[HN Gopher] Microsoft Is Driving Users Away
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Is Driving Users Away
Author : leotravis10
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-02-25 21:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (christitus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (christitus.com)
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| No-one cares about Power Users once the rest of the populace is
| on Windows.
| vajrabum wrote:
| Well maybe, but with Windows maybe they shouldn't think about
| power users but power buyers. And power buyers (i.e. medium to
| large enterprises) care about security, maintainability,
| backward compatibility, and supportability and yeah lots of
| stuff has moved to the cloud but the end user has got to use
| something to get there.
|
| So, the question is, is this creative destruction or just
| destruction. Not every change is an innovation even in IT and
| large vendors have a long history of failing in computing
| usually because they either got sclerotic or too focused on the
| organization and promoting the organization and too little
| focused on the customer.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| I think that is the crux of the problem actually. Same with
| Teams, what the buyer wants is misaligned with what the end
| user wants unfortunately. Most resources are put towards
| making it an easier sell rather than towards a product the
| end user loves.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >To Access the old devices and printer use the run prompt and
| type the following:
| shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}
|
| This is the finest advertisement for every OS not named Windows
| that I have ever seen.
| realusername wrote:
| That's the most ironic twist, I'm using more command line on a
| windows install than a modern Linux distribution nowadays.
| Lammy wrote:
| It's just a GUID. They're a good thing and very useful.
|
| Spoiler alert, your Linux systems probably use them too:
| [lammy@emi] blkid /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p5_crypt:
| UUID="RjKq3i-w2ov-ZXcp-Uc60-Ylzp-Gc56-xtjpkg"
| TYPE="LVM2_member" /dev/mapper/mint--vg-root:
| UUID="4d5373f4-d9e2-4787-98d8-24c33a1574b7" TYPE="ext4"
| /dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="d6b28757-9cd9-44a5-b68a-25515537e540"
| TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="bc0382eb-01" /dev/nvme0n1p5:
| UUID="19104716-2c1f-4e92-8c75-35b113d9ecae" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"
| PARTUUID="bc0382eb-05" /dev/mapper/mint--vg-swap_1:
| UUID="dbfcbc11-37c2-4752-9f8f-6288aa7e8b43" TYPE="swap"
|
| And FreeBSD: [lammy@popola] gpart list|grep
| uuid rawuuid: c345aeb1-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
| rawuuid: c350c1ee-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea rawuuid:
| c359c46d-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea rawuuid:
| c3601e82-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
|
| And probably others but this is what I have on hand lol
| rincebrain wrote:
| I think it's not the GUID, but the fact that referencing the
| GUID is the only way to get at the functionality any more.
|
| Yes, your devices and various other underpinnings have GUIDs,
| but very few of them _only_ surface the GUID as a referent to
| the thing in a place a user would have to access it.
|
| Similar to how, if you could only get at this by doing
| "rundll32 shellex.dll LoadOldPrinterSettings", the issue
| wouldn't be a function named LoadOldPrinterSettings, the
| issue would be that it's making you reach into a DLL to
| invoke a function by hand to get at it at all.
| layer8 wrote:
| As noted in TFA comments, `control /name
| Microsoft.Printers` also works.
| hawski wrote:
| I don't think the OP meant to piss on GUIDs. I think they are
| laughing at a very cryptic command line recommended to access
| "old devices and printer". That was always a classic jab at
| Linux and this looks extra cryptic as it is a literal random
| string.
|
| Also UUIDs in the classic sense do suck in my opinion and
| Linux and FreeBDS use them, because they have to, to support
| standards that were made with Windows in mind. UUIDs are
| strange - i.e. their mixed endianess or how version bits are
| placed in them. All for a 128 bit random identifier as it is
| mostly used nowadays. I like the below to get a random
| identifier: __uint128_t random;
| char id[17] = {0}; getentropy(&random,
| sizeof(random)); for(int i = 0; i < 16; i++) {
| id[i] = 'a' + ((random >> i) & 0xf); }
|
| This gives a 16 character identifier, like: pphlfcjmophlnohl
|
| Chrome Web Store uses something similar.
| Lammy wrote:
| I think it's kinda nice that my random identifiers have a
| little flag bit to indicate they were random v(._. )v
|
| > their mixed endianess
|
| Pardon my pedantry here but this is a misinterpretation of
| GUIDs through the lens of the UUID structure. The actual
| difference between GUID and UUID isn't the endianness-on-
| the-wire within the chunks but the number and sizes of the
| chunks themselves.
|
| GUIDs are [32 bits, 16 bits, 16 bits, [8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8,
| 8] bits].
|
| UUIDs are [32 bits, 16 bits, 16 bits, 8 bits, 56 bits].
|
| Endianness only matters with multi-byte data, so the
| "mixed-endianness" thing comes from the fact that the two
| specs _mostly_ line up, but then people interpret GUID 's
| array of octets as if 7/8 of it were a single multi-byte
| field as it is in UUID.
|
| > or how version bits are placed in them
|
| Indeed this is mostly lost to time and seems like odd
| placement these days. For anyone who's curious, the reason
| why those bits are where they are is because the Apollo
| Network Computing Architecture "version 0" UUIDs had a
| different third layout where the ninth octet indicated
| socket address family. IP's dominance led to the
| ossification of AF numbers which did not keep growing as
| anticipated, leaving several bits of effectively wasted
| space that were then reused to indicate the version since
| those bits could always be assumed to be 0 on NCA/NCS due
| to lack of any network standard on which they could be
| anything else.
|
| Source: wrote a GUID/UUID library that implements all the
| old weird shit just for the fun of it: irb>
| GlobeGlitter::from_gregorian_time.inspect =>
| "#<GlobeGlitter 01eed42e-d812-1db0-0f52-00e04c180069>"
| irb> GlobeGlitter::from_ncs_time.inspect => "#<GlobeGlitter
| 3cd0b18cbd50.02.00.00.e0.4c.18.00.69>"
| firesteelrain wrote:
| As much as I like Linux, tides won't be shifting for desktop to
| Linux. It will be Microsoft Windows for years to come
| traverseda wrote:
| I honestly think that Gnome is a big part of this. A lot of
| people very obviously and loudly like it, but since I've been
| giving developers the option to use KDE they've been a lot
| happier with it all.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Except they're two sides of the same coin. The underlying
| technology (software) is almost all the same. And it is not
| problem-free, unfortunately.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| GNOME2 was the apex of GNOME, fortunately MATE and Cinnamon
| are keeping its legacy alive.
| probably_satan wrote:
| Xfce is far better than Gnome and KDE to me personally.
| Gnome-shell is nice on a tablet though.
| netsharc wrote:
| Yeah, Microsoft's got a huge majority of users captive and now
| they can do as they please, "Oh you don't like this obnoxious
| new 'feature'? Well what are you going to do about it?", like
| an abusive partner.
|
| If only there's some company with money and clout to offer an
| OS with the same level of user-friendliness... Too bad Google's
| product managers are just busy trying to advance their own
| careers, plus it's not like they respect users...
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| They are even worse on the OSS side. They'll push azure on
| everyone while shitting on the community that kept .NET alive
| between 2012-2019
| trealira wrote:
| > If only there's some company with money and clout to offer
| an OS with the same level of user-friendliness...
|
| Legit question: do you think there will ever be a new
| commercial desktop operating system (not one that's given
| away for free) that isn't Windows or MacOS again in the next
| 30 years?
|
| Because Linux is free, and Windows is ubiquitous, and because
| you need a lot of hardware support and support for existing
| applications to be see usage, it seems hard for any new
| company to break into the market with something genuinely
| new.
|
| It seems like the way things are now are how they'll be for a
| long time. We'll just always use Linux, MacOS, or Windows,
| with superficial changes, I suppose. Or a BSD.
| probably_satan wrote:
| I've converted a handful of some of the least computer tech
| heavy people to Linux. This was years ago.
|
| The final few nails of Microsoft's coffin are being nailed as
| we speak. Not only because they are just fundamentally bad at
| innovation, but because they also sold out the United States to
| China. Billy boy is scared, and he should be.
| forinti wrote:
| I managed to convince my mother-in-law to use Linux and drop
| Windows.
|
| But it seems that convincing the network guys at work is
| harder than convincing a retiree. Apparently it's easier to
| administer a Windows network than a Linux one.
| layer8 wrote:
| There is no good replacement for Active Directory, by a
| large margin. It's the single biggest factor that keeps
| Windows alive in the enterprise.
| tonoto wrote:
| Was that really a good thing? Active Directory in
| enterprise environments keep the hackers happy
| trealira wrote:
| I didn't know what the Active Directory is until now,
| although I found its Wikipedia page. Is it known for
| being insecure?
| layer8 wrote:
| Not really, in 2024. GP is presenting a caricature.
