[HN Gopher] Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11
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Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11
Author : thibautg
Score : 414 points
Date : 2022-12-11 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| maxbaines wrote:
| I say it every time I see similar posts, but these kind of
| features and being tied to an Ms account has made me leave
| windows for Linux and MacOS.
| maxbaines wrote:
| For context I used and loved Windows since I was a teenager
| with Windows 3.1 but for me I just find an OS with such
| features to jarring for daily use. Also note Mac OS has its
| problems too. I was so excited for W11 and generally love most
| of it.
|
| Oh and I run Linux on a Surface Laptop.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can still use Windows 11 with just a local account, see for
| example https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-
| windows-11-without-mi....
| maxbaines wrote:
| Yes you can however every so often I see the let's finish
| setup screen will appear to prompt you, again you can
| continue without an account and then be nagged again.
| layer8 wrote:
| Go to the Notifications page in Settings and untick "Offer
| Suggestions on How I Can Set Up My Device".
| fxtentacle wrote:
| My new gaming build is Linux-only, PopOS to be precise, and the
| experience so far has been smooth. AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU and
| stuff just works. And thanks to Valve's investments, all the
| games that I care about just work, too. I'm also pretty sure that
| no upcoming triple-A game is going to ignore Linux, now that all
| the cool kids with money bought a Steam Deck.
| AB1908 wrote:
| Do you know of any alternatives to Playnite? I use that and
| GameActivity to try and track my play time.
| beached_whale wrote:
| Windows 10, unless things change will be my last windows machine.
| I use it for testing with msvc, and my tax software that i like.
| But all this imposition into software i paid for isn't how i want
| to use my computers. Like Windows is pretty solid, it is MS by
| doing this has lost all credibility as a company that views me as
| their customer. I don't need them
| jmugan wrote:
| Speaking of all this, on my windows 11 machine I get McAfee
| popups, and for the life of me, I can't track down where they
| come from or how to turn them off. My son has a windows 10
| machine and has the same problem. Why does Microsoft put up with
| this? I only use windows when I have to because of crap like
| this.
| haolez wrote:
| I've used Linux and Windows for more than a decade each. I know
| about desktop Linux' shortcomings and I was using Windows 10 in
| the last few years because it worked better than Linux for me.
| There is just too much stuff going on and performance suffers
| (especially when dealing with Docker for Windows). It also feels
| that I'm a guinea pig for PMs at Microsoft to experiment on new
| revenue generating features, but my operating system is not a
| place where I would want them. It hurts my focus.
|
| Windows 11 finally sent me back to Linux. Despite a few bugs and
| annoyances here and there, I'm doing my work on Linux more
| productively than I was on Windows 11. Time to move on for me.
|
| In the end, it feels like I'm not an important customer to
| Microsoft anymore (as a "power user"). It feels that their target
| audience are clueless grandmas that can be easily scammed into
| their products. I don't want this to sound aggressive. It really
| does feel that way.
| redrobein wrote:
| For the love of god, if anyone from the windows design team is
| looking at this, give us taskbar on the side with ungrouped icons
| and titles, and fix the autohide. It is painful to use windows on
| laptops without it. That's been my windows setup for over a
| decade and it was straight up removed from win11 whilst calling
| it an "upgrade".
| croes wrote:
| Windows Start Menu is a PITA, can't count how many times it
| doesn't find installed programs.
|
| It was much better when it didn't try to be smart.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Startallback has been a revelation
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I just use it like Windows 98 and scroll through the list to
| find the program. It works.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > Windows Start Menu is a PITA
|
| Slow as molasses.
| expert_here wrote:
| JSRR1991 wrote:
| Bad time to be pushing this crap with the Linux desktop wooing
| the gaming/ power user overlap crowd now that steam deck is on
| the scene. I have been using Windows my whole life but now I have
| a PC dedicated to Linux for the 1st time and I'm thinking about
| seeing one up for my wife, as I'm sure Linux will be perform
| better on the older laptop I'm considering 'upcycling'. People
| forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who
| will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world
| - see chrome for example
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Honestly, ubuntu is doing similar UX breaking crap... every two
| years you need to relearn where to set the static ip, apt-get
| is snap, or snap is apt-get or who knows what you'll get when
| you need a simple install, and phoning home is preinstalled
| too.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've had better luck with rolling release desktops because at
| least things break and change slowly over time.
|
| Each new Ubuntu is a whole new beast on the desktop (and
| sometimes even on server).
| andix wrote:
| Microsoft has not a lot of interest in home power users. They
| need windows for business customers. And the majority of home
| users just keep the default system their PC came with. So if a
| few home users switch to Linux they probably won't care at all.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Those 2% market share are looking great.
|
| The Year of Desktop Linux is as virtual machine running on top
| of Apple and Microsoft desktop OS, or having the complete
| userspace replaced like on Google OS offerings.
| lewantmontreal wrote:
| Off topic but I really wish the regular old mouse and scroll
| wheel would work "normally" straight out the box on
| fedora/ubuntu/etc. It's really such a horrible experience
| coming from Windows when using the mouse is all icky not having
| "proper" (Windows default) acceleration on and scroll wheel
| scrolling one line at a time.
|
| Like many people I really want to make the jump but still hang
| on to Windows via O&O Shutup 10.
| sph wrote:
| I don't know what you're talking about, but I've never had
| any mouse wheel issues on Linux, when I dual booted daily so
| it had plenty of chances to compare. In fact I made sure I
| had the exact same mouse speed on both OS.
|
| My wheel doesn't scroll a line at a time, and there are three
| acceleration modes for the pointer-default,adaptive and flat.
|
| I keep hearing people complaining about Linux with the
| weirdest problems ever.
| lewantmontreal wrote:
| Sounds good, I'll try again when I have time.
|
| My latest attempt was back in Summer with Fedora 36 and a
| Logitech mouse. The default was one line at a time and I
| could not find a setting for it. (Apart from Firefox config
| but I need multiple browsers.)
|
| Amusingly I even gave Chromebook (kind of a Linux) a proper
| try and with the scroll wheel it too scrolled a single line
| at a time.
| cjauvin wrote:
| I have been using Linux as my primary OS for many years, but
| this particular issue is stubbornly baffling. There are
| solutions of course but they are not really good.
| npteljes wrote:
| Chrome as an example? They had an advert on top of the most
| successful search engine. Hardly a grassroots effort.
|
| People won't bother with Linux, nor other alternative systems.
| Many don't even change the desktop wallpaper. The computer
| works out of the box, as it comes, and that's the end of the
| customization story. In order to achieve Linux majority, it
| needs to become the de facto standard: governments need to use
| it, schools need to teach it, and businesses need to use it.
| And it needs to come on computers preinstalled, compatible with
| all these other systems. Otherwise, no dice. The question is
| not technological - Linux has been fine for a long time now. It
| has been down to business, and Microsoft is good at business.
| That's it.
| dzdt wrote:
| Yes 2023 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop. (/s)
|
| The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is
| slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on
| this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is
| strong competition from apple and for education there is strong
| competition from chromebook.
|
| Linux is still not really in the running, sorry.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I don't think that's really true. Recent trends show the % of
| desktop/laptop users has normalized and is no longer trending
| down.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Soo niche except for 99.99999% of devs
| vips7L wrote:
| A lot of devs don't want to tinker with Linux. Myself
| included. And this is disregarding all of the work places
| that only give out Windows or MacOS machines.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I use Linux. No tinkering required if you use a major
| distro. I used to like to tinker with stuff, but slowly
| my viewpoint changed. Most of the time these tweaks are
| just different, not better, and a waste of time. Worse,
| whenever you have to use a more stock configuration on
| another machine, you are fumbling around. These days I
| just use the defaults on almost everything, whether
| Windows, Mac, or Linux.
| tormeh wrote:
| No tinkering required. Tinkering can be tempting and
| dangerous, but if you keep yourself in check it's just
| not a thing you need to do. Unless you install Arch, but
| then you deserve what you get. Just install Ubuntu or Pop
| and you'll be fine.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| "No tinkering required" needs to come with a big YMMV.
| Most of the devs I've polled about their Linux experience
| matches the OP, they tried it and went back to
| Mac/Windows.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The comment I am replying to says that computers with
| keyboards are niche, that's what I'm replying to
| mhh__ wrote:
| Also I've spent a grand total of 30 minutes tinkering
| with my Linux machines this year, windows has had to be
| reinstalled twice.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Not me, I make it a habit to try Linux every year to see
| what the major distros are, and test their feasibility as a
| replacement for MacOS. I usually run into bugs and lots of
| necessary copy-paste from the internet to get random
| features working.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even the majority of "command line devs" are satisfied by
| Mac or even WSL for their machines. The servers they
| connect to are almost always Linux, however.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Apparently not, since every time Microsoft does something
| boneheaded that alienates their "command line devs" we
| hear about it on hackernews.
| bombcar wrote:
| If they didn't keep using it we'd've only heard about the
| first time.
| f1refly wrote:
| It's almost as if those are multiple people with
| different tolerances for microsoft induced pain
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| As a developer I tried Linux for 1 year (no dual boot). It
| was such traumatic experience, that I would never repeat it
| again.
| oliwarner wrote:
| While there are still use-cases where the traditional
| laptop/desktop form-factor remains the answer and there are
| Windows users, Windows getting worse and Linux getting better
| will continue to see people migrate over.
|
| No, there' won't be an explosion, it's a death by a thousand
| cuts. The bemused amongst us are wondering why Microsoft is
| the one holding the knife.
| drkhn1234 wrote:
| als0 wrote:
| The year of the Linux Desktop already happened, just not in
| the way people wanted - Android and Chromebooks.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Tbh, everyone I know who has used an Android "laptop" or
| "Chromebook" has abandoned it after ~6 months for a "real
| computer".
|
| Turns out Native > Webshit for many things.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'm never buying another Chromebook and Chromebox because
| Google sunsetted my perfectly fine working laptop and
| Chromebox and now it can't do things like play streaming
| movies from HBO Max because the chrome version is too
| low. Spotify doesn't work either. Leaves few things left
| to do with it haha.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Install Linux on it and you'll be able to use the latest
| version of Chromium and stream to your heart's content.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I think I'll just sell it and get a used Macbook Air,
| they go for like $99 on Ebay now.
|
| Every time in my life I have installed Linux with such
| high hopes and get annoyed by all the crap that doesn't
| work.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Can you give some examples of "things which do not work"?
| Seeing how as I've been using Linux for close to 30 years
| and have it running on loads of different types of
| hardware with more or less everything working - yes even
| Bluetooth - I'm always somewhat surprised by these
| problems which fail to haunt me.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Wi-Fi is usually wonky and just various other things like
| video drivers etc.
|
| Here is the laptop you wanted me to try to install Linux
| on lol. Who has time for this shit? I just want to use
| the computer not futz around with it constantly.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/eku5tv/replaci
| ng_...
|
| Like I said, spend $99 on MacBook Air, receive it, turn
| it on, it works. That's all I care about. I don't even
| like apple products really but I just want something I
| know will work.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| That is an ARM laptop, which means you have an especially
| low chance of installing Linux easily. Get an x86
| Chromebook and you would probably have less issue, but
| yes, you may still have some hardware issues (especially
| since Chromebooks have spotty desktop Linux support). Get
| an off-the-shelf x86 laptop and you probably would be
| fine; maybe you will have a few issues. But instead of
| faulting Linux, consider this? Could you install Windows
| on this same laptop? Probably not. In fact, on many
| laptops, hardware support is limited on Windows without
| vendor drivers (although, there is a chance that this has
| gotten less bad these days).
|
| If you went and bought a used laptop that has official
| Linux support, like an XPS 13, then you could also open
| it, turn it on, and have it work with zero issues with
| Linux--the same way as a MacBook Air. Try Hackintoshing a
| random laptop from Best Buy and I think you will
| encounter similar issues with macOS.
| 20after4 wrote:
| I think some people just don't even bother to resolve an
| issue. Maybe it's not even broken but just reflexively
| assumed to be broken if something isn't immediately as
| they expect it to work. My parents both use Linux daily
| and rarely ever need me to provide any support. Ubuntu or
| Debian has worked out of the box on every machine I've
| touched over the last 10 years. Avoiding nvidia graphics
| is probably the secret to success though, and may be the
| issue responsible for many people who have a much more
| negative view of Linux "just working"
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is the Year of Linux kernel, there is nothing else
| from GNU/Linux on Android and ChromeOS.
| tormeh wrote:
| It's a pretty good argument in favor of the GNU/Linux vs.
| plain Linux distinction. Which is not a thing I really
| thought I'd say.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| On the contrary, Linux is in a good position for the same
| reason you think it isn't. As the desktop/laptop market
| shrinks to advanced users, it loses the long tail of users
| who weren't technically capable enough to switch. At the same
| time, WINE/proton and even some native ports have vastly
| improved the gaming scene on Linux, and a decent chunk of
| non-gaming applications too. Sure, there will always be
| certain business applications that refuse to work on anything
| but actual Windows, but Linux works for a decent and growing
| part of the shrinking niche that is "real computers".
| jakogut wrote:
| > Sure, there will always be certain business applications
| that refuse to work on anything but actual Windows
|
| I disagree with this statement, especially in the case
| where there's somebody motivated enough to patch Wine to
| support specific applications.
|
| At the end of the day, Windows applications expect a set of
| interfaces. As long as those interfaces exist and work as
| expected, the application will work.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Just played some games on Linux Steam yesterday. It works
| so smooth. The Steam client is actually buggy at times with
| a tiling WM, but all the games worked great.. even the oned
| with Proton.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's actually amazing how well games work under Proton.
| Even a significant number of multiplayer titles just
| work, despite anti-cheat. There's some "random problems"
| sometimes with some titles, sure... but that's also true
| on Windows. Interestingly the problematic titles are more
| or less exactly opposite to Windows - new titles tend to
| work well on Windows and perhaps have issues on Linux
| (requiring some specific launch options or Proton
| version, perhaps graphical glitches). Meanwhile older
| titles are often problematic on Windows, but are less so
| on Linux. Might just be my selection bias though.
| naiveai wrote:
| Until and unless Microsoft Office products are on Linux
| natively and are supported by Microsoft, Linux will never
| be a mainstream operating system. And that's never going to
| happen.
| [deleted]
| gs17 wrote:
| The web based Office 365 my university gives us seems to
| work as well on Linux as any other platform AFAIK
| (unfortunately that's still not perfect). It did claim to
| need Edge for some things, but that's relatively minor.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Ironically enough I've found that O365 works far better
| on Firefox and Chrome on Linux than it does on those
| browsers on Windows, and Microsoft O365's support team
| warn against even attempting to use Windows 10 and Edge.
| viraptor wrote:
| This is becoming less and less true every day. Both
| online office 360 and gsuite are popular in offices these
| days with no ms office installed on the device. Outside
| of specific business roles, I haven't seen it in a long
| while. I've even run into a medical clinic running on
| libreoffice.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| My Android phone runs native Microsoft Office apps, so we
| are half-way there.
|
| I am just waiting for Microsoft to give up on Windows-on-
| Arm and instead create a Microsoft-branded Linux
| distribution that has an actual Windows subsystem for
| Linux (that is, a compatibility / emulation layer similar
| to Wine or Proton to run legacy Windows software).
|
| Decades of backward compatibility makes Windows a
| resource hog. I do not think it can make the jump to Arm
| or RISC-V easily.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Huh? The move from x86 is hampered by making binaries
| compiled for x86 work on ARM, it has nothing to do with
| performance.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| There isn't any more a "native" office. Now it's a web
| app -> Office 365
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Unlikey. PC gamers don't care if they're running Windows or
| Linux, they just want the top 10 games to run. Linux can't
| even do that.
|
| And the business world will never switch to Linux.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Sorry, but does it.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| For you, maybe not. For me it has been in the running - and
| mostly in the lead - for close to 30 years. There's Linux on
| this iMac, on the Thinkpad sitting next to it, on the server
| these connect to, on the phones lying on the desk, on the
| tablet. For all I know there is Linux in the washing machine
| as well, I never bothered to look. It seems like Gates'
| vision of "information at your fingertips" has come true, the
| only thing "missing" is Windows. I do have a few virtual
| machines on the server for the few packages (VAG ELSA,
| looking at you...) which don't run well on Linux/Wine but
| these only get started every other blue moon.
|
| By the way, the Chromebook you mentioned runs Linux. Google
| might eventually port this to Fuchsia but this remains to be
| seen.
| veridies wrote:
| I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case --
| gaming -- for which Windows has a newly viable competitor.
| It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that
| Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note
| that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be
| switching to Chromebooks.
| duffyjp wrote:
| In my workplace folks are begging for MacBooks.
| bombcar wrote:
| Macs have been Unix with Photoshop and Office for decades
| now.
| ansgri wrote:
| M1 Macbooks are alien technology compared to Windows
| (performance and battery life) or Lunux (professional app
| support) ones. The main barrier to switch is different
| keyboard layout -- after a month of using Mac as a home
| PC (switching from workplace-issued Linux) unfamiliarity
| with keyboard is the main hurdle, especially on non-
| English layout.
