[HN Gopher] Microsoft pulls OneDrive update that would quiz you ...
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Microsoft pulls OneDrive update that would quiz you before letting
you quit
Author : stalfosknight
Score : 81 points
Date : 2023-11-10 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| input_sh wrote:
| Discussed 3x yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38197715
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38208568
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38208473
| amlozano wrote:
| The last line of the article is just a stunningly good summary:
|
| "But it's just one more annoying default you need to change to
| make sure that modern Windows stays out of your way."
|
| Microsoft is constantly pushing the limit of what users will
| tolerate. I switched non-technical people to Linux OSes after
| hearing about this, and heard no complaints from them. It's
| almost like Microsoft wants to lose whatever footholds they have
| left.
| tornato7 wrote:
| I started using Kubuntu and I absolutely loved it. Leagues
| ahead of Windows 11 in terms of user experience, customization,
| and speed.
|
| However, I had to switch back. I just can't get by without
| Adobe apps and other specific productivity apps and video games
| that I couldn't get to run on Ubuntu. Maybe some day!
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Gimp, figma, Kdenlive, etc
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I don't use windows at all, but for others (parents, s/o,..) i
| would install it as a 'default' (because every instruction
| anyone was written for windows)...
|
| Then they added ads in the start menu, and I found it easier to
| deal with the "this is linux, not windows, to do this, you have
| to do that", than to constanty fix and change windows settings
| making stuff shittier by default.
| Multicomp wrote:
| This is an unforced error on Microsoft's part. The latest in a
| long line. But I'm not even surprised these days, just
| disappointed.
|
| I must have just had rose-tinted glasses when I was young, but I
| totally believed the 'force augmentation' PR Microsoft offered
| with their Windows XP tour and their SkyDrive initial offering
| and their Office 2010 ribbon. I was young enough to not get why
| people complained so much about those switches. Grow up, toolbars
| are old and boring, this is cool, life is change, yada yada.
|
| Now? After the confusing Windows 8, the killing of WP7, the
| spyware of W10, the forced updates of W10, the loss of
| fundamental human interface guideline compliance and look & feel
| by new-age UX designers who have forgotten the lessons of the
| past searching to be the next not-Apple of W11, (I could go on)
| I've grown so sick of Microsoft's current direction that I've
| apparently clipped over to the other side of the screen.
|
| Now, I don't care. I miss what I see and saw as good. I let my
| inertia keeping me using Onenote and familiar tools. But I'm not
| in love with MS like I used to be, I had to let go of MS
| fanboyism to hang on to "fight for the users" fanboyism.
|
| Luckily the Year of the Linux Desktop will arrive shortly, any
| second now, and we will be fine (EDIT: /s). In the meantime, I've
| had to treat my computers as tools, not hobby projects...it's too
| depressing otherwise.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > Year of the Linux Desktop will arrive shortly
|
| I think we've been saying this since at least 1990.
| jamespo wrote:
| We have tablets and phones now all running unix variants
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Year of the Linux _Desktop_ will arrive shortly_
|
| I don't consider my phone nor my tablet to be a "desktop".
| threePointFive wrote:
| In my circles, personal Windows PCs have gone almost
| entirely away. Chromebooks are massively popular, but
| most people do everything on a phone/tablet. In the PC
| market, gaming is the only thing keeping Windows
| relevant, and each Proton update shrinks that market
| segment.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Sure, lots more people (maybe most? I don't know) use
| phones/tablets in place of a desktop. I still don't call
| my phone a desktop.
|
| As for what is keeping Windows relevant, I would bet
| gaming is just a blip on the radar. Corporations,
| especially larger ones not in the tech market, like to
| use Windows for user machines (also applies to
| governments).