| bhewes wrote:
| In addition to Windows, I manage Ubuntu, MacOS and iOS
| via Azure Active Directory. I like Azure.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Out of curiosity does Linux, or rather directory/desktop
| software running on Linux, have something similar to
| Windows Group Policy?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Is converting the least tech literate an issue? I assume some
| of the easier distros are pretty much plug and play now, and
| if your only goal is to browse Facebook and print off recipes
| from an already set up printer pretty much anything can do
| that easily. But these people would probably be happy with an
| iPad if their iPhone wasn't cutting it.
|
| I think the big middle of the population that's the problem,
| people who are tech literate enough to do some things, but
| not willing to relearn the wheel. They can use microsoft
| office, but don't want to have to relearn a new file
| structure. Those are the people who probably will have the
| biggest issue, and there's a lot of them. That's office
| workers, computer gamers, all those people. Even the pretty
| tech literate people who know how to do things in Windows but
| don't care to relearn it all in Linux.
| logtempo wrote:
| you have a valid point. I always had Macintosh machine and
| then Linux, discovered at the university.
|
| I think I fall in the case of tech literate people who know
| how to do things in Linux but don't care to relearn it all
| in Windows.
|
| So I guess it's true for the opposite too ahah
| realusername wrote:
| While I do agree that nowadays users with a basic computer
| usage would be much better served by a modern Linux
| distribution compared to Windows, it won't happen due to the
| power of defaults. Windows is preinstalled and that will be
| enough, no matter how badly it degrades.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I guess because the majority of Linux folks don't really care
| about making it a solid user experience for normies, and those
| that do so might have strong opinions on things that might not
| roll with everyone, especially coming from Windows (read:
| gnome).
|
| I've maintained an in-house distro for a couple years so I know
| the ins and outs of systemd, dbus, polkit, xorg and whatever
| crap is needed to run a desktop session, and how to track down
| what's broken if the system misbehaves in some way. So
| switching every machine I use to Linux wasn't really an extra
| burden. Ironically it made me switch to i3 as my WM and
| ditching a file manager, gvfs and other moving parts. I'm doing
| a lot of things in the terminal. I loathe complicated setups -
| less moving parts, less things that can break. But I'm fully
| aware that I'm a complete oddball here, and I don't think nor
| care whether the day of the Linux desktop will ever come.
| Unless maybe we're at a point where really _absolutely
| everything_ runs in the cloud and people only need a browser.
| But at that point just get a Chromebook?
| bee_rider wrote:
| The Free Software and Open Source ecosystems are, at their
| best, about communities putting together projects to serve
| their own needs and then generously sharing those solutions
| out.
|
| I think an easily discoverable UI for non-technical people is
| not a problem that many technical communities have. Anyone
| who does try to start that project is signing themselves up
| for a lot of complaints from outside the project, almost by
| definition. I don't really see why anyone would do it.
|
| The Chromebook is probably the right way to go. I'd recommend
| them to my non-technical friends if they weren't designed by
| an ad company. As it is, I have no idea, there legitimately
| doesn't seem to be a good desktop OS for non-technical users
| anymore.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I installed Linux for my parents and they use their laptop a
| lot more. I did no proselitizing.
| overgard wrote:
| I think the end result is less people using the desktop overall
| (ie, just relying on tablets and phones), which in my opinion
| is a catastrophe since phones and tablets are generally
| consumption devices rather than creative devices (sorry, I'm
| not counting selfies or tiktoks), and we're slowly dumbing down
| the next generation.
| earlone wrote:
| Yes agree. I started using Linux (Gentoo) as student 20 years
| ago to learn LKMs programming, and with my main Desktop being
| Windows currently, I give a new try to linux distros every
| year. I see Linux distros improve year after year, but they are
| still light years away from providing a good user experience.
| And even if I don't agree with many Windows 11 updates (like
| the cumulating number of services required to run user
| interfaces, the taskbar which can't be moved anymore, the
| bloatware by default and so on...), Windows still provides a
| better & smoother user experience overall. Even Desktop
| multitasking experience feels better engineered in Windows,
| probably because of a better Desktop processes timing.
| Solvency wrote:
| How has had the entirety of the open source developer
| community not managed to make even a mediocre step forward in
| UI/UX of even the biggest Linux distro?l in 20 years? Hell,
| even Blender has made big strides and I thought that'd be
| impossible.
| rocqua wrote:
| Blender is unique in having a big set of users who are
| actually good at aesthetics professionally. A subset of
| that group wanted to contribute, and the technically minded
| were actually willing to let them.
|
| Most other open source projects have people behind them who
| don't put UX first, and who are suspicious, jealous, or
| plain disagree when people want to help with UX.
|
| This shouldn't be too surprising in a world led by people
| who value technical excellence most.
| earlone wrote:
| The bottleneck regarding UI/UX was (and is still) X11 /
| Xorg, with the obsolete client/server architecture
| inherited from a time when computers had no graphic card.
| Wayland has been in progress for some time now to replace
| X11 / Xorg, but it is still bugged to some extend, and
| driver support needs to be improved.
| slooonz wrote:
| > they are still light years away from providing a good user
| experience
|
| I really don't get this. All modern desktop environment (OSX,
| Windows, KDE, Gnome) looks like very similar in terms of user
| experience quality to me. All are different, true, which is
| why I can understand will exists. But I will very hard
| pressed to justify "actually, x is better than y" (yet alone
| "light years away"), for any pair (x, y).
|
| Can you name just three deal-breakers, things so huge that
| they deserve that "light years away" judgement ?
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I used Ubuntu on my laptops from 2008 to 2023. Last year I
| switched to Windows 10. Looking at what's going on, I believe
| I'll be back to Ubuntu in my next laptop. Cycles...
| jseliger wrote:
| It may be true that Linux on the desktop is finally here, but I
| used to read about that on /. in the late '90s and early '00s,
| and people talk about it occasionally on HN.
|
| Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't, but like
| 25 / 0 of the last "Linux is taking over the desktop" moments
| have been predicted.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Linux have been usable as a daily driver for at least the
| past ten years (exhibit: my mom), and with Proton it has even
| become usable for gaming.
|
| For people above 60 who've spent two decades using windows,
| Linux Mint has even shown to be more manageable than jumping
| to a newer version of Windows.
| amlib wrote:
| I think by this point Linux desktop has matured enough that
| you can say with certain that the biggest problems is
| application availability.
|
| Users want to run Adobe's creative suite or Affinity software
| (because they have to, even tough there are some decent
| alternatives) or run some very specific
| Scientific/CAD/whatever software that has no parallel in the
| Linux world. Worse, sometimes its hard to get Linux native
| software to run on your choice of distro due to it not being
| available in your distro repositories yet (flatpaks are
| changing that but still not a perfect solution) or it being
| some proprietary software that was really only tested on some
| old version of Readhat meant for high end workstations which
| requires you to run some arcane scripts on the command line
| to install and therefore tainting your whole installation,
| kinda defeating the purpose of running away from messy
| Windows installations.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I understand that there are closed source software tools
| used in science out there, but it seems pretty wrong-headed
| to me. A scientific tool that doesn't have exposed source
| code seems not very trustworthy. If you get unexpected
| results, how do you know it wasn't a bug?
| amlib wrote:
| I was just citing it as an example, I wouldn't advocate
| for such thing nor do I know really how common this
| happens.
| tormeh wrote:
| Linux is usable now, but it's not preinstalled for personal
| use and not approved for corporate use. That's the current
| issue.
| treprinum wrote:
| I can't get Ubuntu working well on my Zephyrus G14 4090. They
| seem to have dropped the ball...
| chucky_z wrote:
| Try Pop_OS. I had a lot of issues with Ubuntu as a daily
| driver, however Pop seems to have cracked the code.
|
| Fedora has also worked OK for me in the past.
| oDot wrote:
| Always useful to look at the seemingly endless stream of
| Linux information, the Arch wiki:
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ASUS_ROG_Zephyrus_G14_(2022.
| ..
|
| Also NixOS has a nixos-hardware repository with
| configurations for some laptops:
|
| https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-
| hardware/tree/master/asus/zep...
|
| Reasonably legible if you ever programmed anything
| markles wrote:
| I've always preferred Mint over Ubuntu itself. It runs better
| and seems to drain the battery on my laptop more slowly.
| Cinnamon is a nice and simple DE, though I usually use Plasma.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm curious if you'd get a working Ubuntu install in WSL2 for
| all your "serious" need and rely on Windows mostly for the more
| mundane bits.
| doawoo wrote:
| I really agree with this article- I used Windows as my primary OS
| (not counting work machines) until about 2 years ago, the mess of
| non coherent design and CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences
| every update (like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my
| taskbar) ultimately lead me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new
| personal machine.
|
| Never looked back. I only boot up windows for occasional games
| now, and even then, old games started to stop working. Linux at
| this point has better backwards compatibility using
| Proton/Wine/etc.
| charles_f wrote:
| Those things, and the performance. My surface laptop is 3y old,
| constantly lagging on windows, but as good as new on Linux.
| epolanski wrote:
| I really don't care about design to be honest but the fact that
| update after updte they keep changing where you find things and
| how they work pisses me off so much.