| nesarkvechnep wrote:
| At my workplace people are begging for Linux but
| unfortunately we got Macs.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| People keep saying this and then run into minor problems
| becoming bigger problems because frequently used programs
| end up being unusable or 3rd class citizen, behind both
| mobile and Mac users.
|
| Unless Linux is braindead easy to use without frustrations,
| it won't happen. Gamers pay more for lesser ease of access
| increases.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Many people highly value continuity, if it's working it
| should keep working the same way for a very long time.
| Once a Linux computer is working, even if it's more work
| to get it to that state, keeping it working is much
| easier than with Windows. Using updates to force major
| breaking changes should be a crime.
| croes wrote:
| Yes, people are strange. Every problem on Linux is deal
| breaker, all the problems on Windows aren't.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, this is pretty easily explainable. People have
| grown up around Windows. The problems for the most part
| don't change over time, so people have gotten used to
| them and have developed their own tried and true ways of
| doing something that sidesteps the problems they had.
|
| Switching to Linux brings with it a whole new swath of
| problems and fixes Windows problems so not only are users
| seeing new issues, their workarounds now have to be
| worked around because whatever was wrong in Windows works
| in Linux. Add to that the fact that most Linux users are
| power users and instructions therefore lean towards that,
| and you've got a problem that also seems insurmountable
| to solve.
|
| It's the classic boiling frog dilemma. Windows has just
| had decades of heating water to get to where we are.
| drkhn1234 wrote:
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| It's not 'every problem'. People know Windows. People
| understand most of Windows. They took years to do so, and
| they still run into problems. Now you ask them 'switch
| over to Linux, it doesn't have problem X', without
| understanding the average person doesn't want to invest
| the time or effort learning anything more complicated
| than downloading and installing a random .exe (why do you
| think phishing and malware are so prevalent in their
| infantile state?).
|
| This is reinforced by most major apps which _eventually_
| become cross-platform starting out treating Linux as a
| 3rd class citizen. For games, Discord and Parsec come to
| mind, where the former took years, and the latter still
| doesn 't allow hosting from Linux. Nothing about this
| reinforces the idea of Linux being easier to use. It's
| the opposite: it reinforces the mentality that Linux is
| still two decades behind, regardless what the reality may
| be.
|
| How many complaints form when YouTube pushes a minor UI
| or UX change? Now multiply that by a few magnitudes of
| order. _That_ is the problem we 're dealing with, and no
| amount of chastising or belittling Windows users will
| change that (in fact, it does the _opposite_ ). Did
| people forget how Apple managed to get a foothold in the
| market despite their ludicrous prices and dev-unfriendly
| practices?
| Santosh83 wrote:
| It's not even this. It's just that for vast majority of
| 'average' people, they just use whatever OS comes with
| their devices. "Installing an OS" is an alien concept for
| most people. So it is automatically either MacOS/iOS or
| Chromium/Linux (Chromebook), Android or Windows. That's
| it. And although Linux the kernel features in two of
| these, that's totally beside the point. The point is
| people mostly don't even _know_ how to change their
| preinstalled OS, no matter how irritating it is. If it
| develops too many issues, they take it to the local tech
| shop who almost always will reinstall /reset the same OS
| and give it back.
|
| The _only_ people who use Linux are the tech oriented
| crowd, including gamers, who naturally tend to be more
| tech oriented than most. This is still a very small
| fraction of the world though. And this isn 't changing
| _unless_ a healthy fraction of devices and PCs come with
| Linux preinstalled. Even then a lot of people will
| complain and ask for Windows (or whatever) the very next
| day after purchasing their device.
| exceptione wrote:
| > People know Windows. People understand most of Windows.
|
| Not in my observation. They get something pre-installed,
| they click on things they know. I am always amazed by the
| fact that most don' t have the smallest mental image of
| how it works.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| If you play AAA titles, you're not moving away from
| Windows.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| With Win 11 I get Micro-stuttering which makes gaming a
| nightmare. I've given up on getting it fixed. I wouldn't
| put it past Microsoft to accidentally kill their cash cow
| via an accumulation of small mistakes and a loss of key
| competence.
| wincy wrote:
| Why? Looking at top PC games lists of 2022, almost all of
| them are supported on Steam Deck. All the games I've
| played on there run fantastically well. On a sale I
| bought Assassin's Creed Odyssey which is an older AAA
| game and Steam Deck even runs fine.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Anti-Cheat. Most multiplayer shooters will refuse to run
| under Linux.
| chabad360 wrote:
| Since the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve has made
| various promises to work with the AC providers to bring
| support to Linux. So far they have brought support for
| Epic's EAC, and it seems they are working on bringing it
| for other titles as well.
| iuafhiuah wrote:
| Most is a stretch.
|
| The FPS in the top 100 currently most popular games on
| Steam[0] and their status [1]: #01 CS:GO
| - native #04 PUBG - anticheat #05 CoD MW2 -
| anticheat #06 Apex - Works (it has anticheat that
| works on Linux) #07 TF2 - native #09 Rust -
| Works #12 Destiny 2 - anticheat #21 Rainbow 6
| - anticheat #22 DayZ - Works (it has anticheat that
| works on Linux) #26 Warframe - Works #69
| Payday2 - Works #78 Arma 3 - Works (it has
| anticheat that works on Linux) #79 CS:S - Native
|
| Native or working: 9/13
|
| Broken: 4/13
|
| Non-steam or outside top-100: OW2 - Linux
| is second class and not actively supported - but Blizzard
| have unblocked Linux support when issues were reported
| Battlefield (all?) - Works CoD (before MW2) - Works
| Gundam Evolution - anticheat
|
| [0] https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed
|
| [1] https://www.protondb.com/
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Sadly even a few top games not running on Linux is enough
| to keep most PC gamers off of Linux.
| Zhyl wrote:
| An increasing number of games with Anti-cheat work.
|
| https://areweanticheatyet.com
| mholm wrote:
| If using Windows is death by a thousand cuts, using Linux
| is obliteration by ten thousand.
|
| Linux has completed 90% of the work, but the last 10%
| (usability) is a long way away.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Dunno man, I've been using Linux on the desktop for
| almost 3 decades. It's been ok for me :) conversely I
| can't stand using windows for more than a few minutes -
| luckily I don't have to do this often.
| oriolid wrote:
| If you're a veteran Linux user, you probably know where
| to look for config files and how to hack them. Trying to
| use Linux using GUI only, whichever you choose, is awful.
| It's like the designers copied the worst ideas from both
| Windows and MacOS on purpose and then added some of their
| own.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You don't need to hack config files. The big DEs have GUI
| settings for pretty much everything macOS or Windows
| does. The only reason it might not seem like it is
| tutorial websites where it's easier to post a one line
| command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I prefer using the GUI, but frequently find I have to hop
| back into the terminal to chmod/chown some file that's
| ended up without the appropriate permissions. I think a
| casual user would probably give up at that point.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots
| for 7 different GUIs"
|
| Yeah, that's the thing. It often feels GUIs on linux are
| meshed together from at least 7 different styles and
| paradigms and too often they are indeed made like this.
|
| So in Ubuntu for example I sometimes had to click left to
| close a window and sometimes right.
|
| What laypersons want, is one single way to do things,
| that works. But you just won't get far, without the
| terminal. That is, things do run pretty much out of the
| box if you are lucky - until they don't. And then good
| luck trying to fix it without the terminal. I can parse
| and usually fix cryptic error messages and logs, but my
| father (who is a trained engineer, but no english speaker
| nor programmer) cannot. Unless of course there is a
| driver issue. I seldom can fix them and I encountered too
| many over the years.
|
| In either case, I am lucky that linux exists and I am now
| off to try out EndeavourOS ..
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Using KDE, everything can be changed using only a mouse
| (or a finger with a touch screen).
| agumonkey wrote:
| I agree but this won't be a "real" problem. It just gonna
| be put under the rug by most.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No problem has been described.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I actually wrote about using Linux as a daily driver for a
| week for everything, gaming included:
| https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-
| of-...
|
| In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone
| can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how
| many of the titles they care about are likely to work.
|
| Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will
| work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library
| (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is
| no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most
| of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal
| and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional
| bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.
|
| Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I
| personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on
| Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan
| curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable
| replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl
|
| Back to games, there will be issues with either really old
| niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the
| modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-
| cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same
| publisher/developer might have one of them be available on
| Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but
| Enlisted doesn't).
|
| In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might
| already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for
| the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1
| replacement and some things just won't work for a variety
| of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux
| Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional -
| it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular
| folks.
|
| This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's
| involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine
| and other software like that.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Games developed on Windows desktops, targeted for Windows
| desktops, running by translating the Windows API.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Does that ultimately matter? Proton/WINE etc. create a
| compatibility layer for Windows on Linux, and WSL/Cygwin
| etc. creates a compatibility layer for Linux on Windows.
| If one is cheaper and offers less bullshit, the other one
| is threatened. It's a moat coming down.
| pjmlp wrote:
| OS/2 has proven how much it matters.
|
| WSL is nothing new, the only thing it brings to the table
| is that we don't need to install VMWare or Virtual Box.
|
| I don't dual boot since 2005.
| blibble wrote:
| wine runs older windows games better than modern Windows
|
| with Microsoft's declining focus on compatibility, the
| time is coming where the majority of Windows games now
| run best on something that isn't Windows
|
| (not to mention the lack of ads, spyware, general lack of
| stability and forced reboots)
| pjmlp wrote:
| If you search for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows
| 8,...., versus Linux, you will find similar arguments
| being made as prophecy of the great migration.
| blibble wrote:
| previously there wasn't an extremely profitable, market
| leading, privately owned gaming company with a founder
| that is completely and utterly determined to ditch
| Microsoft
|
| and share the result of that freely with the world
| pjmlp wrote:
| By creating a platform that emulates Windows, otherwise
| no one would bother to target their device natively.
|
| Those 2% market shared are filled with games that are
| developed on Windows, targeting Windows.
|
| Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft
| money, and letting Valve do the needful to work on their
| platform.
| blibble wrote:
| > By creating a platform that emulates Windows, otherwise
| no one would bother to target their device natively.
|
| this is a stopgap measure to bootstrap demand for the
| platform
|
| because these days the main platform isn't Windows, it's
| the engines sold as a service, like Unity and Unreal
| Engine (both supported natively)
|
| > Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft
| money
|
| now you've lost me
|
| (it's also bizarre that you pop up in every single
| "Windows bad" post right on queue to defend Microsoft's
| honour)
| mancerayder wrote:
| This message is 20 years old. Many of us long for the utopia of
| a Linux desktop that just works, where drivers are up to date
| and X windows doesn't die due to a yum/apt-get update.
|
| This feels like a future parody thread where someone will make
| fun of our comments.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This had been the opposite of my experience though. Maybe I
| got lucky with hardware, but I've never had issues with out-
| of-date drivers (outside of CUDA dependencies for research
| work) or having X or Gnome or whatnot break during an update.
|
| But, I need to use Windows at my employer, and it's horrible.
| I wish Windows were at a point where it was ready for
| development.
|
| Right now, the best dev setup is "install Linux in a VM" or
| "install this collection of incomplete
| ports/emulation/virtualization of Linux tools".
|
| With Proton for gaming and Electron for desktop especially,
| Linux on the desktop is way different than it was 10 years
| ago, let alone 20.
| SCLeo wrote:
| My Nvidia driver literally just died last week or the week
| before. I had to reinstall it to make it work.
| vetinari wrote:
| > having X or Gnome or whatnot break during an update.
|
| This happened exactly once (nvidia driver update killed x
| as it tried to reload the kernel driver).
|
| Still better than system update deleting all your
| documents, right? (yes, I know that it happened only once
| too, but since the nvidia problem is a fair game, deleting
| user documents is the same).
| brokenmachine wrote:
| My Nvidia driver dies every single update.
|
| It's basically part of every update, first thing I have to
| do is reinstall the Nvidia driver via ssh every single
| time.
|
| And maybe every month or so, when I reboot it comes up in
| some ridiculous resolution, like 640x480 or something. This
| is also fixed by reinstalling the Nvidia driver.
|
| When I get a new desktop (main PC is Windows), I switch my
| linux server to my old hardware. I just bought an AMD GPU
| for my desktop so in a couple of years when I upgrade my
| desktop, I'll be rid of Nvidia bullshit once and for all.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| The Linux desktop arrived under the guise of Android.
|
| The rest is minor noise, sadly.
|
| At least it is possible to have a working Linux desktop but
| that was true twenty years ago.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Oh really? Where are these widely used/popular Android
| desktop and/or laptop machines?
| bombcar wrote:
| They're called phones and they're killing the windows
| desktop like Linux users wanted in the 90s.
|
| It's a very monkey's paw scenario.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Accidentally Android spies on you to the extent Microsoft
| couldn't even dream of in their evilest of dreams. And
| there is no way to root/control it to prevent that
| spying. Unlike Windows.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Accidentally Android spies on you to the extent
| Microsoft couldn't even dream of in their evilest of
| dreams. And there is no way to root/control it to prevent
| that spying. Unlike Windows.
|
| https://www.grapheneos.org/
| smoldesu wrote:
| > And there is no way to root/control it to prevent that
| spying.
|
| Can you explain what you mean here? How do AOSP ROMs
| subject themselves to Google's spying, much less the
| meticulously-designed privacy distributions?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| That's simply untrue. I have a phone, a tablet, and a
| laptop. I do different things on each. None has
| supplanted the others; they all supplement each other.
| viraptor wrote:
| You do that, but it doesn't generalise. Mobile phone
| ownership exceeded laptop/desktop ownership in the us in
| the last 2 years and the latter is in a slow constant
| decline. A lot of people are going to be happy with just
| the phone in the future.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Citation needed. Moreover, what's the evidence that those
| that make do with only phones would even want to purchase
| a tablet or laptop?
|
| Edit: also, conflating phones with "desktops" is just
| being glib and disingenous.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Citation needed
|
| Literally the top results for US smartphone ownership.
| You can do it.
|
| > that those that make do with only phones would even
| want to purchase a tablet or laptop?
|
| That's the whole point - they don't need / want one. But
| given the services that everyone needs are moving online,
| everyone needs some level of internet access. This
| effectively moves windows users to Linux/Android as
| discussed upthread.
| bombcar wrote:
| We went from computers being very rare (early on I
| remember maybe two families out of the whole _class_ had
| one at home) to heading to above one per person (everyone
| had a laptop and there would be a desktop, too, or more)
| during college and now we 're headed back towards "about
| one desktop/laptop per house or a bit more" as most
| people have phones.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I know a lot of people who use Tablets as their main
| driver and don't have a PC (or only use it for edge
| cases). Not even for ideological reasons, it just works
| for them. It's not universal, but it's not rare, either.
| betaby wrote:
| Chromebooks I suppose. https://www.gsmarena.com/pc_and_ta
| blets_see_strong_sales_per...