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| It's bound to happen eventually.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Sorry, I should have included a /s, my bad!
|
| But yes, i'm not holding my breath.
| hkchad wrote:
| It wouldn't let me login the other day until I completed my
| signup for "hello" whatever the f-that is. I had to pull the
| ethernet cable THEN I could login to windows. I promptly disabled
| any signup that had "hello" in the description. I have exactly 1
| windows machine in my house and I am pretty close to making it 0.
| I was careful to setup that machine before connecting it to the
| internet so I could create a local account. The hoops people have
| to jump through just to use something they've paid for is getting
| pretty outlandish.
| itronitron wrote:
| It used to be that once the accumulated Windows updates had
| fully bogged down one of our computers we would uninstall
| Windows and install Ubuntu. These days we just uninstall
| Windows on any new system we get.
| slig wrote:
| Why can't they figure out a paid version for Professionals
| without any BS? WSL2 works fine, docker, Steam, multiple
| monitors, etc. Just remove the BS.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| They have (Enterprise LTSC). You can't have it.
|
| Also, you are now subscribed to _OneDriveFacts_ (tm).
| taspeotis wrote:
| You can buy a grey market CD key cheaply or subscribe to
| whichever Microsoft 365 tier gives you Enterprise.
|
| The subscription model is somewhat expensive but if you're
| able to make it a business expense for Windows + email
| hosting + the Office apps it's not totally egregious.
| jacooper wrote:
| The issue with LTSC is it (afaik) sucks fkr gaming, with a
| lot of missing stuff for dx12 and so on.
| taspeotis wrote:
| You mean Windows 11 Enterprise?
| 38 wrote:
| maybe I am on an old version, but I dont get that at all. here is
| my info: OneDrive version: Build
| 23.214.1015.0001 (64-bit)
|
| if I try to close, I get: Are you sure you want
| to close OneDrive? If you close OneDrive, files in your
| OneDrive folder won't sync with your files online.
| [Close OneDrive][Cancel]
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Change affected a "small subset" of users and has
| (thankfully) been reverted._
|
| From the top of the article. The quiz was not a ubiquitous
| roll-out.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I don't understand why people invite an adversarial entity onto
| their computer just for the convenience of syncing files.
|
| Unison+ssh+Tailscale (or alternatively Syncthing for a slightly
| more hands-off approach) accomplishes the same with much less
| overhead and fewer annoyances.
| jprete wrote:
| Windows 11 more or less forces OneDrive onto the machine. It
| takes active work to get rid of it.
| threePointFive wrote:
| My company switched off of perfectly working SMB shares to
| OneDrive + SharePoint about a year ago and it has been the
| singlehanded biggest generator of helpdesk tickets since. I'm
| trying to get corporate to let me use rclone since I can at
| least tell it to push/pull a specific file instead of waiting
| for OneDrive to finish "syncing changes".
| Xiol32 wrote:
| Syncthing is so good. I wish more people would use it.
| Onboarding is certainly more complex than just using Onedrive
| or installing Dropbox, but once it's set up it just stays out
| of the way and works.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I don't understand why people invite an adversarial entity
| onto their computer just for the convenience of syncing files.
|
| Most dont invite it. MS sneaks it in the backdoor
|
| I recently bought a new PC and only found out it was syncing my
| desktop and user files to OneDrive (which I never signed up
| for) unbeknownst to me when it started having problems.
|
| Then I had to find and wade through a few pathetic prompts to
| disable it. "are you suuure you want to disable cloud backup?"
| "Are you suure you want to delete your tax filings and
| financial docs we copied without asking?"
| yetanotherloss wrote:
| Unless you go out of your way, it's not invited in, it was
| already inside. Most people who don't live in o365 don't know
| or care what OneDrive even is due to how much it sucks.
|
| This is more user hostile tactics to force acceptance of the
| eventual subscription fees for everything Windows.
| projektfu wrote:
| I only use OneDrive for the auto save and versioning feature in
| Excel. Before giving in, I'd frequently come back to a computer
| that had restarted itself in the night (?) and I'd have to
| figure out if I needed to preserve the auto save files of
| things I only had open for reference.