|
| The good thing is that powertoys and WSL2 at the end of the day
| compensate for me enough.
|
| But get into setting up some bluetooth device and you want to
| cry if it doesn't work at first shot. You want to find help
| online? Pretty much all guides speak about the same OS like
| Windows 10, and yet they are already outdated with everything
| having been moved away.
| hypothesis wrote:
| > CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences every update (like
| shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar) ultimately lead
| me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new personal machine.
|
| Boy are you going to be disappointed when you discover that
| settings reset quite aggressively, especially in cases where
| Apple _really_ thinks it knows better.
|
| Want to keep bluetooth off? Both iPhone and macs will not
| abide.
|
| Want to keep your passwords in local keychain? Nah, they will
| be automatically migrated to cloud keychain on next upgrade.
| throwawaymedic wrote:
| I'm guessing you must be referring to something niche?
| [parent post kindly edited to add examples]
|
| I've been using macs since 2012 and never had any setting
| change on me.
| hypothesis wrote:
| I do not know what is niche here, but I added couple
| examples from latest upgrade.
|
| Are they just not testing what some options do? If so, we
| might be better off just not giving those options.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| iOS has a "feature" where wifi and Bluetooth will switch
| itself back on after a set period of time if you use
| control center to turn it off. If you use settings it
| behaves as you would expect.
| hypothesis wrote:
| I'm aware of that feature, but using proper option in
| settings will not retain off position after next OS
| update, which is what OP was discussing. This happens
| _every_ update, so I'm quite sure it's by design.
| wl wrote:
| A warning for anyone who is using local keychain: Don't.
| Either give in to iCloud keychain or use a different secrets
| manager.
|
| If you're using a Mac with a T1 or T2 security coprocessor or
| Apple Silicon, your local keychain can only be decrypted with
| a key stored in those chips. Your backups are useless. I
| figured this out the hard way when an Apple depot repair for
| a failed display flex somehow ended up with my logic board
| getting replaced as well. After reimaging from backup (SSD
| was integrated on the logic board), the keychain was
| unreadable and I lost several accounts without recovery
| options. AppleCare's response was, well, you should have
| backed up your files, even though I had...
| hypothesis wrote:
| A fair warning, but I similarly lost a secret after
| transferring to a new iPhone, even while using 3rd party
| password manager. Said manager likely used secure enclave
| and thus failed to work on new phone. Failure was very
| quiet, not even an error or anything, it just stopped
| generating codes.
|
| I was able to restore it through external means, but this
| reinforced "have a non-proprietary backups" for me.
| doawoo wrote:
| Oh no company is perfect that's for sure. I don't use
| anything deep integrated stuff like the iCloud Keychain, I
| mainly use my own password manager of choice etc.
|
| The iOS Bluetooth/wifi never bothered me personally because I
| use those all the time anyway. Of course everyone's use case
| is gonna differ, but for me macOS is far from doing things
| like pushing huge full page "finish setting up edge" or "buy
| office" when I log in so, I'm happy.
| o11c wrote:
| I for one have stopped supporting Windows for friends and
| family. The last version I used myself was XP, but I could
| still muddle around to help people with later versions for a
| long time. Now I can't.
|
| At least the move to using web browsers for everything really
| eases migration to easier platforms.
| screenobobeano wrote:
| The thing is users have no choice, it makes a complete mockery
| of computer programming as a profession. The people that were
| quality oriented lost the people selling licenses won.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| > like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar
|
| searching for apps in the Windows menu used to take less than a
| second. Now it takes 5-10 seconds to fetch crap from the
| internet (ads and bing results), and mix it with local results.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| And don't forget the never ending Sisyphean hell of trying to
| quickly jump to settings. Windows 7 NAILED this and 10 was
| mostly fine at it, but 11 has completely fucked the dog with
| this in particular, especially since all your PC's settings
| are now situated across three different locations, any of
| which can seemingly change things at the same time.
| nicce wrote:
| The search also used to find things. Not anymore...
| calamari4065 wrote:
| I even went and disabled web search in the registry and it
| still takes forever.
|
| It's also _terrible_. "Fr" will find FreeCAD, the program I
| want. "Fre" pulls up "advanced system settings" because
| there's some subsection about free disk space. "Free" brings
| back FreeCAD.
|
| Every single thing I do that involves any level of
| interaction with Windows has found some way of pissing me
| off.
| mizzao wrote:
| Yep, locally installed programs sometimes don't even show up
| anymore when I press WinKey + <string> because whatever ad
| server they're running on the backend doesn't respond and it
| hangs the search.
| juujian wrote:
| Meanwhile, Linux keeps getting better and better. I used to run
| Ubuntu 15 years ago, then went back to Windows for a while for
| software and because Windows 7 was _okish_. Now I 'm back, and
| while Ubuntu may not be as good as it was 15 years ago, debian
| and other distributions are great, and getting awesome new
| releases left and right. Smartphone connectibility with KDE
| connect has blown me away. It's and interesting trajectory
| right now.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Never looked back
|
| From 2 years ago, I think you're still somewhat in the
| honeymoon period.
|
| The real fun begins when they rewrite system apps in a new
| framework, and kill the mechanism your favorite system
| extension was using.
| doawoo wrote:
| I'm not new to macOS by any means, used it for work for far
| more than 2 years - so I do know this pain, but I'm not a
| huge system extension user so I'm probably an outlier
| nikanj wrote:
| Nobody gets a good performance review for keeping a time-tested
| design. Rewriting everything is the key to career progress
| epolanski wrote:
| Bingo. Many people need to justify their role in an
| organization so they need to just deliver anything even if
| harmful.
|
| Most companies I've worked with are full of similar projects,
| rebrandings, major rewrites in micro services, everywhere I
| look at from UI to tech to product there's always a huge bunch
| of people needing to show they are actually delivering and
| working.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| If only, the worst thing about Windows was that its control
| panels were inconsistent. Leaving aside "predictably treacherous"
| MSFT behavior. </weyoun>
| alerighi wrote:
| I think that Windows was kind of usable till Windows 7. Windows
| 10 was not that bad from a performance point of view, an
| improvement over Windows 7, but it had a ton of bloatware that
| you had to clean up with third party applications, after it it
| was kind of ok.
|
| Anyway, I use Linux and to me Windows is so far behind, for
| example only in recent years they introduced features such as
| virtual desktops that in Linux DE are present till the 90s... the
| user experience of windows is kind of bad, and still misses some
| (to me) basic features, such as the possibility to keep a window
| always on top, not to mention the mess that is installing and
| updating software (you still have to download programs from the
| internet because not even all Microsoft software is distributed
| trough the Microsoft store, or use third-party package managers),
| or the Windows updates themself (possible that in 2024 Microsoft
| or Apple still haven't found out a way to update the system
| without rebooting it and wasting a ton of time? I mean, come
| on...).
| hkgirjenk wrote:
| Every week when I SSH into my Ubuntu server I see a "System
| restart is required" message after installing updates.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Wasn't 7 the one people liked vs the previous version Windows,
| Vista? I remember windows 7 being popular until about Windows
| 10 or so. Lots of people think Windows 7 was the last good
| Windows version (at least from my memory).
| conradfr wrote:
| You had virtual desktops with powertoys on Windows XP.
|
| There's also one for Always on top, or the freeware Turbotop.
| JALTU wrote:
| Enterprise Windows is a cash cow, lock-in is perhaps...forever;
| long MSFT. (Typing this on one of my three Macs.)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Hate to break it to you, OSX/Mac are just the same cash cow
| with proprietary vendor lock-ins for forever.
|
| Unless that was the irony you were pointing out. Good show.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| OS X works well especially with the hardware it was co-
| designed with. The only other option is an idealistic Linux,
| which still isn't suitable for most people, so grandma moved
| from Windows to OSX, and never looked back.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > OS X works well especially with the hardware it was co-
| designed with.
|
| Only while they continue to support it. It may work well
| now but when they stop supporting it; it's proprietary,
| it's dead.
|
| When they fully move away from Intel based support, all
| those without the latest platform will be dead in the
| water.
|
| "Your not running the latest secure version of OSX! -- Your
| running an Intel? Sorry we don't support that".
|
| As which that can be seen with old iPhones and iOS.
| amlib wrote:
| Case in point, if I was running Apple hardware from
| 2011~2014 I would be out of support for quite a few years
| already with massively outdated hardware, Apple puts
| their customers on a MUCH faster treadmill to keep
| upgrading often. But instead my _daily drivers_ 13 year
| old Thinkpad X220 and both my 10 year old 4th gen haswell
| i7 PCs keep trucking along. It's easy enough to fix,
| upgrade and have access to ALL current software. Not only
| that but one of those machines perform just as good if
| not better than a PS5, so I can still play any game I
| want at a respectable fidelity and performance. Also, not
| running Windows helps keep the bloat overhead at bay.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Would you be better off with windows? I actually still
| have Apple hardware that old that I still use. Yes, Apple
| doesn't fix it anymore, but no, I never needed Apple to
| fix it before. I guess it doesn't get OS updates, but so
| what? It just works, the only thing I want I is no hassle
| computers, and that's what I get with Apple hardware.