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| They may run Android apps, but they are not Android
| devices.
|
| By that logic, my Linux machine is a Windows machine,
| because it has Wine/Proton.
| screye wrote:
| If anything, I think it's the other way around.
|
| WSL2 is now so good, that you can get away with not needing
| Linux at all.
| jakogut wrote:
| Strange take. WSL2 _is_ Linux, running in a hypervisor with
| proprietary APIs for acceleration [0]. You're not using an
| alternative to Linux, you're using Linux that's been vendor-
| locked to require Windows.
|
| [0] https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/d3d12.html
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Oh boy. I tried, really. WSL2 is good enough to test things
| and run docker, but as soon as you try to run X applications,
| remote in with ssh on your laptop, or try to use full power,
| the limitations become clear soon.
|
| I tried, on the new job. I've dealt with windows for 6
| months, but 2 weeks ago I was sick of it. There is always
| something not working right. If a computer is a bicycle for
| the mind, Windows 10 has training wheels and a hysterical
| helicopter mom screaming 'you're gonna fall!' all the time.
| Death by a 1000 papercuts. I've reformatted it and run
| kubuntu now. I will miss excel, and online outlook is not as
| good as the real thing, but these are sacrifices I am willing
| to make just to get rid of the whiney drug addict called
| windows 10.
|
| I'm not going to say Linux is perfect. Plenty of dumb cuts in
| there too. But at least it treats me with respect, at least
| the KDE world does.
|
| Ymmv, of course. The job is great enough to let each run his
| or her preferred OS. As a recent escapee from a hyper
| standardized environment, I am loving it
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I pretty much live in WSL2 at work. While it makes Windows
| tolerable, it's not even close to as good as a full Linux
| desktop.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> it 's not even close to as good as a full Linux desktop_
|
| I use "a full linux desktop" at work (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) and
| the desktop UI bugs and limitations are a nightmare. Give
| me Windows and WSL any day in comparison. At least there I
| know that basic stuff like clipboard and screen
| sharing/capture always works flawlessly, and windows don't
| magically get stuck to one aspect ratio and nost wasting my
| time trying to google fixes for snap/wayland/apt bugs.
|
| Sure, some of these bugs I encountered could be Ubuntu, or
| Gnome, or Wayland, or pipewire issues, but as an employee,
| I don't have time to distro hop at work in search for the
| Linux experience with the least amount of jank or find out
| which component of this bazaar engineering efort is the one
| responsible for this jank.
|
| Sure, I don't see ads in my Ubuntu install, but it's 2022
| and the clipboard in Firefox in Ubuntu still stops working
| randomly, which causes me way more productivity loss than
| seeing a candy crush icon in the Win start menu. Firefox
| bug tracker says the clipboard issue fixed on their end
| whenever this bug gets reported and says it must be now a
| Wayland issue, while Wayland devs say this is a Firefox
| issue, meanwhile me and severa other Ubuntu users are
| complaining about our clipboards being broken in FF. FML,
| it's 2022 and I still can't have a working clipboard on
| Linux, one of the most used basic features on any OS. "Year
| of the Linux desktop." Yeah.
|
| Not to mentions the lack of hibernate(not sleep) on Ubuntu.
| I spend almost an hour trying various tutorials and command
| line incantations that had the risk at bricking my OS, to
| get hibernate working, and no cigar, and I realized Ubuntu
| really, really wants you not to use hibernate at all cost.
| I never thought it would be missing a basic feature so
| simple as "dump entire RAM contents to SSD, then at power
| on, copy them back to RAM and resume". Sure, Linux boffins
| will tell me this is a limitation due to the use of Z-RAM
| compression or something, but me as an end user, I don't
| care which technical decision has lead to this limitation,
| as it doesn't fix my problem of not having hibernate.
| tester756 wrote:
| >People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the
| nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it
| to the world - see chrome for example
|
| trillion dollar marketing seems to be more important factor
| than "nerds"
|
| see Linux for example
|
| There's ofc Android, but people have no choice - you are either
| "rich" (outside US) and want to buy iphone or go with android
| brundolf wrote:
| I've held on to windows just for gaming, but Valve has been
| making huge strides turning linux into a viable option for
| that. Whenever support stops for Windows 10, I may have to give
| it a try
| idiocrat wrote:
| Was not Win 10 the last operating system version?
| layer8 wrote:
| That was never an official MS statement:
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-window...
| fredoralive wrote:
| Apple stopped using 10.x versions for Mac OS, so Microsoft had
| to respond.
|
| (I guess the real reason is stuff like the TPM requirements and
| no 32 bit version meaning it drops support for some systems
| Windows 10 runs on?)
| psychphysic wrote:
| My personal most hated features of W11.
|
| Removing most right click options with clicking show more or some
| obscure icon.
|
| Constant notifications making the bottom right of the screen
| unusable.
|
| So many ways to pin a window moving it to just drop it feels like
| threading a needle.
| shreddit wrote:
| It's quite ironic reading about the complain of the "recommend
| webpage section in the start menu" while getting 20% of my screen
| (iPad) stolen by a "destiny 2" ad...
| humanistbot wrote:
| Most people will go along with this. Most people don't care.
| Those that do have already left Microsoft for Apple a long time
| ago. HN is not representative of the general population, and
| these comments really show how out of touch people are on this
| site.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I feel like many users _do_ care but are not comfortable enough
| with technology to realize they can turn some of this stuff
| off, or they aren't comfortable with switching operating
| systems - much less installing Linux.
|
| I can't tell you how many people I encounter who don't realize
| AdBlockers are something they can install. Once I get
| uBlockOrigin set up for them they tell me it is a night and day
| difference. Such technologies have been available for years but
| they either never realized it was an option, or thought it
| required some hackerman level of configuration to make it work.
| anonymous360446 wrote:
| I am a happy Windows "user". Specifically, I use it for its
| superior battery/power management on laptops, and mainly as a VNC
| client to connect to Linux desktops. As long as I'm in control of
| the firewall, it's also free from ads.
| tkuraku wrote:
| Between the adds infiltrating every part of the os and the
| arbitrary decision to not allow my computer to run windows 11 (no
| TPM, though it is plenty fast) I have had enough. I've daily
| driving Linux for 7-8 years with only occasional windows use.
| There are certainly some rough edges with Linux, but it is
| perfectly workable.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| TPM2.0 is required because it allows for running of encrypted
| binaries and microsoft will need that feature to ensure people
| can't modify away any user hostile features.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I installed Windows 11 last week, disabled all
| personalization/tracking/ads settings I could find and I don't
| think I've noticed any ads whatsoever.
| account-5 wrote:
| It's a sad day indeed when you pay for an OS that you then
| have to manually opt out of targeted ads and tracking.
| neilv wrote:
| These are the least of the abuse that history shows us you should
| expect.
|
| But, this Sunday afternoon, you can burn this Debian installer to
| a USB stick, use it, and be mostly done with MS forever:
|
| https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
|
| (I did that a couple decades ago, and still haven't regretted it.
| I regret many tech choices over that time, but I don't regret
| moving from MS to an honest Linux distro.)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Windows is aggressively regressing since Windows 7. Bizarre move
| LooseMarmoset wrote:
| Why would you pay for this? Why would you even associate with a
| company who will not even sell you, a private individual, an
| option that does not include this?
|
| What about using Linux on the desktop is "difficult" enough to
| justify paying money to Microsoft for voluntary software
| servitude?
|
| * They will not tell you what data they collect about you
|
| * They will not allow you to disable data collection
|
| * They will not permit you to define the default browser you use
|
| * They will not permit you to avoid advertisements disguised as
| valid system alerts
|
| * They will delete your privacy settings without notification
|
| * They will lock down your hardware so you physically can't
| install or modify the software
| ketzu wrote:
| > Why would you pay for this?
|
| Most people don't. They are reusing their windows 7 license
| from that one computer they got in 2010 or their windows 8
| license they got for free in college.
|
| Or they do not consider it "buying" it, as it was "free" with
| their computer.
|
| > They will not permit you to define the default browser you
| use
|
| They might reset it on updates once a year or something (it
| hasn't happened to me, but I heard others were not as
| fortunate) but you definitely can set it, right?
| [deleted]
| progman32 wrote:
| Linux/*BSD may still be that awkward friend who sometimes
| misreads your intentions and causes awkward moments or knocks
| glasses over, but at least tries to respect you (snapd excepted).
| Windows these days doesn't seem to respect you.
|
| There's a difference in my mind between struggling to make your
| computer do something (because nobody made it easy yet) and
| struggling to make your computer do something (because a
| marketing team decided to try to stop you). Resolving the first
| scenario feels like working for myself, the other feels like
| fighting an adversary.
|
| I try to not use products that don't respect me. That's
| fundamentally what keeps me almost exclusively on FOSS. Better
| alignment of incentives for what I'm trying to do.
| tomxor wrote:
| I think it's all about "intent" in summary.
|
| After long enough it gets tiring battling people who's intent
| is ultimately maximum wealth extraction, rather than simply
| producing a good piece of software.
|
| The intent behind most FOSS projects is just about the
| software, and sometimes we disagree on what and how (but that's
| why we have choices)... and some things are a bit creaky and
| come from different ages and don't fit perfectly together, but
| with a bit of fiddling and understanding you can gradually
| accumulate things that do what you want - and so it becomes
| more comfortable over time, not less, because they don't try to
| betray you at every turn.
| civopsec wrote:
| Precisely. I get frustrated with computer interfaces that are
| hard to use all the time. But at least then it's just the
| program which is _stupid_ ; I don't have to get mad at anyone.
| But to have to deal with things that are actively working
| _against me_ due to deliberate design decisions? That's
| outright infuriating.
| nicbou wrote:
| Windows is the guy that makes you watch your drink at all
| times, because he clearly doesn't take no as an answer.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Are you sure? Why not? C'mon. Yes? Haha ok that definitely is
| a yes.
| rurp wrote:
| This resonates with me, as someone who switched to Linux awhile
| back for similar reasons. Having an overtly adversarial
| relationship with the company who makes a major tool of mine is
| not a pleasant experience.
|
| In addition to the points you raised, it always feels possible
| to fix something with Linux. It might an annoying PITA problem,
| but I can probably figure it out if I care enough to. With
| Windows (or Mac) when I encounter a problem with the OS, I
| never know if it's fixable or something the parent company
| insists on forcing on users.
| berkes wrote:
| As much as I dislike snapd, I don't see how that is a lack of
| respect. It's just unfinished not ready for production mostly,
| i'd say.
| progman32 wrote:
| I see these things as being disrespectful about snapd (happy
| to be proven wrong):
|
| - apt install firefox and other packages actually install via
| snap on Ubuntu. My intent was to install via apt. It should
| prompt me instead of silently using a different tool with
| different implications. For example, my firefox profile was
| silently copied to another folder with zero notification,
| causing issues with my tooling. - they're only now adding the
| ability to pause updates (an experimental feature!), after
| aggressively pushing snapd for years. Work arounds included
| telling the OS the Internet connection is metered, which
| sounds familiar. https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-
| to-date#heading--... I feel disrespected when a tool imposes
| its own schedule on me and fights to enforce it. I appreciate
| that they added the Hold feature, but I feel the way we got
| it was due to continual, years long community push back.
| Reasonable defaults are fine. Let me edit them without
| fighting me. - proprietary server implementation, only
| canonical gets to run one or modify behavior. Distros can't
| run their own. I get that this might reduce fragmentation. To
| me the disrespect comes from not giving me a choice.
|
| To me it's fine to aggressively push a tech. What I take
| issue with is the apparent intent to reduce end user control.
| If my impression is wrong, I'll recant. At least snapd seems
| to have slowly improved, my nfs mounts actually work in most
| snap apps now...
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Windows has always been like that though. I remember switching
| to Linux full time back when XP was first released because I
| hated the direction Microsoft were going. The complaints people
| make now aren't any different from the complaints I was making
| 20+ years ago.
| FredPret wrote:
| Absolutely spot on.
|
| If only there was a way to pay money and then get printers /
| scanners / Bluetooth / wifi working properly on Linux, I'd
| definitely be doing that.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > get printers / scanners / Bluetooth / wifi working properly
| on Linux
|
| Use a distro released some time in the last 20 years?
| ugjka wrote:
| There are still a lot of wireless chipsets out there that
| suck ASS. If you want to get good support, just get
| whatever hardware most kernel developers use
| matkoniecz wrote:
| At this point printers and wifi work more reliably on Linux,
| at least in my experience.
|
| And wifi troubleshooting at Windows is basically impossible.
| drekipus wrote:
| I also use Ubuntu and have no problems with printers and
| scanners and bluetooth. As annoying as Ubuntu is it does work
| out of the box for everything I've thrown at it
| soniman wrote:
| Linux would be best for the unsophisticated users that just
| want a browser and maybe OpenOffice, but those are the users
| least likely to try it.
| sli wrote:
| I put Linux on my mom's laptop when it needed a good
| refurbish for this exact reason and IT support requests from
| her dropped to basically zero, even for seemingly platform-
| agnostic stuff like printing. Did everything she needed, I
| could update it for her over ssh, and just chugged along
| perfectly reliably since she isn't a poweruser that's poking
| at every part of her distro.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I use Linux (Ubuntu Mate) at home and Windows 11 at work (care
| giving at someone's home, helping him do minimal things).
|
| Linux is like a friend, not even awkward at this point.
|
| Windows is like a drunk at a bar, who, half an hour ago, was
| just talking too loudly but now has started groping you.
|
| In ten years, I can imagine Windows trying to override
| literally anything someone does on their machine, including the
| text they type, if MS can imagine profits. Nothing is off the
| table, why should it be. Nothing stops this.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Apt-news made me finally leave Ubuntu after over a decade. I
| went to Debian and Arch depending.
|
| Seeing 'apt update' shill r/Linux was the last straw after
| forcing-snap, forcing-Amazon ads, Wayland vs Mir, etc. I should
| have left years ago. Canonical, are you listening? Stop.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Windows is still my favourite OS, but I surely am not rushing to
| adopt Windows 11 beyond work requirements.
|
| It is just another Vista.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| > Windows is still my favourite OS
|
| Now there's an unpopular opinion if anything. I've heard the
| "yeah it's kind of shit, but the games/applications I use only
| really work with Windows" a million times, but this one is kind
| of new.
|
| Edit: this comment was indeed intended to be read in the
| context of HN crowd.
| vips7L wrote:
| It is also my preferred OS. It's familiar and everything I
| need is there. I don't need a Unix command line as I prefer
| an OO shell and I've never once have had to interact with the
| underlying kernel for any programming that I do.
|
| I ran Fedora for 4 years and it was a mess of gnome crashing
| due to memory leaks or trying to find a hacky way of getting
| some program installed that I needed. Sacrificing real
| outlook and office applications only hurt my ability to do my
| job as well.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| "kind of shit" - in what way? I'm dying to hear an
| intelligent complaint come from somebody because so far
| everything I'm reading (for Windows 10 at least) are mob
| mentality pitch-forky type of comments. You can read my
| comment on it to another post here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946821
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Take Windows 10 or 11 through a time machine and show it to
| someone in the 90s or 00s and it would be considered adware
| and/or malware and/or spyware. It takes every opportunity
| to shove ads in the user's face. It takes days of
| configuration to make it usable, and an update at any time
| can undo your efforts as shown by other comments in this
| thread. Unless you complete a metaphorical Ninja Warrior
| course every little bit of your data will be sent to
| Microsoft, and even if you do everything right there still
| are telemetry that you can't disable. The UI is often laggy
| and unresponsive compared to eg. Manjaro XFCE.
|
| Linux may have issues at times but at least they're not
| caused by malice. An OS should get out of my way and let me
| do what I need / want to do, not do everything it can to
| _intentionally_ and _maliciously_ get in my way to make a
| few cents of adverts. Modern Windows is parasitic.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I can at least provide you with my usual favourites. I use
| Windows on my work computer and Linux on personal.
|
| 1. Auto updates. Get a pop up every 1-2 hours reminding you
| that by the next morning the computer will restart. If you
| do it now, you get rid of the pop up, but will spend the
| next 15 minutes waiting for the update to apply. If you
| forget about it, you will find all your programs closed the
| next morning. This never happens on Linux, although I don't
| know how much of this is due to the laptop being a company
| one.
|
| 2. Customizability: I wanted to customize the keyboard
| layout to my own preference. Could not do it. In Linux it
| was 5 mins on Google and one config file edit. Don't even
| care to think how this changes when one wants to start
| customizing further.
|
| 3. No tabs on file browser or power shell/cmd. This one is
| the most baffling one, such a low-hanging fruit to improve
| UX.
|
| 4. Microsoft data collection from usage: more of a
| theoretical concern to me, but still doesn't make me like
| it any better.
|
| 5. I'm not a fan of the office tools you're forced to use
| with corporate Windows: for some language reason outlook
| refuses to believe that I want to write "to the" and not
| "tot he", even if I explicitly tell it not to correct it.
| And unfortunately Excel is the de-facto standard for office
| spreadsheets. It has a rather primitive way to handle dates
| and can't open files with more than some 1 million or so
| lines. I can't help but think that if MS didn't have such a
| monopoly on office software, we would have similar variety
| and quality as we see for IDEs in spreadsheet software.
|
| The last point is not exactly better in any other OS, but
| it still is a firmly Windows thing, so I feel it's
| justified to be added to the list.
|
| Ah, lastly, using Linux I can be pretty comfortable that my
| OS experience will stay more or less the same for years to
| come. If bit, just change the distro to something
| relatively similar. Not so much with Windows. So far I
| haven't read a single positive thing about W11, and would
| like to hear your thoughts on having ads and whatever else
| you have to put up with when you're forced to do the
| switch.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You don't know anyone that prefers Windows? It sounds like
| you're a bit out-of-touch.
|
| Anyone who is familiar with Windows is going to prefer it
| over the alternative which, in reality, the only alternative
| that most people would use is macOS. People in my life who
| prefer Windows include:
|
| * Pretty much anyone who went to school with me K-12, since
| that's what we primarily used
|
| * Anyone who was in my CS program in college since we were
| expected to use Windows machines, and most graduates when on
| to companies where devs used Windows
|
| * Anyone at any of my previous jobs who wasn't in a developer
| role (save the rare manager who has strong preferences)
|
| * Anyone who play video games on a desktop aside from those
| who are technically inclined
|
| I personally prefer macOS/Linux. I use Windows when I have
| to. Most people find Windows to be fine. Regardless of
| validity, I rarely hear non-tech people complain about the
| issues with Windows that HN rants about.
| howinteresting wrote:
| A bit of an aside, but CS and software engineering programs
| should be based on FOSS to the greatest extent possible,
| with proprietary software only being used when necessary.
| The idea that CS programs would use Windows or macOS by
| default is pretty horrifying to me.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| It depends on your view on the program. If your goal is
| to produce graduates who are successful in the workforce
| you'd be doing them a grave disservice by having them use
| FOSS (e.g. a Linux-based OS).
| howinteresting wrote:
| My CS program was almost entirely FOSS and I turned out
| OK in the workforce, as did most of my classmates.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Unpopular in HN and FOSS circles.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| I stopped when they forced the microsoft account onto everyone,
| fun fact I changed the only email I use to auth with my msft
| account a few years ago... I can only login with the new it sends
| 2FA to my old one
|
| the old one isn't listened in my account as additional emails or
| anything
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's truly amazing how Microsoft insists on making Windows worse
| with each release. It makes me miss the old odd/even releases
| where at least half of them weren't bad.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Perhaps they're making it worse for people on HN, but better
| for the average user?