|
| LibreOffice Calc is becoming a better option though. I like the
| new array functions in Excel but I don't think anyone else I'd
| share a spreadsheet to understands them. Meanwhile, Excel makes
| it hard to work with Unicode CSV, no longer has the option to
| bring up the text import wizard when opening a CSV, silently
| changes your date formats, etc. For my uses it's become
| frustrating. Libre has kept working like I expect.
| Jorge1o1 wrote:
| "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
| quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally
| with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted
| filesystem."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion and updates:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38197715
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| This is about them pulling the update which is a new
| development.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| What's most frustrating to me is how slapdash One Drive is to
| this day. It is their easiest way to get consumers to start
| paying for services, yet the product still has embarrassing
| limitations.
|
| Two that I hit on my corporate machine:
|
| - struggles with too many files. Last I looked, official
| Microsoft documentation says to not exceed 100k files. Yet, $WORK
| wants to dump basically every file I touch inside there. My Teams
| folder alone is ~20k files.
|
| - has a max file path limit which is less than the allowable on
| NTFS. I use some software with a heavily nested folder structure
| which One Drive cannot accommodate. A valid Windows file path
| cannot be backed up by their promoted solution.
| gailees wrote:
| wtf
| m3kw9 wrote:
| What happens when you have a company that doesn't understand user
| experience and have close to a monopoly
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| Is it possible to delete OneDrive from Windows 11? Apple doesn't
| let you delete the News app, or Safari from Macs.
|
| I'm hoping the EU does something similar to iPhones and USB-C and
| slams the hammer down on forced apps on various platforms.
| soroushmo wrote:
| you can remove OneDrive, but you cant remove Edge.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You want O&O ShutUp10++[1], which is an excellent app for
| disabling tons of Windows features including OneDrive.
|
| [1] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
| tcbawo wrote:
| The only reason I have Windows is for seamless device driver
| support. Most things work and don't break with a system update. I
| don't want to spend a single minute debugging issues on a forum,
| resorting to OS reinstall due to something being broken, or
| twiddling with buggy display or wireless settings. I love the
| Linux desktop. I wish I could pay someone to deliver this
| experience. But, I don't believe that I can. I wish I could strip
| the display off Windows and run it as a hypervisor with a nice
| hardware abstraction layer for another OS.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm with you. Love the idea of using Linux, but couldn't have
| stated the drawbacks more elegantly. I look at the OS reinstall
| more like an insurance company totaled your car vice it being
| at the bottom of a lake: You can always bring a Linux install
| back to life through a correct combination of CLI incantations
| in a fallback console, but at a point, it's easier to do a
| clean install.
| christophilus wrote:
| I mean, it's worth giving Linux another go. I've had far more
| problems with Windows machines over the years than I have with
| Fedora since I started driving it (since 2019).
|
| Same for my parent's and family's computers. Updates have been
| non-events.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I keep telling myself like that. The general fragility hasn't
| changed much in the past 20 years, but I keep trying.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've been using Linux exclusively at home for going on five
| years now (with the only exception being for Android rooting
| apps, which is infrequent).
|
| It has been moderately painful, but for a while now I consider
| it less painful than dealing with Microsoft's MBA-team's multi-
| year long stream of howlers.
|
| I use Pop!OS as my primary desktop, Debian for servers, and
| have a separate Ubuntu machine for gaming that very rarely gets
| used unfortunately. I also think that Pop would do the job for
| gaming.
| rbut wrote:
| When building your next PC stick to a motherboard that uses
| Intel for everything (or as many things as possible).
|
| When selecting a laptop choose one that provides Linux support
| out of the box, eg Dell XPS 13.
|
| I've done the above and never once had a driver issue on Linux.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| OneDrive syncing, plus whatever "enhancements" Microsoft have
| made to Windows Explorer, makes my current directory navigation
| and file management slower than it was 10+ years ago.
|
| I've started working out of a separate directory structure so
| that OneDrive stays out of the way, and then move the files
| manually into OneDrive's field-of-view once I'm finished. This is
| not good practise for backups, but it's good practise for time
| efficiency and minimal frustration.
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