| nickelpro wrote:
| This is basically an article by a guy angry that the UI for
| printers changed and predicting the end of the Windows empire
| based on that.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Accurate as every other week's predicting of Microsoft's
| impeding doom from users who don't like Windows in the past 30
| years.
|
| - 1995. _wah, wah!_ Windows 95 sucks, it 's so bloated, MS-DOS
| was so much lighter, this will be the end of Microsoft.
|
| - 2001. _wah, wah!_ Windows XP sucks, it 's just a bloated
| Windows 2000 with Fisher Price coloring, this will be the end
| of Microsoft.
|
| ....
|
| - 2021. _wah, wah!_ Windows 11 sucks, it 's just a bloated
| Windows 10 with a different UX and TPM requirement, this will
| be the end of Microsoft.
|
| Maybe in 30 more years, when PCs will be in museums as we'll
| all have AR glasses or neural implants for personal computing,
| they'll finally be right with their prediction.
| Lammy wrote:
| Where's the lie though
| overgard wrote:
| Well in 2013 Windows had a 90% market share for desktop PC's,
| and now it's evidently down to 69%... so yeah, I'd say they
| have a problem.
|
| (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-
| market-sha... )
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| What problem? In 2013 Microsoft only had 2-3 big products,
| Windows, Office and X-Box. Now it's significantly more
| divested and the company's growth no longer depends on
| Windows' success or failure, and the stock pricing reflects
| that.
| overgard wrote:
| So, you're saying that losing 21% of their OS market
| share by actively pissing off their customers shouldn't
| be seen as a problem? OS stagnation would be an
| improvement compared to what they're currently doing.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Why is having even bigger market share so important?
| Android has bigger market share than iOS too yet iOS is
| the more profitable one. Microsoft cares about profit
| first, not unprofitable market share.
|
| Not saying they're right or wrong, just saying it seems
| to be working for their bottom line as Windows is less
| relevante towards that as the PC market has been in a
| continuous decline anyway in the last decade.
|
| Fighting to capture more % of a declining market seems
| like a fool's errand, when they have bigger fish to fry
| now.
| dijit wrote:
| why is being unable to maintain market share _not_ an
| issue?
|
| Because of revenue? a large seller of windows is
| genuinely just it's market cap, it doesn't really have a
| lot of killer utility compared to contemporaries. If it
| loses market cap then it's a precipitous issue for them
| as there's no point choosing the OS for other reasons, it
| simply lacks the value.
|
| It's market cap comes from people thinking it has a huge
| audience and so tailoring software for that audience and
| putting significant resources into that. Without that
| third-party effort: windows is toast.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> why is being unable to maintain market share not an
| issue? _
|
| Because unless you're from the 90's, the market for
| desktop operating systems is not one that generates a lot
| of revenue anymore. That's like laughing at Netflix for
| loosing DVD rental market share to Blockbuster.
|
| _> Because of revenue?_
|
| See my comment above. Microsoft makes a fuck tonne of
| revenue from services no matter if your company doesn't
| buy Windows PCs. If they buy Macs, they'll still pay
| Microsoft subscription fees for Office 365, Outlook,
| OneDrive, Azure, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc. and soon Copilot
| AI stuff. All these are platform agnostic and way more
| profitable for them than selling more Windows licenses.
| dijit wrote:
| office365 will die without windows, it's genuinely
| terrible on every non-windows platform and onedrive is
| objectively worse than alternatives too.
|
| Office365 subscriptions are propping up azure numbers,
| without them their cloud business looks shit, and azure
| itself is often only used because "we are a microsoft
| shop", it's all inertia.
| overgard wrote:
| You're kind of missing the point, which is that they
| obviously are putting a lot of effort in (we're talking
| about changes they're making, not stagnation), and
| actively making things worse. And in doing so they're
| objectively losing customers. This isn't like the
| situation where they just stopped updating IE6. They're
| clearly investing in Windows and doing an AWFUL job. If I
| were an investor I would be calling for change in the
| Windows division.
| Fervicus wrote:
| I don't think it's the same. I have been a Windows user all
| my life. Bloat and bad UX changes is one thing, but this is
| the first time I feel like I am having to actively fight the
| OS against showing me ads and dark practices like changing
| user preferences unbeknownst to me.
| trealira wrote:
| Mainly because
|
| - There's so much existing software for Windows on x86
| computers that it may not be feasible to migrate to MacOS or
| Linux.
|
| - Windows does improve sometimes, and security updates are
| important. There's nothing forcing anyone to stop using
| Windows, like if it were abandoned.
|
| But just because it hasn't happened so far doesn't mean it
| won't. MacOS market share has risen. Windows used to have 85%
| market share, but now it's 53%, and MacOS accounts for 31% of
| US desktop systems.[0] Perhaps that's just because the
| desktop market shrank, though.
|
| Maybe in the future, 64-bit ARM Macs will be the standard
| workstation like Windows PCs, with a minority running Linux
| on their Macs instead. I don't like that future, though; as
| much as Windows sucks, at least they don't try to limit user
| freedom to the extent Apple does. If Windows stopped being
| profitable to continue for Microsoft, I'd hope another
| company would rise up and sell their own operating system.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/3695172/statcounter-
| da...
|
| edit: It _was_ 53% when the article was written. The
| statistics they link say it 's now 64%.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Except that too much wah wah will eventually tank a company -
| even the size of Microsoft
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| And when will that happen? In 30 more years?
| naasking wrote:
| He's not angry that it changed, he's angry that the new
| settings interface doesn't let him fix the issue at all, and
| while he used to be able to easily access the old interface so
| he could fix it the old way, MS has now hidden that ability
| too. If not for some user-hostile magical incantation, printing
| would have been permanently broken. Who wouldn't be seriously
| annoyed with this situation? How many non-technical users would
| have chucked a perfectly good printer because of a poorly
| executed software change? The Windows control panel UI
| transition has been a serious boondoggle from the start.
| nickelpro wrote:
| The article doesn't specify what the issue was, neither you
| or I can say what the best way to fix the problem would be,
| if it required something specific of the old panel unable to
| be accessed via more appropriate or modern tooling.
|
| I suspect this is on purpose.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Well I still need to access the good old control panel each
| time I long on to a new machine, since the new settings app
| thing still doesn't have all the regional settings.
|
| Quite basic stuff, at least it's still available in the old
| control panel for now.
| lencastre wrote:
| A long time ago there was a video (or was it audio) of a really
| angry dude ranting about this and that and in the end he
| exclaims: I can't print. And that is the punch line, his life
| was miserable and the root of the problem was printing.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Printers have been this evil hellhole of driver support for a
| decade or more, compared to other devices.
|
| These days, I print so little I either stop at my local
| library, where printing is free, or I pay a pittance to print
| at a shop. It would take me a decade or more to pay off a
| printer when pages cost $.10.
| tigerlily wrote:
| Someone should mash this with retro encabulator to create an
| infomercial to showcase the ease of printing to various
| devices on Linux desktop.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Yep. My first reaction was printer issue? Riiight, that's
| definitely going to be the large market issue driving ppl away.
| People _like_ the blackbox OS that doesn 't do anything. It's
| not good for IT, but neither is Mac OS!
| overgard wrote:
| Every Windows user I know hates the new control panels. (I use
| plural because they've been trying to replace the actual good
| control panel basically every version of Windows since 7 and
| it's an incredible mess). Enterprise users put up with Windows
| because it's better to administrate than anything else, so
| taking away that stuff really is murdering windows.
| nickelpro wrote:
| I did enterprise administration of Windows boxes, ~400 seats.
|
| We did not manually muck with control panels per station. I
| could not care less what the settings UIs for home installs
| of Windows are.
|
| And that's the real truth, power users and these small fry IT
| install bases are not major markets. The most prominent
| markets are OEM installs for non-technical home users (who
| hate complex panels and love the push-button UIs), and large
| 3/4/5 digit enterprise installs that do not give a damn about
| this stuff because they're using MDT (or whatever) to deploy
| images to all their stations and not playing with this per-
| station configuration stuff.
| overgard wrote:
| I dunno man, with Steam on linux and most of the major game
| engines making porting easy (or at least moving in that
| direction) I have very few reasons to stick with Windows
| anymore. At this point it's basically Photoshop and Fusion
| 360, otherwise I'd abandon it completely. If they lose
| gamers, I think they'll have a real issue.
| nickelpro wrote:
| You're a power user unable to understand the needs of
| non-power users.
|
| We all go through that stage, it's natural.
|
| I once installed Linux on all my siblings' desktops
| because I had convinced my parents it would lead to "less
| viruses" (Fedora 13, I think, GNOME 2, those were the
| days). The nightmare of providing support for that over
| the rest of my high school years provided me with a
| powerful and important lesson.