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Most average users complain just as much, and are just as
| unhappy with it. Only reason they stay is learned
| helplessness and lack of realistic alternatives.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| They still don't really have any serious competition, other
| than macOS (that push you Apple services) and Chromebooks (that
| push you Google services).
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Technically Windows 11 is an even release, since Windows 9 was
| skipped. I, for one, am looking forward to the revolutionary
| Taskbar with Titles in Windows 12!
| Maxburn wrote:
| Windows will never again reach the pinnacle that was Windows 7.
| Win 7 was familiar, stable, powerful just get things done OS.
| RIP.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Don't remind me
| layer8 wrote:
| The MS employees who "get" it and actually use stock Windows
| themselves stopped being in charge.
|
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307.
| twiddling wrote:
| I love digging into every new version of Windows to find an old
| NT-era dialog box on some low level setting
| withinboredom wrote:
| At my last employer, I built a thing that let us target warnings
| on various pages of the admin about the user's configuration.
| Things like "hey you don't have backups turned on and this is the
| fifth post you've made."
|
| It was incredibly fine-grained. Then the marketers got a hold of
| it, which is fine because surely they'd understand targeted ads.
| Nah. 75% of people just slapped a message on the user's homepage,
| whether they could use the feature or not.
|
| Seeing basically the same thing being built for windows settings
| makes me sigh. Mostly because people don't have the ability or
| disciple to use it correctly.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Linux Gaming cannot come fast enough.
|
| I'm so ready to uninstall Windows on my only Windows machine
| which happened to be a gaming computer, however there are just a
| few games that I want to play from time to time that does not
| support Linux.
|
| For now I can live with Windows 10 which had a workable WSL so I
| can pretend that windows have a terminal (Some modding needs
| code!)
| azemetre wrote:
| I will say myself personally, that after I got my steam deck I
| haven't turned on my desktop in 6 months. Slowly in the process
| of converting my windows desktop into a media server. My two
| laptops are not windows machines.
|
| I have't looked at the steam surveys but I hope there's enough
| users to encourage more publishers to make games linux
| compatible.
|
| I know for me personally, all the games I enjoy are available
| for linux gaming. Even "recent" titles like Spiderman and God
| of War.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Too bad if you're interested in playing Age Of Empires 2 and
| older titles like Medieval Total War...
|
| There are some concern about graphics performance as well, it
| seems most titles are not tuned for Linux. Do you have the
| same graphic performance under linux?
| thomond wrote:
| AoE runs fantastic. Controls are an obvious issue but you
| can connect up a keyboard and mouse
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Linux can play pretty much anything under Proton now. And
| older games tend to work better than on Windows because
| Proton runs the actual code instead of trying to force it
| through the current windows OS that is 10 versions on and
| doesn't have any of the APIs anymore. A lot of old windows
| games don't even run on windows anymore.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Thanks, I might need to try that, does Proton require
| SteamOS or I could use any linux flavor I like?
| tmtvl wrote:
| You can use any distro you like. I'm using OpenSUSE
| Tumbleweed and have basically the same experience as most
| people on ProtonDB. The thing to remember is that to use
| Proton for games that Valve hasn't verified, you have to
| go into your Steam settings and under Steam Play check
| "Enable Steam Play for all other titles".
|
| I have noticed that some games work better or worse under
| different versions of Proton, though.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| As long as it can run Steam. Steam on Linux has Proton
| built in.
| npteljes wrote:
| There's no particular distro preference. If you can
| install Steam on it, Proton is also likely to work.
| Steam's SteamOS is Arch based (btw), used to be Debian
| based. Steam games used to target Ubuntu, I can't find
| the sources for this, but I remember seeing it as a
| target. LTS versions usually.
|
| I personally had good experience with either Mint
| Cinnamon, Debian (with KDE), Fedora and Manjaro, so it's
| pick your poison, really. For support reasons, I suggest
| a popular distro.
| czx4f4bd wrote:
| What's the problem with AoE II? It's rated gold on
| https://www.protondb.com/app/221380 and runs fine for me
| under Proton.
| Aperocky wrote:
| There's a definitive edition now that everyone plays and
| it also happens to be from literally Microsoft
| themselves..
| wswope wrote:
| And that definitive edition is listed as gold on
| ProtonDB.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Well now you guys have given me no excuse, RIP Windows on
| my gaming desktop 2019-2022.
| BirAdam wrote:
| This kind of crap is what made Windows 10 unusable for me.
| Everything was infuriating.
|
| I'm not a fanboy of anything either. Win2K was great. macOS
| 10.1-10.4 was wonderful. BeOS, RISCOS, IRIX, NeXT, and even DRDOS
| have warm places in my heart.
|
| These days, I use macOS because I find it the least annoying. It
| still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it
| isn't quite as hostile as Windows. Linux and BSD are "fine" but
| there are other issues that I have with those ecosystems as far
| as usability is concerned.
|
| I really hope SerenityOS continues its fast paced development and
| becomes usable for daily computing...
| null_object wrote:
| > It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but
| it isn't quite as hostile as Windows
|
| I'm genuinely intrigued by which approval dialogs and
| notifications you find so hostile in MacOS?
|
| If it's SIP or Gatekeeper you're talking about, there are
| easily implemented workarounds.
|
| Otherwise I really can't think of any "notifications" from the
| OS
| coder543 wrote:
| Just to provide one example, I definitely have seen macOS pop
| up notifications advertising that Safari is better than
| everything else, and I should switch back to Safari.
| null_object wrote:
| > Just to provide one example, I definitely have seen macOS
| pop up notifications advertising that Safari is better than
| everything else, and I should switch back to Safari.
|
| I would love to see a screenshot because this I simply
| don't believe
| coder543 wrote:
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153379/how-do-
| you-...
|
| I saw it within the past year. I didn't save a screenshot
| anywhere I can find. I believe I applied defaults
| overrides (like in the link) to prevent it from coming
| back, much like Windows GPO policies.
| goosedragons wrote:
| This is an old thing they've been doing almost a decade
| now [0]. It's still around now [1]. You probably never
| because you either use Safari as your web browser or use
| it enough for the pop up to not trigger. I don't really
| get why you think this is unbelievable when Apple will
| regularly try to get you to use Apple Music, iCloud, etc.
| Why not Safari?
|
| [0] https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-
| promotion....
|
| [1]
| https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/TRYTHENEWSAFARI.html
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's well documented, I saw it at least once a month when
| logged out of iCloud. Certainly not the most annoying
| pop-up though, _that_ award goes to the automatic Apple
| Music launcher when you put on headphones.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I got my first Mac a few months ago and there are definitely
| a few annoying things. Not necessarily (only) popups, just
| weird error messages, bugs and the system sometimes telling
| me a jpeg file might be a virus that I may not want to
| "launch". Though on average I'd say it's a drastically better
| experience than the current state of Windows.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I've been using Mac for 12 years and never seen that dialog
| about a jpeg being a virus. Are you sure there _isn't_
| anything malicious embedded within the file?
| Jasper_ wrote:
| I have a MacBook I use occasionally for work. I don't have an
| AppleID and don't want to make one (same as Microsoft
| Account). Every time I boot the system, there are about 20
| untagged login prompts and have to manually cancel.
| atty wrote:
| That's interesting. I have a MacBook for work with no Apple
| ID and I don't think I've ever been asked to sign into
| anything. I wonder if there are fleet management controls
| my company is using to disable a lot of that stuff.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| What are you doing with your machine that makes Windows 10
| unusable? I've been on Windows 10 for years. I ran O&O ShutUp
| 10 a long time ago and haven't had any of the problems people
| are complaining about. I've had people complain about how they
| "shouldn't need to run Shutup 10" yeah ok valid point, but it's
| a weak one because I can make that point about anything on any
| other OS. It takes what - 10 seconds to run the application?
|
| I'm an advanced power user. There are no pop-ups, no nagging to
| use Edge, no search feature hostility, no crashes, nothing. Not
| one day has gone by where I think "wow this OS sucks, why
| haven't they addressed this issue". I play PC games on it,
| browse, code, image editing, etc. all without a single hiccup.
| It's been completely stable and user-friendly. I'm genuinely
| curious what is it specifically that bothers people about this
| OS because it sounds like complaining for the sake of
| complaining and not anything authentic at this point.
|
| I'm a software developer at a FAANG and I use a Windows
| machine. I listen to my Mac user colleagues complain every
| week: "my application crashed", "I need to reboot", "I'm forced
| to update see you in an hour", "I have to shut down so I can
| reset permissions for this app", etc. They roll their eyes when
| they notice I'm running Windows, but then endlessly complain
| about their mac systems. The cognitive dissonance is
| staggering.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| You are exaggerating in an attempt to prove your point.
| Permissions _may_ require restarting the app once. Not
| weekly. MacOS major updates happen yearly, and minor every
| few months. Patches often don't require restart. So that
| isn't happening weekly either. Finally, "my application
| crashed" has absolutely nothing to do with MacOS and
| everything to do with the application. Nothing ever crashes
| for me except for Photoshop.
| ffwd wrote:
| This is my experience with Win 10 as well. In fact I dare
| say, Win 10 in the past 5 years is one of the best desktop
| OS's of all time. No crashes, perfect customizability to turn
| off things, fast and responsive.
|
| However that said, I'm extremely worried about Win 11, and
| when I saw all the things they changed in the taskbar (no
| text labels, no option to never combine icons), the right
| click menu and so on, I was very disappointed. I did get the
| send to menu back with a thing and I know you can use
| winaerotweaker to get all the old stuff back, but a part of
| me wants to be on the native OS stuff whenever possible and
| not change core OS with third party apps. But I'm also
| worried about what they might further do in the future and in
| 5-10 years, incompatibility in programs/etc with Win 10 might
| make using it very bothersome so you have to update at some
| point.
| sampa wrote:
| For all those who stay on Windows only for games, google for vfio
| it's a virtual machine with Windows for games Uses a dedicated
| graphics card, has like 3% cost.
|
| Bonus is you don't have to care about updates and
| viruses/trojans. Disk C with OS is just a raw file, that you can
| copy at will.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| What is the cost when it comes to disk I/O? I found the
| overhead to be significant in VMs. Personal impression, no
| metrics. I am also talking about standard OS-based VMs where
| the image is a file, not hypervisors.
|
| It is becoming more and more relevant now that we have
| ridiculously fast SSDs and games take advantage of them. It
| was, after all, a big selling point of the PS5.
| hbarka wrote:
| I still haven't recovered from when Microsoft changed Classic to
| Tiles. It was a shock to years of muscle memory. There were
| plenty of hacks to get the Classic UI emulated. Start > Programs
| you are dear to heart.
| Nition wrote:
| If you've noticed that when you search in Windows 11, there's a
| big delay in the results coming up (or worse, they come up for a
| split second, then disappear for a while before coming back
| again), it's the web search that's the problem.
|
| You can turn it off to get fast search back:
|
| Regedit:
| Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
|
| Sub-key (folder) "Explorer" - create if it's not there.
|
| New > DWORD (32-bit) -> DisableSearchBoxSuggestions
|
| Set value to true
| dzink wrote:
| This is in the email that microsoftadvertising.com is sending
| unsolicited to the support email account of one of my sites:
|
| "Microsoft Advertising 88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined
| last year
|
| Search is at the center of online shopping 88-90% of online
| shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their
| shopping journeys. Two. Most searchers are open to switching
| brands In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we studied visited multiple
| brands' websites while they shopped.
|
| Entice them to buy from your business with Dynamic Search Ads.
| Three. Online shopping journeys vary greatly On average, 45% of
| purchase journeys lasted 30+ days. But some, like grocery
| shopping, lasted only 2 days.
|
| Target ready-to-buy shoppers with In-market audiences."
| return_to_monke wrote:
| I am sorry, but that sounds like a scam. I doubt that it's an
| actual ms domain.
| alxlaz wrote:
| If it's a scam, it's a damn clever one, because a whois query
| reveals a domain registered to Microsoft, with azure-dns name
| servers and a Microsoft contact email.
|
| Also one that's, erm, been flying under the radar for a long
| time because I've been getting these things for years. Not
| sure about parent but this is pretty well-known by people
| who've had to deal with it.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Been looking for ten minutes now and I can't find how to
| differentiate between Azure customers and Microsoft
| official websites. Observations:
|
| - the advertising domain is not bought by markmonitor
| whereas microsoft.com, office.com, and outlook.com all are.
| Maybe this advertising domain isn't an important enough
| brand or maybe some other reason. The DNS servers for all
| four domains are NS1-{0..99}.azure-dns.com,
| NS2-{0..99}.azure-dns.net, and two other TLDs for NS3 and
| NS4, and always in the same order
|
| - IP space is all AS8068 and AS8075 (checking the same four
| domains)
|
| - I tried duckduckgo for "how to differentiate between
| azure customers and microsoft ip space" but didn't find
| anyone asking that question anywhere. Probably bad phrasing
| on my part
|
| - I tried looking for websites hosted by Azure to see if
| there is an IP space for customers by searching ddg for
| "powered by azure" and "hosted with azure" but I only get
| results from Microsoft themselves, random garbage, and
| things like "azure lessons" that aren't hosted with azure
| at all (heh)
|
| I would also have expected this to be not-Microsoft-owned
| and a scam, but I'm failing to prove that hypothesis. That
| would mean Microsoft is not the company that I thought it
| was: I thought the difference between Facebook,Google and
| Microsoft,Apple is that some are in the business of
| manipulating people and others sell honest products (even
| if I have other issues with locked-down Apple devices, at
| least it's not adtech). Looking for revenue streams, I
| found <https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_
| revenue_...>. So not quite adtech but ads was the biggest
| growing product last year and has been growing for at least
| a decade (also based on other sources). Interesting.
| sharikous wrote:
| Windows as a curated platform is a lost case at this point. They
| probably don't make enough money from it to justify investment.
|
| Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock in,
| plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It shows.
|
| Not a problem for me. I have no issue using a bad OS if a company
| is paying me for using it, and at home I don't use Windows.
| layer8 wrote:
| Also, PC users who prefer the (classic) Windows UI over macOS.
| primax wrote:
| No one seriously games on a Mac.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Parse error:
|
| > Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock
| in, plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It
| shows.
|
| Their market is:
|
| 1) The enterprise world, where they have a lock in.
|
| 2) Gamers.
|
| 3) PC users who cannot afford a Mac.
| jayd16 wrote:
| This is why the oxford comma is important.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| secondcoming wrote:
| I don't use a Mac because they're overpriced. The new CPUs are
| interesting but the rest of it can go do one.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| One thing to consider is resale value. When I tried reselling
| old Windows laptops like a Surface or XPS, the value dropped
| off a cliff from the MSRP. I would spend $2000 on a laptop
| and then it was selling for $700 used on ebay a year later.
|
| With MacBooks (and other Apple products) you can often recoup
| 70%-80% of your initial cost as long as it's in good
| condition.
| smoldesu wrote:
| _If_ it 's not a base-model. If you're one of the unlucky
| shmucks running an 8/256 M1 Macbook Pro, you'll be lucky to
| get $500 for it on the secondhand market.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Swappa shows that you can get much more. The current
| average sale price for a Macbook Air, M1, 256GB is $673
| respectively. Compared to the $1000 MSRP you're getting
| about 67% back.
|
| Note that Swappa takes a 3% cut, so the buyer would
| actually see around ~$650.
|
| https://swappa.com/guide/macbook-air-2020-13/prices
| secondcoming wrote:
| I don't tend to upgrade machines all that often. My current
| laptop is two years old that I maxed out with 128GB RAM and
| oodles of storage so I won't need to consider upgrading for
| at least 5 more years at least.
| clay-dreidels wrote:
| [deleted]
| djtriptych wrote:
| Reads like ChatGPT
| howinteresting wrote:
| The Macs are somewhat overpriced (especially the upsells for
| more RAM and storage), but I'd still consider one once you
| can get rid of the horrible operating system that comes with
| it and Asahi Linux works fully (external monitor/Thunderbolt
| dock support is what I'm most interested in).
| h1fra wrote:
| I don't understand how microsoft can be bring so much in the Open
| Source world and this kind of things in the OS world. Seems
| completely out of touch.
| layer8 wrote:
| Microsoft is not a singular coherent entity, it's a pile of
| separate teams.
| hgsgm wrote:
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Windows is in the business of selling software to business
| clients (And slowly migrating to being a cloud provider
| business).
|
| The only reason Windows happens to have 'home' editions and
| pervasive software in schools is to perpetuate the 'familiarity'
| argument when Businesses are doing procurement.
| dzink wrote:
| Another ad we got unsolicited from Microsoftadvertising.com to
| our support email.
|
| Microsoft Advertising 719 MILLION DESKTOP SEARCHERS
|
| Get ready to meet them.
|
| When you know your audience, you can learn how to reach them.
| Let's take a closer look at the Microsoft Search Network
| audience. Start reaching them today >
|
| They're getting established
|
| 60% are ages 25-44
|
| 53% are married
|
| 53% graduated college or above They're making big decisions
|
| 2.6M are planning last-minute travel
|
| 3.1M are researching a car purchase
|
| 2.2M are looking at a home loan
|
| They're spenders
|
| 32% spend more online than the average internet searcher
|
| 48% are in the top 25% of household incomes
| wooptoo wrote:
| I feel like Win 11 is a solid product from an engineering and
| even an UI/UX perspective, ruined by awful marketing decisions.
| iansinnott wrote:
| I used to run a windows box occasionally for gaming, but have
| completely replaced it with PopOS. Proton is truly amazing tech
| IMO. My whole steam library runs as well as it did on windows.
|
| Posting this here for others that might not have known. I could
| have switched away from windows for gaming long ago but Steam
| oddly doesn't promote / enable Proton by default.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's really miracle tech, I'm not sure if people _really_
| understand how good it is. I 've got a library of ~300 Steam
| games, and less than 10 of them don't launch with Proton. I
| think I've had more problems on Windows...
