description of _interpreted_ software is nothing like
| what I have long understood. The document seems to claim that
| _interpreted_ software is much the same as _just in time_
| complied software; here there is a new sequence of machine
| instructions generated (the instructions are not new but the
| sequence is). In total contrast, my understanding is that
| _interpreted_ software is having a program, the _interpreter_
| , run the user's software simply by directly doing what that
| software says. It is like a human reading the software and
| doing what it says -- no new sequence of machine instructions
| generated. A good example of interpreted software is the
| scripting language Rexx. I'm fairly sure, and due to computer
| security certainly hope, that JavaScript software is executed
| interpretively.
|
| (5) It seems that the document is claiming that for writing
| programs with .NET it necessary to use Visual Studio. Gads, I
| HOPE NOT! I just checked and see that I wrote 11 million
| bytes of .NET software, and I never used Visual Studio. I
| fully intend never to use Visual Studio. Instead, all my
| software source code is just simple plain text I type in with
| my favorite plain text text editor KEDIT -- ALL of it.
|
| NO WAY do I want any usage of Visual Studio. I tried it once:
| There was a LOT to learn just to consider writing the
| standard "Hello World". And for the initial _project_ to
| write Hello World, I got some huge file system tree with
| maybe 50 million bytes of I don 't know what the heck. And
| when something went wrong, I'd have to work through 50+
| million bytes of undocumented I don't know what. I see
| writing the software for my startup on Visual Studio a threat
| like my being lashed to a railroad track with freight train
| at 80 MPH 100 yards away coming right for me. NO WAY.
|
| I just checked: The way I got my .NET code compiled was just
| run as a command line the .NET VB compiler EXE program
|
| Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\vbc.exe
|
| Worked fine. Got to "Hello World" right away. Worked fine for
| 300+ .VB programs. Used TCP/IP, ADO.NET, etc. -- just fine.
| The compiling on a very cheap AMD processor with a 1.8 GHz
| clock was really fast. I was a super happy camper, thrilled,
| and NO Visual Studio in sight.
|
| Debugging? Didn't have any problems a little print tracing
| didn't easily solve.
|
| Documentation for using .NET objects? Put the tree name on my
| disk of the relevant Web page I'd downloaded from MSDN in my
| source code, and with one key stroke my editor would run a
| macro that did a little parsing and displayed the MSDN Web
| page. Worked great. No problems.
|
| Now, however, that macro won't work: Somehow Firefox now
| floods me with popups about "safe mode", "Do you want to ..."
| and refuses just to display the Web page. So, will have to
| revise my editor macro to use the old version of Google's Web
| browser Chrome to display the pages. Firefox messed up, big
| time, and is no longer qualified to be my "default browser".
|
| A lot of people with famous software have convinced
| themselves that it is really good NOT to do the work the user
| is requesting but, instead, to stop the work of the user,
| refuse to do the work, and put up various windows, popups,
| video clips, etc., lots and lots of stuff other than the
| actual work involved. Of course I avoid such software as much
| as I can. Adobe did that with Acrobat, and now there is
| NOTHING by Adobe on my computer. Firefox did some of that,
| and now Firefox is no long my default browser. This popup and
| "Do you want to ..." stuff is a really good way to get OFF my
| computers.
|
| THANKS again for the reference. Remarks (1)-(5) aside, the
| good stuff in .NET Basics
|
| is TERRIFIC information!
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| For a website that is all about user interface design, I was
| surprised I couldn't get the Ukrainian profanity to go away at
| the bottom of the page.
|
| (I do support Ukraine but this user interface is bad.)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Some of the anti-user patterns aren't even pioneered by
| Microsoft, they simply fall in the anti-user direction many big
| companies are pushing.
|
| Ads in apps? Pioneered in Android. Tricking the user to log in
| using Microsoft account? You can't make much use of an Android
| phone unless you sign in with your google account. Also, Apple
| requests having an Apple Id.