|
| _You_ have few reasons to stick with Windows, you are a
| very, very tiny droplet in an ocean of users with
| different needs than you. Judging what such markets will
| do based on your personal needs is unwise.
| overgard wrote:
| Here's the thing though, the desktop now really is about
| power users or corporate users, because everyone else
| just uses cell phones or tablets. So ok, sure, your sales
| people and your secretaries probably aren't going to care
| about the control panel, but people that use computers
| outside of work are mostly going to be power users and
| they're starting to have options. (I can use all the
| software I need on macOS, and linux is rapidly getting
| there too)
|
| And honestly, breaking Printers is a thing that
| _everyone_ is going to care about, especially people in a
| workplace.
| nickelpro wrote:
| As explained above this is irrelevant to enterprise
| users, corpo installs don't play with per-station
| configuration like this or care about consumer-facing
| UIs, the needs of that market revolve around things like
| image management, deployment, and active directory
| administration.
|
| You're right that the home market is shrinking though,
| the OEM install market is down billions in revenue and
| has been dropping by double digit percentages each fiscal
| year, but you're wrong in your assumption that the power
| user market is worth anything. Power users, represented
| by direct license installs, are a rounding error of
| Windows revenue. There's nothing worth fighting for
| there.
|
| Convincing Mom that she should buy a Windows laptop
| instead of an Apple laptop is still worth ~$750M/Q, and
| Mom doesn't ever want to see the old Windows panels, she
| loves the "Add Printer" button. Convincing Timmy Q Hacker
| that he should buy a Windows license key instead of
| installing Arch Linux is worth squat.
| overgard wrote:
| I think you're overestimating the importance of the
| revenue generated and underestimating the importance of
| mindshare and people caring about their system. If the
| next generation of creators (IE, coders, designers, etc.)
| grow up on macOS and linux then Microsoft has a real
| problem down the line. The Windows monopoly has been VERY
| good to them, they would be foolish to lose it by
| angering their most passionate users even if in the short
| term they don't see an effect on their bottom line.
| nickelpro wrote:
| > I think you're overestimating the importance of the
| revenue generated
|
| It is literally impossible to do this. Revenue is the
| only thing that matters when measuring markets. If it
| doesn't affect the bottom line, it does not matter.
|
| Passion does not sell OEM installs or license keys.
| Creators and hackers didn't buy MS products in
| appreciable numbers to begin with (compared to consumer
| and enterprise markets), so to the degree MS can be said
| to be losing them, MS does not care. If moms and
| humanities majors stopped buying laptops entirely and
| that $750M/Q dropped to the ~$1M/Q the power users drive,
| MS would pull out of the OEM license market entirely.
|
| This is a very different mindset about how businesses
| operate than you seem to share, which is fine, I'm
| explaining it not trying to convert you to it.
| hackerlight wrote:
| How was the old school control panel not better for non
| power users? Everything in one compact and intuitive
| display with understandable icons and a description of
| the icon in the English language. I'm confused when I try
| to change or navigate settings in Windows 10 or in modern
| apps in general where there's an array of icons with no
| description. I can memorize what the hamburger means but
| beyond that is too much!
| nickelpro wrote:
| You haven't worked in IT with "truly" non-technical
| people if you're asking this question (yes, No True
| Scotsman fallacy, I know).
|
| They never opened such panels, they don't read error
| messages, they just say "the printer doesn't work". If
| the "Add Printer" button doesn't work it's all over for
| them. The only thing you can do is make the "Add Printer"
| button as good as possible.
|
| The least common denominator is so much lower than you
| think it is. It's why Jobs and Timmy Apple worked so hard
| to eliminate the concept of the "file system" and make
| everything built around the concept of the "app". These
| abstractions that seem intuitive to power users and
| technical people are nonsense to the much larger market
| of push-button users, and that's where all the money is
| outside B2B enterprise.
| rolph wrote:
| things are happening:
|
| https://www.gimp.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP
|
| https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-
| Linux
|
| https://gist.github.com/probonopd/0fab254aa0b6fc371d8db64
| 182...
|
| https://www.freecad.org/
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBF I don't think there's any control panels people are in
| love with.
|
| Apart from the issue of needing control panels mostly to
| solve problems, they're just not great.
|
| Windows legendarily keeps multiple versions of them, while
| for ios/macos it's a game of finding which image is actually
| a clickable button or understanding that wi-fi hotspot is
| under sharing and not networks. The FA was about command line
| incantation to fix printers and of course at every new macos
| version there will be a set of new defaults to get back
| behaviors. I think that's just the way of life at this point.
| overgard wrote:
| Sure, but here's the thing, all they really have to do
| is... nothing. Just leave the old control panel alone and
| stop making new ones. Make small evolutions, not redesigns.
| It might not have been brilliant, but once people learned
| where things were there's very little upside to changing it
| and all sorts of downside.
| rolph wrote:
| On Tuesday, I had a printer issue at a client site and I was
| going to pull up the "Devices and Printers" panel to manage the
| drives and printing default settings. In the most recent 22H2
| Windows 11 update, they hid it!
|
| Using old Control Panel (Start->Run->control)
|
| Clicking on this will redirect you to the new settings printer
| that gives NO options to do any advanced troubleshooting and
| removes the ability to FIX the issue!
| rr808 wrote:
| DHH today on how windows is just as good as Apple now.
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/vscode-wsl-makes-windows-awesome-f...
|
| (OK he hates Apple so is pushing an alternative but a good POV)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I've posted about why I left Windows, and wont be back, the only
| device with Windows is my Surface Book 2, and even that I can
| install Linux on...
|
| I have mentioned it a few times on HN in the past few weeks, but
| I already hated the telemetry spying, heck, it was creepy that me
| looking up files on my one computer was on their servers
| somewhere, so I wiped all that many years ago. Then I realized,
| their Antivirus tech will send files to "analyze" with zero audit
| trail as to which files, or anything of the sort. I immediately
| pulled down POP OS and wiped my drive. You shouldn't be sending
| my data around willy nilly without an audit trail. What if I'm
| working on something classified? What if its highly proprietary?
| This is so unethical on many levels.
|
| The article also mentions some issues I've run into, where their
| UI is just not working correctly, which led to me uninstalling
| Windows one time prior as well, I had Windows Home Edition after
| spending thousands of dollars on a prebuilt machine, I tried to
| add a new user, it told me to use a different program, so I went
| to the different program, which then told me to go back to the
| program that told me to use that specific program. Why not just
| let me add users instead of horsing me around? I uninstalled
| Windows on that box, until I wanted to play Starfield, I got
| enough hours in until I saw that their AV software violates any
| sense of privacy on a whim with zero audit trail.
|
| Microsoft. You had a really good OS, and you keep making it
| worse. Please stop making it worse. I'll gladly take on the task
| at half of whatever you pay the person currently ruining the OS,
| which is clearly way too much. You peaked at Windows 7 and its
| been downhill since. I am someone who weirdly enough did not mind
| Vista or 8, but I will admit that 7 was the peak best version.
|
| Previous comments I've made on the subject:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39444688
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39371870
| Solvency wrote:
| Every single time I wake up my computer from sleep the Edge
| browser opens up in full screen. I have as many Edge settings
| disable as possible, Chrome is my default browser, and there are
| no keyboard shortcuts that could possibly open it.
|
| It doesn't matter if I press the spacebar, click my mouse, etc.
| No matter how the PC awakes, Edge launches itself in full view on
| top of the other apps.
|
| It's blatantly aggravating stuff like this that pisses me off
| even more than spying telemetry.
| netsharc wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, tasks defined in Task Scheduler can be set
| to run at system wake, so maybe look at your tasks... I'd be
| worried about something configured to load a URL (i.e. call
| home) on every system wake.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >hey are making some improvements like the GUI and cleaning up
| other elements that give a more cohesive look. No more mixing
| Metro UI and Legacy panels like Windows 10
|
| I don't even think this is wholly true. The new / old context
| menu that for some reason now exists in parallel so you have to
| do two clicks on every right-click actions still mixes legacy and
| modern UI, and there's so many redundant mouse control and audio
| control settings also with entirely different look and feel. It's
| like you're on three Windows operating systems at the same time.
|
| Baffling to me how a company the size of Microsoft cannot
| streamline their user interfaces.
| hkgirjenk wrote:
| The new two stages desktop context menu is indeed insane.
| Probably "we need to give it a new look, but we can't risk
| breaking anything, so let's keep the old one too".
| erremerre wrote:
| I tried changing myself to linux (Fedora) and I still had
| problems with a Realtek ALC892 for audio, which is a chip from 12
| years ago. No solution other than buy a soundcard with a
| different chip.
|
| Unfortunately, we still be using windows.
|
| Curiously the game were working quite fine as long as I was using
| x11.
| ajkjk wrote:
| what's a soundcard?
|
| (being flippant but also.. Yeah why?)