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Last week I allowed it to "upgrade" to Win 11 22H2. Part of the
| upgrade involved silently resetting a heap of my default apps.
| When the upgrade was done, Firefox was no longer my default
| browser, it was changed to Edge. Also, the default apps for PDF,
| JPG, PNG, TXT, MKV, and probably others that I haven't yet
| discovered, were set to their MS equivalent apps.
|
| Microsoft, this was not a nice thing to do to a user.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Microsoft "update" somehow does this to me:
|
| - I lost the ability to use my trackpad without having to wait
| for 1 second, holding my finger on the trackpad. This is palm-
| rejection. And there is NO way to turn it off. Rebooting the
| laptop temporarily sets the wait-time to 0 seconds, until I
| close the lid and sleep the laptop, then wake it again. There
| is a "sensitivity" feature, which uses words like "low" and
| "highest" .. and this does nothing to fix the issue,
| perceivable to me.
|
| - I lost the ability to use my game-pad with built-in trackpad.
| I don't know why that feature disappeared. Clicking and swiping
| now does .. things .. but not moving the mouse nor right/left-
| clicking the button.
|
| - I somehow failed to "update and shutdown." I chose that
| option, which said it should take 3 minutes. After 15 minutes,
| and multiple reboots, I was left BACK ON not shutdown, and the
| "update and shutdown" menu was still present. I don't know what
| Windows 11 even needed to update in the first place.
|
| Overall Windows disrespects the user. Its "run all the drivers,
| on all PC configurations, from the beginning of time" is no
| doubt the culprit. That kind of complexity is impossible for
| humans to manage. (garbage-can emoji)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to
| Edge_
|
| I'm wondering how does this happen? I have Chrome as the
| default browser on my Win11 machine for a year now, and after
| all the updates, Chrome is still the default. The default apps
| for PDF, music and video play-back were also kept between
| updates. Updates never did anything funky for me, just added
| improvements and new features, which kept me contempt with it.
|
| Really curious why this would happen to you but never happened
| to me. I have Win11 Pro edition, installed from scratch from
| the official ISO (not OEM), if that makes any difference. Maye
| OEM or Home editions behave differently?
| a2tech wrote:
| You're extremely lucky then. On our (very large, very
| strictly managed Windows 10 fleet) Edge is CONSTANTLY
| becoming the default PDF handler. Its a real PITA and MS has
| failed to give admins the tools to manage this correctly.
|
| These anti customer dark patterns are going to drive a wedge
| into the golden goose of corporate sales. At the same place
| as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in
| places you'd never have guessed before. Clinics, law offices,
| regulated environments. IE corporate MS bread and butter.
| Someone over there needs to get their head out of their
| corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the
| ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full
| steam.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are
| slowly showing up in places you'd never have guessed
| before.
|
| I switched to Macs in 2004, and have loved the experience
| most of the time, but fear that it's not so much that Apple
| is above this sort of thing as that they're a little bit
| behind Microsoft in doing it. Already, do you want to use
| iCloud? Are you sure you don't want to use iCloud? Maybe
| now you want to use iCloud? And it's relatively easy to
| ignore, but of countless small such choices is Microsoft-
| style user hostility made.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Someone over there needs to get their head out of their
| corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the
| ship before it hits the iceberg they 're heading at under
| full steam_
|
| It was probably some manager's KPI at Microsoft to increase
| Edge market share so he decided that forcing Edge to
| default everytime would push him ahead and get him that
| sweet promotion.
|
| Microsoft lacks a common vision for Windows and good
| leadership. As with the products of any massive
| corporation, Windows now feels like a product built "by
| committee", a result from various internal turf wars, where
| every manager or gang tries to push their agenda to gain
| visibility inside the org to show something at their next
| performance review and hopefully get promoted, at the
| expense of the end-user and the OS being universally hated
| by consumers and businesses. _" So, what did your team
| achieve last year? Well, I was in charge of putting Candy-
| Crush and other partner-network ads in the Star Menu,
| giving us an extra 10 Million USD a year. Great, the
| investors and bean counters will love the extra revenue. HR
| will contact you about your promotion. Congrats!"_
|
| I think much of Apple's success was Jobs dogfooding every
| product being developed before giving the final go ahead
| for shipping. I wish Satya Nadela and other higher ups
| there would dogfood fresh installs of Windows (not the
| images provided by their IT department) and see the
| horrible mess they're shipping to their customers. Then
| Nadela and those execs should ask themselves, "Would I
| actually want to spend money on this and have to live with
| it every day? If not, what could I fix to make it desirable
| so that others would want to buy it?". This way of consumer
| first thinking allowed Jobs to make Apple what it is today.
|
| Microsoft needs to put in charge of Windows someone who's
| in touch with consumers and business to guide this project
| with an iron fist instead of letting various committees and
| gangs sneak their own agendas in the end product. But I
| think Microsoft just doesn't care that much about Windows
| anymore and is instead focusing on Azure & cloud, OneDrive,
| Office365, Xbox and buying game studios, etc. so Windows is
| slowly rotting away unnoticed by those at the helm.
| exceptione wrote:
| > so Windows is slowly rotting away unnoticed by those at
| the helm.
|
| I wouldn't call it slowly, but you are right about your
| assessment. It is already quite some years ago, when
| evaluating the privacy and security measures of my
| machine, I had to conclude that MS *is* the adversary. I
| have a chuckle when people ask me what virus scanner they
| would need for their Windows machine. It is like asking
| how to prevent a deadly disease from catching a cold.
| It's not a hyperbole. All the opt-outs are illegal in the
| first place, but the damning fact is that MS does not
| allow you to switch of stealing part of your personal
| data anyway.
|
| You should not run Windows. If you have to, because some
| legacy software does not have an alternative (and I find
| that has become increasingly rare), then run it in a vm
| with no internet access.
|
| Also, we should really stop the meme about the year of
| the Linux Desktop. KDE has far surpassed Windows already.
| I use both OSes and have to conclude Windows is beyond
| repair. Nobody cares about this sinking ship, and that is
| a positive end of this rant.
|
| *EDIT* I even think MS thinks the same wrt win in a vm. I
| can imagine they will ship Linux one time and have win
| apps open in a legacy win vm.
| II2II wrote:
| I can only speak for Windows 10, but I have noticed that
| Windows behaves differently when updating Home and Pro
| versions. For example: I noticed the Home edition would
| reinstall removed apps on certain updates, while the Pro
| edition would not.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| People blindly click ok in dialogs ,think it will be fine and
| thus get their setting changed or install unwanted softwares.
|
| And the dialog that nukes your app default pops up in OOBE of
| every win 11 major update. (To clarify, I don't think the
| dialog should be there at first place. A dialog that defaults
| to give user a big problem is just dumb)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I wish antitrust enforcement focused on this stuff again.
| Remember when MS merely including a web browser at all was
| brought into question?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Microsoft also used to have 90% market share. It's less
| impressive now that Mac is a viable competitor and iOS and
| Android are good enough for 80% of common tasks.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > that Mac is a viable competitor
|
| Almost made me spit out my drink
| goosedragons wrote:
| How much of the Office Suite market do they have though?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you want to use the Microsoft Office suite, it's
| available on the Mac, included in Office365.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| By viable competitor, do you mean OS that I can't possibly
| use for work or for proper gaming? Mac isn't any more
| viable than Ubuntu, which is why I have an Ubuntu laptop
| (But a windows desktop, by utter necessity)
|
| (Edit: Actually, when it comes to gaming, Linux is getting
| better and better)
|
| 80% of common tasks isn't enough when part of the remaining
| 20% is absolutely necessary for work
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I mean, obviously it depends on the work - as if macbooks
| weren't standard issue at many companies ostensibly doing
| some kind of work
|
| if your cad software or whatever doesn't work with your
| OS of choice I'd take it up with the vendor
| [deleted]
| syeare wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I never had a Mac device before this
| year, but it can do all the document processing (M$
| Office) I need for work/school, almost all audio-related
| stuff (DAWs and VSTs), and video/photo (ugh I know but
| Adobe) that I need it to, even though its a brand new
| chip architecture. It can't do games but I have a M$
| desktop just for that and for some rendering stuff
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Windows advertising features were bugging me, so I tried
| to install MacOS on my computer, but Apple told me that I
| would have to purchase different hardware from them
| directly if I wanted to run their software.
|
| Seems like MacOS does not run on hardware that is not
| sold by Apple.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| It does; just not out of the box. They only include
| drivers for their hardware; You have to compile your own
| kexts. The EULA, however, _does_ "prevent" you from doing
| such a thing, but unless you're selling "Hackintoshes",
| Apple isn't going to care.
| wffurr wrote:
| https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-
| customac-h...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Remember when MS merely including a web browser at all was
| brought into question?
|
| The very first MS-DOS also included a text editor - for free!
| Oh, the humanity! Those evil Redmondians!
| theknocker wrote:
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm curious what the difference is between a free text
| editor is and a free browser included with the OS. Neither
| are functions of the operating system. Both have other
| companies providing such functionality.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I can see two obvious differences.
|
| 1) the text editor shipped with the OS is extremely
| basic. It is not competing to be the world's favourite
| text editor, and is probably required to have a usable OS
| out of the box.
|
| 2) the web browser was essentially a competing platform
| to the OS itself for many user tasks. To leverage your
| monopoly on one platform to control another is against
| anti trust.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 1. EDLIN wasn't much different from the text editor I
| used on the PDP-10 just a few years earlier. Lots of
| people used EDLIN and saw no need for another. Also,
| Netscape was an extremely buggy browser - it crashed all
| the time. Explorer was far more reliable. It was
| _better_.
|
| 2. If it was doing essential OS tasks, then it _was_ part
| of the operating system.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Maybe IE was better for a while. But for a long time it
| wasn't, and it wasn't allowed to stand by itself. That
| was the problem. It was the de facto standard, not by
| being good, but by being pushed via Windows.
|
| I hope we can agree a text editor is different that a
| browser, word processor, or an IDE (at least nowadays).
| Nobody complains that Microsoft ships Nodepad or Paint,
| because they are the bare minimum and avoidable. Hell,
| they shipped Nodepad and Wordpad, and neither dented
| Word's market share.
|
| Regarding 2, this is unbelievably naive. For such an
| important product, of course Microsoft would find a way
| to make it do "essential" OS tasks. Apple/iOS is
| obviously much worse in this regard. But for better or
| worse, iOS devices are a minority in the EU.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| In 2013 they were fined $731m by the EU for, as the BBC put
| it, _failing to promote a range of web browsers_. They blamed
| a 'technical error' then too.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21684329
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I think it do ask you whether you want to change the setting,
| except the default is nuking all your settings.
|
| And something even more annoying is: That pops up in the OOBE
| of every major update. If you accidentally click "yes", your
| settings fxxks up. Come on, I already click "no" last time, you
| shouldn't even ask me again about this.
| warning26 wrote:
| My favorite part about this "helpful" prompt is that "no" is
| tiny text at the corner of the screen, and the yes-please-
| change-all-my-defaults button is a giant "ok".
|
| This kind of behavior should be illegal, IMO.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's not going to be illegal anytime soon, but in the
| meantime, you can punish them by moving to Mac, or
| Chromebook. I did that after an update that went too far
| gernb wrote:
| Just to give anecdata on the other side. I too just updated to
| 11 22H2 because my Oculus Rift S wouldn't run without updated
| drivers and I thought it best to update windows first.
|
| No defaults changed for me. I wonder what the bug is. Note: I'm
| using Pro, not Home.
|
| At the same time windows does drive me nuts with it's
| darkpartterns. The worst for me on Windows 11 was all the
| keyboard shortcuts that try to launch MS Office, MS Teams and
| related crap. The only way to turn them off is via PowerTools
| and even then they're not off on remote desktop.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I'm the post you're responding to. My install is the Pro
| edition as well. And the version I'm upgrading from was also
| W11, completely up to date on patches, I just didn't go to
| the 22H2 feature update until the GPU issues were fixed.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So, what's rehab for Windows users? :)
| cauefcr wrote:
| A steamOS fork?
| arglebargle123 wrote:
| A Linux install USB?
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Never run Windows updates. I've always seen shady behavior with
| them and they did nothing significant in my case for my system
| in any way.
|
| I don't use windows at all but it is just giant pit of
| advertisements targeted towards the very basic computer users
| adambyrtek wrote:
| Then your system is likely wide open to all kinds of known
| security vulnerabilities.
| acdha wrote:
| If you don't use it, how have you seen "shady behavior" or
| been able to definitively assert that they "do nothing
| significant"?
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| I used it briefly in the past 1 year.
| Bayko wrote:
| So you have like three molecules of experience and you
| are generalizing?? I am on win 10 n do every single
| update except upgrading to 11 and I m pretty satisfied
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| With all due respect, that's not enough time to be saying
| anything about it and especially not enough to be telling
| people not to install updates when that's the most common
| way people have their computers breached.
|
| I don't own a Windows device (and haven't since Win98)
| and have had dislikes about it since the early 90s, but
| I've also supported it professionally and would never
| recommend someone avoid updates. Buy a Mac, perhaps, but
| until you're ready to switch you should stay current.
| rychco wrote:
| My transition to 11 has been _mostly_ painless. Some weirdness
| I 've experienced so far is a handful of default applications
| being changed (not Edge, surprisingly enough) and that since my
| default PDF reader is Okular all the icons for .pdf files are
| now a blank white rectangles instead of the nice white/blue
| okular icons they used to be. To be fair though, this could be
| some incompatibility with icon formats/sizes or something... I
| haven't looked into it.
|
| My only real annoyance so far is that all my old context menu
| items are now tucked away into an _additional_ context menu,
| such that I now have to right-click - > "Show more options" ->
| old context menu. A bit of an odd choice.
| gigel82 wrote:
| I've never had that happen to me in 20+ years of using and
| updating Windows. I suspected it's an urban legend but when a
| friend told me they experienced it with a feature update in
| Windows 11 I inquired further:
|
| It turns out during the first startup after a feature update in
| Windows 11 (and 10) they sometimes show a bunch of new prompts,
| one of which is a very vague text with a big (default)
| "Recommended Settings" and a very small, differently rendered
| cancellation.
|
| If you're one of the folks that just presses next / enter
| through a wizard without reading the instructions (which my
| friend was), you might have accidentally applied the
| "Recommended Settings".
|
| And -of course- switching the browser to Edge is "recommended"
| by Microsoft.
|
| Shitty _dark pattern_ for sure but at least not forced settings
| change (yet).
| chii wrote:
| describing it as forced is certainly technically wrong, but
| the results is no different. MS should not have done it, and
| the fact that they used a dark pattern to achieve it is not
| better than forcefully doing it!
| kyriakos wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken browser doesn't reset unless you accept the
| prompt you get on first boot after the update to use default
| Edge settings.
| gman83 wrote:
| I've definitely had Edge being set as the default browser
| following an update without any prompt to do so.
| binarycrusader wrote:
| Hey, sorry that happened, it should have preserved all of the
| default applications, etc. There are multiple suites of tests
| and processes that exist to try to ensure updates preserve user
| data and preferences but clearly something went wrong here. I'm
| just a developer, not a spokesperson, but I want to ensure that
| this is investigated if possible.
|
| If you file a bug in feedback hub under the Windows Update
| category it will collect the diagnostics required to fix this
| issue and prevent it from happening again.
|
| If you also provide a link to the filed feedback to me I'll be
| happy to triage it personally as I frequently work with the
| teams that are responsible for update migration.
|
| Thanks!