|
| I wonder what if someone at Apple, Google, Microsoft decides at
| some point that you shouldn't be able to use your own device,
| bought with your own money? They can disable your account at one
| push of a button. Or maybe a state agency decides you are one of
| the bad guys.
| theclansman wrote:
| These companies all copy each other's bad practices, it's no
| surprise there, if one can get away with it the rest will
| follow.
| Const-me wrote:
| > You can't make much use of an Android phone unless you sign
| in with your google account.
|
| This depends on the phone. Samsung phones aren't terribly bad,
| I've been using one without google account for a few months
| now. For instance, the built-in web browser has a command like
| "setup an ad blocker".
| pkrumins wrote:
| Windows has to revert back to Windows 2000 when it was usable.
| ficiek wrote:
| >I mean, I can literally run a game written for Windows 95 on
| Windows 11 without major issues
|
| Ok, I think this person hasn't tried to run many old games.
| dend wrote:
| It's not ideal, but to be fair, a lot of them (not all) that
| don't require funky DRM APIs (a-la Grand Theft Auto IV with
| Games for Windows Live) _do_ work decently. Some might need to
| have a right-click, run in compatibility mode check done.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Windows 11 is probably the last straw that pushes me to Linux.
| I'm still using Windows 10 on my Lenovo 470S laptop, but my next
| one is going to be a Linux one. I still have to keep a Windows
| gig somewhere to play old school games but that's pretty much all
| I need.
|
| I'll also try to avoid any job that requires MS Office. Nowadays
| I have to "Save as" to easily navigate to a local folder,
| otherwise it takes quite a few steps to move away from the
| OneDrive default folder. Windows 10 is bad enough, but whatever I
| heard about 11 seems to be much worse.
|
| MSFT has made the decision to suck money on Cloud, which is fine.
| I'd like to remind you not to fall into the WSL trap. Use a
| standalone Linux instead. Once you are getting used to WSL you
| are probably getting sucked into Windows anyway.
| barbs wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what games do you play? Would wine and/or a
| virtual machine suffice?
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I actually play a lot of old school games so 1) Dosbox solves
| a lot of them and 2) Never tried that but maybe Wine solves
| the rest.
|
| A list of freq games:
|
| 1) Baldur's Gate EE Trilogy (And their EE cousins)
|
| 2) Quake I (this I'm sure can be played in Linux directly)
|
| 3) Diablo 2 (Also think there is a Linux version, they even
| have a MacOS one)
|
| That's pretty much it, and TBH I don't really play them
| frequently, maybe a few times a week? So yeah I can probably
| move into Linux right now, and the only "obstacle" is that I
| removed most bullshits from Windows 10 Pro and it is now
| usable, so I'm kinda lazy to change. On the other side, since
| I want to learn sys programming, that's some incentive to
| move to Linux...
| Decabytes wrote:
| I'm curious to see if Microsoft will lose market share to Linux
| and MacOS over it's user hostile practices
| NL807 wrote:
| So long it's deployed on laptops by default, probably not.
| gfaster wrote:
| That can only happen when those other OSs match the level of
| functionality, reliability, and support that windows enjoys. I
| would love to switch my main OS to a Linux distro but it is
| _still_ unstable enough and not supported enough that I can 't
| reasonably switch.
|
| As far as I can tell, our best hope is for Linux to improve at
| the same rate or faster as it has over the last 5 years for at
| least the next 5. Only then will Microsoft start to face any
| meaningful competition in operating systems.
| everyone wrote:
| There already is an ideal version of Windows 10, without windows
| store, metro, cortana, xbox live, ads etc. etc. It also will get
| support and security updates but _zero_ feature updates or
| changes for 10 years. It 's called Windows 10 LTSB. They dont
| sell this useful version of windows to normal people though, only
| to corps via a volume license. This is one of those situations
| that behooves one to pirate it, and there are plenty of copies of
| this + crack on torrent sites.
| Beltiras wrote:
| Maybe someone should make a file browser app for Windows so we
| can continue enjoying ad-less perusal of finding and opening a
| file in Windows.
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