| quadcore wrote:
| What drives me mad is my lean 2023 windows laptop suddenly making
| noise because some installer or whatever started. If that was
| occasional, that'd be okay.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Microsoft has been driving users away for no less than 10 years
| now and nothing much is changing IMO because Windows is what most
| people think of as "the computer". Non-technical users think they
| have no other choice, they shrug the defects off and try to get
| their job done.
|
| Though the article kind of piqued my interest by claiming that
| Microsoft "is in panic" -- any proof that they are indeed
| bleeding users more than what is deemed normal?
|
| I have noticed people around me get recommended Linux Mint and
| being happy with it but I'd think that's a minority; many offices
| rely on bespoke local network setups with printers and scanners
| and people putting files in shared directories and what-not...
| modernizing that and making it better is no easy feat.
|
| EDIT: Oh, and as other users are saying, Linux desktop is
| absolutely not going to eat Windows' lunch. There are still too
| many confusing things there, and "you can hack it and make it
| your own" appeal to an infinitesimally small audience.
| Swizec wrote:
| > any proof that they are indeed bleeding users more than what
| is deemed normal?
|
| They are, but not to other OSes. More and more people associate
| computers with something you use for work (and work provides)
| or for school (and school provides). All personal computing
| happens on a phone.
|
| My partner, for example, uses her personal laptop about once a
| year to do taxes. Otherwise it sits in the closet.
|
| Even I use an iPad for most personal work these days. Laptop is
| mostly for personal coding projects for which I have less and
| less time as life adultifies.
|
| I know a lot of people who don't even have a personal computer
| anymore and just use the work laptop the few times their phone
| isn't good enough.
| rincebrain wrote:
| Really, among people under 25, a lot of them see "the phone" as
| the computer, and treat using desktops as a burden any time it
| happens.
| bhewes wrote:
| This i find fun to watch as they sit down at a desktop and co
| work together through the desktop interface.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. All they had
| to do was not not change things, but they continued to force junk
| on me that I don't need, take power away from me, and spy on me.
| Honestly MacOS isn't much better. Linux is still crap software,
| but we've reached the point where most things can be done on
| Linux, so good riddance. I hope that more people switch and Linux
| continues to improve. There's actually interesting improvements
| being made in the Linux world too, like NixOS.
| Animats wrote:
| > It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows.
|
| It is. At Windows 7, they pretty much had desktops right.
| Everything mostly worked. They'd finally fixed the crashing
| problems. (How? The Static Driver Verifier validated that
| third-party kernel drivers would not crash the rest of the
| system, and a classifier applied to crash dumps routed similar
| crash dumps to the same maintainer.) The UI was reasonable for
| a desktop, and wasn't a clone of the mobile UI. No ads. Didn't
| phone home too much, and you could turn off auto-update. No
| issues with installing your own software.
|
| Then Microsoft tried to make desktop look like mobile and
| tablet. Desktop began to look like a big phone, optimized for
| content consumption and fat finger selection. The result was
| something that was neither a good desktop nor a good content
| consumption device.
| Solvency wrote:
| Everyone loves to use the meme "enshittification" but fat
| fingerization started the whole downward trend. In fact, most
| UI is designed for a big fat doughy hand to sloppily slap a
| single giant rounded button.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I sat near an administrator who loudly cursed all day,
| because they force that gui down upon all system internal
| tools and ruined the info-density of the dashboards.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > you could turn off auto-update
|
| I would not mess with that bit these days
| quantified wrote:
| When you have things about as good as they'll reasonably get,
| having a group as large as that dev organization going full
| throttle is more likely to make things worse. From the top of
| the mountain all directions are down.
| tux1968 wrote:
| > I hope that more people switch
|
| It's reached a point where it no longer really matters. Linux
| is good enough, usable enough, and supported enough, that
| getting more users won't change much. It might actually be
| worse if a lot more users, with a lot of wide-ranging needs and
| demands, switch to Linux. At least, I am happy with the current
| state of Linux usability, and no longer care to evangelize the
| benefits of being free of a walled garden and adware platform.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I have a hard time imagining a world where Linux is used in a
| more diverse set of operating environments than it already
| is.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Linux is good enough, but in terms of stability and
| performance for user applications, it sucks compared to
| Windows and MacOS. There really isn't a company or
| organization that focuses on that, besides maybe Valve. We
| need more attention on it, for our own sanity, but most of
| the money is in enterprise servers.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Internal promotion-point systems similar to google decouple
| large companies from customer demands and reactions. One huge
| hamster-wheel producing unwanted features and deprecating the
| one thing that kept windows valuable, the customers are already
| trained in to the operating system when they enter the
| workforce.
| npteljes wrote:
| People won't change, because people don't use their PC for the
| OS. This is why it's important to have systems that bundle
| Linux, for example, with the UX worked out as much as possible,
| like how it is on the Steam Deck.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The criticisms in this thread center around user interface and
| userland software issues. What about kernels.
|
| Often I see people claim the Linux kernel is too large and it
| is too difficult to remove code from it.
|
| How large is the NT kernel. We know that there is lots of
| graphical interface garbage in there now to make up for
| performance issues as Windows became more and more bloated. But
| would it be easier in theory to remove code from the NT kernel.
|
| Just curious.
|
| (I rely on neither, personally. NetBSD is the kernel I prefer.
| When I compile it, it is smaller than popular web browsers and
| mobile apps.)
| Animats wrote:
| "To Access the old devices and printer use the run prompt and
| type the following:
|
| shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}"
|
| And people complain about Linux.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| That's something I've noticed over the years. More and more of
| Windows debugging and configuration is happening on the
| (various) command line terminals. You're even starting to see
| it with official Microsoft installers.
| rocqua wrote:
| It's where developers are learning. Most of my learning was
| done on a (Linux) command line. Making things usable on the
| command line makes sense to people like me.
| amluto wrote:
| It has tiers these days. You might need the new settings
| thingy (is it still called a "charm"? I hope not) or the
| control panel or MSC (which you might need to start from
| Win+R or the command line) or actually the command line.
| There seems to be no a priori way to figure out where a
| seething is.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| They changed things to hide 'less common' actions when you
| right click. To disable that you need to hand edit a registry
| key.
| dcan wrote:
| The most bizarre thing in my experience is that they removed
| "Refresh" from that context menu, yet Explorer will a) not
| update when an application writes a new file, and b) when you
| rename a file, it does not get automatically sorted.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Reminds me, recently removed a folder and explorer showed
| it still being there and you could click on it and see the
| files.
|
| I'm suspicious that they're trying to move to 'one drive'
| for the whole file system and so need to cache everything
| for reasons. Performance and also the files on your drive
| might actually be only in the cloud. IE your hard drive is
| for local caching not for storing data long term. Means
| perhaps if you save a file to disk. And then later pull the
| drive and put it on another machine those files won't
| actually be there.
|
| If true this bodes very poorly.
| suby wrote:
| I installed Windows 11 three days ago because I need to
| make Windows builds for software, this was my first
| serious attempt at using Windows since 2017. I thought I
| unchecked everything I possibly could regarding telemetry
| / cloud services, but I either missed something or they,
| without permission, uploaded all data in my users folder
| to their server. It was at almost 2 gigabytes of stuff on
| their cloud before I realized what was happening.
| Completely unacceptable to me, and a reminder for why I
| left Windows in the first place.
| lostmsu wrote:
| But why would you want to? There's a "new" (Windows 8? so 10
| years?) area in Settings.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| With the latest m2 macbook air's you actually get a significantly
| better laptop, for a lot less money, then a windows version I've
| found. Let alone the fact it just damn sexy.
|
| I got a DELL laptop from a client to be able to access their
| windows applications. I used it for coding for a bit, it was so
| painfully slow, so I switched back to my macbook air m2.
|
| I thought the Dell was just a cheap laptop, found out the retail
| price was a few 100 euros higher then my m2. I was dumbfounded a
| shitty laptop would go for those prices. (granted I have a 13
| inch, 15 inch are around the same price)
|
| The new macbook air's are really fairly priced and are sufficient
| for most professionals.
| asd88 wrote:
| I suspect Apple Silicon is still in a league of its own and
| worth every penny compared to Windows laptops.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's really the whole package. The new Qualcomm chip is
| probably not that far, but having a whole machine designed
| from top to bottom with a closed system helps taking
| advantage of every bit.
|
| The closest to that would have been the Surface line, but
| with Panos out I wouldn't bet on it.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| DELL's market is not cheap consumer machines, it's laptops and
| desktops that can run windows (macbooks could until 2 years
| ago...) and can be corporate ordered and customized at scale.
|
| If you're price shopping Lenovo or Asus would probably be
| better choices with better designs (but TBH if you're in love
| with macs you're probably in the right spot for them, I don't
| see why you'd go choose different tradeoffs)
| thiago_fm wrote:
| The issue with Windows that the HN public might have trouble to
| understand, is how bad decisions are sticky in a company with
| little to no taste like Microsoft.
|
| You can't suddenly change things and expect app developers to
| accept it like they do in OSX. This means they can't change
| Windows too much.