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Unrelated, but something that staggered me:
|
| I have a pair of Bose QC35 headphones from 2016 or possibly
| 2017. They have bluetooth.
|
| One day, an update to Windows 10 prevented them from working
| with Windows. If I'm remembering right, they would still
| "connect", but they couldn't play anything other than the
| occasional glitchy click sound. This problem was never fixed.
| I verified that they continue to work with non-Windows
| devices, and they failed to work with other current Windows
| devices.
|
| I'm not sure how this could have happened, but it
| dramatically lowered my opinion of Windows.
|
| I still have the headphones; if you know how to generate a
| relevant log I'll look into it.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > If you file a bug in feedback hub under the Windows Update
| category it will collect the diagnostics required to fix this
| issue and prevent it from happening again.
|
| One user filing a bug will absolutely not "prevent it from
| happening again".
| vanous wrote:
| > Hey, sorry that happened, it should have preserved all of
| the default applications, etc.
|
| Thanks for your apology. I can imagine this could happen to
| some random unknown software team but not to the supposed
| leader of the desktop. I believe this is honest apology but I
| am not sure I can trust that the issue was a bug and not a
| feature.
| binarycrusader wrote:
| I can understand why you might be skeptical. However, I
| have learned over the years as a developer investigating
| update issues that the constraints placed upon the update
| process to ensure compatibility and resiliency are complex.
|
| The nature of the process used for most Feature Updates
| requires user data and preference migration and transfer.
| Notably, an entirely new installation of Windows is created
| and then existing user data and preferences are migrated or
| transferred as appropriate. There a variety of good reasons
| for this from a technical standpoint, but it has certain
| complexity and performance trade offs so is only used for
| certain types of updates.
|
| Other types of updates use an in-place upgrade methodology
| that doesn't require user data and preference migration but
| has certain characteristics that make it currently less
| suitable for major feature updates.
|
| Thanks!
| yason wrote:
| _However, I have learned over the years as a developer
| investigating update issues that the constraints placed
| upon the update process to ensure compatibility and
| resiliency are complex._
|
| I have learned over the years that constraints and
| complexity are often abused to force one's way.
|
| Not necessarily even consciously but if the collective
| train of thought in a company predominantly wants to
| prefer one outcome (i.e. market share, world domination)
| at the expense of another outcome (making users happy),
| then it tends to be that it's really easy to do things
| that result in the former and really complex and
| difficult to do things that result in the latter.
| binarycrusader wrote:
| I appreciate that when unexpected outcomes occur it's
| tempting to vent frustrations and say things in a way
| intended to influence the feelings of others to validate
| our own frustrations and feelings. However, as a former
| colleague of mine (Bryan Cantrill) frequently reminds
| everyone, _empathy is a core engineering value_ :
|
| https://tritondatacenter.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
|
| I completed the second decade of my software development
| career just a few years ago and it already seems like the
| third decade is speeding by. The first 17 years were in
| the *nix world and the last five have been as part of the
| Windows development team.
|
| There have been many times that I have incorrectly
| assumed why a particular outcome occurred only to find
| out later as I suddenly became responsible for that same
| scenario that they had good reasons for their choices,
| and it was either the best possible outcome at the time
| given constraints or very much an unintended one.
|
| In short, I have been extremely fortunate to have a
| number of mentors during my career that have helped me
| realize that perspective and empathy are key to
| understanding the complexities of software development.
| Through those experiences I have come to believe that
| software development is just as much a social discipline
| as a technical one, especially at scale.
|
| Thanks for your kind consideration.
| noio wrote:
| It's crazy what difference a single human voice can make
| to one's perception of a topic.
|
| Thanks for chiming in :)
| heather45879 wrote:
| It does make a difference but doesn't change the effect
| of Microsoft's bad business decisions. There are no doubt
| many amazing individuals at the company, but the whole
| Windows ecosystem is polluted. It has lacked identity for
| the past decade since cancelling Windows Phone.
|
| Gamifying browsing habits, monetizing MSN celebrity
| gossip on stock widgets and built-in search
| capabilities... etc... how are we supposed to be
| productive with such childish garbage?
| civopsec wrote:
| Have you ever kissed a girl?
| stonogo wrote:
| That message is probably a huge factor in his realization
| that empathy is important.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > empathy is a core engineering value
|
| If only microsoft had any (he says, bitterly).
|
| They broke web standards, XML standards, javascript,
| tried to 'extend' java, linux = cancer (remember that?),
| screwed up MERGE for MSSQL,...
|
| Anything else I've missed?
| causality0 wrote:
| _There have been many times that I have incorrectly
| assumed why a particular outcome occurred only to find
| out later as I suddenly became responsible for that same
| scenario that they had good reasons for their choices,_
|
| Your attitude is about fifteen years out of date. We live
| in a world where you have to turn off your wifi if you
| don't want to use a Microsoft account and any option
| Microsoft doesn't like us using is displayed in a tiny
| font that's almost the same color as the background. You
| don't think we can tell when we're being told to go fuck
| ourselves?
| causality0 wrote:
| Yeah considering the absolute pissbaby tantrum Windows
| 10/11 throws when you go to change the default browser in
| the first place there's effectively no difference.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Same. Windows has done this in the past on updates
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Sibling comments indicate that the behavior is an intentional
| Dark Pattern. You can sleep tight and write it off to the PO.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| No offence but it is difficult to take bug report invitations
| such as this seriously when long standing bugs aren't fixed
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c).
|
| There is something deeply flawed with the culture at
| Microsoft / the Windows development team, and it has been
| that way the better part of a decade now. Stop milking your
| users for cents by turning Windows into malware.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > Hey, sorry that happened, it should have preserved all of
| the default applications, etc.
|
| Allow me to be skeptical. This isn't the first time.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is a chronic problem with Windows that Microsoft tries to
| stuff products I don't want up my nose, up my fingernail and
| toenails, into my pores and into other unmentionable body
| orifices. This has gone back to at least Win 98.
|
| OneDrive, OneNote and many other Microsoft products have, I
| think, been much less successful they could have been because
| Microsoft worked really hard to kill them. I'd like to see a
| culture change at Microsoft where they stop doing this --
| it's what I'd expect from that mobile OS that has a trashcan
| for a logo, not from the market leading desktop OS.
| steelframe wrote:
| > I frequently work with the teams that are responsible
|
| If this bug is rare and your personal insistence on
| prioritizing this fix makes any kind of difference, that's a
| bug in the organization and a misalignment of individual and
| business priorities. If a team can be randomized by an
| isolated instance without taking overall impact into
| consideration, that's a warning sign about the health of the
| business and the product.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Microsoft tried that explanation before.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21684329
|
| > It introduced a Browser Choice Screen pop-up in March 2010
| as part of a settlement following an earlier EU competition
| investigation.
|
| > But the US company dropped the feature in a Windows 7
| update in February 2011.
|
| > Microsoft said the omission had been the result of a
| "technical error".
|
| > Microsoft has been fined 561m euros ($731m; PS484m) for
| failing to promote a range of web browsers, rather than just
| Internet Explorer, to users in the European Union (EU).
|
| I would believe this explanation if that this kind of "bug"
| would occasionally happen in the other ways, not benefiting
| Microsoft.
|
| Computer owned by my sister and unfortunately using Microsoft
| was hit by something similar - massive slowdowns, request to
| upgrade some cloud drive (leading to credit card form).
|
| Turns out that random local files were being deleted and
| moved into tragically slow cloud drive, and Windows in
| utterly misleading way claimed that space run out and
| demanded money for more space.
|
| Hard drive had over 1 800 000 GB of free space and Windows
| claimed that she should pay for more space.
|
| > If you also provide a link to the filed feedback to me I'll
| be happy to triage it personally as I frequently work with
| the teams that are responsible for update migration.
|
| That is an intentional user-hostile behaviour, not an
| accident. Or at least of pattern of not really testing for
| bug that increase some metrics (cloud drive adoption needs to
| be higher? lets show misleading message that will result in
| it being enabled!)
| brokenmachine wrote:
| _> Hard drive had over 1 800 000 GB of free space_
|
| 1800 Tb free? No wonder you were mad.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I just want to know how to turn the damn "anti malware service
| executable off". I've turned it off in settings, I've added
| various registry keys but that damn process still haunts me.
| intelVISA wrote:
| The same service that sends Ms every bin you run? You've got
| a lot of Spectres in that machine I'm afraid.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I have the same sorts of gripes with VS Code; stubbornness from
| the people running the project at MS and refusal to listen to the
| userbase. It seems to be a pervasive trait at MS.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Sorry for an emotional expletive-laden post here, but this
| enrages me so much. My computer is my main professional and
| creative tool, and for MS to do this shit without my permission
| or control (like it already does with fucking Edge and OneDrive
| nags every time it installs an update) feels so exploitative,
| greedy, and evil.
|
| And stupid - their execs are chasing myopic short term gains with
| aggressive stongarm tactics, while long-term I and probably a
| million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to
| never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again.
|
| So few companies out there seen to care about their long term
| reputation.
| amelius wrote:
| And sadly, there is no reason to believe other companies will
| not end up going down the same road.
|
| Hence we should fight for open hardware.
| GraphenePants wrote:
| It's unclear that Microsoft providing up-to-date guidance on
| the continued leverage of various professional features
| included with your Windows license qualifies as "nagging". I
| would double-check if you actually have experienced this.
| [deleted]
| christophilus wrote:
| I know I probably sound like a broken record, but Linux really
| is quite nice these days. I personally find it miles better
| than Windows. It is even decent for gaming, thanks to Steam's
| work on proton.
|
| So, depending on your use case, you might be able to make the
| switch without any significant drawbacks.
|
| FWIW, I say this as a former Microsoft employee and heavy
| promoter of their ecosystem for the first 15 years of my
| career.
| brundolf wrote:
| One of the many reasons I don't use Windows for anything but
| gaming (and even then, I'm keeping my gaming machine on 10 as
| long as I can)
| Slighted wrote:
| Microsoft transitioning Windows into a spyware platform filled
| with advertisements and garbage has been in the making for
| years at this point. Its absolutely exploitative, greedy, and
| evil, which is why if you can you should consider switching to
| a different operating system, like Linux. At the very least you
| can transition to using Linux for tasks that work on Linux
| while keeping around Windows for tasks which require windows,
| either due to a lack of Linux support or poor
| performance/stability/etc. All of this assuming you aren't
| doing this already.
| leeoniya wrote:
| i used to do all sorts of stuff with Windows XP/2000 (like
| sysprepping reg-tweaked/debloated/pre-loaded Windows ISOs for
| myself). but now i have fully moved away from Windows to
| EndeavourOS/KDE and haven't looked back; many others have
| jumped ship to PoP_OS. yes, you do have to slightly
| limit/research your hardware options to get a great
| experience, but i've always been an AMD GPU guy (due to their
| better thermals / power efficiency), and all of my laptops
| are Thinkpads w/Intel wifi, so take this with those grains of
| salt.
|
| i do miss Foobar2000 and HeidiSQL (DeaDBeeF and DBeaver
| aren't quite as polished), and Affinity products are hard to
| get running without glitches in Wine/Proton, but otherwise
| it's been fantastic. though i've had to fiddle quite a bit
| with Chromium and MPV settings to enable GPU hardware
| acceleration for video decoding.
|
| first straw was slow filesystem access due to Windows
| Defender, last straw was unstoppable Windows updates full of
| ad garbage and apps i previously removed with various
| debloating scripts. i ran Windows 10 with these addons to get
| back a more Windows XP experience:
|
| disable TPM v2.0 (keep it at v1.2) to forever prevent Windows
| 11 upgrades: https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/enable-tpm-2-0-o...
|
| debloat: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows.
| there's also LTSC, but it's basically impossible to purchase
| an actual license, so you have to pirate it:
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-
| blog/l...
|
| start menu: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
|
| taskbar: https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker
|
| search:
| https://goffconcepts.com/products/filesearchex/index.html
|
| archives: https://www.7-zip.org/
|
| task manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...
|
| Notepad replacement: https://github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Linux is a usability mess, and has been for 20 years. I give
| a new shot once every other year.
|
| Basic flow: - Works out of the box for a
| basic desktop - Once you start installing drivers and
| software outside the package manager (Which you'll need to do
| immediately) and doing C+P CLI workarounds, the system state
| starts decaying, and things break. - The easiest way to
| fix things is usually a clean OS reinstall, in the sense of a
| car "total".
| Silhouette wrote:
| Usability of Linux desktop environments isn't perfect but
| at least the trend is steady improvement. The days of
| having to do weird stuff just to make some everyday USB
| device work when you plug it in are mostly gone. The
| software available for Linux in a few areas is now
| genuinely best in class. It's not always the same exact
| applications you might be used to but then that's true of
| moving between Windows and macOS as well.
|
| My own experience of modern Linux is very different to
| yours. I don't think I've had to completely clean and
| reinstall any Linux system I use - desktop or server - for
| over a decade. Some of those systems have been through
| multiple full OS upgrades in that time but those were done
| in place and usually without losing anything (or gaining
| anything unwanted).
|
| It's obviously not perfect. Some of the recent Wayland
| changes got released by some distros before some of the
| applications that do video calls were fully ready for them
| and that caused problems with remote working for example.
| But it's paradise compared to the danger of installing any
| modern version of Windows or any Apple OS and getting
| serious regressions or overtly user-hostile new "features"
| that you can't turn off.
|
| I do think there's room for a modern desktop OS that
| doesn't have all the historical baggage of Linux. Not
| having a permissions model that sandboxes apps and the data
| they work with by default seems very outdated in 2022 for
| example. The traditional filesystem hierarchy is
| unnecessarily complicated and not well suited to modern
| systems. We rely on container technologies for professional
| work now because the package management and
| installation/update mechanics are so fragile (though no
| worse than Windows or macOS IMHO). I just wish the barriers
| to entry weren't so high now that it is tough for anyone to
| build a new desktop OS from the ground up any more.
| jacooper wrote:
| What drivers? You don't need to install any drivers if
| everything works.
| skipnup wrote:
| My computer ran well with Linux with one display after
| instaing Linux. Then I tried to use a second, daisy
| chained, Displayport display. And the mess began.
| Confusing tips on forums, confusing and experimental
| drivers to install... And so on. Didn't manage to get it
| running.
| account-5 wrote:
| The thing with Linux is it gets blamed for lack of vendor
| support. If something doesn't work with Linux it's
| Linux's fault, if something doesn't work with windows
| it's the vendors fault. That's never seemed fair to me.
| Those confusing and experimental drivers you mention are
| unlikely to be provided by the vendor and are likely a
| volunteer's best efforts to reverse engineer the driver
|
| As a counter point my old wireless canon printer works
| flawlessly out of its old box with Linux but getting it
| to work on windows 10 is full of confusing tips on
| forums, confusing and experimental drivers to install.
| Nightmare.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| My point isn't about who's at fault; it's the result.
| account-5 wrote:
| Seemingly just for you.
| Dwedit wrote:
| The GPU drivers tend to be proprietary.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| Both AMD and Intel have open source drivers upstreamed
| into the Linux kernel (and are the vendor recommended
| ones, outside of certain enterprise use cases).
|
| It's really only NVIDIA that's proprietary.
| jeltz wrote:
| What nonsense is this? While I admit that Linux has real
| usability issues which none of what you wrote is remotely
| true.
| bloaf wrote:
| Rings true for me, I'm about at the reinstall stage with
| my HTPC. It will no longer send audio via HDMI due to
| some deep obscure pipewire config that broke itself
| without me touching anything. It also no longer connects
| to my Bluetooth keyboard on 2/3 of the keyboard's
| channels (actually it connects and disconnects very
| rapidly, several times a second, but is unusable
| regardless).
| account-5 wrote:
| First point true. What's an advanced desktop consist of?
|
| Second point false, unless you're using something obscure
| and/or one of the pure only open source variants.
|
| Third point. This is down to experience. But when you do
| decide to do a full reinstall it's done in about 5 minutes.
| Can't complain about that!
| swayvil wrote:
| Make a deal with a demon and it will come around to bite you in
| the ass every single time. They've written instructional
| parables about this stuff for thousands of years.
|
| Learn from the ancient wisdom. Say no to demons.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > while long-term I and probably a million others are running
| for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure,
| Outlook, Office etc again. So few companies out there seen to
| care about their long term reputation.
|
| Sadly, the number of people who will actually run for the exit
| is much, much smaller. People on HN are completely
| unrepresentative of the general population. I'm pretty sure MS
| has people who do user retention as part of design research, it
| is standard in the industry before rolling out a feature to all
| users. Especially when switching costs are high, even people
| who hate ads get used to them after a very short time. Plus,
| everyone who can afford a Mac and doesn't mind being locked-in
| to the Apple ecosystem is already there.
|
| Every mainstream platform is already inundated with ads. Social
| media is full of ads and sponsored posts. Most 'news' sites
| have gotten so bad that content is only 25-50% of the screen.
| E-commerce marketplaces from Amazon to Walmart are compromised
| and corrupted. People may run from one ad-saturated platform or
| site to another, but the norm is ads everywhere. If they're not
| running from that, would they notice or care about this?