|
| Any new change creates lots of compromises and just slapping a
| new UI doesn't fix the underlying issue.
|
| This has been the case since forever, that's why Apple could
| survive and that's why we have Linux.
|
| It isn't worth for Microsoft for example, to change how program
| becomes initialized at system startup. What happens is that every
| program then will want to be initialized at Startup.
|
| The average windows user is used to have to close lots of garbage
| at system startup. Also dealing with pseudo-ads all around the OS
| and also edge. Changing this would probably mean less revenue and
| no corporation would prefer to delay revenue in a bad product
| that will likely never die.
|
| Mac likely wouldn't be vibrant and with so much attention to
| details if Windows didn't exist. There wouldn't be a market for
| it.
| mejutoco wrote:
| > You can't suddenly change things and expect app developers to
| accept it like they do in OSX
|
| Ads in the taskbar indicates that Microsoft has no problem
| pushing some choices.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Also, MS's primary audience for Windows is corporate IT
| departments and to a lesser extent established ISVs, while
| Apple's primary audience for *OS is end-users.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I would say the fundamental problem with Mac is paying through
| the nose for hard drive space, ram, and multiple display
| capabilities. However, like you say, Microsoft is driving users
| away with their terrible choices like forcing me bing and
| actively adding spyware to my machine, but they are far from the
| only ones doing it. Other legacy software makers like Intuit are
| actively sabotaging their software and the enshittification
| continues.
| eschaton wrote:
| Maybe people are getting what they pay for.
| overgard wrote:
| I really hate the way they're forcing their products I don't want
| on me. Stop opening things in Edge, I'm never ever going to use
| it. And stop asking me to backup folders on OneDrive, I already
| have Dropbox, I don't want it.
|
| And jesus, stop breaking the taskbar. Every major windows version
| they just make it worse. Now you can't even dock it to different
| parts of the screen. Why?!? The Windows 2000 taskbar was
| infinitely superior to this macOS dock wannabe pile of trash.
| Also, why do "widgets" always come back. It's never been a good
| idea in any OS, but it feels like we're constantly being sold on
| it. If I want the weather I'll just do a quick internet search. I
| mean, they've been trying to make this a thing since Active
| Desktop in Windows 98 and most users have never ever cared or
| wanted these things. Maybe 26 years later it's time to say that
| it's not a good idea?
| rincebrain wrote:
| A number of people really want widgets of some kinds - little
| things showing information like the time, or CPU clock, or
| battery left, or music playing.
|
| The problem becomes that A) people really want different
| presentations of information, B) something tiny and satisfying
| in the corner isn't as easy to justify as a big improvement,
| even if it is, as a big flashy thing, and C) some people get
| very upset at anything doing this at all.
|
| Look at how people got super excited about active desktop
| backgrounds, or how people used media players which turn into
| tiny widgets displaying pretty visualizations and a little bit
| of information.
|
| People want widgets, but getting a consistent design that many
| people will use without introducing so much complexity that
| most people will never bother is hard.
| overgard wrote:
| My suspicion is that it has nothing to do with what users
| want, it's just a way to sell ad space essentially. I mean
| right now my "Widgets", which I never open, evidently has a
| bunch of news sites I never look at, coupons, some casual
| games I have no interest in. It's basically a bunch of ads
| pretending to be a feature
| rincebrain wrote:
| The most current iteration is very fond of that, yes.
|
| But I was answering why people keep trying and failing to
| add the functionality long-before it was an ad space grab.
| Nition wrote:
| Windows really is a confusing mess right now. Especially the two
| different settings areas.
|
| All sorts of ridiculous stuff like Microsoft realizing people
| won't be able to find the options to turn system icons on and off
| on the Desktop anymore, so they add a tiny clickable link to a
| Bing search for how to find it
|
| If you go back to Windows 95 right now and use the interface it
| feels amazing in comparison. It feels like everything is designed
| to be both easy and productive. There's even a little Task
| Scheduler icon in the taskbar just in case maybe you want to set
| up something to run sometime. Because why not let normal users
| discover power user features? The Task Scheduler interface is
| much clearer and less intimidating than the current one.
|
| Can you imagine getting your first ever PC now and trying to
| learn Windows 11? Especially without using the Internet to find
| where everything is?
|
| That's not even mentioning the other issues
| (advertising/privacy/bloat/Microsoft account to log in...).
|
| -
|
| A while ago I decided to see if there's still local help in
| Windows and wrote down my experience.
|
| I typed 'help' into the start menu search in Windows 11. An app
| came up called Get Help.
|
| It opened with an ad banner at the top: "Increase productivity
| and collaboration all while staying organized, using a new
| meeting solution designed for small businesses. Learn More". Out
| of morbid curiosity I chose to Learn More but "We are sorry, the
| page you requested cannot be found."
|
| There were several features in Get Help beyond the primary
| feature of linking to a broken URL. You can sign in, you can rate
| your experience out of five, or you can send feedback. There is
| no Contents or Index, but there is a search box with a few
| suggested searches like 'How to install Office'. I tried
| searching 'how to copy paste' (without quotes) but "Your search
| did not match any solutions." It suggested I sign in to contact
| support. Closing the app was a little tricky because the
| minimise/maximise/close buttons are the wrong colour - white on
| pale grey. I rated my experience a 1/5, although it's 5/5 as a
| satire.
|
| Screenshot: https://imgur.com/aToMCtE
| selimnairb wrote:
| You'd think a multi-trillion dollar company would have the
| resources to properly re-do the control panel, but I guess not?
| However, even Apple can't get this right (see the unnecessary
| iOS-ification of System Preferences which to this day is a
| disorienting mess).
| shmerl wrote:
| _> Yet, both of these options are better than modern Windows
| unless you need Gaming_
|
| Linux is good for gaming. macOS is not and will never be with
| Apple's attitude.
| SHY_TUCKER wrote:
| Because I have to use Autodesk apps everyday I am forced to use
| Windows. There is not one other thing I can't do better, with a
| more efficient workflow on Linux. If ever there becomes a good
| way to run Revit on the cloud or on Wine, etc, I will throw a
| massive party.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Would Autodesk run on Crossover?
| riffic wrote:
| windows has always been garbage.
| ilikeitdark wrote:
| Microsoft...screwed up my relationship with my HP printer. Two of
| them.
|
| And don't get me started on that malware Onedrive or the
| constantly shitified Teams.
| richforrester wrote:
| It's impressive how much worse MS Teams has gotten. Genuinely
| baffling decisions on every single level in that UI...
| Takennickname wrote:
| I knew Windows was fucked when pressing WIN and searching for
| something brought up random crap from the internet instead of
| what I actually wanted. Do people at Microsoft use Windows or
| mac?
| layer8 wrote:
| The UX designers reportedly use macOS and want to make Windows
| look more like it. Management uses Windows Enterprise which
| doesn't have the ads. Everyone who cares about pre-8 Windows
| installs Open-Shell.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I am not too bothered about changes, just need Windows to run my
| PC without crashing/weird stuff or corrupting my files.
|
| All I use it for is to launch 8 programs that is pinned to my
| taskbar that is opened as soon as my PC boots.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Isnt this the MS playbook 101? Bad windows version everyone hates
| but exiting the ecosystem is hard . Juat when people start
| getting fed up they release the new same as the old version and
| everyone buys it. They make billions and people are happy until
| the next release
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Install Windows 10 LTSC - keeps you sane for a few more years. By
| then the newer Windows should hopefully be better.
| layer8 wrote:
| The last Windows 10 LTSC version (22H2) only has support until
| 2027, only two years longer than regular Windows 10.
| dijit wrote:
| unless of course you need:
|
| * Intel Arc drivers
|
| * eGPU drivers
|
| * Razer Blade 18 drivers
|
| * native ssh
|
| * windows containers
|
| * WSL
|
| (and likely many more that i haven't found yet)
| auggierose wrote:
| > macos is bland and hasn't changed in years
|
| I have the feeling Windows users are a self-selecting bunch.
| eschaton wrote:
| Yeah. Every time a pundit, even an Apple-focused one, complains
| that macOS "hasn't changed" I have to shake my head at such
| ignorance from people who should know better.
|
| The _interface_ changes relatively slowly, all things
| considered. (When it does change suddenly, some of the same
| pundits throw a fit.) But the _internals_ are always changing,
| virtually always for the better; things like the `discoveryd`
| situation are outliers, not the rule.
| moribvndvs wrote:
| Windows 10 and 11 are miserable. At this point, I only use them
| for gaming, but just about every windows update breaks
| performance and stability, or introduces a headache. Sometimes
| they fix it, but mostly it's drifting towards the abyss.
| Meanwhile, they endlessly shovel unwanted products and insert
| their corporate surveillance into just about every aspect of the
| Windows experience. I'm just sick to death of it. We are so close
| to the point where I can just delete it and run SteamOS
| exclusively or at least a majority of the time, and I cannot
| wait.
|
| In general, MS is pissing a lot away. Office, both the desktop
| apps and Office 365, are absolutely atrocious (just started using
| it due to a new job, I previous thought Google Docs was the
| worst). VSCode has become slow and frustrating to use. I stopped
| developing on their platform products long ago because most are a
| terrible value proposition and frustrating developer experience.
|
| I have been a dedicated DOS and Windows user since the 80s, and a
| Microsoft developer since late 90s and 2000s, but between Vista
| and Windows 8 it was clear they were circling the drain and I
| have been distancing myself from their products as much as I can.
| andyferris wrote:
| What's happening in somewhat poorer (BRICS, say) countries?
| Surely they'd be price sensitive enough not to pay for a Windows
| license if suddenly it has a (widespread) reputation for being
| less user friendly than Linux? (And this cohort would eventually
| become the majority of computer users over time... where would
| that leave Microsoft?)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| They pirate it?
| raincole wrote:
| It's such a "first world question" haha. Sorry, not trying to
| insult or criticize you, but this is genuinely a question only
| people in developed countries would ask.
|
| People in poorer countries use pirated software. No, the don't
| need to be tech-savvy enough to know torrents to use pirated
| Windows. They don't need to know how to install an OS
| themselves.
|
| 20 years ago when I got my first PC, pirated windows was the
| norm here. _You needed to be tech-savvy to know how to get a
| legal version._ That is how developing countries work.
| _dain_ wrote:
| nobody pays for windows in non-first world countries
| calamari4065 wrote:
| Linux has never given me a notification that says "you previously
| removed this search box from your taskbar, but we put it back.
| You're welcome"
|
| Paraphrased, but this actually happened on my work machine a few
| months ago. This kind of bullshit and bald faced disrespect is
| why I haven't used windows at home in years.
| datagrimx wrote:
| For full Disclosure, I once upon was a software engineer at
| Microsoft. I witnessed first hand the evil decisions around
| Windows. I left Microsoft in 2006 but I am still part of the
| Alumni Network.
|
| IMO Microsoft can gain users back by:
|
| * Not requiring a Microsoft Account * Ending all data/telemetry
| collection * Not forcing Edge on its users * Stop releasing
| improved UI updates every week * Make bash, zsh, ... native for
| Windows * Taking the AI out and making it an optional extension *
| Making the Microsoft Store optional
|
| A *plus* would be to open source Windows.
|
| I would be interested in hearing your pet peeves.
| Solvency wrote:
| What I don't get is... doesn't MS get more than enough
| data/telemetry from its cloud services and now AI usage? Do
| they REALLY have to shove it into the core desktop OS?
|
| As much as I loathe my days being siphoned from me all day long
| while being forced to use Office, I'd at least forgive them if
| my daily driver OS wasn't a giant ad-infested spyware app.
| timetopay wrote:
| Tbh telemetry is really useful for identifying bugs, feature
| requirements, and security issues. It's anonymized, not
| really that invasive, and the way they gather it is pretty
| responsible.
|
| However...
|
| It's my operating system. Can they not understand why people
| would be sensitive about this? It blows my mind that, at
| least, there isn't an on/off toggle in the Pro version. It's
| really disrespectful to those of us who care.
| timetopay wrote:
| It's wild how _annoying_ Windows UX can be when it 's something
| that microsoft wants you to use, to help improve their services
| revenue.
|
| TBH, I'm on board with some of the negatives you listed, but I
| feel like the entire enthusiast community has been screaming
| about edge, telemetry, and start menu search for years.
| Microsoft seems determined not to listen, it's astonishing.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| > Make bash, zsh, ... native for Windows
|
| Why? There is PowerShell, able to run on Linux and MacOS. And
| compared to Bash it is actually readable language.
| Falmarri wrote:
| I can't believe there are people that actually like
| powershell
| raincole wrote:
| If the alternative is bash then I don't just like
| powershell, I love it from the bottom of my heart.
| datagrimx wrote:
| IMO PowerShell is horrible. It is it an object, or not an
| object. You don't know, unless you know. How about operators?
| They make ZERO sense (-eq). They went supreme extreme on
| namespaces. I could write a paper on how bad PowerShell is.
|
| You can keep it. I'll stick with zsh or bash.
| yodon wrote:
| Ironically, power shell is the most consistent cross-platform
| scripting environment today. No more wrangling osx bsd grep
| commandline flags not working with linux gnu grep, and vice
| versa. Powershell just works cross platform. And this from a
| guy whose daily driver is an M3 MacBook.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| I agree. Windows should lean into its original strengths, not
| become a bad clone of a unix system sitting on top of a non-
| unix system.
| layer8 wrote:
| Microsoft needs to realize that the UI revamps made since
| Windows 8 have been a degradation for usability, and return to
| the old values of the WIMP interface, interface consistency,
| and keyboard-ability, and get their UI framework story back on
| track for good.
| deviantbit wrote:
| I was at Microsoft, leaving around the same time, but I was in
| the Game Studios.
|
| How about making the installation about 90% less and dropping
| DCOM support. That is a dinosaur that has long out lived its
| usefulness. It is a constant source of security problems.
| DirectX needs a massive overhaul.
| js4ever wrote:
| I agree with everything you said!
| devinprater wrote:
| On Linux, since companies are paying for it now, Orca, the Linux
| GUI screen reader, is getting bug fixes on the main branch just
| about every day. Lol, if Windows loses even the loyal blind folks
| like me, I'll die laughing at Microsoft.
| bicebird wrote:
| My daft conspiracy theory I only slightly believe is that
| Microsoft is really fed up of maintaining Windows given the
| amount of technical debt it must have piled up and the limited
| revenue it produces given that paying for an OS isn't really a
| thing anyone wants to do anymore.
|
| It sounds like a hell freezing over situation but maybe they'd
| even release their own Linux distro with compatibility tools only
| they'd ever be able to make with access to source code and
| engineer experience, and just push their web based versions of
| apps as much as possible.
|
| Either way it seems like Linux will be profiting from the
| situation at the moment as a huge number of devices out there
| won't support Windows 11 but will perform perfectly fine with
| Linux. If Ubuntu / Redhat are smart they'll put the effort in to
| make transitioning as easy as possible and scoop up all the
| people who don't want to pay for a new device, and given the
| financial issues more and more people are having I don't think
| that's a small group.
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Microsoft drove me away circa 2006 with the complete dumpster
| fire approach to device drivers (at the time anyway, I don't know
| about today) where every hardware vendor can do whatever the hell
| they want, distribute their driver however the hell they want,
| sign it or not sign it, etc.
|
| I had spent a pretty penny building a beefy gaming PC and the
| Windows XP installer would have this selective amnesia about
| device drivers that weren't signed. A very important driver
| provided by the motherboard OEM (nVidia) would be cheerfully
| accepted by the Windows XP installer at the beginning but then
| after the initial reboot during installation, the driver wouldn't
| work and would not be considered acceptable by the installer
| anymore. I was left with a [?]$3,000 (in early 2000s money) PC
| that could not complete the Windows XP installation. After a few
| days of hitting my head on this I drove to the nearest Apple
| Store and bought a MacBook and never looked back.
|
| To this day I am still somewhat livid / grossed out with the
| entire PC ecosystem and it's lack of any kind of standards,
| platform conventions, and the general flea market / down market
| vibe of the available hardware (new motherboards in 2024 STILL
| have an ocean of USB-A ports instead of USB-C or Thunderbolt!).
|
| There is a lot that Apple could improve on, particularly it would
| be nice if they loosened up a bit when it comes to what kinds of
| apps they permit on the App Store. But I immensely enjoy that I
| haven't had to give a flying dripping shit about device drivers
| for almost 20 years now. I don't have wonder if something will
| work when I plug it in. It just does. I sort of get why it's
| popular in enterprise settings, I don't understand why people put
| themselves through the misery that Windows seems to insist upon
| for its end users.
| sombragris wrote:
| Linux is my primary OS but sometimes I use Windows, and I really
| hate the UI changes. A typical example would be the printing
| dialog used by various apps. It used to work all right from the
| mouse. Now you can't tell which widget has focus, and can't tell
| how to activate a given UI element from the keyboard. Worse yet,
| you selected your print job parameters, press Enter, and nothing
| happens. You _have_ to click the OK button with the mouse.
|
| And don't get me started on the ribbon UI which was inflicted
| upon the world in Office 2007 onwards and then shoved upon
| everyone's throats in subsequent editions of Windows.
|
| Why did they have to change such things? It worked as it was.
| There's no improvement and, on the contrary, a quite noticeable
| involution.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is just sensationalist. Microsoft doesn't have their users
| by the users choosing Windows from a lineup of software. People
| use Windows, because that's the de facto PC operating system.
| It's what people learn in school, use in governments, use to
| conduct their businesses, play their games on. PC hardware is
| made for Windows, and PCs are bundled with Windows. That's why
| Windows is everywhere.
|
| Not because it's relationship with users, but because of its
| relationships with the avenues leading to users.
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