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Well we're often the ones who recommend a computer to our
| parents and grandparents. Or the ones who decide which cloud
| hosting platform or email service provider to use in our
| organizations.
|
| People and governments are collectively getting fed up with
| surveillance capitalism.
|
| One can hope.
| 323 wrote:
| Well, I remember how 10 years ago tons of HN users were
| posting about how they changed the browser on all of their
| relatives and friends computer to Chrome. How did that end
| up?
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Chrome became the most popular browser in the market.
| (Unfortunately with its own issues.)
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| It took me a while to abandon the Microsoft ecosystem for my
| own use but I'm so glad that I did. It was a lot of careful
| considerations though and finding out what was important to
| me and how other open source projects aligned with those
| goals.
|
| I'm thinking maybe a site that has a way for users to pick
| things that matter to them and then recommend an OS and
| software would be a good idea.
| prox wrote:
| This article was 50 percent ads.
|
| What's interesting is that MS is doing things that the EU
| already gave substantial fine for making a browser default.
| dangus wrote:
| Well, how much are you willing to pay for Windows?
|
| Consumers already spoke with their wallets: they don't want to
| buy OSes. They're expected to be free.
|
| The only reason macOS isn't this aggressive about advertising is
| because it's locked down to profitable hardware and linked
| together with a proprietary ecosystem of even-more-profitable
| hardware.
|
| Diving into these, I still think this article is a bit dramatic.
|
| 1. Recommended Websites: Do you even look at your start menu? I
| don't. I hit the Windows key and type in the first few letters of
| the app I'm trying to open. The Start Menu could be completely
| blank and I wouldn't care.
|
| 2. Search Highlights: You don't even need to have a search bar in
| your taskbar at all
|
| 3. Suggested Actions: Can be turned off entirely
|
| 4. Warnings in the wrong places: Easily ignorable text in another
| piece of UI I never look at.
|
| 5. Please use our search filled with ads: Again, remove the
| search icon from your taskbar. It doesn't have to be there at
| all.
|
| Don't want any of this? Install Linux.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >More attempts to impose Edge
|
| I don't particularly mind this. Apple already forces Safari down
| our throats at every turn. And Edge is honestly a pretty great
| browser. Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better
| choice on Windows at this point.
| oefrha wrote:
| > Edge is honestly a pretty great browser
|
| Edge is the only browser I've ever used that tries to sell me
| some sort of credit card deal or reward points or some shit.
| Got a popup just yesterday when testing a browser extension of
| mine on Edge.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better
| choice on Windows at this point.
|
| Oh, yes,here is. It's the browers I _chose_ to prefer to
| install, and its the only one i chose* to use on a daily basis.
| starky wrote:
| You should be pissed off that your OS doesn't give you the
| freedom to choose which browser you use as a default. While you
| may think Edge is good, I use a different browser and my OS
| shouldn't be allowed to override the preference.
| elektrontamer wrote:
| The company software auto updated my machine to Win 11. There
| were many issues but two of them really struck out
|
| 1. The right click context menu change
|
| 2. The highlight around windows on Alt + Tab got very hard to see
|
| I just gave up in a week and got a new machine with Win 10 from
| IT. Had to install everything from scratch.
| layer8 wrote:
| It seems they improved #2 in 22H2, but at the same time removed
| the registry option for the classic Alt+Tab dialog.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I have hope for Linux running on more desktops now that I've seen
| Proton in action. But there's still things here and there that
| stop me from switching, even if every game I want to play runs
| flawlessly.
|
| One of the biggest issues is peripherals. None of the
| manufacturers write their software to work on Linux and they
| don't make their protocols open so others can easily do the work
| instead. Reverse engineering works to an extent, but that
| requires significant effort. I'm not going to be okay with losing
| functionality of my hardware.
|
| Last time I checked, the HRTF options were also lacking on Linux.
| Meanwhile there's multiple choices on Windows (I'm currently
| enjoying SteelSeries Sonar) including built-in support for
| object-based 3D audio with multiple renderer options.
|
| And the latest killer for me is lack of HDR support. I have an
| HDR monitor and I'm not going to settle for running it in SDR
| mode. I'm not even sure I'd want to switch if Linux supported HDR
| but didn't have an equivalent of Auto HDR (which I think does a
| decent job at scaling the luma of SDR games outside of the SDR
| range)
| superchroma wrote:
| I would have rather stuck with ballmer. His worst was better than
| this.
| ehvatum wrote:
| I assure you that Ballmer would at the very forefront of aping
| the latest disreputable, scummy dark patterns while missing the
| point and forcing tasteless, trashy, ineffectual money grabs
| that do much to waste your time and little to benefit Microsoft
| or anybody else.
| superchroma wrote:
| I know, I was there, but they didn't fuck with the basics.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| But they wanted to. Billy G was still hovering around
| pouring cold water on some really stupid ideas. He finally
| relented on getting rid of the start menu and that turned
| out to be a total disaster.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I see 'secure' laptops at F500 companies now that have search ads
| in the start menu.
|
| How did IT not push back against MS here?
|
| Huge security issue.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Windows update frequently break my laptop. For instance, one time
| the speakers just stopped working. That eventually got fixed. And
| recently (and still broken) .local mDNS lookups I use to ssh into
| my Linux desktop to code no longer work.
|
| I dread what my laptop will be like when I hear it whir awake
| when closed.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Ugh... Why? Who is the human that this will benefit. What are MS
| execs smoking? Obviously it is the good stuff.
|
| They lost the mobile phone because of their stupidity. Now trying
| to lose desktop too?
| flipbrad wrote:
| The EU Digital Services Act (article 25) bans dark patterns for
| online platforms: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
|
| What a shame it doesn't straightforwardly apply to operating
| systems
| butz wrote:
| What about using a custom shell on Windows 11? I remember using
| LiteStep, bbLean and geoShell on my old Windows 98 and XP. If
| they are no longer developed, this might be a niche market for
| Windows 11 users who are tired of constant "improvements". I bet
| some users would be very happy with "classic" Windows 7 shell
| too.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can, for example using Shell Launcher:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/kios...
|
| But people usually prefer replacing just the Start menu, or
| just making tweaks to how the regular task bar works.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Part of the problem is that MS made it harder to replace the
| shell with every version
|
| Edit: Although apparently "Open Shell" can replace the Windows
| 10 start menu, so I guess it's not _impossible_.
| abraxas wrote:
| Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of
| this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year
| and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since
| around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used
| to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the
| olden days with the latter being far less annoying.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Windows 10 'LTSC' sounds like what you want, I used it for some
| client projects.
|
| The LTS release was meant for Kiosk and pseudo embedded
| applications but was pretty much a non hostil UX version of
| Windows 10. In comparison even Windows 10 Professional editions
| are very bloated.
|
| I am not sure if they intend to have an analogue Windows 11 LTS
| but I suppose the need will probably be there for customers who
| are more Windows-centric.
| agluszak wrote:
| You can use stuff like https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-
| Windows-10
| [deleted]
| rejectfinite wrote:
| If it is a Windows machine provided from a workplace with IT
| then it should be a Windows Enterprise image where this stuff
| is disabled with Group policy or Intune.
| npteljes wrote:
| Don't bother with cleaning script, they can fuck things up, and
| the benefit is questionable, as it's a whack-a-mole basically.
| Windows 11 is not a hard requirement, and I don't think it will
| be in the coming few years, so I went with Windows 10 LTSC.
| Lots of useless crap is cut from it, so no Cortana, no Store,
| no Edge even, and no feature updates. There are security
| updates however! So it's a nice, stable, useful edition, with
| no downsides for gaming.
| Maxburn wrote:
| Real businesses will not put up with this nonsense and that's
| why LTSC exists.
|
| I'm also wondering if you can just run server editions.
| npteljes wrote:
| I don't think businesses care too much. LTSC is for when
| you need the system to not change over time, but still get
| some security updates, not simply business use - for that,
| there's the Enterprise edition of course.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Annoyingly LTSC costs around $300ish for the typical end
| user and has an inordinate amount of hoops just to buy
| it... makes it difficult to recommend to family so I
| curse them with Arch instead.
| mhb wrote:
| Win 10 Pro with Open Shell and auto updates off is quite
| pleasant.
| tester756 wrote:
| Wouldn't Pro versions of Windows don't have this mess?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| No, they still have these features on Pro and even HPC SKUs
| of Client. Server and LTSB don't, but are missing other
| features you might actually want (like DirectX).
| nolls wrote:
| The policy editor should let you disable most (all?) of these
| things. It comes with the pro edition I think.
| PostOnce wrote:
| Microsoft did a tremendous amount of hard work to convince me to
| make the effort to migrate away from Windows at home and at work.
| They want to lease me a word processor. They want to put ads in
| my digital filing cabinet. They want to take 30% of my software
| revenue, and when they realized they couldn't have it, they said
| they'd settle for 12%. No dice.
|
| There are zero Windows machines in my home or in my business
| right now. In fact, there are no Microsoft products. I migrate
| clients away from Windows when possible, and refuse to work with
| those who are tightly integrated with MS products. I do
| occasionally work a job where something has to work on Windows or
| with MS SQL, but I only accept if that can be done in a platform
| agnostic way.
|
| I previously held onto Windows at home because despite my age I
| still love games. At least, I love the idea of them, if I ever
| get time to play.
|
| Now, recently I had a startling realization: it's actually easier
| now to get many of the games I love running on Wine (with or
| without steam) than it is on Windows. The performance is great.
| (edit: I love you, Lutris, you make gaming easy.)
|
| Even for tools where Windows is essentially mandatory (music
| production), the situation is such that I now would rather run
| old software on an old version of Windows as a dedicated DAW
| machine than to subject myself to new Windows.
|
| Anyway, great job Microsoft, you converted a customer into
| someone who will take time out of their day to bad-mouth you on
| the internet.
|
| All that could have been avoided by just not behaving like an
| asshole.
| hepitsu wrote:
| Same here vis a vis Linux for my personal use, but the worse
| thing from Microsoft's perspective is how it pushed me towards
| buying Apple and recommending Apple products to everyone I
| know. As a techie, I used to hate Apple. I can't stand the
| closed ecosystem, I can't stand the product markups, and
| whenever friends or family would ask, I'd tell them they could
| get more powerful systems for a fraction of the cost if they
| just stuck to Windows. Nowadays I do the exact opposite. I tell
| them that while they'll be paying a markup, it's worth it
| because Apple has at least trended in the direction of privacy
| and has also continued delivering on usability. I'm not
| bombarded by ads and news when I open my Mac. So while I will
| never get my family and friends to use Linux, I have absolutely
| caused them to spend tens of thousands of dollars on Apple
| products instead of Windows. That's where I think these anti-
| consumer behaviors could really hurt Windows in the long run,
| if enough techies start driving their social circle to Apple.
| acdha wrote:
| That's been my experience since the early 2000s: people
| recommend Macs (or especially iPads) for the people who will
| be calling them for support, and it's generally delivered
| well.
|
| One thing I will note is that the markups have been a lot
| less in practice than claimed since Apple stopped using
| PowerPC. Most of the people I know who did comparisons ended
| up finding the Mac either equivalent or, frequently, cheaper
| once they adjusted for equivalent quality. Sure, you can buy
| a $400 PC but you end up buying 3 of them over the same
| service life and have a shoddy display for that entire time.
| The bundled crapware PC vendors use to subsidize the low-end
| stuff is really not helping the impression of their products,
| either (I know multiple people who had an unusable system out
| of the box that way. They now use Macs.).
| goosedragons wrote:
| The markup is in the RAM/storage upgrades. Your stuck with
| Apple's prices at time of purchase for the most part and if
| you need it fast then you have to go some way more
| expensive SKU to get it. Only the Mac Pro (which is already
| insanely expensive) and the Intel Mac Mini (where you can
| only upgrade the RAM) are user expandable. And who knows if
| the Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be.
|
| The mistake is buying a $400 laptop. Although anecdotically
| I've known a lot more people whose MacBook has died than PC
| laptops.
| throw903290 wrote:
| I am similar, except one thing.
|
| I have separate hdd with offline windows 10 installation for
| gaming. It never gets internet access, never gets updated.
| Everything totally offline. I dont have a stomache to deal with
| Wine.
| chii wrote:
| how do you get those games onto the machine if it's offline
| these days? Unless you exclusively buy off GOG, and download
| the offline version...
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Are there games you want to play, that won't allow you to
| start the game if you don't have an active internet
| connection?
| PostOnce wrote:
| I just use Lutris now and it all works, there's no more
| screwing around with Wine for me; if you had problems with
| Wine in the past, I suggest you try Lutris, you might find it
| is no longer a hassle.
|
| If you use Steam, it's all automatic and transparent in the
| background, but I don't use Steam for everything.
| intelVISA wrote:
| You could look into LTSC, it's about as close to W7 as you
| can get in terms of user control (e.g. no forced updates) and
| still enjoy semi-recent Windows features like D3D12 ""Agile
| SDK"" (lol)
| bunbun69 wrote:
| I doubt Microsoft cares that you migrated away.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Drip... drip... drip...
| PostOnce wrote:
| Not only do they not care, they don't know I exist. That
| doesn't mean I have to tolerate their behavior.
|
| Their empire crumbles anyway, that's why they're doing this
| to Windows, because they know the future is (sadly) on the
| web, and the OS is less relevant than the browser now, and
| more replaceable than it was 20 years ago.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| How many of the top 500 supercomputers run windows?
|
| They care.
| evilduck wrote:
| Or smartphones, or servers on the internet, or IoT devices,
| or car head units, or the computers that are put into the
| hands of every school age kid nowadays.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I doubt Microsoft cares that you are shilling for them.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| No, but pissing off people who love computers the most is a
| terrible idea.
|
| The Windows 98-7 era made me like the system and aspire to be
| a developer for it. I remember wanting to make my own window!
|
| Now it is simply a hostile wasteland that I regard with
| suspicion and resentment. There is no love for it left. I now
| use Linux and bear with OSX when I need to. Windows 8, but
| especially 10, made a hardcore Unix freak out of me.
|
| Microsoft can't put a quarterly cost on it, but over time
| losing people who care will cost them everything.
| chii wrote:
| > pissing off people who love computers the most is a
| terrible idea.
|
| back when balmer jumped up and down in a presentation
| yelling "developers, developers, developers", they were
| still good (despite balmer's terrible leadership).
|
| I think they're just losing the battle for mindshare now.
| Users would more easily move to macs, if they're a casual
| consumer of tech, and linux if they're more hardcore.
| Windows has no raison d'etre except for the gaming space
| imho, and i would hope that the steam deck propels WINE and
| linux onto gaming and remove the final hold from windows.
| antod wrote:
| _> back when balmer jumped up and down in a presentation
| yelling "developers, developers, developers", they were
| still good (despite balmer's terrible leadership)._
|
| My memory is probably faulty so corrections welcome, but
| wasn't "developers, developers, developers" a while
| before he became CEO?
| landemva wrote:
| Mindshare and count of installed devices is now the
| phone. MS lost the phone battle a few years ago.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| fortyseven wrote:
| Windows-free Ubuntu guy here, for over a year now. I even kept
| my old Windows box hooked up to a KVM "just in case". So far it
| only gets turned on if I accidentally bump my foot on the power
| switch.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm really getting to the point that I think we need regulation
| that bans mandatory advertising features in any product which
| you outlay cash for directly, or at least _requires_ a
| realistically priced non-advertising version to be made
| available (i.e. give some leeway to go "nah, it's not 10,000%
| more expensive to sell the version with ads...)
|
| It seems like the inevitable destination of all products is to
| be chock full of tracking and ads, because if you have a large
| market share, why not also monetize it further by selling ads
| to your disposable-income identified customers?
| steve1977 wrote:
| What DAW are you using that is Windows-only?
| PostOnce wrote:
| Ah yes, you can also use Mac for most.
|
| I meant, rather, that I don't think any of the Linux audio
| production stuff is great. Reaper and Waveform are good,
| Ardour is not yet (in my opinion, it's buggy and requires too
| much configuration that is not required in other software,
| but they'll get there).
|
| The big-name software is genuinely better than what is
| available on Linux and is worth using, and the latency
| introduced by VMs makes that idea useless, and using Wine for
| that task is non-trivial.
|
| I'm just a hobbyist though, my job is not music-related. I
| have used a midi controller as an industrial process
| controller though :)
|
| Like everything else on Linux though, it'll get better over
| time. I do screw around with LMMS on linux because it's
| completely intuitive to me. It works, it's just not as
| complex and feature-complete as Ableton / etc.
| cageface wrote:
| Bitwig is available on Linux now and works great in my
| experience. I actually prefer it to Ableton anyway.
| PostOnce wrote:
| I thought I had tried all the linux DAWs, but I haven't
| tried Bitwig; thanks for mentioning it, I'll try it out
| this week.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| What about VSTs? They won't all work on Linux.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Quite a list here of Linux compatible VST/VSTi, some
| paid, some FOSS : http://linux-sound.org/linux-vst-
| plugins.html
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Ableton is the only thing keeping me on Windows.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > refuse to work with those who are tightly integrated with MS
| products
|
| And nothing of value was lost
| PostOnce wrote:
| It's not just spiteful, it's practical.
|
| If I tie my skills, products, and services to Microsoft, and
| they discontinue whatever I relied on, then my investment
| stops being valuable; worse, the skills I built are no longer
| useful, and my human capital diminishes. If I build skills
| and products that aren't tightly tied to some other company,
| then my future is more certain.
|
| If I don't invest in Microsoft, they can't pull the rug out
| from under me, and they can't change the terms on me. They
| might not be as unreliable as Google, but they're not exactly
| a charity.
|
| I can and should insulate myself and my business against
| corporate bullying.
| meta2023 wrote:
| Those features are annoying, I agree, but they're also a
| checkbox away from being disabled. Less time than it took you
| to write this rant.
| serverholic wrote:
| For music production you should check out Bitwig. It's awesome
| and competitive with other mainstream DAWs.
| disqard wrote:
| Don't worry, a bunch of Microsoft VPs got promoted for showing
| that this would boost revenue (and, unless MS experiences a
| _serious_ exodus due to this latest round of shenanigans, such
| increa$es will materialize).
|
| So, yes, there certainly are MS folks who (unironically) think
| that they did a "great job" with this.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think the exodus thing doesn't work the way you think. Sane
| people leave, and the staff is left with people who _want to
| be there_ and to be pulling all these stunts, spinning them
| as success.
| tester756 wrote:
| I can't believe that right click Menu has has "more" option which
| shows basic features of that context menu, like what the fuck?
| what's even the reasoning with this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc
|
| But select text and search in browser option seems to be really
| reasonable.
| Maxburn wrote:
| I use windows server at work and even the newest ones are pretty
| agreeable. There might be a real case to be made to just user a
| server license for desktop. I wonder what the drawbacks of that
| are these days for say gaming or trying to use it on a laptop?
| avsteele wrote:
| We use windows at work because people need MS Office, CAD, and
| because it is the easiest platform for me to develop desktop apps
| for our scientific equipment.
|
| Win 10 issues in this vein were a bit annoying but no too
| terrible
|
| I've been dreading having to move to 11 someday. All the bad
| parts of 10 get cranked up. We can't even create local accounts
| (as is appropriate for a single-user / shared machine.)
|
| I have been liking other Microsoft software the last few years.
| But why are they ruining Windows for any professional use?
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I just run W10Privacy program every now and then, and it disables
| all the ads, telemetry and bloatware in Windows. Takes 5 minutes.
| No such program exists for Android or iOS, it just can't exist.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| My pro 1 running lineageOS begs to disagree. Android can be
| customized to your liking if you know what you're doing. You
| may argue that that is removed from the default experience
| enough that it's not that valid of a use case, but w10privacy
| hardly is a common use case.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I maintain a tiling window manager for Windows[1]. It's the only
| thing still keeping me on Windows right now. I run NixOS on WSL,
| and I have a separate NixOS desktop partition that I iterate on
| from time to time.
|
| Once I can make my tiling window manager X11-compatible, I think
| that will be it for me and Windows. The last update totally
| screwed me to the extent that I had to go into the registry and
| manually set my user profile path to get all my settings back,
| all because the update couldn't handle a symlink in the C:\Users
| dir, which I had to use because there is no sane way to do
| something as simple as changing the user directory name.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi
| account-5 wrote:
| Genuine question, but what's wrong with the tiling window
| managers already available for Linux?
| saratogacx wrote:
| While I don't use the tool (I use Windows Power Toys for my
| tiled window management) I have to give a shout out on the
| amazing github readme. That is lovingly complete and I wasn't
| left wondering how any of it worked.
| datatrashfire wrote:
| After years of thinking "wsl2 is enough for me", I switched to
| fedora as an experiment and I have not looked back once.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Welcome to the fold, friend. Stoked to see another soul has
| seen through the smokescreen.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yes, I've always thought that OS discussions needs more
| tribalism.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| If you can't understand the difference between solidarity
| and tribalism, that's something you should work on.
|
| If you can't understand the political, philosophical and
| sociological nuances of selecting between Windows and Linux
| as computing environments, and why this is more than just a
| simple UI preference, that's something you should work on.
|
| Sarcasm is also something you should work on.
|
| See you next time.
| joemi wrote:
| I'm not the person you responded to, and I would never
| have replied with sarcasm as they did, but "Stoked to see
| another soul has seen through the smokescreen" comes
| across as more tribal than solidarity, IMO, if those are
| the only two options.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's about how Microsoft is
| gaslighting the user about the future of computing. There
| is absolutely a smokescreen in place, which the majority
| of Linux-based distributions do not employ.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| For me, Manjaro, and later (purely out of masochism) Arch. :)
|
| I _did_ "look back" for certain AAA games that either don't
| work on Linux or DO work but their launcher doesn't (e.g.,
| Blizzard), but AAA game companies have done me the solid of
| hypercommercializing themselves into unbearable mediocrity. So,
| even if I want to play one of those games now, I'm not too
| hurried to wait for a few years so Proton support makes it
| available (plus you get it cheaper, with bugfixes, all DLCs,
| _and_ your hardware can run it better).
| Daegalus wrote:
| just as a heads up, the blizzard launcher works fine. there
| was a short period it didn't due to some bug, that they fixed
| on their end for the Linux community.
|
| I play wow, ow2 and such just fine from the launcher. so give
| it a try again if you've been avoiding it.
| Andrex wrote:
| I overwrote Windows 10 and installed Fedora last year.
|
| I just love Gnome.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| This is me, a few weeks ago. WSL2 feels so hobbled in
| comparison, now that I'm on the other side again.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I tried this with Ubuntu a few years ago. Once I had to deal
| with hidpi issues and screen tearing while scrolling in
| Firefox, I went back.
| badrabbit wrote:
| If you're gonna pirate (well, use leaked activation keys) then
| install the enterprise version which has less of this crap to
| deal with.
|
| I hate start menu ads and edge default pages because they have
| animation which beings rdp to a crawl.
| runjake wrote:
| Microsoft is a services company. Expect only more of this.
|
| By the way, Apple is also a services company.
|
| The difference here is that most of Apple's customers want to use
| at least some of their services.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| The best feature in Windows 11 I've seen so far is the downgrade
| feature; after I gave it a spin and found the new taskbar to be
| intolerable the revert to Windows 10 was remarkably painless!
| npteljes wrote:
| What a pile of shit Windows has become. The user hostility was
| present from day 1, but they really visibly ramp it up over the
| years.
| api wrote:
| This can all be summarized as: Microsoft is going down market.
|
| Of course if Apple starts with this stuff they too will start
| going down market and open an opportunity for someone else to own
| the high end.
|
| If I pay for it it better not have ads. If something I pay for
| starts adding ads I cancel.
| dahart wrote:
| What really kills me about the ad-spam being added to menus
| everywhere is that eventually they start having problems and drag
| my computer to its knees. I end up with behaviors where the Start
| Menu takes several seconds to appear, or a search will stall, and
| when navigating folders in the File Explorer have very serious
| and noticeable drag, taking one or two seconds. So far I've
| eventually been able to figure out how to turn them off with
| registry edits and fix the delays, but it seems to be getting
| harder to do, and MS is definitely omitting controls from the
| control panel.
|
| It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen,
| due to customizations or features I've enabled or disabled, or
| software I've installed, or due to my company web policies and
| firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true
| culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between
| application software and operating system. Allowing all these
| hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It's
| crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go
| out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping
| suggestions for me, crazy I say!
| rolph wrote:
| a lot of windows people i know, dont bother with a proper shut
| down anymore, they let it run 24-7, or they just hit the power
| switch and nuke it all instead of waiting.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The idea of shutting off a desktop computer is baffling to
| me. I guess it's an OCD thing some people have.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Install Keypirinha [1] and you don't need the Start menu
| anymore.
|
| [1]: https://keypirinha.com/
| LorenDB wrote:
| Or use Powertoys Run
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I know I don't _need_ it, but I want to keep using it. And, I
| lament that the company I already paid money to for an OS
| license can't help itself by putting in so many intrusive
| advertisements and dark patterns on what is supposed to be
| just an operating system.
| eric__cartman wrote:
| It's such a shame because Windows is a good operating system for
| a lot of desktop use cases that happens to be smeared with shit
| all over the user interface. Honestly I'm expecting them to
| introduce mini advertisements in the task bar any time soon. It's
| not like those pixels are being used for anything when there
| aren't many windows open right?
| dole wrote:
| The Weather/News Flash taskbar pretty much does this already.
| Nothing like an angry red triangle warning to keep me up on the
| latest celebrity news.
| 323 wrote:
| So why don't you switch it?
|
| I've put it to show Weather only and I actually like it a
| lot.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Not who you asked, but my employer won't allow me to change
| it.
| civopsec wrote:
| Lots of people have told me (not _to me_ specifically of course)
| that paying for software was the magic thing that would rid
| software of ads. But isn't Windows a payed-for product? It seems
| more likely that such organizations will do whatever they can get
| away with.
|
| Another example is Spotify with their podcasts suggestions (that
| you can't get rid of). Why would I, who is not from America, want
| to listen to the wife of a former American president?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| "Paid" is a spectrum. Hulu has paid (with ads) and paid (pay
| more to remove ads). Windows is probably being sold at a loss,
| and ads make up the difference. So no, it isn't enough to stuff
| a dollar in Microsoft's shirt pocket and expect to not see ads.
| nicbou wrote:
| Windows was fine 10 years ago when I switched to Mac, but it
| seems like every time I look back, the OS is more hostile. They
| basically took every reason to use an ad blocker, and baked those
| into the OS.
| howinteresting wrote:
| The horrifying descent of Windows is one of the great tragedies
| of our time. It's never been _great_ , but it's generally been
| OK. This is monstrous.
|
| Every single exec involved in this should be publicly named and
| shamed, and driven out of the tech industry.
| [deleted]
| theknocker wrote:
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Firefox (mobile) was pushing ads at me on [what is supposed to
| be] my home screen last week (Addidas and Nike being put in the
| first two slots).
|
| Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed
| competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get
| their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might
| as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition
| every day.
|
| [I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but
| that's just me.]
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I left Windows for Mint about 2 months ago and it's just so much
| better. All that stupid bullshit you have to deal with on windows
| just went away, I felt actual relief. No more ads, no more forced
| updates because you walked away from your computer, no processes
| that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics. It
| just works. If you want it to look like windows 7 you can, if you
| want it to look like an iPad you can. I've made mine into a weird
| hybrid of windows 7 and OSX which I love. My start button
| actually shows my programs instead of loading bing and showing me
| 100MB of pictures of nigerian football players.
|
| The only thing that was stopping me before was games, but games
| all work on linux now. Other than one or two that require
| specific anti-cheats that use 0days to hijack windows, there's
| basically nothing that doesn't run on linux now. In fact, a lot
| of my games actually work better because proton dynamically
| patches out bugs from the original windows implementations.
|
| I don't think I've found any software or anything that I use that
| hasn't got a linux version. Windows is dead to me, I haven't used
| it since.
| garbanz0 wrote:
| My experience leaving Windows was like yours... until I did a
| software upgrade or had to replace my graphics card, etc. Hours
| of fighting the command line, glitchy graphical bugs. For me,
| the desire to cultivate my linux computer like a garden ended
| up being a distraction from using my computer like the tool it
| is. Just my 2cents.
| tuxinator wrote:
| When was the last time you tried Linux? I just replaced my
| entire computer (CPU, motherboard, GPU, etc) and my Debian
| (bookworm) installation booted with zero issues. No need to
| reinstall anything.
|
| I certainly remember fighting with xorg.conf settings,
| graphics drivers, and kernel modules in the past. I haven't
| had to deal with troubles like that in nearly 10 years
| though.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Can't speak for the other guy but the latest Ubuntu update
| absolutely wrecked my desktop. No network, no graphics. It
| blew my mind because I haven't experienced anything like
| this in more than a decade.
|
| This experience pushed me straight into rolling release
| territory but I'd imagine most people would go to MS
| immediately, or even Apple if PC gaming is not something
| they do
| garbanz0 wrote:
| I was using plain Ubuntu around 2020. Upgraded from an
| ancient GeForce to a pretty standard AMD graphics card and
| it totally wrecked my installation. While debugging in the
| command line, my screen was constantly flickering. Headache
| inducing. Then while trying to reinstall Ubuntu, I
| accidentally messed up my windows installation. It took a
| weekend to get everything back to normal, and it just
| wasn't worth it at all.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > When was the last time you tried Linux?
|
| Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having
| problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in
| response.
|
| I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various
| devices and I still constantly run into issues.
| _Constantly_. It 's great that you have zero issues, but
| please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.
| alexjplant wrote:
| Because 20 years ago using Linux meant that I had to deal
| with configuring ALSA, NDISWrapper, GRUB, CUPS, etc.
| whereas last night it took me less than 15 minutes to
| install Mint on a late-model ultrabook and have
| everything working perfectly. It's a real phenomenon.
|
| Some vendors are better than others at Linux support. I
| would suggest sticking to Lenovo or Dell if you'd like a
| smooth experience.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| There is a lot of Linux distros out there too.
|
| Trying Debian Stable versus a bleeding edge Arch Linux
| will likely give wildly varying degrees and complexity of
| 'issues'.
| burnished wrote:
| What would you want them to do differently? They believe
| things have improved over time and want to share that
| information. I think it's helpful but you seem to think
| it's tiring or that they just shouldn't?
| Maxburn wrote:
| Me too my friend, I find mint a decent general desktop OS and I
| rarely touch windows for personal use. Still struggling with
| iTunes though.
| thebiss wrote:
| Can you use music.apple.com under chrome on mint?
| Maxburn wrote:
| Pretty much the only use case I have for itunes is to
| sideload music to my iphone, so I go into my windows
| partition a couple times a month to do it.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it
| worse. I've used it on Mac and Windows and both suck
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it
| worse. I've used it on Mac and Windows and both suck
|
| It's technically no longer even there on macOS, thank God.
| It was becoming a sort of kitchen-sink dumping place, and I
| am glad that I can now manage my iPad through Finder
| (though I still wish I could just treat it like any other
| bulk-storage device, as I can on Windows, at least it's
| there). There are apps called "Music.app" and "TV.app", if
| I want to access my music and videos the Apple way, but I
| can and do just ignore them if I don't want to use them.
|
| There are probably a multitude of other features that were
| in the old iTunes app that I never even noticed or have
| forgotten, but I think that a lot of users who used to be
| forced into using iTunes on macOS now can avoid both it and
| its replacements.
| Maxburn wrote:
| I just don't have a mac, that's really the only issue here.
| I went out of my way years ago to try and wrap my head
| around itunes, all the (too many) things it does etc. They
| mess that up a bit with updates (not as bad as windows) but
| it isn't terrible once you realize it's a whole bunch of
| apps rolled up into one. It doesn't do any of them really
| great but it's just a gateway to my devices so it isn't
| horrible.
| accrual wrote:
| > no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on
| your mics
|
| Is this hyperbole or a real thing that happened?
| lallysingh wrote:
| It's 2022. Who runs Windows? Consumers moved to iOS and devs
| moved to Linux/macOS.
|
| The only thing I have that needs Windows is a service DVD for a
| motorcycle and autocad fusion. Both work great in VMs for my
| occasional use. The VMs contain all the user toxicity from
| spreading to the rest of my environment.
| coredog64 wrote:
| There's still gaming. I've got a bunch of games on GoG that
| don't have a Linux install and are 32-bit only for Mac.
| extr0pian wrote:
| Windows is adware. A couple weeks ago I recently wrote a rant
| about the reasons I no longer use Windows on any of my machines
| [1], but I recently installed Windows 10 on bare metal because I
| have a work project coming up that likely requires me to use
| Windows. One of the first _new_ obnoxious things I noticed was
| that search box in the taskbar had a bright and colorful gift
| icon inside it. Clicking on that icon brings up links to holiday-
| themed advertisements like "Top 10 Tech Gifts This Holiday
| Season". Mind you, I provided zero information to Microsoft and
| had yet to even open a web browser. I also made certain my
| internet was disconnected prior to the installation setup to
| avoid being strong armed into creating a Microsoft account, and
| disabled as much telemetry as they allow beforehand. This was not
| a dev or beta release, this was the latest version of the Windows
| 10 ISO from Microsoft's website. It's not just sad, but it gives
| me a gross feeling.
|
| [1] https://chuck.is/windows
| slicktux wrote:
| So, impositions, ads and lacking ability to disable...
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